Tygerbug
Group: Super Administrators
Posts: 330
Joined: Dec. 2002 |
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Posted: Jan. 29 2003,03:14 |
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WATCH RADIO MAN DESTROY THE STAGE AT GROUNDZERO, LIVE. (8 min)
This is horribly unfunny, but may lead to better things.
http://ffrevolution.com/ffvideo/radiomanlive.rm
Tell the story.
I got out of work at 9. Went to the FF forum. Jason Gutierrez - Vigilante - shows up. He has this huge grin on his face. He's like, holding out his hand for me to shake it. I look at him like he's a can of potted meat playing the banjo at Shemp Howard's funeral. Which isn't an easy way to look at someone. I have perfected this look over many months of dealing with Jason.
"Hey, are you hungry? I'm hungry." I say.
He says "Not really. Actually man, I gotta go." Jason always says this. Jason is always ready to leave the minute he shows up anywhere.
Then he says, "There's an open mic night at Ground Zero tonight." Ground Zero being the coffeehouse on campus where USC's bad poets and musicians come to perform.
I look at him and shrug. I don't get what he's talking about. "You wanna get something to eat?" I ask again.
"Radio Man." he says. "Radio Man should show up to the open mic night."
A long pause. A long, delayed reaction. Then I smile.
"I dunno. Maybe. When is it?"
"I don't know, like now maybe. I have no idea. We should go and see what's going on."
So we go. There are some weird people with weird hair outside. All the time I'm wondering ... Radio Man onstage. What would Radio Man even do onstage?
"I don't have any idea what to do. I have no jokes, no topics, no anything."
"Well, aren't all the Radio Man shows just improvised?"
"Yeah."
"So come on, man."
I had no fucking clue what to do.
We got in and some guy was playing guitar. He wasn't bad. I asked the guy at the coffee counter if there was any place to sign up, if there was any room on the list. He said, we end at 11. (It was 10:20 or so.) The host is sitting on the floor in front of the stage.
Indeed she was ... a young, dark-haired, goggle-eyed birdlike woman in a white stocking cap, sitting on the floor watching the guy perform. She was holding a list of names.
Talking to her meant pissing the guy who was playing off.
I asked her if there was any space left. She said, well, a lot of people who had signed up aren't here. So maybe. What's your name? I almost said Radio Man. I should have. I said Garrett Gilchrist. Then I noticed Marcus Philips' name on the list. Method Mark, a friend of mine, the actor who played Daniel in Stripped Away ... a wandering minstrel he and fascinating person. I looked around for him. He wasn't there. He never did show up. Too bad.
The guy playing the guitar is pissed off at me, I think. Why did she have to sit so close to the stage?
I have no plan, no clue what to do, but I'm signed up. I cue up my camcorder and hand it to Jason. I tell him to tape whatever I do. I try to find a battery that still works. It isn't easy. None of them do. I tell him to shoot without the LCD screen out.
Some woman is up reciting some kind of interesting poetry ... she is nervous because there have been no other poets onstage. Her voice quavers as she speaks. I like her multisyllable words, her often invented words.
The camera is making noise and I am worried I am screwing her up too.
By the time it is cued up, the host is up onstage again.
I think, fuck .... what if none of the 5 people on her list is there? Wouldn't that be insane? If she went through her list and called me up? I'm not ready. I am so far beyond not ready I have achieved antimatter in myself. But there is no way none of those people would be there. My body twitches. For some reason I hit the record button on the camcorder, I record her speaking.
Garrett Gilchrist, she says, pronouncing it wrong.
Oh fuck.
Oh fuck.
What the hell? How did this happen?
Come on up here, she says. Play us a song.
A SONG?
SHE THINKS I'M A FUCKING MUSICIAN?
WHAT THE HELL DO I DO?
Jason's guitar, I think, in a blind panic. Jason always carries a guitar. I can take his guitar. I can ... I can do something with it. Something like .... I don't fucking know what to do.
A guitar.
I grab a guitar, and realize it isn't Jason's.
And another.
And another, I grab and it looks kind of like Jason's.
I call out in a Radio Man voice, "Is this my guitar?"
Jason doesn't say anything, so I assume it's his guitar.
It isn't his guitar. I find out later. I don't know this at the time. Whoever's guitar it is, they don't stop me.
I am panicked. I start falling down a lot, as a reflex. A LOT. The Rich Evans falldown. I just fall down. As I'm getting up onstage.
Then I say, "Hello," and it doesn't sound enough like Radio Man. Fuck, I'm not in character yet. Fuck. I have nothing to say. I have nothing funny to say. I say nothing funny. I am not funny. They are going to murder me. I am going to stand up here on this stage and say nothing and just say uhh and I will have to run away because I have no act.
