 Last week I was happy to be able to play my home club. It’s the club
here in Austin that I first started performing at and it meant that I
got to perform every night and then sleep in my own bed.
It also meant that I had to get up at 6 a.m. three days in a row to go do morning radio.
Morning radio is an essential duty for a working comedian. You do a
show the night before and strangers want to buy shots for you after the
show and you have to show up at the studio at the crack of dawn
smelling like booze and cigarettes, with stripper glitter on your face.
It’s very difficult to be funny in that state.
But you have to. That’s what the clubs want and that’s what the hosts of whatever “morning zoo” you happen to be a guest on want. Usually, it’s a couple of sad sacks that know they’ve spent their whole lives trying to be successful in a dying medium. They do the wacky sound effects, make fun of Britney Spears and during the commercial breaks, they cry softly into their hands at the knowledge that they have wasted their lives.
Usually the DJ’s are not funny and are suspicious and wary of people who are. The best course of action for an appearance on a show like this is to “take over.” Dominate the conversation and try to get as much funny into the airtime as you can in the hopes that the listeners will be sufficiently charmed to come out to the show that night and buy a ticket.
When you go to commercial, the DJ’s will discuss exactly where the conversation will go when we come back on and will try to lead you into bits and try to make it sound like a conversation. It’s all very forced and awkward
The Austin radio show is different. They are a crew of genuinely funny people who know what their show is and don’t try to build it in their minds into something bigger than it is. When a comic is a guest on the show it is understood that the comic is there to contribute to what is already happening on the show. They have an agenda and if you have something to contribute, they welcome it, but they are not there to lead you into your stage act. In fact, if they sense that you are going into any kind of prepared material, they will call you on it and stop you.
It is a format that I appreciate and it encourages me as a guest to be funny “on the fly.” It’s how I learned to be a guest on a radio show and I think it’s the most entertaining style for the listener.
However, with an unpredictable show like the one in Austin, you never know what kind of curveballs are going to be thrown on the air.
On Friday morning, while I was on the air, someone brought in live rattlesnakes. Live. Poisonous. Rattlesnakes.
I’m not especially scared of snakes in general. When I was in college I dated a girl that happened to be a herpetologist. She dealt live reptiles out of our apartment. I’m pretty accustomed to them if I know they’re in the room, (snakes, not girlfriends.)
The radio show brought in some guests that were handlers at a Rattlesnake Roundup. While I’m still not sure exactly what that is, I know that I don’t ever want to go to one.
These two guys brought in live snakes that they were holding in a way that pissed them off to an incredible degree. The snakes demonstrated their anger by rattling their tales and glaring at me. They focused all of their reptilian rage at me and seethed.
As small as the studio was, I noticed that there was only one route of escape and it was blocked by two pissed off, venomous snakes.
These two handlers proceeded to talk about the upcoming event and regale us with hilarious stories of the many times that they had been bit by one of these incredibly dangerous animals that they couldn’t seem to stop angering.
I was uneasy at the way they kept thrusting the snakes at me and then laughing uproariously when urine would squirt into my pants. But I was cool.
Other than the pee thing.
It was then that something unexpected happened. Something I wasn’t warned about and something that caused the pee stain on my pants to become the least of my worries.
He dropped the thing on the ground.
If you’ve never seen a rattlesnake on the ground and up close, let me tell you, they can move incredibly fast. And this was a pissed off rattlesnake with all of its rage focused in my direction.
I proceeded to do what any freaked-out, panicky neurotic would do.
I lost my shit.
I screamed like a woman and did my best to clamber over the DJ console. I wound up planting my ass onto the guy’s laptop.
All the listeners heard was a vicious snake rattle and me screaming, “I’M GOING TO THROW UP! I SWEAR TO GOD I’M GOING TO THROW UP!”
When the snake guys collected their reptiles and left, there was a period of silence as everyone in the room looked at me with a mixture of amusement and disgust
I hope we got good ratings.
I also hope no one has a copy of the tape.
|
|
Users' Comments  |
|
Average user rating
 (0 vote)
|
|
|
Quirkee Voices 
I don't have a copy of the tape but I heard you scream like a girl LIVE on the radio! 
