All Things Hairpin

Over the woods and through the trees to … “Give a guy a bad blow job, he don’t care how big your breasts are!”

When you tell someone that you are a comedian or have done stand up comedy, invariably you get two responses: 1.) Tell me a joke/make me laugh. 2.) Who’s your favorite stand up. For the first response, “So I’m screwing a vampire … I look up in the ceiling mirror and all I see is …” [I guess you had to be there] For the second, I ask for clarification, “You mean other than me? My favorite comedian is Doug Stanhope. The funniest comedian may be Brian Regan. But the most inspirational comedian by far is Grandma Lee.” If you know me from Jacksonville, Florida, then you can stop reading now, because if you know me from Jacksonville, Florida, then you know Grandma Lee (though maybe you’ll read something about her that you never knew.)

This tale begins in the early 1990s on a Sunday afternoon in the front seats and tables of the only comedy club in Jacksonville, Florida, “The Comedy Zone.” It’s not the night of the show. The club was closed on Sunday, because until [1990’s] recently, one couldn’t buy alcohol at a bar on Sunday and you can’t have comedy if you don’t have alcohol. Well you can, but why would you? (The recently refers to the fact that Jacksonville was in the running for and won an NFL franchise. And you can’t have NFL football on Sunday without beer. Well you can, but again, why would you?)

So no, it wasn’t a show this particular Sunday, it was the weekly get together of the free comedy workshop. The Comedy Zone tried to encourage and grow its own local talent. They did this by hosting a weekly workshop every Sunday afternoon. Your first reward for the workshop would be the chance to perform three to five minutes of comedy on the monthly Monday night “Make Me Laugh” show. From that point your talent determined your progress. You would go from performing the “Make Me Laugh” to emceeing the Monday night show. If you did that enough times and the workshop director and club owner felt you were ready, then you’d get to emcee an entire week of paid shows, Monday through Saturday every six weeks. The going rate was $20 a show. That doesn’t sound like a lot of money, but if you are only working five minutes, you are making $100 an hour. But none of that compared to getting to be in front of 50 to 230 people a night, perfect your jokes, hone your craft, and talk shop with touring comics. It was a golden opportunity for every comedian that made it to that level. But then what? What happened next? Nothing. The workshop was exclusive to the Comedy Zone and couldn’t get you gigs at other places, so if you wanted more experience, if you wanted to be holding the mic, you had to hop in a car and drive to any where that offered an open mic. There was also the chance to drive to comedy clubs in other cities or convince bars, restaurants, or hotels to start their own comedy night.

By the way, if you are impatiently waiting for me to talk about Grandma Lee, then you don’t have to wait. I posted on Facebook that I loved her dearly and that she’s a wonderful human being. But you should know I’m also a fast typist and I believe there’s a back story to Grandma Lee that many people don’t know or take for granted and it’s important to know because it’s what truly separates her from so many other comedians and human beings.

Thanks for interrupting me, where was I? Other clubs and road trips. Funny is funny, but funny isn’t stand up comedy. Some of the funniest people I know have never even tried comedy, nor do they have any desire to. Stand up comedy is the intersection of talent, performance, writing, and hard work. Most comedians have three of these traits, very few have all four. For example, you can be a full-time comedian if you do the following regularly: hone your performance, write new material, hustle for gigs and opportunities. Again, you don’t have to be funny to be a funny stand up comedian. The following is a bad example because it isn’t stand up and a good example because it illustrates my point. Leslie Nielsen was hilarious in Airplane and the Naked Gun films. Is he funny personally? We don’t know. We know he performed funny, well-written lines, and he worked hard at honing his craft. How funny he was didn’t factor into his success.

