It was my worst performance since the Saturday Night Live audition. I’m sure she knew exactly what was going on. I didn’t even have enough money to tip the valet.
I wrote so many bad checks that weekend that if they could actually bounce, some would have cleared a football field. I just needed to make it to the Skirball Center the next night without getting arrested. I could find a way to dig myself out of all these holes afterward.
Twenty hours later. Skirball Center. This was it. Lights, producers, cameras. My first big special was about to go down. I’m a Grown Little Man.
I checked to make sure the seats were filling up. Still too many empty ones. There was my family, though. Torrei’s family. Na’im’s family. Many fans I knew by their first names. And many I didn’t.
Okay, showtime.
I walked out. The audience jumped to its feet applauding, screaming. Normally a good thing. But we told them to do that for the special. Will look like they actually paid to be there.
I grabbed the microphone. The stand was too high. No one had adjusted it after Na’im’s performance. If Nate were here, this wouldn’t have happened.
First joke. Me trying to pick up women with baby seats in the back of the car. Big laughs. More jokes about my kids. Bigger laughs.
I spotted Riq, Na’im’s brother, in the audience. Couldn’t look at him. He’s too critical. Always tells me whether my delivery is good or bad—and where I’ve performed the joke better. He’s usually right.
Damn, he caught my eye. He nodded and smiled approvingly. As if to say, You’re doing it, Kev, you got this!
That was just what I needed to get in the zone and stay there. When the show ended, I brought Heaven and Hendrix on stage. “Anyway, this is just so y’all can see that what I tell is the truth,” I began, and then got choked up. A flood of joy and relief roared through me and lifted me up. I’d done it.
I went to the theater lobby afterward to thank everyone who came. “I saw you at Boston Comedy Club back in the day,” one woman said excitedly. Then a guy nearby: “Boy, I remember you performing to a hundred people at Carolines!” To know that there were individuals watching my career, invested in me, rooting for me, on the journey with me—that was the icing on the cake.
The cake, of course, was the show itself. And the blown-out candles on the cake were my bank account and credit.
Back in Los Angeles, we stayed home for the rest of the week and ate everything on the shelves until it was time for my college show.
I got paid for it with a check. Since I now had a negative balance at the bank, I cashed the check elsewhere and began to rebuild my life. I bought food for the family and worked out a payment plan with American Express.
It took a long time for Torrei’s mom to forgive me for dinging her credit. But American Express held its grudge even longer. Years later, when I was one of the highest-paid comedians in the world and had a great credit rating, I applied for a card and was still denied.
Comedy Central ended up buying I’m a Grown Little Man for fifty thousand dollars, which, after commissions, allowed me to pay off some of my expenses and debt. Though I was proud of the work, the special didn’t explode into the world like I’d hoped. It came and went like everything else I’d done. I was just another comic with an hour-long special—and a DVD and CD to sell at my merchandise table.
But I was fine with this outcome, because by now, I’d come to accept that endurance is key. If I stayed persistent and on my grind, I would make it out of this hole and my dreams would come true.
I just didn’t know when.
Life Lessons
FROM TEAM BUILDING
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I know I just said that you gotta do things alone, but make sure you do things alone with a team. That may not seem like it makes sense, but it makes total sense once you’ve read this section. And if it still doesn’t make sense, I suggest you get a team to help you understand it.
With Joey, Harry, Wayne, and Spank
74
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I’M THINKING THAT I SHOULD GET AN HONORARY DEGREE FOR ALL THE COLLEGE SHOWS I’VE DONE. CALL ME IF YOU CAN MAKE THIS HAPPEN. (NOTE: WOULD PREFER A DOCTORATE.)
The thing that saved my ass, more than the fifty thousand dollars from Comedy Central for I’m a Grown Little Man, was NACAC.
NACAC is the National Association for College Admission Counseling. That may not sound like much, and it didn’t to me either, but they organize an annual convention for six thousand professionals from different high schools and colleges around the country.
Nate and I set up a booth at the convention. After I performed a showcase there, people from different colleges stopped by our table to ask about hiring me. I took every show they offered. As a result of that convention, I ended up booking some fifty-five colleges that year, with each show paying between seven hundred and twenty-five hundred dollars.
Those shows gave me many opportunities: to pay off more debts, to work on a new hour of material, and to go to practically every state in the union and make people laugh.
Nate and I worked hard to get the contact information of everyone at each college show. Then we’d ask if anyone had connections at local comedy spots, so we could come back and pick up an adult audience in the town as well.
As we worked this system, however, club promoters began pulling me aside and telling me they were going to stop booking me if they had to continue to deal with Nate. They complained about being threatened, distrusted, and micromanaged. They wanted to do business with someone else.
I sat down with Nate in my hotel room one night. “Listen, people are saying they won’t book me again if you’re the one doing the business. So this is what I’m gonna do: Because I like you and I’m loyal, I’m gonna get us a personal appearance agent.”
Nate flipped out. “Naw, hell no. Hell no. That’s what I do. I’m the one that do that. Damn, man!”
“Nate, listen to what I’m saying: We don’t have a choice.”
“No. Ain’t no way in hell you gonna let them white boys take this over.”
“Nate, you’re not listening to me. The clubs will not work with you. We have to slowly get you back into a position where they’re comfortable dealing with you. Let me do what I gotta do.”
“I don’t know, Kev.” He shook his head. “I don’t like it. I don’t like it one bit. You don’t need nobody else.”
The reason Nate had done so well for me up to this point was because he’d been as tenacious with the promoters and bookers as he was in this conversation. But I needed to make this change if I wanted to still have a touring career. It took me four more years to get that motherfucker to work civilly with people. The only other person in my life I’ve argued with more than him is Torrei.
Dave Becky soon found me a new personal appearance agent named Mike Berkowitz. I told Berkowitz that I didn’t want to do any more package shows—even if it meant turning down big-money offers. “I can have you working as much as you want by yourself,” he said.
“Good, cause I want to work a lot—but not alone. I want to build my own team.”
75
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