It's So Hard To Type With A Gun In My Mouth

IT'S SO HARD TO TYPE WITH A GUN IN MY MOUTH

BY

Steve Bluestein

PREFACE

When I walked into the Comedy Store in 1972 I knew my life would change forever. I had no ide
a how much it would change or what direction it would take. I just knew my life was about to be different. I'd no longer be the assistant buyer at The May Company; I'd be a "somebody".  And I was right.  Because of my career as a stand up comedian, TV writer and playwright I've traveled the world and worked with some of the biggest names in show business. I have some fond memories and some I'd like to forget. My personal life has always been a mesh of bad relationships, lost souls and natural disasters, yet I seem to have come to the surface like the flotsam of a shipwreck. I'm a survivor, as they say. And this is my story.

The memories began when I first published my blog, "LIFE SUCKS WHY NOT SHARE IT.” It was the idle ramblings of an insane comedian. I wrote daily entries and the readership grew. Soon there were people egging me on, daring me to tell it all, begging me to tell the truth. I told the truth and my family disowned me. But the readers rallied around me to make a family of strangers and that kept me going.

Who would have thought when I started writing, words alone could change a life?  My profession is making people laugh. I worked in comedy clubs. I did stand up. I'm no author; authors are Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote.  Authors live in Connecticut. I live in Bel Air. I'm not an author, yet that's not what my readers tell me. My readers tell me my writing has changed their lives.   And so I sit here banging away on my laptop as the Panama Canal passes my window.  (I've taken a cruise and given myself time to organize this book.) I'm feeling like a real writer today but inside I never feel like a real anything.  My book was just a lark, something to take up my time, to stretch my funny, to record my thoughts. I had no idea it would turn into my passion. I never thought my life would interest anyone. After all, I never became a star like some of my friends.  I didn't find the cure for any disease. I haven't flown over any oceans. I'm not a political leader.  Yet the readers tell me I matter. They write to tell me how much my words mean to them. My knee jerk reaction, "Get a life."  Yet, I thank them for being so supportive.

Writing
the book hasn't been easy. I, who as a comedian, is so used to hearing the instantaneous reaction to my words, is learning via email that my jokes amuse. I'm learning that my words have worth. I'm learning about me, as you, the reader learns about you. They call that a symbiotic relationship, the host benefiting from the parasite and vice versa. Don't ask me which I think I am.

Before you start on this journey with me, I need to explain something. The stories are not chronological. This whole book is a dyslexic's wet dream. OH! And I've changed a few names to protect the guilty. Wasn’t that kind of me?

Just one final note, I wrote these words for you but it is I who has gained the benefit, I who gained the self-confidence and shed a life of negative familial connections. It is I who started writing as an adult child and ended up an adult.  I AM the author, not the parasite; I am the host.   Welcome to my world.

February 10, 2006 -
THE FIRST ENTRY

It's Friday at about 11:30 in the morning and I've started my new book. My good friend, Carole Propp, talent producer, suggested that I should document my life for all to see because "Who'd believe the crap that happens to you"! I guess I would, Carole, I'm living it.  And now I invite you, the readers, to live it along with me.

As we speak the "handy man " is in my garage trying to open the garage door, which fell on my car last night. Oh, it's not one of those sectional garage doors you buy from Sears, with the row of tacky windows at the top. Ohhhhhhhh noooooooooo, it's a solid wood, made by hand, weighs a ton door. And right now it's sitting on top of my Lexus, the one that I was rear ended in last week by an 18-year-old Israeli without insurance.... THAT Lexus. I try to look on the bright side; the damage done by the Israeli can be repaired at the same time as the damage done by the garage door. I hope the body shop is having a two for one special.  COULDN'T YOU JUST KILL ME NOW????

So, the garage door has fallen and inside the garage is my car AND the contents of the antique shop. What antique shop you ask? The shop I opened in the hopes that it would give me something to do when I was not on the road, the hobby to keep my anxiety down, the place for me to go on Saturdays...that antique shop. It's the one that, after I opened, got sold to a developer who gave me three months to get out. That one!

