ABlog the Author

Detroit Report to come....

…but until then, know that I am not a good merchandiser.

So…my loyal followers/commenters, email me your size and address and get your very own “Scheft Happens” t-shirt. My gift to you. 

Hack Update....

The spamholes got into my billscheft account again early this morning, but thanks to Toast, I know the drill. Hope no one got another solicitation.

But you’ll love this. Last night, as I was trying to restore my accounts and change my password over the phone through Yahoo Customer Service [(866) 562-7219. Prompt 2. They are phenomenal…], the woman on the phone had to ask me three security questions to unlock the accounts. First question was a layup. Second question was a layup. The third question (which I have since changed): “Who is your favorite author?”

Cold sweat. The answer I put down 12 years ago could have been one of three: Philip Roth, Richard Yates, or (in a blaze of delusional self-reverance) me. I sucked it up and said, “Yeesh. I really really hope I said Philip Roth.”

IS RIGHT!

And now, back to the exciting conclusion of “Slumdog Millionaire….”

The Winner of a Bill Scheft t-shirt for Heroic Email CPR....

….is our pal, Toast in the Machine, who sent me the Yahoo help number and got me back up and running in two email accounts in four hours, rather than 24.

Toast not only sent warnings and numbers to this blog, but sent my wife a message on Facebook. Come on. And thanks to everyone who also chimed in with blog comment alerts. When it happened, around 3:45. I was so nuts I didn’t check in here for a while. That, of course, and the fact that it happened in the middle of a, wait for it, NINE -HOUR HOUSECALL FROM VERIZON to set me up with FIOS. Unreal.

I really appreciate everyone’s concern. It is v-humbling.

Thank God it was just a greasy solicitation. Although when I was finally back up, Jude Brennan, one of the Late Show EPs, had sent me three emails saying she had wired me the money for the passport. So, I guess it was all worth it….

On my way to Detroit....

…for the Detroit Jewish Book Fair, the Rose Bowl of Jewish Book Fairs. It is a big big deal, apparently. I took this gig because I wanted to experience one Jewish book festival, and I wanted to go back to Detroit, my favorite city to do stand-up.

Mark Ridley’s “Comedy Castle,” which is still around and I may scoot over to for the late show Saturday night, was one of the great road clubs. Great treatment, great sightlines, wonderful crowds that got it, and a real mensch of an owner. Mark Ridley was a sweetheart who treated comics like artists and not like, as a guy once said to me in Vegas, “a buffet that tells jokes.” The Castle was the only club I worked where I was a legit draw, and the first place that paid me $2000 a week to headline, which was giant money in the go-go 80s.

The first time I worked at the Castle was September, 2005. I had to run to Port Authority off the softball field (where I helped the Associated Press team win its first Press League title) and grab the bus to Newark Airport, to catch the People Express flight to Detroit ($59, one-way. My friend Steve Skrovan had a great line: “Flew People Express last week. Did you guys have to elect a co-pilot?”)

Somewhere between Port Authority and Newark, my luggage was stolen. My guess was somebody grabbed it out of the bus. I had one of those giant garment bags (the gig was five days) and a small bag with all my essentials (don’t ask) I carried on the bus. I was wearing jeans, sneakers and a Hawaiian shirt over my softball jersey. And that’s what I walked into the club wearing. I was always a coat and tie guy. I wouldn’t go on stage with bare sleeves, so the doorman gave me his large tweed jacket to wear.

After the show, Mark Ridley’s father-in-law starts talking to me. One of those guys who knows just enough Yiddish to get himself in trouble. I tell him about my luggage, and he keeps says, “Oh, are you in tsuris….” He says to me, “You need to go to The Outpost. They’ll set you up with a new wardrobe for nothing.” Then he takes a napkin. And writes on it: Take care of this guy. Harold. And he says to me, “Give this to Jerry. Don’t give it to Lester. Lester is a schmuck. You want Jerry.”

Okay, fine. Thanks. What do I know?

I call a cab the next day. The guy shows up. I say, “I need to go to The Outpost.”

Cab driver says, “What, did you lose all your clothes in a fire?”

I say, “Why?”

He says, “Because that’s the only reason anyone goes to The Outpost.”

“Take me to the mall….”

Here they are...Dave's Opening Remarks 11/4/92....

President Bill Clinton! And you thought he was getting chicks before….

Earlier today, Admiral Stockdale told reporters, “I think we gonna win this thing!”

Good news for President Bush. Because he left the White House in good condition, he will be getting his security deposit back.

Okay, so come January 20, it’ll be President Clinton, Vice President Gore and Assistant Dairy Queen Manager Quayle.

NOTES: I wrote a more personalized version of the first joke (“I’m gonna go out out on a limb here and say there’s no better pickup line in a singles bar than, ‘Hi. I’m the new President of the United States.’” ) but I really wasn’t close. I’m sure jokes 1, 3 and 4 were written by Larry Jacobson, who now writes monologue for Leno, and #2 smells like vintage Gerard Mulligan.

Special thanks to Late Show coordinating producer Kathy Mavrikakis for digging this up.