I fall down again.
Because it's all I can do.
They don't laugh. People always laugh when somebody falls down. It's a rule.
I am so fucked.
For some reason, I look at the guitar which isn't mine and say a Neil Innes quote. "This is a short blues." He would say that and then do a one-line blues song. "I woke up this morning." That's the entire song.
I am neither that clever nor that funny.
But I am destroying the stage. I am knocking chairs over. I am destroying this guitar.
Which I find out later isn't Jason's. Is a nice guitar.
The host gets freaked out, I guess. She comes onstage to "help me out" .... stop me destroying the stage.
I have been onstage for several minutes now without making anyone laugh.
And then I look at her, I look at her unattractive face and suddenly Radio Man starts talking. Actually, he starts hitting on her.
Radio Man finally comes out.
And finally it happens. It's not good Radio Man, very little of funny is said, but it is Radio Man. I had never done Radio Man with anyone else in the room ... never done it in front of an audience. Never had to do it live.
But for a while Radio Man takes over.
He says some stuff, but the audience really wants him to just play a song already.
I can't play a song. I can't play the fucking guitar. I can't even pretend.
I stall.
I ask her to play instead, since she's still on the stage.
She sings the lamest song I've ever heard. She doesn't even strum the guitar. She sings a song about Chandler Bing. The Matthew Perry character on Friends. What the fuck?
She really sucks. But at least she takes the pressure off of me.
For 10 seconds.
And now they expect Radio Man to sing.
Um, I say again, this is a short blues.
My hands hit the guitar and make a godawful noise, by accident.
Shit.
I woke up. This morning.
And then I run offstage.
In a blind panic.
But I am heady, filled with weird excitement. I was HORRIBLE, but I filled 8 minutes in front of an audience, out of absolutely fucking nothing.
And then Jason tells me that wasn't his guitar.
I start laughing. We are so fucked. We are going to get arrested. I destroyed the fucking stage, and some guy's guitar. The guitar is still onstage.
Radio Man shouts out, "Whose guitar was that?"
No answer. Laughter. Nervous laughter, from the audience. We ARE going to get arrested. I say to Jason, "Let's get the hell out of here, fast."
I pack up my stuff as fast as I can and run out in fear.
As I leave, two guys named Sean stop me and tell me they liked the act. One says, "we should rock out sometime." I give him my website address. Jason says, that's lame, don't do that.
Two girls pass by and say, hey, nice show.
Another guy passes by and says, hey, I liked your show tonight.
I am nervous and frightened, and cover it up through humor as usual.
Jason says, "I feel like that guy, Kaufman's friend."
Lloyd Kaufman? I think.
"Huh?" I say.
"Andy Kaufman, the guy who would do stuff with him."
"Bob Zmuda."
"I feel like Bob Zmuda, except I didn't DO anything."
I smile. I am giddy like a schoolkid as I realize that I stole some guy's guitar and destroyed it and a stage and made a total ass of myself and wasn't funny, and got away with it.
I feel like a juvenile delinquent.
"Two weeks," Jason says.
"Huh?" I say.
"There's another open mike night in two weeks."
The rock star thing wasn't funny, but maybe if radio man had another gimmick. Like, a poet.
"You should be a poet."
I think about this. I try to have Radio Man compose a poem about He-Man. It comes out actually kind of funny.
We talk about ways to make this act genuinely good. Just a test run. Just a test run.
I am amused by this.
In two weeks, I will be prepared. Hopefully they'll have forgotten what I did the first time ... and won't run me out of the place and call the cops.
I was unfunny this time. But I shall return to be even more unfunny.
My knees are skinned up and I am breathing a little weird .... actually that's from the Subway meatball sandwich I just ate. Not my knees being skinned up. That's from the show. It's been an hour and a half since the show and I just now noticed that my knees are skinned and bleeding, and stinging. I had other things on my mind.
WATCH RADIO MAN DESTROY THE STAGE AT GROUNDZERO, LIVE. (8 min)
This is horribly unfunny, but may lead to better things.
http://ffrevolution.com/ffvideo/radiomanlive.rm
Edited by Tygerbug on Jan. 29 2003,04:38
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Garrett Gilchrist, FF dictator-for-life
http://pythonet.org/fredshow
"23 years and all I have to show for it is 'ow my groin' and 'what?'" - Rich Evans, The Orange Cow Awards
THE BONGOS ARE SO VERY LOUD
"Slide, Radio Man!" - Jason Gutierrez
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