And so after filling the shop with thousands of pieces of fine antiques, I had to empty it...into my Lexus... before it got rear ended... and crushed by my garage door. I brought home all that crap, I mean, fine antiques, made my nice clean garage look like an flea market and put out the garage sale notices on Craigslist, LA Times and 200 emails to friends. "Come buy the antiques they’re half off".  However, those antiques are sitting in my garage, which has no other access but the garage door, and are being held hostage by a 2000-pound garage door built by some guy without a green card.

Let me explain my house to you. It's in Bel Air, the slums of Bel Air but still Bel Air, and it has been built into the side of a mountain. The same mountain that gave way last February and destroyed thirty years of memories when it filled my office with mud and water. THAT MOUNTAIN. (Feeling better about your life yet?) Ok, back to the house, you enter on the street level and travel up four flights of stairs as they carry you through the house. The foyer is on level one; my office is on level four. The garage is on level 0...street level. Are you with me?

I needed to tell you this so you'd appreciate the following.  The handyman calls me on his cell phone from the garage. (I told you it's a big house) and asks me to come down and hand him his toolbox. Why? There's no way out of the garage and after he squeezed in, the door closed just enough to trap him.  He's trapped in there with the car and the antiques and my tools and my trashcans and all the stuff one keeps in a garage. I walk down the four flights of stairs, hand him the toolbox through a crack just big enough to pass a wrench through and head back into the house. I find my dog, the new one, the one that weighs 85 pounds and eats whatever he feels like, that one, I find him with a wet coffee filter in his mouth and behind him a mountain of coffee grounds spread all over the living room.  His tail wags rapidly so proud of himself..."Look what I found".  So now I stop and begin the process of cleaning up the wet coffee grounds that have fallen into the cracks of my antique pine planked floor. This process takes 30 minutes. I head back to my office on the 4th floor, the phone rings. It's the handyman, "Can you come down and help me?" And so I make the trek back down the four flights of stairs to find him peeing in an antique spittoon he found in my garage. SERIOUSLY, JUST KILL ME NOW.

We get the door opened, he rinses out the spittoon, which I plan to bury in my back yard after he leaves. What he's left me with is a 2 X 4 holding up the remnants of the garage door and 5000 dollars worth of antiques exposed to the street. It's sort of like a homeless person's wet dream.

It's 12:45 p.m. The Garage Door Doctor is coming at 3. This is not some name I've made up. This is a company that does nothing but fix Garage Doors. There are all kinds of "doctors". I've seen the "door doctor" and the "rooter doctor" and the proverbial "doctor doctor" but this guy is the Garage Door Doctor. You'd expect him to show up in a white coat with rubber gloves. Instead you get a 350-pound Italian guy on parole for non-payment of spousal support.  A guy you'd run from in a dark alley and this guy is going to fix my garage door.   I'll fill you in on what good news he gives me after my consultation. That's what they call it, he's not coming to look at the door; he's coming to give me a consultation. What, in reality, he's coming to do is to suck out whatever is left in my checking account.  See, he's like a real doctor.

Update: 1:32 pm

I get a call from the Garage Door Doctor's office. "The Doctor is on his way". I am thrilled because no one comes when they say they will.  I hang up and the doorbell rings (that's on level one) I'm on level four. I make a mad dash for the front door expecting to see the doctor, instead I see two cherubic girls who look like they're from the dance group "The Lockers, featuring Fred Berry".  I think, "Oh Shit, they saw the Lexus in the driveway. I'm gonna get hit for a donation."  I open the glass doors and greet them in the portico. "Can I help you?"  It was then it started..."Sir, we'd like to wish you a happy day." If they really wanted me to have a happy day they would have rung my neighbor's doorbell and not mine. I make a decisive move. "Look, I'm not buying anything. I've bought before. I bought the peanut brittle for eighteen dollars. I bought the pen set for sixteen dollars. I got the magazine subscription to Arizona Highways.  I'm not buyin' nothin."  Long cold stare. "How about a donation."  "NO!" I reply firmly.  And then it happened...she went all ghetto on me.  "YOU BE LIVIN' IN THIS BIG HOUSE WITH A LEXUS IN THE DRIVEWAY AND YOUR WHITE ASS IS TELLING ME YOU CAN'T MAKE NO DONATION TO POOR STARVING KIDS WHO'S JUST TRYING TO MAKE A LITTLE MONEY SO THEY CAN GO TO COLLEGE!!!"    We stare each other down.  "YAH, BASICALLY THAT'S IT IN A NUTSHELL." I reply.  beat...beat... "OK, Have a nice day". And they both leave.

