My Point ... And I Do Have One (4 page)

Here are some affirmations that have helped me. Use them if you’d like. They’re yours free (except for what you paid for the book; if you borrowed this book from a friend or the library and you feel you should send me a few bucks, that’s fine, too).

I am the world’s tallest midget.

I’m a little teapot, short and stout. Here is my handle, here is my spout.

I bet nobody knows I’m crazy.

I look good in bell bottoms.

Archie would rather date me than either Betty or Veronica.

I can walk through walls. Ouch! No, I can’t.

I mean for my hair to look like this.

The Great Spirit smiles on me. On me and only me. The Great Spirit hates everybody else. We’re best friends.

I don’t need to exercise. I have the perfect shape.

I’m smarter than my dogs. Well, smarter than one of my dogs.

I look good with back hair.

Being grubby equals being cool.

I sing better than Bonnie Raitt. I have as many Grammys as Bonnie Raitt. I am Bonnie Raitt.

It’s not important to know what everybody else seems to know. I don’t care how much they laugh at me.

La la la la la la la la la la la—Talk all you want, I can’t hear you—la la la la la la la la. La la la.

If I put my mind to it, I could do anything. I just don’t feel like putting my mind to something. So there.

I have X-ray vision. Wait a minute. I don’t. These glasses are a rip-off.

I meant to get ripped off.

I’ve fallen and I can get up.

I’m good at watching TV.

I can come up with better affirmations than these.

ellen
degeneres:
road warrior

or
sometimes you need a map,
sometimes you need a globe,
sometimes you need a map and a
globe—but not very often

“A
unt Ellen, tell us a story.” It’s so cute when the kids from the neighborhood drop on by.

They just love to hear me spin a tale. It’s either that or they love that I buy liquor for them no matter how young they are. You’ve got to learn to drink sometime, so it might as well be with someone you can trust.

“Please, Aunt Ellen, please tell us a story,” Little Tori pleaded between sips of her Margarita. Then suddenly, “Ahhhhhh! My head hurts.”

“You’ve just got an ice-cream headache, dear,” I assured her. Then I told her that it would go away if she pressed her tongue to the roof of her mouth and held it there for a little bit. (This really works.) Within seconds her headache was gone. “I feel so much better. You know so much, Aunt Ellen.”

“Well, I’ve been drinking for a whole lot longer than any of you,” I quipped.

We all laughed at that. After we stopped laughing and I freshened everyone’s drink, I said, “So, you want to hear a story, eh?”

“Yes, yes we do, we surely, surely do! Oh yes, in-deedy, doddy, duddy, we do, Aunt Ellen,” Tori, Tony, Toni, Tone, Toby, Terry, and Pedro said in unison. “We want to hear a scary story.”

“How about if I tell you how I broke into show business? I originally wanted to be a singer. I used to perform with the Judds. In those days we were known as Two Judds & A DeGeneres. And, well, I was always known as the funny one.” I laughed.

“That’s not a story!” the children cried. “We want a
scary
story. Aunt Ellen, not some old joke from your stand-up.”

Kids are so cute. I have no idea where they get their ideas. I never did that joke in my stand-up. I may have mentioned it on Leno or
Regis and Kathie Lee
, but I’m pretty sure I didn’t do it in my stand-up. Well, not more than once or twice.

“I’ll tell you the scariest story I know. It’s about bad gigs that I’ve had.” Gigs, for those of you who don’t know, is plural for gig. I lit a cigarette and started my story.

“There have been many, many bad places that I have played. One of the worst was a long, narrow, dingy restaurant that may have had fifteen tables (or, if you only counted tables that didn’t wobble … no tables). There was no way that it was created for any type of art form, whether music or comedy or anything. It was barely created for the consumption of food. I don’t remember what town this was in. It could have been any town. Though, on second thought, I don’t think there is a place called Anytown. I’m pretty sure it was either in the Midwest, the South, or on the East or West Coast. Or it could have been in Canada. I was traveling. I was on the road. It was the mid-eighties, when it wasn’t considered cool’ to know where you were.

“I was with some comedian, and I didn’t know who he was either, even though we were doing fifteen dates together, driving from city to city. When we got to the restaurant, there was a chalkboard sitting on the street out front. It said: Soup of the Day—Cream of Asparagus. Ellen DeGeneres.

“That’s when I had the Funniest Person in America title. That’s the only reason I got top billing over the comedian I was with, who was the opener. He didn’t even get on the chalkboard. And soup of the day had top billing over me. People would really have to want cream of asparagus soup—that would lure them in. And while they were there for the soup, well, I was just there. Nobody knew who I was. And, I’m sure my name was misspelled. My name was never spelled right. And even if it was spelled right, what did that mean to anybody? That’s pretty scary right there, isn’t it?”

