When Bad Things Happen to Funny People

Doug Stanhope, Elayne Boosler, Merrill Markoe and other standups on the pitfalls of comedy

Comments (0) By The Comedians Wednesday, Aug 12 2009

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I applied for the phone-sex job and, of course, got it. They started me on the graveyard shift, which worked perfectly, as I knew I’d be liquored up by then. I also had a bag of mushrooms I’d kept in the freezer for a special occasion. I went to the Coach & Horses, had a few drinks and choked down the mushrooms before Fat Ralphie May drove me down to the job. The first night was a complete anticlimax (’scuuze da pun) stuck on some trainee line where I only got about six calls in eight hours, mostly hang-ups, and the mushrooms never kicked in.

Not the good story I was looking for, although I did gain a sincere respect for those who work for a living, when I got yelled at for taking 13 minutes on a 10-minute smoke break. Evidently there are people out there who want their cocks mock-sucked NOW! This kind of shit for six bucks an hour!

Elayne Boosler knows the importance of a blow dryer.

Melinda Hill, rethinking her most recent career decision

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The other surprising thing was that I was not allowed to talk graphic sex on a 900 line. If you want the hardcore phone sex, you have to have a credit card and call in on an 800 number, the theory being this will keep minors from getting through. The 900 operator is supposed to steer them away from sex talk while keeping them on the line as long as possible. Ask questions like: “What do you look like?” and “What are you wearing?” As though you’re about to start talking nasty but you never do. A complete fucking scam. No jacking off without proper credit. I can talk dirty in a nightclub, but if you want to hear it over the phone, bring your bedroom voice and a Visa card. Of course, you couldn’t jack off when I talk dirty in a nightclub (not that you’d want to).

I went back the next day only on the assurance that they’d let me work on the hardcore lines and spent five hours making the most perverse prank calls ever, at a cost to the customer of $4.99 a minute. It’s amazing what a guy will listen to or pretend not to hear when he’s about to come. If I started off goofy, they’d just hang up, but if I played along and waited for them to get into it, I could say anything.

“Oh, baby, yeah. I’d love to have you fuck me up the ass but I just found out that I have colon cancer and it’s spread to my lymph nodes. ... But this probably isn’t the time to talk about it. Go ahead, fuck my ass! Right past the malignant lump all the way to the bottom, baby!”

“I had my first black guy last week. I swear, he had an 11-inch cock and when he pulled outta me, my ass slammed shut like a car door! I couldn’t shit for 10 days! I had to get in there with a butter knife and start myself like a ketchup bottle! What do you look like? I’m a 61-year-old Korean War veteran. I used to drive a tractor-trailer cross-country until diabetes took away my legs.”

“Gerbils got boring after a while, so now I get a big string of rats on a rope, shove them up my kucky-hole one at a time and then yank them out just when I start to come. By the way, do you know anything that will get shit stains out of a Persian cat? My mother is going to kill me!”

I was hoping to get fired, but no one in charge seemed to be paying attention. I just kept getting more vile and abusive until my shift was over and I was in pain from the laughter. Of course, most of it was “had to be there” funny and never made the act, but it was a hell of a good time. And if there’s a lesson to be learned, it’s, “Don’t own a couch in L.A.” Get a love seat. That way, your friends who sleep on it will cramp up after a few days and move on.

LATHER, RINSE, REPEAT
By Merrill Markoe

In 1986, when Ronald Reagan was president, Paramount bought a screenplay from me about a girl who worked at a magazine and was about to turn 30, and her talking dog. It was called Me and My Boy. I had decided to write a talking-dog movie because I was working on Late Night With David Letterman, and noticed that the short movies I shot from the point of view of a dog seemed to have wide appeal. Also I lived with four dogs and in 1986, the talking-dog genre, which I’d always liked, was lying fallow.

Attached as producers were the team of Lynda Obst and Debra Hill.

So I wrote a few drafts, which everyone liked. And the movie almost got made. Then it didn’t.