Our next stop is at the Arlington Heights VFW. We manage to get there after realizing the Mapquest directions that were available online were completely wrong. Mapquest is sometimes like that, but no matter; we still find the location and hunt for a place to park, as their tiny lot is packed.Without knowing what was in store, I was informed by a man I met a few weekends ago by the name of “Crazy Ed,” (not related to “Babyshoes Ed”) at a breakfast meeting, that the VFW has comedy open mics.
Tonight I wear my colorful yarmulke that looks more like a jazz hat and a blue Hawaiian short-sleeved shirt to blend in with the crowd. Fat chance and that’s an understatement.
A comedy open mic ought to be different I told myself, as I prepare material and told almost no one, including Mitch what I planned to perform, but when we arrived, I find out it’s just another regular open mic and performers can do “almost” anything.
There are several groups of men with guitars and singers just waiting in the wings. Some are good and some are mediocre.
The audience is made up most of ugly skinny and plump women smoking cigarettes, along with short, tall and rotund men with a “tough guy” attitude.
Primarily, the audience is made up of ex-military personnel; babykillers by another era or two if you will and they expect good entertainment for free, just like they received while serving in the armed forces for our country, willingly or involuntarily.
They expect standards. They expect classics. They expect the entertainer to entertain them. What they lack however, is respect. Whatever respect they learned by serving in the army, navy, marines and other military branches certainly seems lost in the crowd tonight.
Most people talk loudly over the groups and solo acts, even the old guy who sings out-of-tune & off-key Frank Sinatra ballads along with a Karaoke machine. As I thumb through my work, I feel a nervous chill spread throughout my entire body. This crowd feels weird to me.
The open mic host comes up to me and asks me if I’m planning on performing tonight and I say, “Yeah.” I ask him what can’t I perform or do and he says he’ll go ask the proprietor of the VFW and come back to tell me. A few minutes later, the host comes back and says the only rule is that I can’t swear. I say, “Okay. No problem. I’m ready to go.”
A few seconds later, the host introduces me as “Sid Yiddish,” and tells the crowd that I’m going to do something “experimental.” The audience seems to perk up, but very few give me a warm welcome.
Already I feel like I’m in enemy territory and I haven’t even started.
I decide to recite “The Dells,” first, my parody poem based off “The Bells” by poet Edgar Allen Poe and adapted to music by Phil Ochs.
The Dells is a funny descriptive piece based on The Wisconsin Dells, a favorite Midwestern tourist trap, similar to Fisherman’s Wharf, another tourist trap, based in San Francisco, California and a poem that in other venues around the United States has received plenty of laughs in the past.
Not tonight, however. I hear only one measly laugh. I finish. No one claps. I think to myself, “Fine, okay, I’ll try something else” and I perform, “Oh Deer!” in the usual two voices: the human voice and the deer voice.
In the middle of all this, Mitch is moving around the VFW hall, snapping still pictures and making little films on my digital camera of me in performance (For copies of the two films made, drop me an email here at this blog and I'll be sure to send you both).
“Oh Deer!” garners no laughs either and still no one claps. I think, “Oh shit, I better come up with a closer that will knock them out.”
So I decide say, “Well, this is my last piece for tonight” and just as soon as I release those words from off my tongue and out of my mouth, a thunderous and hearty cheer comes up from the back and spreads itself around the room.
I join in with the crowd, clapping, cheering and jeering myself as well. Best response I get all night from them.
Then I admit, “Well, I’m no singer, but I’m going to do a little throat-singing for you." The piece I choose is called “Mykel Board Weasel Squeezer.”
I breathe in and out a few times and launch into the first word. For once the audience is silent. And I mean dead silence. Not a peep out of one of them. You could hear a pin drop. “At last,” I think to myself, “They’ve finally shut-up” as I sing the second word.
Breath.
Then, as I launch into the third word, I hear one lone voice in the back scream out, “Oh my god! There’s a second verse!” I just smile and look up and scan the crowd. Their faces are blank. Motionless. White. Silent.
I finish off the last word and thank the crowd for being polite, even though I know the majority of them weren’t. As I gather up my material, the open mic host jokingly asks me if I’ll be on cable in the fall. “As a matter of fact, I will,” I tell him, mentioning the anthology briefly, while looking at directly at his eyes.
As I turn around, there’s a big beefy hand outstretched to me, attached to a well-built body and tousled hair and a guitar in the other hand. He says to me, “It takes a lot of nerve to get up here and do what you just did.”
I shake his hand and smile back. As I trudge back through the crowd, some people blow smoke at me, while others give me disapproval with dirty looks. God forbid I should shake them up a little.
When I sit back down, an older man with a polar bear belly who sat next to me tells me he liked my poetry. I smile.
Then he tells me the man in the white tee shirt and tousled hair is none other than one of the members of the legendary 1960s Chicago band The Ides Of March and how the man is considered a local celebrity around the VFW. I should assume that most people in the crowd grew up with The Ides Of March, yet unbeknownst to many there, I didn’t and yet, that man made my night with his few words.
Mitch turns to me and says, “Let’s go.” I agree and stuff my tape recorder into my backpack and sling my briefcase over my shoulder as we silently steal away without a word from anybody.
After a long drive back north, I drop Mitch back home and I go to Kroger’s and buy a quart of ice cream. It’s hot enough for it, but that not why I buy it.
I buy it, for when I get home, burning tears stream down my face like a steady rain.
Ice cream is good for healing and then some.
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