"A Second Chance"

In the summer of 1974, I wrote and performed on The Bobbie Gentry Happiness Hour, a four-episode replacement variety series on CBS.  On the program’s first episode, performing a self-written routine, I played a “Consumer Expert”, delineating the different varieties of peas. 

“You have ‘Peas-in-a-Tin’, ‘Peas-in-a-Bag’ and ‘Peas-in-a-Pod’… and they give you a bag when you pay for them.”

The premiering debut – if that’s not redundant and even if it is– was extremely successful.  I think.  Since the episode’s “Shooting Schedule” extended over two days, there was no studio audience watching me do it.  The show was “Taped before a live studio cameraman.”  Or more precisely three.  But all three appeared seriously amused – if you can say “seriously” about comedy.  Beyond the enthusiasm of head-phoned technicians, the show’s Executive Producer was also happy with my performance.  A welcome advantage on The Happiness Hour.

In the followingweek’s episode, I was a renowned “Cooking Expert”, providing my personal recipe for preparing a peanut butter sandwich, made “from scratch.”

I was an unusual comedian.

The results of thatperformance were considerably less favorable. And here, I believe, is the reason why. Though I could be wrong about this and the “Peas” routine was simply funnier than the “Peanut-butter-sandwich-‘from scratch’” routine and that’s that.  Although, to me, they were equally hilarious.

Have I mentioned that I have not performed comedy on television or professionally anywhere else since the summer of 1974?  That could also possibly mean something.

Here’s what I think happened that scuttled my second on-camera performance.

My “Call”, as they loftily say in “The Business”, meaning when I was instructed to show up… by the way, do you think trash collectors say, “I’ve got an 7 A.M. ‘Call’ to collect garbage”?  I do not believe they do.  Though I have never, in fact, asked one.

Anyway…

My “Call” to the studio was scheduled for noon.  However, due to numerous delays in the “Production Schedule”, I did not go before the cameras until one, the following A.M.  

Which made for thirteen hours of waiting to go on, a daunting interval, you will agree, to successfully maintain my “Performing Edge.”

“The Wait”, however, may well be just a lame-ass excuse.  There were similar delays the previous week when I scored big with my memorable “Peas” routine.  On that occasion, though – having written “however” two times – I insinuated my natural exhaustion into the “act.”  At one point, sleep-walking my overtired body to a “prop” blackboard included in the routine, I ad-libbed, “I’m going there now”, the palpable genuineness of my announcement triggering the biggest laugh of the evening.

The thing is… offering a better excuse…

Something significant happened during that 13-hour-long “Holding Pattern” that threw me joltingly “off my game.”

Somebody visiting the set yelled at me.

My agitated insulter, a veteran television writer whom I did not know, was, like me, an expatriate Canadian. (As was the Executive Producer of The Bobbie Gentry Happiness Hour he had apparently dropped by to visit.)  When we were introduced, the incensed former Canuck almost immediately began screaming. 

“You think you’re so special!”

And other vituperative insults of that nature.

Whoever this irate visitor thought I was – it most definitely was not me; I had never met him before – the man viscerally loathed him.  My first thought was he had mistaken me for my older brother, whom he had encountered working in Canadian television, but that couldn’t be right either.  My older brother never behaved like he was special.  (Though he unquestionablyis.)  That was not the way we were brought up.

(We were brought up to believe everyone elsewas special, and we weren’t.  Though I may have misread my mother’s carping insinuations, leading to feelings of inferiority, which I can’t imagine are any less damaging than feeling you’re special.  Which was exactly what I was now being accused of.  Sometimes, you just can’t win.  Anyway…)

The guy eviscerated me for about ten minutes, and then left.

And I was never the same again.  At least, not that day.  I have since gotten over that jolting experience, although, as it remains a traumatic recollection, not entirely.

Harkening back to the story, eleven hours later, when I finally went on, I had lost the relaxed self-confidence needed to successfully deliver in front of the cameras.  As a result, my shaky “Making-a-peanut-butter-sandwich ‘from scratch’” routine fell thuddeningly  flat.  

Seeking post facto encouragement, I asked the show’s Executive Producer who had effusively lauded my “Peas” routine whether what I had just completed was funny.  His equivocal answer was “Somewhat.”

In the end, the unfortunate comedy routine was removed from the broadcast version of the program.

Okay.

And “Oh, dear!”

I had originally intended to take another crack at the “Peanut-butter-sandwich-made-‘from-scratch’” routine in this venue – hence the above title, “A Second Chance.”  Unfortunately, it turns out – and, acknowledgingly, not for the first time – I have gone too long with my “Contextual Buildup”, necessitating bumping my “Redeeming Reboot” till next time.

Feel the anticipating excitement?

I do.

Come back and be dazzled.

“Making a peanut butter sandwich ‘from scratch.’”

A promising comedy routine,

Devastated by yelling.