If you don't slavishly read the comments on this blog....

You missed one of our regulars, Toast in the Machine, pointing out that today was the 17th anniversary of the day Bill Clinton was elected and I wrote my all-time one-day record of 78 jokes at the old show. Actually, the anniversary is tomorrow, because I wrote the jokes the day after Election Night. I know what you’re thinking: “Wow. Which ones did Dave do?” The answer: Zero. For years, the monologue at NBC was three jokes long (Dave got one note from the network when he started: Don’t be the Tonight Show. His brief, decidedly unCarsonian musings at the top of the show wasn’t even referred to as a monologue, rather the Opening Remarks.). About six months after I started in October, 1991, they expanded the Opening Remarks to, wait for it, four jokes.

When I started, I was writing 15 jokes a day, which quickly became 20, then 30. That was a comfortable number for me. But once Clinton made it official, I got in early and figured this day would never happen again. Churned it out from 10 am until he came up from rehearsal at 4 pm to shower for the taping. He put five or six of the 78 on cue cards, but I didn’t make the final cut. (As we speak, I am trying to find the four he did that night to show you what made it.)

When you right monologue, you learn to deal with rejection in bulk. Whether a guy does all 78 or none, you’re still a writer. That’s what I still tell myself.

The story has a happy ending. The next day, I scored big with this one (Remember, this is November, 1992):

Earlier today, Dan Quayle turned to his wife and said, “Is there an ‘e’ at the end of resume?”

Good times.

Texas Book Festival Post-Game Wrap-Up....

Back ensconsed in the house, done with football for the day (I heard the Fox “Favre Cam” got punched out in a Green Bay bar for staring at a girl in a Donald Driver jersey….) and over the back-from-the-road pass-out nap. So, here goes….

This is a big deal, this Texas Book Festival. It is the biggest book festival in the country. I was one of over 200 authors, but was mercifully not on a panel. It was just a one-on-one interview. The moderator, Will Clarke, a fine comic novelist, did an amazing job. Not once, not once, did he steer the discussion to his work or his process, which may get him kick out of the author moderators union. Wonderful, engaging guy. Cannot wait to read some of his stuff.

As I may have said before, expectations are just resentments waiting to happen. So, I keep mine real low. I was looking for 20 people to show and hoping to sell 5 books. Well, we had over 100 in the house and I sold a couple dozen copies of EVERYTHING HURTS.

Many wonderful moments during the interview, but I’ll mention three. The event was held in the capital building in Austin in one of committee rooms, so it had all the trappings of a steroid hearing. In front of Will and myself, we had a young woman doing ASL. Early on, I had to ask her what the sign was for “Jew.” She made a motion in front of her chin like a long beard. So, of course, later on, she was trying to capture my histrionics for the hard of hearing in the audience, I said, ”I know it’s tough to do, because I’m a…and I stroked in front of my chin.”

Lots of very thoughtful questions about writing and my book and the process. One brave young girl asked what I do about self-loathing. I told her to use it was fuel. If we didn’t have it, if we didn’t have such doubt, we wouldn’t be able to overcome it to create. And then I told a story about one day, when Dave said to me, “I am so full of self-loathing.” And I said, “Yeah, but you balance it so nicely with the self-pity….” Big laugh.

And in the “we always worry about the wrong thing” department, there were indeed a lot of questions about Dave and the show, but exactly ZERO about the current situation. God bless Texans and their manners. As it turns out, the last question I got was from a woman who asked if it was true that Dave paid the staff during the Writers Strike. I explained not only that, paid he paid all the expenses of the show, to the tune of $1 million a week out of pocket, and in so doing, kept six other shows off the air and that, along with getting us an interim agreement to come back to work after two months, did more to end the strike than any single person. I got very choked up as I recounted that time, and I said we would never be able to repay his generosity. I remember thinking, “Well, sure I’m crying now, but I’ll get some laughs on the next question.” And then they closed the Q+A, with me in mid-blubber. You know what? That’s fine. 

The book signing was great, marred only by a photo my wonderful publicist Nettie Hartsock took of me where I had the escaped mental patient hairstyle.

Last night, I attended the authors cocktail party, and did very well for me at a cocktail party, which means I showed up and stayed. I was rewarded on my way out when Richard Russo, the Pulitzer Prize winner who had given me a glorious blurb (“How rare it is for a novel to be both hilarious and profoundly moving. In EVERYTHING HURTS, Bill Scheft is firing on all eight rumbling, throaty cylinders….” ). We saw each other, and he gave me a giant hug, turned to his wife and said, “This is Bill Scheft. He wrote the funniest book of the year.” So, that didn’t suck.

(By the way, Russo’s latest, THAT OLD CAPE MAGIC, is terrific. The man has some moves).

Okay, enough. Next week, the Detroit Jewish Book Festival. Hang on to your tzitzis!

Attention Facebook people: Please email Happy Birthday wishes to my wife, Adrianne Tolsch. Thank you, the managment.

My best friend (and Late Show EP) Barbara Gaines models the mercifully limited edition Bill Scheft t-shirt....