Let me tell you about these friends of mine. They're entertainers. And they're crazy. They bounce off the walls like metal balls in a "Mr. Fantastic" pinball machine. They do schtick that would make Ernie Kovacs roll over in his grave. They tell jokes that, were there true justice in this world, would join the late Mr. Kovacs within that same place of interment. They are, at this moment, throwing into chaos the entire telephone system of South Florida, searching in vain for a seafood restaurant that serves clams, in the shell -- at one o'clock, on a Monday morning. The poor woman on the other end of 1-555-1212 is babbling incoherently something about "50 ways to heave your supper," and the entire bit is rapidly degenerating into a real dangling conversation.
As I said: My friends are entertainers; they are crazy. They are also beautiful, and I love them. They keep me (their audience-of-one, this particular one-a.m.) sane.
The two, entertainer and audience, share a symbiotic relationship. Each seeks sustenance through something the other provides. We look to our entertainers for escape; they, in turn, turn to us for an ostensibly sane stage upon which to present their theater of the absurd. I thought, just this once, I would share with you a few of the insanities this special breed of Homo sapiens endures, so that the rest of us might maintain a fragile grasp on our own sanity.
Have you ever spent a night in a hotel or motel? It's a lovely experience, comparable to making love to an anhedonic. It takes everything you have, and gives absolutely nothing in return. The room we're sitting in now, cyber-seeking those clams, provides a perfect example of what I mean.
The walls are done in "Early Carlos Castanada" -- a lovely Wells Fargo motif, presented in a style best described as cuniform executed by a palsy victim. Hot water is at a minimum, cold drafts at a maximum. The bathroom -- all Formica, chrome and fluorescent colors -- faintly resembles a psychotic's vision of the perfect fast-food restaurant. The beds provide all the comforts of a night spent reclining on stalagmites.
And then, there's the phone.
Have you ever watched someone hold a telephone conversation? It's obvious that the technical wizards who hot-wire hotel rooms haven't. Most people pace, when they talk on the phone. I know I do. Think about it. You probably do, also. When talking on the telephone, ambulation seems somehow condusive to conversation.
Hotels and motels deny their patrons this luxury. For some illogical reason lost to antiquity, they allocate each room approximately two feet of telephone cord. This translates mathematically into a pacing range of four feet, back-and-forth, or semicircular coverage of approximately 12.56 square feet, before you fall victim to a rare malady called "cable whiplash." It is a painful affliction. It's also quite unnerving when you realize that whomever you were conversing with when you reached the end of your rope (figuratively speaking) has been left dangling (literally), trapped (now speaking metaphorically) within a telephone receiver that somehow manages to strike each and every object within that 12.56 sq.ft. semicircle. Ain't modern technology grand?
This is life in a hotel or motel room. For us, the common folk, it is the one insanity we must endure amidst that predominantly joyful activity we call a vacation. To an entertainer, it is the rule, not an exception, within the unique life he or she has chosen to persue.
And now, a word about boredom: excruciating. Contrary to the popular mythos reflected in such stalwarts of impartial journalism as The National Enquirer and Star Scene Magazine, the life on an entertainer on the road is not all glamor and excitement. Quite the opposite. It is, for the most part, a tedious routine. Boredom hangs in the air like cigarette smoke at a politically incorrect cocktail party, drifting down until everyone's head is lost in a haze of -- of what? -- more than simple inactivity -- non-activity.
Boredom is, in a word, the enemy. This is not melodrama, Gentle Reader, it is fact.
Ennui is a beautiful French word Mr. Webster defines as: The state of being bored; listlessness. Ennui, to the entertainer, is an unseen nemesis. It lurks just beyond the proscenium, stalking him, like predator stalks prey, between the time the final curtain for one performance descends and the next show begins. Meals and laundry consume only so much of the day. The remaining seconds, minutes, hours, are spent in strange places, surrounded by strangers, looking for strange ways to fill the time.
An undeclared and constant war ensues. The Battle of the Boredom. And most entertainers fight this war by indulging in craziness, if only to convince themselves that they are not going insane.
This, then, is what makes my friends special to me. This is what sets them apart from the majority of the people I know. They are crazy, but in a unique way. They are not dangerous. They do not threaten. In truth, they provide a yin to our yang. They endure, so that we may enjoy. They will drive themselves to the point of exhaustion during a two-hour performance -- expending more energy within this short period of time than most of us use in a week -- simply to receive a few seconds of what, all too often, amounts to polite applause from an uncomprehending and unappreciative audience.
And so, Timothy, Cary, Sookie, keep bouncing off walls. Keep doing your schtick. Keep telling your jokes, even the old and stale ones. In short, keep being crazy -- and accept whatever small measure of appreciation these hastily scrawled paragraphs can convey.
You and your peers deserve it. You've earned it. To you, as the Bard once proclaimed, "all the world is a stage." I'm grateful for having been allowed into the dressing room of your minds for this short while. I don't even mind the mess. You see, thanks to your hospitality, I now know and understand a little more about life than I did before. This makes it all worthwhile.
Now, let's get back on the phone and track down those clams, shall we?
returns you to the Chez Nims Library.Our current position on the cosmic clock is:
people have perused That's Entertainment in the electronic reading room.
This site maintained by Jack Nimersheim
Copyright © 1995 Jack Nimersheim
All Rights Reserved