There’s a line of Christmas lights bisecting the roof of an SUV, continuing across the hood onto the ground and then around the back of the house. This has to be the place.

I’m in North Hills. Seems pretty flat, I think the “hills” part might be a branding thing, like Beverly Hills, and I guess North is also branding? I mean,“North Pole” (Santa’s workshop)_ or “North West” (her first album should be out soon), or “North by Northwest.”

From the name of the show and the design of the flyer (where I am listed as “Sean,” like “Cher” or “Hitler”), it seems there is to be a theme to the night: marijuana. A gateway drug. I hope I don’t come home an ayahuasca addict or something. 

Apparently the show is in this guy’s backyard, and it’s also live-streamed. Stand-up comedy and live reggae music.They do it every week. I’ve been asked to do a half hour. I haven’t been doing a lot of stand-up lately, so I’ve spent the entire day working on my set. I’m nervous, but I have a plan, and it feels like a good plan. A plan that could work.

I get out of the car. It’s like 45 degrees Fahrenheit, which in LA means start burning the furniture. But the gate is closed. Hmmm, how to get in…

I call my contact, the owner of the home, the designer of the flyer.  He answers with a noticeable Jamaican accent, which Google’s AI search tool (btw we’re so fucked!) tells me has a distinctive pronunciation of the /aʊ/ diphthong in words like "mouth". It also has a variable semi-rhoticity, meaning the pronunciation of "r" varies depending on the word and the social context.

The variable semi-rhoticity immediately reminds me of a Jamaican guy I went to college with. We lived on the same hall freshman year, and pretty much were together for four years-including senior year, when I moved off campus to the house that had the collapsing deck which accidentally and painfully ripped off somebody’s big toenail, which of course  then got nailed to the wall in the kitchen, like a moose head. That year Joe lived in an electric blanket the basement.

Joe, I realized as we walked outside on a freezing cold grey Worcester Massachusetts probably November day in the 80’s, had never seen snow. An adult seeing snow for the first time. Fun! He’d heard of it, but it was difficult for him to even understand, it didn’t make sense, it was exciting, amazing, delightful, delicious, cold and uncomfortable all at the same time. Like when sushi comes with roe.

I also took him to his first-ever ice hockey game, again in Worcester (the fourth-largest city in the world not on a major waterway- I didn’t record promos at the campus radio station for nothing!), and in the middle of the game there was a bench-clearing brawl- one of those even-the-goalies-are-fighting fights. Hockey was not what he thought it was going to be, but it was the coolest sport ever invented!!!.

Then he went to a baseball game at Fenway and caught a home run. Another coolest sport ever! Some people just get to live that way. 

By the way, every major city has at least one college. Worcester has ten.

Joe, from Jamaica, graduated ranked number one in our class of 680 (I don’t remember my rank) (I actually do and would prefer not to share). He was the valedictorian, and spoke at our graduation, along with I think maybe Art Buchwald? Right around the time Art was suing Paramount for stealing his screenplay idea and giving it to Eddie Murphy.

The homeowner/party planner comes out and opens the gate. There’s a stage in the backyard, surrounded by about 30 or 40 seats. Where is everybody? Turns out a lot of people have stayed home to watch the Tyson “fight.” Like, so far, all of them.

So the only people there are the five of us involved in the show. Myself, and:

1. The homeowner, talking to his live-stream audience the whole time.

2. A gorgeous reggae singer, wearing silver makeup and a faux fur., The TIn Man’s favorite pop star..

3. A bartender named Tiny, average-sized, rolling spliff after splif with incredible skill.

4. An actor, whose side hustle is stand-up, dominating the conversation by telling story after story about all the cars he has ever owned. Color, make, model, how many doors, torque… he has owned a lot of cars. 

Sometimes I look at actors who do stand-up and I think, they shouldn’t. Then, I think that again.

The fight ends. Still no audience there. Too cold? Everybody too exhausted by reallllllly hoping Jake Paul gets his ass kicked? The homeowner hesitantly asks if we want to perform. To an empty yard, but 91 live-streamers. 

Nope. No show for no-shows. 

We continue to stand around chatting for another half hour or so, gently elbowing each other for space in front of the space heater. 

The homeowner walks to the turntables and giant speakers in the backyard and cranks incredible obscure dancehall 45’s and sings and dances along (he’s been putting Tiny’s spliffs to good use) (I wonder how the neighbors feel about the weekly concerts?). He and I talk about his work on a popular TV show, his close relationship to a respected Hollywood director (now deceased), and the script the two of them were developing before the director passed way. 

A pug runs out of the house and tries to vocally intimidate me (so loud!), which works, but I’m told he’s harmless and just needs to get used to me. He seems to.

The stand-up actor finishes his extemporaneous classified ad for a ‘93 four-door Cutlass Cierra, 6 cylinders, 160 horsepower, really moved well… fascinating stuff. Then, he mentions briefly, in passing, that he first moved to LA to become an assistant at the Playboy mansion, and they had some fun nights, “... and that’s all I’m gonna say about that.”

Dude. 

Time to go.  I get back in my car to drive home, list of unrecited jokes still in my pocket and my head.

“Everybody has a plan, until they get punched in the face,” said Mike Tyrson. 

Bang.

Stay safe.

Sean

PS The Buchwald screenplay idea was “Coming to America.” Paramount eventually paid him $900,000.