I sold my car, a late 60's Oldsmobile DELMONT 88 that got about 8 miles to the gallon for 200 dollars and bought a one-way ticket to Chicago. I loaded up my Duffel Bag from my Army days (I still have it) and off I went. Ted Holum picked me up at the airport and delivered me to a rooming house in Lyons IL. The stand-up comedy scene in Chicago was actually in the suburbs. The COMEDY WOMB was in Lyons, and THE COTTAGE was in Rosemont. The first night I was in town Ted took me with him to one of the "paid" gigs in the area, a one-nighter at SINESE'S WINERY, run by Bill Brady whose parents owned the restaurant. Bill was a professional host/MC around the area, and I believe he also hired himself out as a SANTA at XMAS, and an EASTER BUNNY. (He owned the costumes.) I went up and did a guest set (I have it on audio tape and it will be available here when I figure out how to do it). AND THEY GAVE ME $5.00. I was now a professional comedian.
THE WOMB was above a Pizzeria and I started getting spots there every night, I was going up amongst an interesting mixture of acts. Brian Schmidt, Dailey Pike , Larry Reeb , Jerry Dye , Ed Fiala , Orlando Reyes, Phil Soltanik ( Emo Phillips ), James Wesley Jackson "the enviromedian", Tony Arquilla and others.
I was working a job from midnight to 4 cleaning up at a Dunkin Donuts. This lasted about 2 or 3 weeks when I just stopped coming in, they still owe me my last check. I started working at the door to the club, and to be honest I don’t know where my money came from but somehow I survived. Bumming rides back and forth to the COMEDY COTTAGE, watching and learning form the other comics.
I thought Ed Fiala (RIP ED) was the best. He always did his act and it was so much fun, Bert and Ernie from Sesame Street Smoking a J, "looks more like an 'I' to me.” Ed actually had been the former partner of Ted Holum in a comedy duo, Holum and Fiala (originally titled Ketchum and Holum). They eventually broke up but both worked single acts and were co-owners in the Clubs.
All through the summer I built an act, and I did pretty well, I usually got good laughs, sometimes I killed and occasionally I stood on stage in a room full of silence.
Around July this weird little man came to town from San Francisco. Frank Kidder . Frank went on stage and did a routine about riding the Street Cars in San Francisco on acid. Frank made a lot of people uncomfortable. But he talked about a Stand-Up comedy competition he had started in San Francisco 2 years before and was trying to get comics to come out and be in it. Frank is very intense and animated. He needed a place to stay and no one was offering him a couch. But I had moved into someone’s attic by then and my hair was long and I considered myself a latter day hippie so I offered him to stay at my place. And he went on and on about this competition. The first year 76, Robin Williams had come in 2nd. (The winner had won by a very small margin; Frank said it was because the lights went out during his set, and he improvised the line “When the lights come on everyone yell SURPRISE”. The second year Dana Carvey had won. He actually had an audiotape of the 2nd years final's competition. Dana Carvey, Mark McCollum , A Whitney Brown ("I use to be THE Whitney Brown"), 2 others and a guest set by Jack Marion. And it was fantastic, I had never heard anything like it and I wanted in.
Someone wanted a car delivered to the west coast and I drove it out along with Dawn Huber, a waitress who I had a giant crush on, but she did not feel the same for me, (sigh). We did a little sightseeing, (Mount Rushmore, and some caverns) and we stopped in Reno to gamble and we saw Rich Little in the Main Room. I think I tipped the maitre D $50 to try and get him to introduce me to Rich Little to no avail. And I heard him do an old joke. He asked them to name someone they wanted him to impersonate, and he pretended someone had said Lassie, and he said “I’ll do Lassie if you will be the tree” I made it out to SF, and I was dropped off at Frank Kidders where I crashed for a few days until I eventually got a room in the tenderloin, I think it was $35 dollars a week. I still don't know how I was making any money!!!
The competition was amazing. Frank had brought in some partners the previous year, Anne and Jon Fox . And they were in the process of turning it into a significant event. It lasted a month, 2 weeks of preliminaries, each with 20 comics. And the top 10 from the 40 went on to a week of semi's, and then the top 5 went to the final's and the first prize was $500.00, WOW!!!
Well I had some killer sets in the preliminaries and made it to the semis. But I just couldn't sustain it when I went from 5 minutes to 10 minutes so I didn’t make it to the finals. But I went to the finals and George Carlin was one of the judges. I was star struck.
I was on hold to do a guest set when the judges were tabulating the winner. And then Robin Williams came in the room; he was in town from LA. He stopped by and told the promoter he was sick and did not want to perform, but Jon let it slip to the audience and the audience demanded his presence. At first I was crushed as he went up to do the guest set I had been hoping to do, and then I was blown away. I watched a guy destroy for 15 minutes, largely with no microphone to a room of over 500.
I had had a vision of what I wanted to grow into as a comedian before that night, and Robin was surpassing it by a factor of 10, it was the most humbling experience of my life
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
About Lucien