Again, the same holds true for stand-up comedy. If you want to make a career out of it, you have to have at least three of the traits above: talent, performance, writing, and hard work. There’s also a lot of little minutiae (as opposed to big minutiae?) too, but if you take anything away from this ridiculously long “Ode to Lee,” just know “funny” isn’t as quintessential to comedy as you may think it is. And remember everyone’s idea of what is funny is different. Some people like comedy with a lot of physical humor, some like “blue” humor, some like observational humor, some like political humor, and then there are combinations of all of these. Keep this fact (okay almost fact) with you until later: in the 90s and up through the 00’s everyone had a different idea of funny, but most people agreed, “Female comics aren’t funny.” I am not perpetuating the stereotype, nor do I believe this to be true based on gender. One reason for this is because the truly funny women weren’t given television specials or weren’t traveling through your town’s comedy club. Trust me when I say this, for every bad female comic, there are at least 50 bad male comics, probably more. Remember this – it’s important.

Now we are back at the Comedy Zone workshop in the early to mid-90’s. Most people in attendance were in the early 20’s with something for notes. No one had smart phones. I’m not sure if lap tops even existed yet. You couldn’t buy beer from the club, but you could refill as much soda and water as you wanted. At this time, the workshop was run by Tim Hentzell. He had a black and white MEAD notebook turned to a blank page with the day’s date. You’d walk in, sign into Tim’s notebook, then take a seat. Much like a high school lunch room, there were cliques and you would sit at the table or tables your clique sat at. You’d shoot the breeze for 5 to 10 minutes, then Tim would look for volunteers to take the stage, get behind the microphone, and do their bit, bits, or new bits. I am not an etymologist (true fact though: my brother-in-law is a world-renowned entomologist) and I have no idea how comedians came up with “bit/bits.” In layman’s terms, bits are just jokes, but in the case of comedians, bits are jokes that are particular to each comedian’s performance which is known as a set. You have long bits, short bits, opening bits, and closing bits.

So again, Tim would either start off with his own bit/bits or ask for volunteers. As is so common in individuals, everyone had their own unique purpose for being at the workshop and their own unique way of using the workshop. Some of the more experienced comics would either go onstage to hone/refine bits they were already telling or they may go onstage to try new bits to freshen up their set. New guests to the workshop may not go on stage at all. It was not uncommon to have a “newbie” wait a week, two, or three before trying a bit. Then there were some newbies, that would sign in and be the first to jump at Tim’s invite to practice. There truly was no rhyme or reason. The eagerness to perform in front of the workshop wasn’t predicated on your funny/talent level either. Some of the funniest would wait until the end to go on for just a line or two, or they may not go on at all. Instead they’d just offer suggestions on everyone else’s practice.

And that was what was key to the workshop. Everyone can be funny, but one way to perfect your funny is to have everyone tell you what works, what doesn’t work, what could work if you tweaked it. This was an incredible luxury that most clubs don’t have. Your workshop audience consisted of people who were critiquing your show which is a good thing during the review portion, but a horrific thing during the performance aspect. We were focusing on the fundamentals and viability of the performer’s jokes, not simply laughing to be entertained. This meant you wouldn’t get a lot of laughs while you were practicing. We know that speaking in front of people is one of the greatest fears in the world for humans. Now imagine bracing yourself to face that fear, getting behind the microphone and saying something funny that has made your parents laugh and your best friends laugh, and the people in the audience only stare back at you. It’s hard. It’s very hard. And for every newbie that came back the following Sunday, there were two or three who never came back. In the workshops I attended, if you didn’t hear a laugh, it didn’t mean it was a bad joke. If you got a chuckle from the group, then you knew it would probably do well in a regular audience. If a joke made everyone laugh, then you knew you had a golden joke, especially if you made the clique at “Table 44” laugh.

“Oh my god, we are two and half pages in and you still haven’t mentioned Lee. I thought this was about Lee. What the fuck is going on?” (All apologies to Mama Hairpin who doesn’t like when I use the “f’ word.)

