City of Brotherly Love

Over the past two months I..ve gotten about 5 thousand e mails asking me ..What the fuck happened in Philly?.. ..Why were those people booing?.. ..Did you just come out on stage like that, or did they fuck with your first?.. So I..ve decided to answer every fucking question with the longest blog in my space history.

To be honest, I don..t really remember much of the set. All I know, is that when it was over, I had a headache, and I felt like I had just gotten into an argument with a relative.

The weirdest thing about that whole episode, was that my brain got locked in ..Go Fuck Yourself.. mode. I couldn..t shut it off.
For the next three days, I was walking around New York, muttering insulting shit about Philadelphia, as if I was still on stage..

..RON JAWORSKI, THAT STUPID FAT-FACED POLACK. HOW MANY TIMES ARE YOU GOING TO THROW IT TO ROD MARTIN BEFORE YOU REALIZE HE..S ON THE OTHER TEAM? ..HEY COACH, HE KEEPS RUNNING THE WRONG WAY......

THREE DAYS I walked around New York doing that. I really felt like I was going crazy. I was still pissed at that fuckin.. crowd and I couldn..t stop arguing with them in my head. I was telling a friend of mine that I felt like I needed some sort of comedy healing. That if I could go on stage in front of 12 old people, with some easy listening music in the background, maybe I could get my brain to stop envisioning caning an entire amphitheater with a mic stand. I literally wanted to saw down the roof of that fuckin.. place and have it land on the crowd.


I should have known something was going to happen. The day was too perfect. I was driving down to Philadelphia with Robert Kelly. We were having a great time, doing what all comics do when they ride to gigs. We were breaking each other..s balls, telling pussy stories, and trashing every comic and club owner in the business.

As I recall, it was a beautiful day.

RED FLAG ..1: Tragedy always happens on a beautiful day. It..s like the universe is balancing itself. If you ever get a blowjob on a sunny day, don..t leave your house, because you are going to get run over by an ice cream truck. It..s just how the world works. Some negative would have to come along to offset the warm breeze and that beautiful ..light as air.. feeling in your nuts.

..THE FUCKIN.. 76ERS, WHO DO YOU HAVE ON THAT TEAM? ALLEN IVERSON? THE REST OF THE TEAM IS JUST LIKE THIS CROWD. A BUNCH OF FUCKIN.. NOBODIES GOING NOWHERE IN LIFE..GO FUCK YOURSELVES. I WISH YOU ALL COLLECTIVE ASS CANCER...

Anyway, I was in a stupid mood and was really looking forward to performing in front of a crowd of 10,000 people.

RED FLAG ..2: To be looking forward to a gig with thoughts of ..This is going to be awesome,.. That thought is the stand up equivalent of stating, ..My car has been running GREAT!..

So we pull into the Tweeter Center and immediately gaze upon a sea of White dudes, most with shaved heads, grilling and drinking. If it weren..t for all the Eagles jerseys, I would have thought we were at a White Power rally. I..m sure there were a lot of decent people mixed in with the degenerates, but everywhere I looked I thought I was seeing that fat dude, singing in the van, from American History X ..THE WHITE MAN, MARCHES ON!!!..

You could tell by their sunburns, that a good portion of the crowd had already been drinking for at least two to three hours. I forget exactly what Robert said at that moment. All I know is he said ..Dude.. and ..What the Fuck..about 63 times.

So we got backstage and everything was cool. I talked to some fans, ate some food and avoided the strippers. Almost every comic I ran into would first say, ..What..s up,.. and then in concerned tone would then go, ..Did you see those fuckin.. people out there?.. Another person, who will remain nameless, was peaking through the curtain, looking at the crowd while muttering, ..Animals..Bunch of fuckin.. animals...

Despite this, I still wasn..t thinking that it was going to be a bad crowd. Every show on the tour had been great so far, and the crowds had had their fair share of booze. So why would this one be any different?

THIS PIECE OF SHIT, WHITE TRASH TOWN. WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME ANYBODY WHITE FROM PHILADELPHIA EVER ACCOMPLISHED ANYTHING? ALL THE SUCCESS STORIES ARE BLACK. JOE FRAISER, WILL SMITH, THE ROOTS, ERYKAH BADU. PHILADELPHIA IS LIKE A BIG DUMPING GROUND FOR FAILED WHITE PEOPLE. YOU SHOULD ALL GO HOME AND HANG YOURSELVES BY YOUR WALLET CHAINS. WHAT A BUNCH OF FUCKIN LOSERS

The show started about an hour later. Rich Vos was out on stage MC-ing and he was doing fine. Then he brought the first comic up. This poor bastard never had a chance.

The first spot on a comedy show is affectionately referred to as, ..Falling on the grenade.. or ..Taking the Beach... Both of those expressions have a military connotation, which on this night, turned out to be appropriate. Cause if you secretly edited the first guys set into the opening scenes of Saving Private Ryan, not even Speilberg would have noticed.