2:10 P.M.

The doctor just left. "Can't do anything until next Tuesday."  So my garage stays open until next Tuesday... Please...someone...anyone... come steal the crap in my garage and make it a perfect day!

February 12, 2006
- GARAGE SALE  - THE SECOND DAY.

So here's the update on the garage sale. Houses on both sides of me are for sale. This means that little people from the Valley run to see how the rich live in Bel Air. The place is crawling with lookie-loos. So since I can't leave the house until the garage door is fixed I thought, "Hey why not try to dump the rest of the antique crap."  I opened the Garage Sale again. Right away I sold 69 dollars worth of stuff... actual street value 150 dollars.  Then, just as suddenly as it got busy, it dropped dead, not a single person until one of the lookie-loos stumbled in. I, trying to make conversation, say. "Are you looking at the house next door."? And he, in his valley accent said, "I wouldn't live around here, dude." Insult my neighborhood will you? To arms!!!!! "What do you mean you wouldn't live here... dude?"  "I like the country." "Which Country?" Is all I could get out.  He laughs...the moron doesn't know I'm insulting him. He holds up an item and asks the price. I double it just so he'll go away. He buys it. And I suddenly realize this kid is the anti-Christ to the lady in the Coco Chanel suit with one "n".  He'll buy anything at any price. He's not looking so bad now. I try to get him to buy more stuff...whatever he asks... I double it. He buys it. The kid is an asshole. The Gods have sent me my reward for yesterday's torment. The asshole takes his purchases, which he does not ask me to bring to the car, and leaves. Oh happy day, happy, happy day!

I close the garage sale because despite the fact that I have made 500 dollars in the last 3 days...it will cost me 600 in therapy. I can't fall into one on my depressions again. Now this may sound like a joke but it's not. I battle depression. When I say battle it's more like an on going struggle.  Once, I was so depressed I watched Schindler's List just to cheer me up.  I can't let myself slip into one of those depressions... I'm going to watch "Munich". Nothing cheers me up like a Spielberg film.  I've gotten an Academy DVD and my afternoon is free.  I am going to watch "Munich" and think of my friends back east pissed off because they are out of rock salt.

February 13, 2006 -
ON SNOW BACK EAST.

There is nothing, I mean nothing, more wonderful than waking up, turning on the news and hearing that there is 29 inches of snow in Boston, New York and Philly.  It's going to be 88 degrees here today. I'm telling you it just validates your very being knowing that you had the good sense to move where the sun shines. OK, the earth moves but at least the sun is shining. In California we have sunshine... OK, we have rain too. We have lots and lots of rain, but it's not too bad. It's not like snow. Snow is cold and wet and you have to use one of those plastic things you get from Dunkin Donuts to scrap off your windshield. Today in L.A., it’s going to be 88 glorious degrees. Sure it gets hot in August and we have a fire season... the rains make lots of vegetation and the hot Santa Ana Winds dry them up leaving your house surrounded by kindling. But at least it's not snow, snow that turns to black dreck and dams up on the corners in huge Tara Lipinski ponds that freeze over at night to create death traps for women with hip replacements.  No, all we have here is rain, fire, mudslide, hurricane force desert winds and an occasional earthquake. Snow people have to dig out; all we have to do is live in mortal fear for our lives.  So I say "ha" to everyone in the East who woke up to a winter wonderland. Ha!  You fools who have not moved to Southern California. Ha and double HA. And now I have to go buy some sunscreen to protect myself from skin Cancer.... "Ha" I say.