The Open-Mike IncidentJun 25 '01 Write an essay on this topic.
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The Bottom Line Well, to begin with, don't convince the audience that you're an assh*le.
Mike, Davey and I walked into the Old Town Pub in Pasadena separately because the plan dictated—pretend we don’t know each other, cause ruckus, insert Broadway-style musical number, exit unobtrusively, run. But, though the plan may have gone as we’d expected in that first hour, we had abandoned it altogether by the time we got kicked off the open-mike night stage. After studying theatre for four and a half years in San Francisco and subsequently receiving a degree in unemployment, I, like every slack-jawed, wannabe-movie-star, prettyboy in America, packed my bags, gave away my furniture and headed down to Los Angeles, in hopes that fear might motivate me to jump-start my post-collegiate career. Or, depending on your perspective, I packed my bags, gave away my furniture, and headed out to San Bernardino to live with my folks in hopes that boredom and anxiety would lure me away from eight-hour computer binges into the world of the struggling actor/ wannabe prettyboy. Within a couple of weeks of the move, I found myself in cahoots with two of my old school chums—Mike, a self-taught guitarist and songwriter, disillusioned with Los Angeles entertainment politics having grown up living in the Hollywood Hills, and Davey, who, at age 19, traveled around America with his twin brother as a clown in Ringling Bros. Barnum & Bailey Circus. Banded together by our college theatre department camaraderie and inherent distrust of the film industry machine, the three of us decided to form a guerilla theatre company which we dubbed (wait for it) repulsemonkey. Miraculously or fatefully, depending on your perspective, within a week and a half of its formation, repulsemonkey scored its first gig. Mike’s ex-girlfriend frequented a monthly open-mike in a beer & wine bar, tucked away behind a large building and a larger parking lot in Old Town, Pasadena. When the three of us showed up to watch her play, she introduced us to Maurice, the organizer of the Old Town Pub’s open-mike. Maurice’s real name was Bill or Joe or some other, more common designation, which he shed every month when he donned a plaid shirt, plaid tie, plaid coat and red lipstick to emcee the show. Apparently, "Bill" was too mundane a title for such a flamboyant host. We remained up front with Maurice about our intention to unleash Andy Kaufman-inspired, "Is it an act or isn’t it?" madness upon his open-mike and, after assuring us that he maintained a vested interest in experimental theatre and especially wanted to begin broadening the range of acts performing at the Old Town Pub, he marked us down for a slot at the next month’s show. At that point, we had no material, so we spent the next month holed up in Mike’s garage, finely crafting our monstrosity of an open-mike nightmare. On paper, it all seemed like a brilliant idea. We would all show up separately and pretend not to know one another as we waited for Mike to be called up on stage to perform as Romeo Malone—a guitar boy from Silver Lake. The performance would hinge on the idea that the audience remained unaware that they were about to be watching theatre and not merely music. After Romeo Malone introduced himself and set down his metal tip bucket, he would begin to play his guitar, only to be repeatedly interrupted by Davey, who would walk back in forth in front of the stage, seemingly oblivious toward the man performing. Romeo Malone would became increasingly frustrated, and eventually ditch his initial song in favor of a scathing insult-song, directed at Davey, who may have been oblivious, but also remained unsuspecting. At one point in the song, Romeo Malone would even call for the audience to sing along, at which point I, all mooked out in the back of the bar, wearing a flannel, Pearl Jam T-shirt and backwards ball cap, would begin to chime in. The words of Romeo Malone’s song to Davey were "Can’t you see you’re a dick, and you can’t hide it anymore?" and it devolved into a tirade of absurdly serious threats and profanity. When Davey realized that he had awakened Romeo Malone’s ire, he would offer to buy him a beer in order to make peace. As Davey walked over to the bar, I would make my way up to the stage and slap Romeo Malone a high-five for playing "such a dope song, dude," and then, in order to further show my appreciation, proceed to drunkenly toss coins into his faux-tip-jar, which loudly panged against the metal bucket with increasing frequency through his entire next song. This time, Romeo Malone’s eyes would stay closed while he performed, and he would, ironically, remain oblivious to any sort of distraction. Presumably, at this point the audience would either decide that the happenings were too absurd to be reality, or they would kick the everliving shit out of me for acting like such a numbskull. Assuming that the performance would continue through the coin-panging, we would have Davey return with his beer for Romeo Malone, which I would promptly misinterpret as an offering to me and take out of Davey’s hand. Before Davey knew what was going on, I would make a B-line to the back of the pub, leaving Davey to chase after me through the crowd and yell "No! No! The beer was for him!" At this point, Romeo Malone’s eyes would pop open and he would see Davey directly in front of him—the man who, minutes ago, he had threatened to kill for interrupting his performance again interrupting his performance. Here, instead of allowing things to escalate into a messy conflict, the three of us, now spread throughout the bar, would break into a joint musical number, recycling the refrain from the earlier song, "Can’t you see, you’re a dick?," and eventually converging together on stage. Not to be undone by our own Broadway-style open-mike musical number, we rigged a moment in which I, uncomfortable with performing a song in front of a bar full of strangers, would fumble the lyrics and rhythm, leading the other two to stop the song and simply stare at me, dumbstruck. When Mike asked, "Marty… What are you doing?," I would declare that I could no longer go on with the performance and the three of us would begin to bicker amongst ourselves in front of our audience. The conflict would culminate in my storming out of the building, Mike buying time with an emotional rendition of "Total Eclipse of the Heart," and, ultimately, a resolution involving a brief dance number. We decided that, afterward, we should plan on beating a hasty retreat. Throughout all our rigorous planning, however, we neglected to take into account the fact that most open-mike audiences probably wouldn’t react well to a pretentious performer hurling vicious threats at an innocent bystander—especially if they had no idea that it was all an act. So, when, during the actual performance, members of the audience began to exit in droves, the three of us were somewhat taken aback. Apparently, Maurice was also taken aback by the departing audience members, because, though he had championed our cause theoretically and in prior discussion, he began to heckle Mike through the entire performance. Thus, instead of bickering amongst ourselves when the time came, we focused our attention onto Maurice, with Mike shouting through the microphone at our emcee until, when the argument could escalate no further, Maurice announced to the entire pub—which all of ten people now inhabited—"Let’s hear it for repulsemonkey!" "Are you cutting us off?," Mike replied, and Maurice simply answered, "Yup." With that, my inaugural performance in the Los Angeles theatre scene came to an abrupt and unceremonious end and, though it proved more of a sociological experiment (or failed exhibitionism, depending on your perspective) than the uproariously absurd stage piece we expected it to be, we must have done something right, because, to this day, Maurice continues to call us in hopes of signing repulsemonkey up for future open-mike nights at Pasadena’s Old Town Pub. His reasoning eludes me. (I’d like to pronounce this a companion piece to Sloucho’s "It's Amateur Hour at Doc Watson's on Tuesday Nights," but I fear that might be too lofty a designation. So I’ll just urge you to visit his story at http://www.epinions.com/content_1712431236 and try to forget about mine.)  |
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