|
At first the New York Times Magazine was talking about an article from me. Then they decided to do their own Q&A. Darn it, the article was done! So here's a web exclusive version:
On January 7, 1999, I achieved the ultimate goal of my stand-up comedy career when I appeared on the "Late Show With David Letterman." Relieved that I didn't bomb or faint, I walked off the stage and was told that Rob Burnett, the show's executive producer and Dave's partner in Worldwide Pants, wanted to talk to me.
After an initial polite greeting, Mr. Burnett spoke the words I still find hard to believe to this day, "Dave and I would like to develop a sitcom for you like we did for Ray (Romano)." I glanced over my shoulder to see if he was talking to someone else in the room.
Mr. Burnett then asked me to think of a premise for a show I would like to do. That evolved naturally, from the point of view built within much of my stand-up comedy. Simply put: a show about a white bread Midwesterner coming to live and adjust to multi-cultural New York City.
In essence, the show would capture something of the tribulations of my first year in New York. Having lived here now for ten years, I had already romanticized my first year in New York as an immigrant experience. My "old country," though, was Indiana.
I mean no insult to the struggle of recent or past immigrants to this great city, but Indiana is in some ways a far-off land and my first year did have a quality of assimilating to a different culture, with its own unique lessons.
The three lessons I learned?
My first year in New York, I realized I was Midwestern. This may seem pretty obvious. But for a long time I thought I wasn't really from Indiana, so strongly did I identify with the energy and irreverence of Manhattan that I saw in the movies. Growing up in a tiny Indiana town that didn't have a McDonald's until I was in high school, I always assumed that there had been an elaborate baby switch at birth.
It took only a few subway rides, with my blond hair and conservative dress, to realize my error. The only people who seemed to look and dress like me in New York were, well, tourists from the Midwest. Stubborn and living downtown, I refused to accept my physiognomy fate. My final attempt at fitting in was when I bought what was then all the craze, a black turtleneck. It didn't work. I looked like an accountant on a ski trip. Before the year was out I was forced to concede that I was what I was. A Midwesterner.
Another reality New York thrust upon me was the fact that I was going to be poor. Not just struggling. Broke. For quite some time.
In college I remember thinking, "I can't wait until I graduate, go to New York and get some money." I hadn't realized I had gone through school in quasi middle-class affluence: I could go to the occasional movie, go out drinking and still eat.
The high prices of New York were no shock - everyone is warned to expect those. I had grossly underestimated, though, their effect on my everyday life. I couldn't leave my apartment without spending $20. I would walk to work and incur debt. New York felt at times like living in a ridiculously expensive hotel where you actually think before making a local phone call.
I remember wondering if it would have been cheaper to buy groceries on "Wheel of Fortune": "Pat, I'd like the generic brand of macaroni & cheese and uh, I guess I'll take the rest in tokens. " (OR: "Pat, could I skip buying a vowel and get some macaroni & cheese?") It took my first good year of work to embrace life among the constantly spending, a sort of poverty in motion no matter what you earn.
I suppose the biggest shock of my first year was when I realized that New York City could break me. Spiritually.
Living in any city has its own list of problems, but New York is a litany. Consider how the lack of space turns privacy into a rare commodity. When things go bad, they go bad in public. It is not uncommon to see someone walking down the street crying, or yelling at a cab driver for some outrageously trivial reason. The overall tone of emotional chaos is only enhanced by the floating homeless, who truly have nowhere to vent. Like many new arrivals to New York my naïve response to this insanity was, "Look at all these weirdos." I couldn't understand why New Yorkers couldn't control themselves.
I later found this view ironic when I caught myself screaming at a broken pay phone or berating a garbage can for being in my way. Embarrassed, I was forced to recognize what New York had taught me: I was a vulnerable outsider. Maybe I wasn't an immigrant, but I definitely wasn't a New Yorker.
Until years later. When I saw a group of pale and conservatively dressed Midwest tourists on the subway and thought, "Look at all those weirdos."
|
|