Fine. Let’s talk Grandma Lee. The Comedy Workshop with seniority/popularity would make a habit of sizing up all the newbies. Tim was in his late 30’s or early 40’s at the time, Wayne, the policeman, was a curmudgeonly family man in his mid-30’s. If you could get Wayne to laugh, then it was a funny joke. If you could get Wayne to talk to you away from the workshop, then you were either funny or had the ability to be. Other than Tim and Wayne, everyone else was in their early 20’s. So, imagine what’s going through our mind, when a wrinkly old woman with a bob haircut joins our workshop. Me being the genius that I am, I knew this “newbie” wouldn’t come back. Heck, maybe she was lost. As was custom, Tim asked for volunteers for practice. My memory isn’t strong enough to remember if she went on first or what the particular order that day was, I just know that I set myself up to be bored and unamused. She told some cute, formulaic jokes about working at Bellsouth, but she sprinkled those jokes with f-bombs. It was so unexpected to hear all these f-bombs come out of this little wrinkly old lady’s mouth. Then she finished with a song parody about her breasts, “tiny bubbles on my chest …” (it would be a workshop or two before the “blowjob” bit) What the hell just happened?! We didn’t have the expression T.M.I. yet, but none of us needed to know this lady had small breasts. Well, I mean we knew she had small breasts, she was standing in front of us on a stage with bright lights, but still … it wasn’t something we were prepared for. She received rousing applause from us all.

She continued to come every Sunday without fail. Even if she didn’t have any new jokes, she would go onstage and practiced jokes over and over again. This is where we were introduced to her work ethic. Lee worked hard on her perfecting her jokes and perfecting the timing. Timing is quintessential in stand up. Tim, the director, would always repeat one of the tried and true formulas for comedy: set up, set up, punch. Lee perfected that better than anyone in the workshop. And she perfected her timing because she practiced, she practiced, she practiced, she practiced, she practiced. “Grandma Lee” was born in that workshop. I don’t think she herself came up with Grandma Lee. It certainly wasn’t me. It could have been Wayne or Tim, maybe Mike or Vinnie.

Another luxury of the Comedy Zone workshop is that attendees could see the live performances for free. We’d have to sit in the back of the room, but we could watch all the comics who came to the Comedy Zone. If the features and headliners were up to it, we could go out with them after the show and talk shop. I cannot emphasize how important this was to a workshop comic’s growth. We could ask advice, we could ask for tips, we could ask for locations of clubs within driving distance. It was HUGE. And Lee took advantage of it. She went to the club at least once a week (we could attend multiple times) unless she had other engagements or she didn’t like the comic, which was very, very rare.

Every comedian is different and some of them would share their wisdom with us and others would just hang out with us, but not share because they didn’t want the competition. Lee had two advantages: 1.) No comic felt threatened by an old lady trying to find her way in comedy. If great stand up comedy led to a role in a commercial, television, or film, Lee wasn’t going to be auditioning for the same role (though I think another “grandma” comic came to town before I left for NYC – that comic had N-O-T-H-I-N-G on Lee, nothing.) 2.) As we all know, with or without comedy, Lee is just a genuinely good human being who enjoys conversation. She may not be the huggy, feely type but she is wonderfully kind, welcoming, and non-judgmental with everyone. No one ever disliked Lee. Touring comedians felt comfortable around her.

If you would asked anyone in those early days what the growth potential was for Lee, they would have said the Monday night Make Me Laugh shows were her ceiling. If anyone tells you differently, they are lying. Sure, you could say, “I knew there was something special about her the first time I saw her perform.” I will give you that, but again, success in comedy comes from sustained effort which comes from performing a hundred times or a thousand times before your “first lucky break.” No one thought this 62-year-old rookie had the stamina for that path. I’m pretty sure her family didn’t. And every single one of us were wrong.

So how did this little old, f-bomb dropping lady go from a comedy workshop newbie in a little-big town in Florida town to the finals of America’s Got Talent? The answer is “Andrew,” hurricane Andrew. Before Jacksonville, Lee and her family lived in Homestead. A small town located between Miami and the Florida Keys. In 1992, Hurricane Andrew swept through the bottom of Florida and laid waste to everything in its path. It destroyed Lee’s home. She moved with her husband to Jacksonville, Florida. If you know Lee, you know she’s resilient and equally, albeit imperceptibly, a strong fighter. She picked herself up from the wreckage of Homestead and was ready to start anew in Jacksonville. However, her husband Ben didn’t respond the same. Ben, whom she loved dearly, was a tough, leather-necked U.S. