Dynomite!: Good Times, Bad Times, Our Times--A Memoir Read online

  I am booked at the Sahara in Atlantic City for a three-month gig in the lounge. I arrive at the airport and look around for the car that is supposed to pick me up. I see a limo with a Sahara sign on it and find the driver sleeping. I tap on the window and say, “Are you here to pick up Jimmie Walker?”

  “J. J.?”

  “J. J.?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Oh, sorry. You know what’s happening? We have WrestleMania in town.” This was WrestleMania IV at the Trump Plaza in 1988. “I’ve been driving all day. I’m really tired. Do you know your way around Atlantic City?”

  “Yeah, I’ve worked here a lot.”

  “Would you mind driving?”

  “Yes, I would. That’s your gig.”

  “Thought I’d ask.”

  At the Sahara the female desk clerk says, “Oh my God, J. J.! What are you doing here?”

  “I’m working in the lounge. I’m going to be here for a while.”

  “Really? I never even heard. Where are you staying?”

  “I’m staying here. Where else would I stay?”

  “Uh, you know it’s WrestleMania? We’re booked.”

  “I’m supposed to have a room.”

  “We don’t have any rooms.”

  I ask her to call Jay, the entertainment director.

  “I’m sorry, Jay didn’t get your reservation in on time. It’s a little crazy. It is WrestleMania. But we’ll figure something out.” After an hour she wrangles me a room. I open the door and see a guy jerking off on the bed. I wince, close the door, and return to the reservations clerk. I tell her there is somebody still in the room.

  “Oh, I guess they didn’t clear it. Well, you know, it is WrestleMania.”

  She gets me another room, but it faces the Trump Plaza and the bright lights from that tower reflect right into my room. For someone who works at night and sleeps in during the mornings, this is a serious problem. I ask her for another room, but she shakes her head: “It’s WrestleMania.” Okay, fine.

  The next day I go to the valet to pick up the car they usually lend to the entertainer playing the hotel.

  “J. J.! I love that show, man!” he says. “What are you doing here?”

  “I’m working the lounge. I’m here to get the club car.”

  He looks at me like I am insane. “You know it’s WrestleMania? All the cars are taken.” I ask him to call Jay, who tells him to send me down the street to a rental car place where I can get a car and that the hotel will pay.

  I walk to the rental car place. The guy at the desk says, “Holy shit, J. J.? I love you, man! I used to laugh my ass off at that ‘dyn-o-mite’ thing. What are you doing in town?”

  “I’m working the Sahara.”

  “So what are you doing in here?”

  “I need a car.”

  “We don’t have any cars. Didn’t anyone tell you? It’s WrestleMania.”

  “But I’m going to be here for three months. I need a car.”

  “Let me see what I can do. But keep in mind, it’s WrestleMania.” After an hour he locates an available rental and I drive back to the hotel.

  The valet says, “Parking is full. It’s WrestleMania.” I give him the keys and let him figure out what to do.

  I go to my room, but it has not been cleaned up. I see the maid, who is about to leave the floor, and I stop her.

  “I think you forgot to hit my room,” I tell her. “It’s a little funky in there.”

  “I’ve been working since six o’clock this morning,” she says sharply. “You know, it is WrestleMania.”

  I do my show that night and tell the tale of my trip so far. Jay comes up afterward and says, “Very funny, man. But we would appreciate you not doing that story. It makes the hotel look bad.” I say, “No problem.”

  But when I go back to my room, it still has not been made up. I see the maid again and she gives me the same line: “It’s WrestleMania.” Okay, now I am getting annoyed.

  I do my second show that night, and I tell the story again—and it absolutely kills. Jay says, “Didn’t I ask you not to do that story?”

  “Come on, Jay, what’s going on? I can’t even get a clean room!”

  “We’ll take care of it,” he says, “as soon as WrestleMania is over.”

  The next day the valet drives my car to the pick-up area. It has a gash about a foot long in the side. “Hey man, what happened to the car?” I ask.

  He looks at the damage. “Man, that is bad.”

  “It wasn’t there when I checked it in yesterday.”

  “Well, you know, it is WrestleMania.”

