“Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town.” – Pink Floyd

Every comic left, but I convinced Cordova to stick around and try to get on the open mic. I didn’t let him know of my suspicions it was more political than comedic, because he would realize it soon enough. The upstairs was crowded and I asked Murdock when I would be going up.

“I’ll take care of you,” he assured me.

Cordova signed his name on the line-up and I realized Murdock’s Wednesday night show, which I had done in December with Ted Alexandro, Lee Camp and Hardcore Boris, was turning into more of a political open mic night. Gonzalo and I went downstairs and caught up for awhile. I kept asking if he wanted some tea and laughing like a hyena. Two young guys were in the basement playing with visual effects they could throw up on the walls. Apparently Murdock was organizing a weekend of art events at The Yippie Museum and these NYU students were hosting a video gallery in the basement all day Thursday. There were zebra-striped mountains jettisoning over all four walls as Gonzalo and I talked on the couch. My eyes were engrossed in the videos and my mind was still excited from killing. At one point Gonzalo started making shadow puppets, but the visual artists yelled at us that they were working and we apologized for heckling. After our conversation in the valleys of the Roaming Zebra Mountains we went back upstairs. The performer before me read two quick, original poems and then John introduced me.

“Before! Before the turnover, before the cats had been pushed out of this room. Back when there was an inexplicable loft dividng the room in half so you couldn’t see the stage, he ran an open mic at the Yippie cafe. He’s coming in from Philadelphia. He’s an outstanding comic, Alex Grubard, please…”

“Hello! It’s nice to be here at the Yippie Museum. This stage is new. We used to always do it by the beehive and that was always cool. I know that this is going to be difficult. I’m a comedian, which is like being self-unemployed. And I’m going to try and make you guys laugh, which is scary, because, you know, we all know that things are not hilarious right now. The times they are, uh, depressing. I have been feeling very under the weather ground lately. I love puns, don’t get me wrong. Things are weird. I’m in town. I live in Philadelphia where the streets are paved with shattered high-life bottles. I live there, because I go to Temple University. I dropped out of Temple when I was eighteen. See, I have a learning disability. I just never learned what it is. What’s the learning disability where you always want to fight cops? I call it free will.”

“Nice.”

“I’ll ride that applause til the bitter end. Three, I guess. Whatever. People call me a hippy all the time. I don’t think I’m a hippy. I don’t even think we should be labeling people, man. And I don’t love getting called a hippy, because I know it’s not a compliment. I know everyone is just telling me to get my shit together. But there are plenty of hippies that got their shit together: Ben, Jerry, Trader Joe, Al Gore, the Muppets, Jimi Hendrix’s estate, Cheech and Lewis Black. Because Tommy Chong went to jail. Do you guys remember that? Yeah, Tommy Chong went to jail in 2004 for selling drug paraphenalia to children. Yeah, who knew that children were buying the Cheech and Chong movies? Lock him away for life I say. They got Tommy Chong because of the Patriot Act too. That’s why they got him in 2004 and not 1974. They tapped his son’s business because his father was Tommy Chong and he’s obviously a criminal. I always hated the Patriot Act because of the rhetoric you would hear about it: ‘If you’re not doing anything wrong then you’ve got nothing to worry about.’ Hey, I’m not doing anything wrong, but I am doing things that are illegal. Like I have seen every episode of Boardwalk Empire and I do not have HBO. Right? Fuck yeah, guys. Man! You have no idea how good I feel right now. I used to host an open mic here and I’m on drugs. I wish they would legalize marijuana because I suck at rolling joints. And it would be so nice to be able to buy a pack. It sucks that every time I want to get joints rolled I have to listen to some dude rant about how everything is going to work out for him once he starts his Thundercats hotel. I smoke pot with my dad. Does anyone else do that? No one knows my dad? He rolls a good J, but he is always talking about this hotel he wants to build. Do you want me to tell it again? All right. I just felt the callback didn’t get enough. What can you do? Here’s a quick one; why did the chicken take mushrooms?”

“To get high.”

“To get to the other side. You might be wondering why I’m here. It’s Wednesday and I’m here right now. I’m on Spring Break on through to the other side right now. So things are good. I get, it’s weird. I’m a little old for a college student, for a college freshman. I’m twenty-five years old and I have twenty-five college credits. I’m a supersophomore. I know that’s not funny, but I have five years to perfect that joke. Um, yeah. It’s weird. I get asked all the time by kids, ‘Oh, Alex, you are clearly well over twenty-one. Would you buy me beer?’ And I always go, ‘No, I will not buy you beer. Let me teach you how to distill gin.’ Cause remember, if you give a kid a beer he’s going to be drunk for an hour, but if you teach a kid how to distill gin he’ll be dead by eight am. And that’s what I want. Because I’m a murderer. I murder people. Children in fact. So look out for me on amber alert, I guess. I don’t know. That’s how that joke ends right now. I like to drink. I like to get drunk man. I think about quitting drinking every time I’m sober and I think about quitting being sober every time I’m drunk. That’s where I’m at. You guys know the phrase An Irish Goodbye? It’s where you’ll be at a party and you’ll get really drunk and then you leave without saying good bye. I don’t do that. I do what I call the Jewish Goodbye. Which is where I’ll be at a party and I’ll get really drunk and then I’ll say good bye to every single person at the party. And then I stay. That’s the rudest thing you can do to anyone. ‘Hey, I do not want to be here with you people, but I have nowhere to go.’ Ah, man. Man, you guys are a lot of fun. I, uh. I’ll tell ya my favorite kind of drink is probably whiskey. I love those Jameson ads that are out right now. They’re not even like advertisements; they’re like Irish folk limericks. They’re beautiful. You know the ones. ‘In 1492 John Jameson beat up an octopus and that’s why we have whiskey.’”

