Fame-ish, Part 1

Good morning on this day of Thur. Today is my father's half-birthday, so everyone please wish him a "Hap Birt!" with me. A funny thing happened a week or two ago, and the time has come to share it with you all. What did you bring to share today? That's what I thought. Selfish bastards. Sharing is caring. Remember that.

I was in the car, which happens from time to time, and I turned on some local sports talk radio. It was the day after the Sopranos finale, and the two on-air personalities were discussing how all series finales seem to suck. They asked the listeners to call in if they knew of any good ones, and I picked up my cell phone and started dialing. It rang, and someone quickly picked up and said the station's name. "Hi, I have a good finale to talk about," I said. He asked me a couple of questions and then put me on hold with the show playing. Suddenly they said, "We have Peter on the line calling from a cell phone in traffic who says he has a good one for us. Hey, Peter." I talked with them for about ten seconds about how the finale of Six Feet Under was fantastic and after a small description, they agreed that it sounded very interesting. (I won't go into what made it so cool and possibly spoil something for those of you who might rent the whole series at some point. You can thank me later.)

As soon as I hung up, I turned the radio back on to see if I would hear myself due to the delay. Sure enough, I heard my voice for half a second. One full second later, my phone rang and it was my brother. "Did you hear me?" I asked, without saying a hello. "Yeah, I just heard you on the radio!" It turns out that he didn't hear them say my name but heard my voice and picked up his phone to call me. I was famous.

It got me thinking (uh oh): what's the most famous I've ever been? That's a tough one. I think the best way to decide is for me start listing my top famous times in what I believe to be an increasing order. At the end, maybe we'll all learn a little about each other...and ourselves. (Cue music)

6. UOPTA: a blog in which I share thoughts and stories with 8-10 people on the internets, many of whom are already related to me.

5. The Kevin and Bean Show: Another radio thing, but this one is definitely bigger. KROQ is very popular in these parts, and almost everyone in high school listened to that show in the morning. They were having a "celebrity spotting" segment, and I called in to say that I saw Donny Most of "Happy Days" at a theatre a couple of days prior. As I found out while on the air, the person before me had seen Anson Williams of "Happy Days." Kevin or Bean asked (probably rhetorically) which sighting was better. I answered. "Oh Ralph was way better," I said. "People laughed with Ralph; they just laughed at Potsie." They agreed with my logic and went to the next called, hoping it would be someone who saw Mr. Cunningham. When I got to school, I had a bunch of people telling me that they heard me on the radio and how cool that was. That's right: famous.

4. Solid Gold: I don't remember the circumstances surrounding this whatsoever, but I was on television in the mid 80s. My brother, my old friend Jason N. and I were all on Solid Gold together for about three seconds. Together, we lip synched (lip sunk?), "Schooooool's out for summer!" And that was it. Brief and forgettable, but television!

3. The 10 Spot: This was a daily list of ten items on the Sports Illustrated website (in the section that they stupidly renamed "Extra Mustard"). The items were all quick jokes about sports. There was a setup about something in the news and then a punchline - very opening monologue-ish. The first Friday of every month, it would be an all-reader edition. I wrote in a few times and actually made it in on the website three times. One of them was even better because he wrote on Monday that he "forgot to add what Peter in Los Angeles wrote" and published it then. That's fame you can't buy, gentle readers. I earned it, armed with nothing but my wit, sports knowledge, and a keyboard.

Well, I've covered my famous moments online, on the radio, and on television. How could I get any more famous than that? You'll have to tune in Monday to find out as I reveal the top two famous moments in Peter Klein history. Can you wait that long? Do you have another choice? I'm not skipping a FUF for you or anyone! Have a great day, folks, and remember to write in to ptklein@gmail.com with anything about anything.

Comedic detour

I was all set to write about something else this morning, but two things happened on the drive into work that changed my plan. Come to think of it, that happened yesterday also. Maybe the secret to comedy isn't timing after all, but traffic. I'll look into this.

