This Is Not Fame by Doug Stanhope

Author:Doug Stanhope
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Da Capo Press
Published: 2017-12-05T05:00:00+00:00

STILL, NOBODY KNOWS YOU

I am happy to say that I have paid to see myself live several times. From the early days when some thick-neck doorman would half slap me with a backhand at the entrance to tell me that it was a five-dollar cover charge, I would gladly pay just to watch him apologize after he saw me onstage. It was also a great out for when jokes didn’t work. I could tell the audience that I was no different than them. I paid the same as them and I was also hoping I would be funnier. We were all on the same page. It still happens occasionally only now it costs more.

Artie Lange asked me to open for him at the Palms in Las Vegas after he was already ensconced as the new co-host on Stern and I was always forgotten as a guest. I knew the gig was going to be an inevitable death. The bill was full of Wack Packers and mainstays of the show. I think I was scheduled to follow Yucko the Clown. And I was the last guy before Artie.

Morning radio audiences are always the worst. Assholes who live their lives stuck in morning-drive traffic listening to radio on the way to a job they loathe, who sit on hold for hours hoping to get on the air to say something pointless. Now they are here live and still have all those pointless things to yell but there is no longer a call screener to hold them back. All of those unanswered calls are blurted out like an endless rain of dull-pointed arrows throughout the show.

I was almost happy when they wouldn’t let me onto the show to begin with. Although I was on the bill and brought by a phalanx of security all the way from Artie’s suite through the back hallways to the artists’ entrance, the drunk-with-power backstage doorman said I needed my necklace-laminate to gain entry. I had assumed that the Secret Service delivery through Frank Sinatra tunnels would have given this guy a clue that maybe I wasn’t a door crasher. I was wrong.

“I don’t give a fuck. You need your pass.” As he turned his back. You don’t need a pass, you ape. You needed better knees. That way maybe you coulda gone pro out of college ball instead of being here all bitter and an asshole, stuck in a back hallway flicking me shit. I didn’t say it but I wrote it down in my head. The Palms is one of those hotels where the beautiful people tend to go and rave and have unwanted pregnancies or whatever the fuck they do. It is something in nature that the more attractive the clientele a place draws, the more angry and shitty the doormen become.

Then I noticed that right beside the door next to us was a huge poster for the show with my name and picture right underneath Artie’s. I pointed this out to the simian and my smug look only made him pissier.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.