No one in the crowd knew this comic from the O &A show, so after about two minutes, the crowd began to boo. It started at the back, and then got louder and louder and LOUDER. Another two minutes went by and the boos had turned into chants of ass-HOLE, ass-HOLE, ASS-HOLE. It would be one thing if the guy stunk, but he..s a really funny dude, who ALWAYS does great.
So seeing him get boo..d was the first sign that the night was going to suck.

After his set, the Private came back stage and looked liked he had just watched some bitch crawl out of a well and come through his TV set. At that point, I looked down at my watch and realized that this crowd was going to be drinking, and doing God knows what else, for another 3 hours before I even hit the stage.

Couple more comics went out, did their thing and had good sets. But even they were coming backstage going, ..There..s some people up on the grass that are booing. Just ignore them and plow through your shit... It all had a very Platoon like vibe. ..CHARLIE AIN..T STOPPIN.. FOR NOTHIN.. MAN!..

So I..m back stage waiting and waiting and waiting, while the crowd was drinking and drinking and drinking. I was hoping they were going to get tired and with any luck pass out. That never happened. They just got louder and angrier. Which to be honest with you, was starting to make me angry.

I was thinking, ..What the fuck is wrong with these people? We came down here to give them a show and their treating everyone like shit. What a bunch.. Oh wait that..s right. We..re in Philly...


..AND FUCK THE FUCKIN.. FLYERS. MY FAVORITE FLYER OF ALL TIME IS ERIC LINDROS. I HEARD HE USED TO FUCK BOBBY CLARKE IN THE MOUTH BEFORE EVERY HOME GAME. THAT..S WHY BOBBY..S MISSING ALL THOSE FRONT TEETH..FUCK YOU, WIN A CUP....

So basically by the time Opie and Anthony were going to bring me up, I had witnessed a small group of assholes become an unruly mob, that was literally dictating the direction of the show. They had completely taken over and had just got done booing one of my favorite comics of all time off the stage, who was FROM THEIR FUCKING TOWN!

And as I was standing behind the curtain, waiting to go out, I suddenly realized that I wasn..t even nervous. Which brings us to...

RED FLAG ..3 .. Being in a high-pressured situation and not feeling the least bit nervous. That feeling is the kiss of death. Even when you..re relaxed and confident, you still feel a nervous excitement. I was about to go in front of a crowd of 10 thousand people, that at this point, looked like the bridge scene in Apocalypse Now, and I was standing there with the same heart rate I have when I watch the food network.

I heard my name called, I walked out and I just felt the whole crowd at my throat. I can..t even describe the energy of this crowd. It seemed to be from another era. I felt like there should have looked out into the crowd and seen fuckin.. horses and little fires burning. The only thing missing was Genghis Khan riding up one of the aisles.

As I was walked to the mic, I was taking all it all in. And this is where it started to get funny to me. I was going to open with this joke about someone telling me that I was homophobic. But the joke has a slow build to it and to be honest, it isn..t the greatest opening joke even when I presenting it to human beings. As I took the mic out of the stand, I had this Fox News style debate going on in my head. ..Fuck that joke.. Fuck that joke... With the other side going, ..Nah, do the joke..do the joke....

I was listening to these thoughts, and at the last second, I called an audible, checked off the linebackers, and decided to do this bit about losing my cell phone. The only problem was, I started in the MIDDLE of the joke. I skipped the whole set up cause I was too busy looking for a Mohawked Tina Turner. When I was done telling the joke, it didn..t even make sense to me.

STRIKE ONE

So then I was like fuck it. I..ll do the bit about Hilter..s last name. That bit works all of the time. No big deal. But I forgot that Opie and Anthony had been playing the Hitler bit all week on the radio, So unbeknownst to me, I was about to do a bit that the whole crowd had already heard. I got to the first punch line and got nothing. I could hear Leslie Neilson going..

STEE-RIKE TWOOOOO TWOOO TWOOO

Now I..m racing to the next punch line cause I can feel it coming liking a fuckin tsunami. So I get to the next punch line and there was nothing AGAIN. Just as I thought, ..How is this not working?.. BLAM! The Boo..s hit me. BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!1

Fortunately I..d been Boo..d before so it wasn..t a new sound. (First time I got Boo..d was in Vegas. The set ended with me being dragged off by four back up dancers and a midget dressed like Cupid. It was a Valentines Day Show) Anyway, because it wasn..t a new sound, it didn..t bother me the way it did the first time. What it actually did, was wake me up from the fuckin.. emotional snooze that I had been taking for the last three hours and fifteen minutes, when I first began resenting this piece of shit crowd.

So basically I snapped. The second I went off, I knew I was fucked. There was no way I could go back to telling jokes, but I also knew I wasn..t going to leave a second early.

So I looked down at the clock that let me know how much time I had left, and it showed ..12 minutes... And then I was like, ..Alright, what do these people love? I made a quick laundry list, and just started attacking each one. That..s basically how I was able to keep going. It was a combination of that formula, and blind rage.

If you haven..t seen it yet, the set is up on youtube.com. I..m trying to get as much of the set as I can. I would love to put it out on an upcoming DVD next year, as an extra. If anyone who reads this was at the show, and has a good copy, please send it my way.