First, the shorter story. A little over a year ago, we were living in an apartment complex with one parking spot for both of us. My wife had recently purchased a new car, so I had no problem letting her have that spot while I usually just found one on a side street nearby. One day, I got a good spot on the main street. When I went out to my car later, there was a note on my windshield: "Dickhead - next time pull all the way up!" I looked, and sure enough there was a foot or two of curb before it turned red and an extra car (or at least a third of one) may have been able to park there as well. I was a little taken aback that my first offense angered this person enough to start the note off with "Dickhead," but that's not what stuck from this encounter. You see, the stem on the 'h' in "Dickhead" was shorter than it should've been, making it look like I was being addressed as "Dicknead." (We pronounced it like dick-need to accentuate the error rather than dick-ned, by the way.)

It didn't take long for "Dicknead" to work its way into my vocabulary. I've found that I only use it in very specific situations, such as someone staying in a faster lane and then cutting over to where they need to be at the very last second, thereby causing more of the traffic that they were avoiding with their frustrating move. It happened this morning in fact. I was slowly moving along in an exit only lane, and someone forced his way in at the last second and caused me to brake pretty hard. "Watch it, Dicknead," I said aloud in my car. And like that, a post was born.

Well, half a post at least. (As a side note, my wireless keyboard just ran out of batteries in the middle of the word "post" in the last sentence, so I stole a co-worker's keyboard for the time being. Don't tell.) Here, as promised, is story number two:

On the radio this morning, the guys on KROQ were playing messages that people left for them saying weird things. One guy half-heartedly made a bad joke, then quarter-heartedly laughed afterwards. Ralph on the show then said, "No, that didn't work. When you have weak material, you need to bring it!" I know exactly what he's talking about. Committing to a joke in comedy is probably one of the top three keys to success (after timing and traffic, of course). No matter how good the idea or line is, if it’s weakly delivered or the speaker lacks confidence in the line’s ability to get a laugh, it will fail.

Take Robin Williams for example. Most of the time, nobody knows what the guy is saying. He’s jumping around, doing different accents, and making the most obscure references known to man. However, we laugh. We laugh a lot. Why is this? It’s because he knows that he’s funny, and we therefore expect whatever comes out of his mouth to be funny. The same thing is true with Dennis Miller; it comes across in his delivery that what he’s saying is, by definition, funny. Therefore, we laugh even if we don’t know how he just compared Boris Yeltsin and Florence Henderson.

Another way commitment comes into play is that it can turn something that isn’t funny into a big laugh from the audience. Comedy Sportz, and improvisational comedy company, performs weekly all over the country. I was at a performance by the Los Angeles team in the late 90s, and I saw such an amazing display of commitment that I’ve carried it with me as an example ever since. The audience was shouting out actions for the actors to perform one by one. When it got to an actor named Frank Maciel’s turn, an audience member shouted, “Put a book on the table!” That has to be one of the inherently least-funny suggestions ever thrown out at a night of improv. Frank, however, as in-the-moment as I’ve ever seen anyone, magnificently strutted up the table, slammed his imaginary book down, then gave the table a look of defiance as if to say, “That’s right. I’ll put this book anywhere I damn please. If you’ve got a problem with that, maybe we should step outside and settle things.” The crowd erupted in laughter and applause. From "Put a book on the table" to laughter - that's a tough road. Frank took a non-funny thing and by means of totally committing to it, made it hilarious, unique, and something I’ve remembered for years.

Another actor in that position only would have mocked the person who shouted out that suggestion by walking normally to the table and saying something like, “Ooh, I’m putting a book on the table.” Kinda funny, would elicit some chuckles, but nowhere near what Frank turned it into.

Ok, I have to end now and search for batteries before the rightful owner of this keyboard arrives. I wouldn't want to return from the bathroom to find a note taped to my monitor calling me an "Assnole."