  That night in the lounge I tell the story again. Jay waves me over to speak with him. “I’ve asked you twice not to do that story. I know you’re getting laughs, but you’re getting laughs at the expense of the hotel. We can’t have that. Maybe it’s best that you leave.”

  “Fine, I’m leaving.”

  The next day I board the plane to LA and settle into my seat. I turn to the guy next to me. It is the same guy I saw jerking off in the hotel room. I change my seat.

  I am a road comic.

  I spend a lot of time on planes and in airports. On the first day that planes could fly after 9/11 I went to the Las Vegas airport. I had a gig and it was time to help people laugh again. Everyone in the country was nervous, on edge, and a little bit scared too, especially if you were about to get on an airplane. I didn’t know what to expect at the terminal. Inspectors searched my bags for what seemed like half an hour, but I finally made it through the checkpoint.

  Security at airports is very tight. If your first name is Muhammad, your last name better be Ali.

  Walking through the concourse to my gate, an airline agent saw me and yelled, “Hey! Dyn-o-mite!” Not a smart move. She was hauled away by security guards, screaming, “Wait a minute! It’s J. J., the ‘Dyn-o-mite’ guy!”

  Please, if you see me at an airport, a simple “Hey Jimmie” will do.

  After I work a club in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, at 2 a.m. I drive the twenty minutes to a hotel in Philadelphia, where I get about five hours of sleep before I catch the shuttle to the airport so I can fly to Rochester, New York. The checkout clerk in Philly wants to know what it was like to be on Good Times. I tell him I’m late and can’t chat right now. He tries to charge me for two nights. I tell him I’ve only been there for five hours—though it feels like two nights.

  I’m five minutes late for the shuttle and have to grab a cab. I didn’t have to hurry, however; the plane is delayed. So I call my agent. He’s not in his office yet. When the plane is ready to board, I’m told I have to check my carry-on bag. No problem. I land in Rochester during the Northeast’s worst snowstorm of the year. I head straight to a local TV show to promote my gig that night—but without my bag. The airline says it is not lost—they just can’t find it. I suppose it must be hiding. They promise they will get it to my hotel as soon as they find what’s not lost. I call my agent. He’s gone to lunch.

  The host of the talk show doesn’t know who I am or why I am there. So I interview myself. I learn things about myself I never knew before. When I get back to the hotel, still no bag. I call Letterman’s show to do a pre-interview for the appearance I’m scheduled for tomorrow. The talent coordinator is new. She doesn’t understand why I’m on the show if I don’t have a movie or TV show to promote. She asks me if I’ve ever met Dave. Then she gives me the Top Ten Reasons I Won’t Be on the Show Again. I call my agent. He’s still at lunch.

  The Rochester gig sells out and the performance goes very well. I open with a joke about potholes in the streets:

  Drove in from the airport. You have some potholes in your streets, Rochester! Saw one so big there was a Vietnamese family living in it!

  I kill. I sign autographs and hang out with the folks until 2 a.m., and I’m in bed an hour later. Have I mentioned that the airline still hasn’t delivered my bag?

  I’m up at the crack of dawn to do an early morning radio show with a loca
l insult comic named Brother Wease. Apparently some people are bright-eyed and ready for insults at 7 a.m. I’m not, but the show must go on, so I stumble my way through it. Ellen DeGeneres has the best line about doing radio: “I knew I was a star when I didn’t have to get up at 5 a.m. to do the Rick & Rob Morning Zoo Show with Ike the Insane Intern.” Ellen is a star. I’m just a road comic, and the road is filled with potholes.

  I remember years earlier receiving a call from a man with a very effeminate voice who said he was an assistant at a comedy club I was supposed to play in a few days.

  “The talent booker is gone and I don’t know our acts that well,” he said in apology. “I mean, I know you used to be on TV and say ‘TNT!’ or ‘Nitroglycerin!’ or something like that. But I’m sorry to tell you that we can’t sell enough tickets to your show. I’m afraid we will have to cancel.”

  Very disappointed, I quickly called my agent. He had no idea what I was talking about and called the club. They said my show was still on. I thought for a second about that voice on the phone. Landesberg!

