You're Better Than Me : a Memoir

204 Pages·2016·1.21 MB·English

by  McFarlane

Contents

1. FOREWORD BY ANTHONY BOURDAIN
2. Chapter 1
3. HOW I FAILED AT BEING A SERIAL KILLER, OR, WHY I AM A
COMEDIAN
4. Chapter 2
5. BEING BORN: I’LL NEVER DO THAT AGAIN
6. Chapter 3
7. THE COUNTLESS STAGES OF DEATH
8. Chapter 4
9. ALL THIS VENEREAL DISEASE AND NO ONE TO SHARE IT
WITH
10. Chapter 5
11. NAME YOUR OWN CHAPTER
12. Chapter 6
13. IT’S NOT ME, IT’S U.S.A.
14. Chapter 7
15. LITTLE AIRLINE BOTTLES IN THE BIG APPLE
16. Chapter 8
17. FRIENDSHIT
18. Chapter 9
19. SCREWING UP, DOWN, AND ALL OVER TOWN
20. Chapter 10
21. ONCE YOU’VE SEEN ONE SUNRISE, YOU’RE TIRED ALL DAY
22. Chapter 11
23. FOLLOW YOUR DREAMS, ESPECIALLY IF THEY TAKE
GOWER
24. Chapter 12
25. NOWHERE TO GO BUT UP YOURS
26. Chapter 13
27. LAUGHTER IS THE BEST MEDICINE, UNLESS YOU HAVE
ACTUAL MEDICINE
28. Chapter 14
29. WORKING 10:00 TO 10:15, WHAT A WAY TO MAKE A LIVING
30. Chapter 15
31. EQUALITY IS FOR UNDERACHIEVERS, AM I RIGHT, LADIES?
32. Chapter 16
33. THE B TEAM
34. Chapter 17
35. MIDSEASON PROGRAMMING IN THE GARDEN OF GOOD AND
EVIL
36. Chapter 18
37. F*** CENSORSHIP!
38. APPENDIX A: HOW TO DEAL WITH A HECKLER
39. APPENDIX B: HOW TO GET REPRESENTATION
40. APPENDIX C: HOW TO PROPERLY GIVE A COMPLIMENT TO A
WORKING COMEDIAN
41. APPENDIX D: HOW TO PROPERLY RECEIVE A COMPLIMENT IF
YOU ARE A WORKING COMEDIAN
42. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
43. ABOUT THE AUTHOR
44. CREDITS
45. COPYRIGHT
46. ABOUT THE PUBLISHER
Foreword by Anthony Bourdain
The tarmac at Heathrow was socked in with fog, my flight was canceled, and the
Percodan hadn’t yet started to kick in. I’d spent the night before (figuratively)
jacking off advertisers and sponsors at a network dog and pony, and it’d taken an
ill-advised number of negronis at the hotel bar to wash away the memory. It felt
like I had a brain tumor.
Other than that, everything was fine.
Because there was a bright light in this otherwise dark, depressing picture: I
finally had in my possession Bonnie McFarlane’s manuscript. Things, I was able
to remind myself, could be worse. I could be growing up on a farm in northern
Canada, eating homemade ketchup and taking once-a-week baths in the same
water as the rest of my family.
I could be a working comedian.
I didn’t know who Bonnie McFarlane was when I first met her. She was
introduced to me simply as “the writer” at a charity roast where I was to be
skewered by a panel of friends, professional comics, and people who genuinely
hated me. Bonnie had been hired to write jokes and insults for those few of the
assembled who, though in possession of sufficient ill will, were incapable of
articulating that loathing to comic effect.
She apologized in advance though she needn’t have. Not to me, at least. In
agreeing to participate, the other chefs and television personalities on the dais
that night had apparently forgotten that custom and tradition require everyone to
share the pain of a roast. And on that night, no one got out alive. By the time
dessert was served, there was blood and hair everywhere.
Mario Batali had to endure one fat joke after another after another. Rachael
Ray, given one of the best lines of the night, had to tell a joke about giving
Mario a blow job and him thoughtfully providing his own scrunchie to help keep
the hair out of her face.
Guy Fieri (“what you get when Billy Idol fucks a panda”) took it from all
sides and limped out of the festivities leaking fluids from every orifice.
My friend Eric Ripert dutifully read Bonnie’s lines to uproarious laughter,
pausing intermittently to apologize to his targets.
The jokes were witheringly funny, merciless, inappropriate. Other comics
—famous comics, funny comics—took their turns but I don’t honestly remember
them, because when Bonnie McFarlane stepped up to the microphone, she killed.
She destroyed. She eradicated all memory of the rest.
I turned to my longtime agent, sitting next to me, and said, “Who IS this
person, and how do we get her to write a book?”
Some people have a unique voice—a special way of looking at the world,
seeing it, describing it. Others have a story. Very few people have both.
I had no idea when I first reached out to Bonnie that she had a story.
Particularly this story. I just knew that she had a fantastic way of looking at the
world, talking about it—and that I’d happily spend a few hundred pages hearing
her talk about, well, anything.
I knew, too, that if I was put on Earth to publish anyone, it was Bonnie
McFarlane. Like so few people are able to do (only Richard Pryor comes to
mind), she walks that tightrope between comedy and tragedy—brilliantly.
I am proud to bask in her reflected glory.
On that tarmac at Heathrow—and on the dais of that glorious roast—I was
just grateful to be in the presence of a rejuvenating, excoriating genius.
Chapter 1
HOW I FAILED AT BEING A SERIAL KILLER,
or,
WHY I AM A COMEDIAN
Ask anyone, I’m weird. But not like weird, weird. It’s harder to categorize than
that. My weirdness is more unsettling because it can go under the radar for a
long time before it snaps to the surface. You could be talking to me for an hour,
maybe longer, and perhaps even enjoyably so, before the realization wafts up on
you like a cool draft that suddenly becomes difficult to ignore: you’re talking to
a fucking lunatic.
I’m not sure how it happened. I can’t for the life of me imagine why I
turned out so odd. I mean, I’m Canadian. I come from a nice farming family. My
parents are still married to each other. I saw them fight only once and they had
the decency to go into the garage to hurl insults at each other so my sisters and I
wouldn’t be scarred for life. Eager for any kind of drama, I followed them out to
witness the fireworks, which turned out to be a real disappointment. I only
remember my father saying to my mother, “You’re just like your sister!” My