DINGINGINGINGINGINGINGINGINGING!

“Is that my time’s up?”

“It’s done.”

“Does anyone have any closers? Uh, can I do one more or is that it?”

“One more. Go, go, go.”

“All right, uh, and you guys know that in Ireland that don’t have light beer like we do in America. That’s an American thing, light beer? Yeah, you buy that shit it’s always local. And I always hated light beer, y’know, because I got asked by a German guy one time, ‘Vat is lite bier!’ And I was like, ‘Oh here in America we water down the beer so it has less calories and is therefore less alcoholic.’ It was humiliating. And that German guy, he looks at me and he goes, ‘Oh, yah, we have lite bier in Germany. It’s vat we give to children.’ And I was like, ‘have you ever thought about teaching them how to distill gin?’ Guys, thank you very much. I’m Alex. Have a good night.”

“One more time for Alex Grubard. And tell that motherfucker to get back here and stop wasting his year.”

While waiting for Gonzalo to go on stage at Occupational Hazards we stood behind a coat rack full of coats that acted as if we were in a green room. Hovering over artists for Blank Canvas knitting on the floor we whispered ruminations over how short a time alternative comedy has been so prominent.

“John Knefel lent me the Invite Them Up album and that’s when I discovered alternative comedy. I never knew people did stand-up outside of comedy clubs before listening to that album.”

“Yeah, I remember getting that album.”

“There wasn’t really an alt scene until after Rififi’s closed.”

“Yes there was.”

“I guess there was Pianos. Nothing like it is now.”

“Sound Fix Records.”

“It was open about a year. John and Ed Murray started a show there every other week and soon Totally JK was there and what later became Big Terrific.”

“And then they closed. When did they close?”

“Rififi’s closed in 2006.”

“No, it couldn’t have been. I went to Rififi’s and I didn’t move here until 2007.”

“Rififi’s was alrerady closed in 2007.”

“I came here for the summer in 2006. That must have been when I went to see Invite Them Up. And I went to Sound Fix a lot. I remember when that closed.”

“Sound Fix closed for two weeks because of a noise complaint, came back big and were closed for good as a venue months later. And then people started running to The Creek. Five years ago The Creek only had the open mic Kingdom of Heaven and a sketch show, Jerk Practice, that split Wednesdays.”

It was a conversation only comedy nerds would ever have and only a few of us even care to remember. Now it’s a scene.

“I used to do Alex’s open mic,” he assured everyone. He left almost immediately afterwards, because he has a girlfriend and they like spending time together. I had nowhere to be so I sat back up at the high table in the corner. I set my bag down. By now I was doing everything quite carefully as every motion and thought smoothed through my body like a glass of ice cold water. Little giggles slipped out of me at little motions. The fact a show was taking place simultaneously made for a good excuse to let out the laughter. A gender-equal sketch group did a skit about Jesus Christ dating Mary Magdelane and some more poets went on stage. Some people were just getting on stage to talk about their support of the Occupy movement. Some were old activists past their prime, but trying to stay ahead of the curve with multiple email addresses and political t-shirts.

Maybe if I wasn’t so interested in watching Joey Gay perform I would have left already to wander the New York night high on hallucinagens. In December, high off a few hits of a joint I’d smoked with Kip and Savoy, I’d watched Alexandro do a twenty-minute set four days after being arrested at Trinity Church in Manhattan. It was a paralyzing and tense comedy set and I was not about to walk out on another pro performing on a political show at The Yippie Museum.

By 10:30 I’d refilled my tea three times and eventually just ate all the hydrated shrooms inside. Having not used even a full gram for my team this show was probably the highest I would be all night. I was, as they say in the field, peaking. Though it was a low hum compared to how beautiful it was supposed to be tomorrow. Monday it had dropped to the 20s, but Thursday it was supposed to reach the 70s. 2012 was ponying up to be the official evidence of the inconvenient truth that is global warming. A hurricane that cancelled my Fall semester’s first day of classes and a snowstorm on Halloween was what we got in 2011, but 2012 was turning out to be unseasonably warm.

While Joey was on stage I rolled an American Spirit between my fingers to get the tobacco out and sprinkled grass inside, twisting it off at the end like it was just a joint with a filter. This is what legalized joints would look like, I thought. I don’t smoke tobacco, but Alex Pearlman had left a pack of Spirits at my house in Philly before we left for Puck Live in Doylestown. I’d been carrying them around in my vest’s pocket thinking I’d run into him, but I didn’t before Spring Break. Even though Spring Break was the first week of March a hoodie, a vest and longjohns were proving to be sufficient winter weather wear.