  I go to the Rochester airport to catch a flight to New York. I’m on time, but the plane is delayed, of course. I discover that the airline found my bag—and sent it to the hotel I just left. I arrive in New York without it.

  Danny, the limo driver sent by Letterman’s show, is a nice guy. He says he’s also a comic. Isn’t everyone? He’s afraid to tell Letterman so he tries his jokes out on me. I’m glad he’s a good driver.

  We stop at Nathan’s, the famous hot dog place in Times Square, and see one of the area’s characters, Coupon Man. He never pays in cash; he uses coupons for everything. He buys me half a dozen hot dogs. In return I give him a ride around the block in the limo.

  I tell Danny to wait for me while I walk down the street so I can buy some clothes because the airline still has mine. I pass a homeless man with two cups. I ask him, “Why two cups?” He says one is for his brother who is out sick. At the clothing store the salesman proceeds to give me a detailed description of two episodes of Good Times that I barely remember. Then he says, “What happened to you? Why aren’t you on TV anymore?” I tell him I’ll be on Letterman tonight. He says he only watches sports.

  At Letterman’s studio suddenly the talent coordinator knows that I first met Dave in 1975 and everyone treats me like a long-lost friend. The talent coordinator wants to know if Dave really had a beard. After the shot, Danny the limo driver tells me he thinks I did really well, but he has some jokes that would have been funnier.

  We drive to the hotel so I can get some sleep before flying to Chicago tomorrow for a one-nighter. But there’s a call waiting for me from Regis Philbin’s show. A guest canceled and they would like me to fill in early the next morning. I’ll be there. The young talent coordinator wants to know what Regis and I might talk about. She doesn’t realize I have known Regis for decades and that we can do the interview in our sleep—which I may have to do. She has insisted on consulting Wikipedia and asks me not only about Good Times but Bustin’ Loose. Really? She also wants to know about my wife.

  I really need some sleep. But my hotel room faces the street. At 2 a.m. I hear: “Hey! Pick up the can, man! Just get the goddamn can!” The garbagemen are picking up the trash. I watch infomercials until 5 a.m.

  Two hours later the phone rings. It’s the Regis show saying the limo is on the way to pick me up. We get there only five minutes before air time. The talent coordinator is nervous because she still doesn’t know what Regis and I could possibly talk about. I walk onto the set, Regis pulls out photos of me on a Perry Como special, and we are off and running. I plug my gig in Chicago that night and then I’m back in the limo headed for the airport.

  Hope springing eternal, I ask the airline if they have rerouted my bag. I’m told I am “in the system.” I call my agent. He’s at a breakfast meeting. I ask his secretary if my agent saw my Letterman shot. She says he was at a B’nai B’rith dinner. I get a call from the airline. They assure me that they are on the case. They say my bag was last seen in Cincinnati.

  I actually get in touch with Bob, my personal appearance agent. He once booked me into a farm convention where the farmers had to mow a clearing so they could set up lawn chairs for the audience. I helped them set up the chairs. Bob would sell rocks to the Palestinians and helmets to the Israelis. He tells me I’m booked for a date in Hot Springs, Arkansas, a hotbed of the Ku Klux Klan. I tell him, “Thanks.”

  At the Chicago gig I open with the pothole joke: “Drove in from the airport. You have some potholes in your streets, Chicago! Saw one so big there was a Vietnamese family living in it!” It kills. Every town has potholes. Every town will hear my pothole joke.

  I arrive in Hot Springs at a dinner theater/country-western bar. The audience is rowdy, so I resort to audience participation mode: “Where are you from? What do you do for a living?” I talk to a blond woman in the front row: “You look a little nervous speaking to a black man.” A guy who looks like an extra from Mississippi Burning jumps up and yells at me, “She’s got good reason to be!” I don’t ask for the details. We go on with the show—until a drunk woman stands up and shouts, “Women have half the money and all the pussy!” She then runs up on stage and says she wants to tell a joke. I have no choice. I let her. “What do you call a black test tube baby?” Pause. “Janitor in a drum!” The crowd loves it. I get her off the stage and move on.

  This is not an audience I want to be confrontational with. I would not survive doing what Richard Belzer did one night at the Comedy Store in LA. I watched him as he walked on and a woman in front immediately yelled, “You suck! I’ve seen you before and you’re horrible!”