mother was crushed by the comment. “Take it back!” she whispered. These short
outbursts were followed by long pauses where they stared at each other or their
feet. I left during one of these endless lulls. Borrrring.
My mom didn’t do drugs when she was pregnant. I grew up eating organic
vegetables and I have three older sisters who turned out just fine. So why do I
have six of the seven characteristics of being a serial killer and, worse, grow up
to be a professional stand-up comedian?
Here are the seven signs of serial killers found on Wikipedia, the most
factual Web site on the information superhighway. Can you guess which one I
don’t have?
• White Male
• Antisocial
• Abused: Mentally, Physically, or Sexually
• The MacDonald Triad: Fire Fascination, Bed-Wetting, Killing
Animals
• Above Average Intelligence
• Violence
• Fetishism
1. WHITE MALE
It’s true, I am white, but contrary to some of the rumors floating around, I am
also a woman, born and bred. This is, apparently, the only part of the serial killer
configuration that keeps me from wanting to see the life drain from the eyes of
strangers. However, and I’m not sure this is relevant, when I was three or four
years old, I started identifying as a boy and wouldn’t wear a shirt around the
house or during swim lessons. We swam in a huge body of water that bore the
same name as the closest town, Cold Lake. The lake was not creatively named,
by the way, and I suspect it might originally have been named Motherfucking
Cold Lake. Still, we swam in it all the time and after the hypothermia set in, it
was a pretty fun afternoon. The dude who gave me lessons was just a boy,
maybe fifteen, and my topless heroin chic androgyny was not his cup of tea. He
unloaded me as fast as he could, telling my parents I was a swimming prodigy of
sorts, advanced for my age and could be moved into the older kids’ group, where
I very promptly nearly drowned.
But this near-death experience didn’t stop the cross-dressing. I wanted to be
like my dad. I wanted the attention he got from my mom and my sisters and me.
One of us would look out the window and see him walking toward the house
from the barn after a long day of baling hay and milking cows. “Places! Places
everyone!” We’d buzz around, getting coffee started and popping a few fresh
rolls onto a chipped plate. He’d sit down at the kitchen table and they’d pull off
his boots and I’d comb his hair. “Oh, Bonnie, you’ve got the touch,” he’d say.
He wanted me to be a hairdresser. Those were his big plans for me. I knew I
could never do it because I have an intense aversion to small talk. Plus, I knew I
could be anything I wanted to be in life if I were a man, so I refused to wear
dresses, drank unsweetened iced tea out of a pickle jar, and answered the phone
“Y’ello!” just like my dad. My parents didn’t fret over my gender-bending and
my mother even cut my hair short, but I think she did that so she had two fewer
braids to tie every morning. In those days, you didn’t spend a lot of time
stressing about the weird stages your kids went through. I’m glad, because if I
grew up in this decade, my parents would’ve changed my name to Benji and
started saving for a sex change operation. Personally, I don’t think women
should get sex changes until all their good ladies’ years are used up. As Chaz
Bono taught us, you can go from being a fat old woman to a well-fed young man
in the blink of an inverted vagina. Unfortunately, what Chaz Bono failed to
realize was that getting an actual medical procedure is excessive. Many women
have late-in-life sex changes using only the cruelty of time and their own natural
hormonal shortages. One only needs to take a stroll through the Milwaukee
airport to see how popular this method is.
I was a tomboy who had graduated to tom-man, though I never really had
the party I thought I deserved for such a momentous occasion.
2. ANTISOCIAL
This one is true. I am antisocial. I realize, medically and psychologically, it
might be more than just sitting by yourself at a party with a couple of celery
sticks and a side of lumpy dip but I don’t feel like researching the real meaning.
I think I actually have severe social anxiety. I don’t take any drugs for it or
have a therapist. No, I get through it the old-fashioned way, overcompensating
by being horribly obnoxious. I don’t know why it helps and I’m not even sure
that it does, but that’s how I self-medicate, by being an asshole. So fuck you.
I’ve heard about rape victims who, after their attack, pack on the pounds for
protection so that no one will come near them again. Maybe this is why I act the
way I do. I wear my assholeishness as a protective covering so that people steer
clear and I can avoid small talk. It might sound insensitive, comparing my
sweaty palms with rape victims’ bodies, but perhaps it would help to keep in
mind that at least I’m not out there killing innocent people.
People think it’s odd to pick a profession where you have to stand up in
front of strangers and try to make them laugh when social anxiety is one of your
challenges, but that debilitating feeling most people get when they have to do
any kind of public speaking is something I’m used to. It’s the same feeling I get
if I have to order a pizza or poop in a public bathroom. No more, no less.
Since we’ve still got a few minutes left in this session, I’d like to take this
time to say that I was not around many people other than my family very often.
Sure, I’d go to school when forced, but weekends, holidays, and summers (if you
can call them that in northern Canada) I spent talking to no one but my family
and the animals on the farm. One of the animals, as I look back on it, was a
pretty good friend.
The tradition in my house was to get a cow as a gift for our tenth birthdays.
I don’t know, perhaps it was an Ethiopian tradition passed down generation after