Gasping for Airtime Read Online Free PDF Page B

for my nap. I found a Cubs baseball game on the television and turned the sound low so I could be lulled to sleep by the voice of Harry Caray. As I was drifting off, the telephone rang. My first thought was that someone in my family must have died. What else could have such importance that I had to be told immediately while lying in bed in a roadside motel in the woods of rural North Carolina?
    I answered the phone warily and was relieved that it was my manager, Barry. On the phone with Barry was my agent at the time, Ruthanne Secunda. Barry asked me if they had caught me at a bad time. I told him no and asked him what was up.
    Ruthanne spoke next. “You got it,” she said, plain and simple as that. I froze. Got what? I knew what she meant, but I needed more description. Barry clarified the situation. “You, my friend,” he said, drawing out each word, “are a new cast member of Saturday Night Live .”
    Strangely, I was not immediately elated. Instead, I felt like a school bus had rolled on top of me. I was dazed. I felt as if something very serious had happened, but I couldn’t quite quantify it. I asked them if I could call them back so I could phone my parents. When I told my mother and father the news, I cried. But oddly, no real joy. I was absolutely dumbstruck.
    I pulled on my jeans and went down to the pool to tell Anthony. I had to tell somebody in person. Anybody. Everybody. When I reached the pool’s concrete deck, I saw Anthony, now shirtless, still skimming the pool with the long net. I stood next to him and watched for a while. He didn’t say anything, he just kept waving that stupid pole around. At this point, it looked like he was removing molecules because the pool was spotless. But he just kept going. Finally I blurted out, “I just got Saturday Night Live .” Anthony stopped with the pole and looked up at me for the first time. He was stunned. A minute passed, and he smiled. “Well, there goes that nap,” he deadpanned.
    Anthony was genuinely happy for me. I was lucky that I wasn’t doing the gig with some dickhead who would be jealous. That night, in the most beautiful theater I had ever seen, in front of 2,000 students, I was introduced as the newest cast member of Saturday Night Live . Since I had done a show there the prior year, they were juiced. I could feel how happy they were for me. What a show.

Three
     

A Knee in the Groin
     
    I DIDN’T have a single idea in my head. It was my first week on Saturday Night Live and Charles Barkley was the host. This wasn’t bad; it was terrible. The seemingly impossible had happened: I was actually working on Saturday Night Live, filing into executive producer Lorne Michaels’s office on Monday, preparing to pitch ideas for sketches for Sir Charles to perform on Saturday. I had none, but I did have a plan.
    I noticed a semicircle forming around Lorne’s desk and guessed that the pitches would start on one side of the desk and then work their way around the room. To act on my own prediction, I had to quickly decide which side of the desk to stand on. I wanted to be dead last to pitch so I could listen to everyone else’s ideas and hope for the light fantastic to strike. It was my only hope.
    I picked the right side of Lorne’s desk, on the far side of the office. After some aggressive maneuvering, I managed to wedge myself into a position where I would be either second or second to last. Dave Mandel, a writer from Harvard, was on my left, and across the room, leaning against the wall, was David Spade. If Lorne said David , I was safe; if it was Dave , I was probably going to be axed before I saw any airtime. The office door swung closed and Lorne looked up from his desk. One glance generated instant quiet from the rowdy crowd. After a few seconds of silence, Lorne said, “David…”
    Whew! With the exception of Dave Mandel, everyone would pitch before me. Think, damn it! I prodded my brain. Concentrating was particularly hard because as I was