  “Big Dick” wasn’t going to take that without a fight. He schmoozed her purse from her and went through it on stage. He took out marijuana joints and showed them to the crowd. She had a diaphragm, and he showed it to the crowd. Every time he took something out, Belzer ripped her apart and buried her. He destroyed her for half an hour. It was vicious and hysterically funny. The audience went wild.

  The woman, not so amused, finally surrendered and said, “Hey, why don’t you just do your thing.”

  Belzer hammered in the final stake: “My thing is fucking you in the ass!”

  Somehow I live through my Arkansas gig and I’m back at an airport. The airline has my bag! But the handle has broken off. I look inside and there is the handle, with a note: “This must be yours.”

  My next stop is Greenville, South Carolina, where I deal with one of the scourges of comedy clubs today—the cell phone. People get calls during the show, hold conversations during the show, text during the show. I see a young woman in the second row who keeps looking down at the device in her hand. She does it over and over. Finally, I reach down and grab it from her. It’s her insulin pump. Ouch. Sorry.

  A couple of days later I’m in Buffalo. It’s winter and it’s snowing. What a surprise in Buffalo. I’m here to play the Comedy Trap, and local comic Air Force Eddie meets me at the airport. Eddie is obviously an optimist: He drives a ’76 Gremlin with a burglar alarm. He tries to convince me that it is not really snowing—until we can’t see the road anymore. We come to a stop in the middle of a field where two cows stare at us. Eddie calls a friend who pulls us out of the snow with his Jeep. At the hotel Eddie says with a straight face, “Buffalo doesn’t get as much snow as people think.”

  The pothole joke kills again and the show goes well. The next morning I am at the Buffalo airport. The worst snowstorm the city has seen in years shuts everything down. No flights in or out. I sit in the airport café having breakfast. A woman comes up to me and says, “How are you doing?” I’m tired and I’m worried about making my gig the following night in Boston. I don’t look up at her. I just say, “Okay,” and wait to hear, “I loved your show. I still watch it. Do you ever talk to the cast anymore?” Instead, she talks about her mom, going on and on about mom this and mom that. I look up. It’s my sister. She lives in Buffalo.

  She tells me ab
out my father, who was now about eighty years old. He had gotten sick and was in the hospital. He was getting worse. The doctors said he needed to be in a convalescent home, but my mother and his two other girlfriends fought to keep him out. They said they would help him return to his apartment. My mother also offered to take him to her place. After all, she had been a nurse. But the doctors said no; he had to go to the home.

  My mother gave her okay. Then she stole a wheelchair and wheeled him out of the hospital. She kidnapped him! After half an hour, the hospital realized he was gone. She was nearly as old as he was, so they were still crawling down the sidewalk not too far away. The nurses started to chase her on foot! But she hailed a cab, put my father in with her, and escaped. They went to his apartment, and some time later he passed away.

  So I call my mother. She reveals a secret she has been keeping from me for more than twenty years: Six months after Mr. Boyce died, she remarried my father. During the entire time since, she lived in two apartments, hers in the Bronx and his in Brooklyn. She was married to him the second time for over twenty years. At his funeral the other two women were also there, but she was officially the widow.

  I am stunned. She never told me, her son. She doesn’t understand why I am very angry with her. Instead, she gets angry with me for not understanding her feelings for my father.

  “Why me?” I ask. “Why are you not angry with him? I didn’t break your jaw twice! I didn’t have two other women at my funeral! You should be upset with the person who did all that!”

  “He was my husband and I loved him,” she says. “He was your father.”

  I had moved on long ago. She never did.

  I do what I do, and good or bad, I move on. That has been the mantra of my life. That is the mantra of the road comic.

  Not too long ago I walked out of the London Hotel in New York and was blinded by the flash of what seemed like a hundred cameras. The paparazzi had staked out the entrance. I stood there and smiled, wondering why they were so interested in me. I walked back into the hotel to ask what was going on. Answer: Justin Bieber, the hottest new teen singing star, was staying there. I guess the photographers figured they might as well take a few pictures of me while they were waiting for him.