The kids stared at me, which I took to mean, “Yes, that is pretty scary.” Just then, who should come in the door but little five-year-old Mercedes and her twin brother, Oldsmobile. I had forgotten that I gave them the keys to my car to drive down to the neighborhood mart for some salted nuts and a two-pound bag of swizzle sticks. My grandmother used to say, “What’s a party without swizzle sticks?” And, even though I still have no idea what she was talking about, I’m never without them.

As we were passing out the nuts and the sticks, little Toby, remembering that I was in the middle of a story, asked without a hint of sarcasm, “Aunt Ellen, how did you get to be the funniest person in America?”

“This is how I got the title ‘The Funniest Person in America,’ ” I continued, leaning back in my BarcaLounger, remembering it as if it were either yesterday or over ten years ago. “I performed stand-up comedy in New Orleans for about a year, and then the club I worked at closed down. This was through no fault of my own, but since then my philosophy has been it’s just as easy to be funny without a flamethrower as it is to be with one. After that I was working in a law firm as a court runner. I worked there for about a year (until I was so out of breath I had to quit) and then I entered the Funniest Person in New Orleans contest.

“The contest was at a club before a panel of judges, and about fifteen other people competed, a lot of whom had never even been on stage before. I had a 102° fever—I was really, really sick. I almost went home, but I decided to stay. I was the last person onstage, and I won.

“They taped the show that night, and my tape was sent to the contest for the whole state of Louisiana. I won and became the Funniest Person in Louisiana. I don’t even think anyone else entered (maybe Al Hirt or Archie Manning). Then my tape was sent to New York—it was put up in a fine hotel and given one hundred dollars a day spending money, which is a lot for a tape—to compete against the tapes from the other forty-nine states. Well, to make a long story short …”

“It’s a little late for that,” one of the children murmured. I couldn’t tell who it was since all of them are trained ventriloquists. I decided to continue.

“So, my tape, representing Louisiana, made it to the top five from all the states. Then all five tapes went to Pee Wee Herman, Harvey Korman, and Soupy Sales—those were the judges—two of whom, if I’m not mistaken, are now on the Supreme Court. And they all picked me as the winner. So I won Funniest Person in America for Showtime based on that one 102° fever performance.

“After I won, I started traveling with that title. Showtime started taking me around to find the next year’s winner. I played parking lots, supermarkets, and other places looking for next year’s winner (most funny people will eventually wind up in parking lots or supermarkets). I traveled in a van with a big nose and funny glasses (on the van, not me). They wanted to make sure I didn’t have too much dignity. I was on the road all the time.

“Having that title and being on Showtime got me a lot of attention. And at that time there wasn’t comedy everywhere and there weren’t that many comedians, so to be on television was sort of a big thing. Club owners could say, ‘As seen on Showtime,’ ‘As seen on TV.’

“I moved to San Francisco, and suddenly I was getting jobs middling and headlining with the title ’The Funniest Person in America. Comedians who had been working a long time and had a lot more material and a lot more stage time and just education in general in how to handle themselves in front of an audience were a little bit peeved. And they were right to be: I was constantly blown away by the act who came before me.

“A title like that really sets you up. You know how people try to pick fights with The Heavyweight Champion of the World? People try to pick fights with The Funniest Person in America, too. And they’re usually a lot easier to beat up.

“My Uncle Punch would use the title sarcastically. ‘Well, if it isn’t The Funniest Person in America sitting with us for Thanksgiving.

“Or, ‘Well lookie here, it’s The Funniest Person in America visiting me in the hospital. I guess you wanna apologize for hitting me in the head with that turkey drumstick.’

“I don’t think they have the contest anymore. They stopped after a couple of years. Where are the other people who won? I don’t know. Maybe some of them are in Congress. Who knows?”

“Aunt Ellen,” Tony asked as he scratched the cobra tattoo I had gotten for him that day at a cute little parlor frequented by longshoremen, “was it like winning the Miss America contest?”

“It wasn’t like Miss America.” I laughed. “There were no tough questions like ‘How would you use your title as The Funniest Person in America to help world peace?’ And the talent portion of the show was … being funny. Clearly that was my talent as The Funniest Person in America. There was no bathing-suit portion, funny or otherwise, and I very rarely wore the crown, except when I was at home. Sometimes, I’d wear the banner and the crown, but not out. There was no song, ‘There she goes, the funniest person in America.’ Some people may have sung that song, but I didn’t hear it. The tape from Georgia did win Miss Congeniality, but I don’t think it did the comic from Georgia—a very nice man—any good.”

I realized then that I had gotten away from the scary part of my story. To quiet the children down, I spent about an hour teaching them to blow smoke rings from their cigarettes. Then I turned off all the lights in my house (it took just a second; all I had to do was clap loud twice), held a flashlight under my chin, and said, “Now that you have some background, here are some really scary stories of bad gigs.