After Joey Gay’s set I smoked outside then sat down with a young man talking to a standing man who went back inside. The young man’s name was Ellis and eventually I gave him the last of my pot to roll so we could smoke it. Ellis had gotten out of Rykers recently after spending twenty-five days inside. He was from Allentown and had lived in Philadelphia before, but had come up from Allentown to be apart of Occupy Wall Street and now he was broadcasting for WBAI. Turns out we knew some of the same people including my old roommate John Knefel who hosted shows on WBAI as well. It looked like the show had ended so we went across the street. Ellis needed to get his bag from inside so he didn’t forget it.

When the show ended most people left or came outside to smoke or talk to smokers. Nuttall and Bell asked questions about Philadelphia, my old pal Mike Drucker and the old comedy club haunts that scared us into the alternative comedy and performance arts scenes. After most people had left Joey looked at me and asked “You want to smoke a joint?”

“Yeah.”

We walked back into the Yippie Museum and headed towards the stairs down to the black box. “You’re not going to believe this,” I said, “but this will be the first time I’ve ever smoked pot in the Yippie Museum.” It didn’t seem to phase him. “It had such a different vibe when I was running an open mic here.”

“It was different?” he asked.

“Way different,” I replied.

Duke was asleep on the couch and a feminine Asian male with long hair sat on a chair drinking a tall boy of PBR. “I am on cloud 6,” he said to Joey. They acted like they knew each other well, but clearly had only met tonight when Joey introduced himself. While Joey rolled the joint I introduced myself as well. “I am called Tiara. I’m a transformer.” Tiara condescended like I did not understand what she was talking about, but I understood. “A drag queen.”

“Yeah, I get it.”

She would make flashy gesticulations with most of her short sentences. “I’m trying to write my piece for Sunday. I’ll be speaking here, for John. You should come, Alex. You too, Joey. It’s about food. Because food is very powerful, you know? Food gives life, food heals, food feeds and food kill. Yeah. It is very true. Food. It is interesting stuff.” She took a sip from her can of beer.

Joey and I smoked the joint. Tiara noted the strangeness of Joey’s last name and he held court with quick witticisms he had come up with over the years like, “It stopped becoming cool in 1940.” He finished the joint with a few tokes and invited Tiara and I upstairs. “Let’s let Duke sleep.” On the way back upstairs I asked where Gay came from and he had done a lot of research on it before. He went on about his particular clan’s heritage, but all I really took away was that it was Scottish.

“From now on you’re The Philadelphia Kid.”

“I’d feel like a fake. I’m Alex.”

“Philadelphia Kid is a great nickname!”

“I’m not knocking the name. I’ve just only lived in Philly for a year. I was born on this island. I grew up in Massachusetts.”

“You’re The Philadelphia Kid. You don’t like nicknames?”

“I have lots of nicknames.”

“Oh really?”

“Yeah. Some people even call me Name.”

“Your nickname is Nickname. That’s how many nicknames you have.

They all talked about their run-ins with the law. A DUI here, a disorderly conduct there. Tiara stood up and told a long story about having to go down to the City Court House by the Brooklyn Bridge to pay for a citation.

“I know where you’re talking about.”

She sat down in a chair close by and put her head on her hand as if very interested. “Oh yeah? You had to go down there?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh, yeah. For what? Tell me.”

“One of my best friends Zeke had at a rooftop party in Harlem and some drunk kid kept throwing bottles off of the roof into an alley. Hours later after all but four of us were left two cops came up on the roof and we got citations for drinking it public.” I felt very uncomfortable telling this story. It seemed pathetic compared to their stories. Like nothing. I felt like I had barely even lived and therefore could tell no tales. It made me a bit paranoid and wish I had committed some dumb crime once while shitfaced in a town I was only in for a few nights.

But a pathetic story is just what Tiara wanted. Now she could talk about herself. She started to talk about being in Singapore, but stopped herself and began talking about food again. “That is why I want to speak to people about food. Because food heals, food grows, food love and food kill. You know? Food kill?”

We all tried to comprehend her idea.

“I’m still working on it.”

“Everyone has those extra lives,” said Joey. “I’ve got a couple.”

We all wandered around The Yippie Museum, checking out little scraps of history and artsy artifacts with passionate and passive interest. Meanwhile I was trying out as many seating positions as possible. “Drunkle. I have t-shirts that say that. That’s how I get an extra ten bucks out of them on the road.” I just ordered t-shirts that say RUA and then a picture of a squirrel. I want to ask what screen printing company he uses, how he spells Drunkle, with a K or a C, and how long he’s been doing that. But I don’t ask anything, I’m only listening and being around. Hanging out. This is some serious next level shit I don’t feel I’ve ever been apart of until this year.

Rob Shapiro selling $8 pot brownies. “As a true Jew, if anyone eats one and doesn’t feel anything I’ll give you your money back.”

“Important. I used to say Importent.” She drank a PBR tall boy.

Wikileaks stickers.

“Just trying to help out. You want a coffee for the road? I just made some.” 2 train from 14th Street