I've been sitting here reading friends' reminiscences since about four o'clock this afternoon. It's taken me all that time to get over the shock.
The world lost a comic genius. The Bay Area lost our favorite son. To those of us who were part of the San Francisco comedy scene of the late 1970's we have lost The One.
I'd like to say there was never a doubt in my mind that he would be The One, but that would be false. From the first time I saw him at the Holy City Zoo, a small comedy club where they literally would turn the lights out on a performer who went beyond his allotted ten minutes, I knew he was genius. But I also thought how in the world could anyone translate this manic energy, this mile a minute mind meld, into a anything more than an exhausting club comic. TV would kill the creativity, film -- yeah right can you see him playing anything other than himself? Even comedy recordings couldn't capture the half of his act that was spot on mime or that look in his eye as he calculated instantly just the perfect retort, barb, or non-sequitor.
Yet still you had to believe he was The One. Comedy clubs could fill on just the rumor he was going to come in and do ten minutes. The Other Cafe had a stage that backed up onto a window along the street. If so inclined passing pedestrians could stop and watch a few minutes of a comic's set, though hearing what was being said was dicey. The street would be jammed when word spread he was there. And this was a world without Twitter or Facebook. He came in second in the first San Francisco Comedy Competition and turned coming in second into a badge of honor for a legion of soon to be great stand-ups. Only The One could do that.
The energy he brought into a club was insane. He fed the audience, the audience fed him, the dynamo filled with electricity till a mere raised eyebrow or sudden change of body language was enough to bring tears of joy and aching of ribs to everyone. Other comics were in awe of that ability. He'd drop in at the Old Spaghetti House in North Beach to work with the improv group Spaghetti Jam and it was a point of honor to just keep up with him. Oh some griped, natural jealousy and professional envy are a bad mix. I don't think you could have a conversation about him without hearing "you know he stole that line from (insert name of comic)", but it was also acknowledged that he didn't do it conscientiously. It was just his mind working at warp speed, sucking in something he heard and using it to propel his jet engine.
Everyone has their story of their encounters with him. A party, a club, in the grocery store, he seemed to be everywhere at once. And at the same time he seemed to be nowhere. The yin of the energy on stage was balanced by the yang of the quiet thoughtful off stage persona. You had to think the off stage person was decompressing from the onstage persona, gathering strength quietly like a tropical storm at sea moving towards hurricane status so that it could wreck havoc once unleashed. What we didn't know, what I came to deal with myself years later, was that the "decompression" was really the dark cloud lowering.
Those of us who live with the cloud know the power of those uplifting powders. Let me tell you, cocaine might be a high for you, but for us it allows a brief moment of what we perceive to be regular life. "This is it!", you think, "this is what it feels like to be normal! This is why all those people are happy. I want to feel like this all the time. I want to feel normal."
And that's how you slide into addiction. You think the Blue Fairy has made Pinocchio into a real boy, but in reality the Blue Fairy is the Wicked Witch and she's just fattening you up for the oven.
You don't notice that as the star begins to ascend. Or maybe it was just the times, the age of "everyone's doing it". Still I couldn't see how he was going to go beyond stand up comic. I think everyone thought that. The feeling was so prevalent that the biggest laugh he got one night at the Great American Music Hall was his last comment about how he had to finish so he could catch a plane for Los Angeles to shoot an episode of HAPPY DAYS. Really? HAPPY DAYS? Oh yeah, sure, what a gag.
I guess I was wrong.
Still the cloud followed. It followed Mork and Popeye and Garp and Vladimir and Adrian. It followed him up the stairs to hold the gold statue, an event that truly had me shaking my head in amazement. It followed him to the worldwide fame and the millions of dollars and the adulation. It followed him to Tiburon, that most exclusive of exclusive towns in the Bay Area. It was there that the cloud swallowed him.
I've been reliving my young adulthood over the past few hours, mourning not only him but the harsh reality of getting older. The cloud sits up on the ceiling, a comfortable distance away. I have learned the skills necessary to keep it at bay. My heart breaks that he could not.
I suppose that's the cosmic deal if you are anointed to be The One.
And the congregation says "Amen".
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| Spaghetti Jam Improv June 1978. Photo by yours truly. |
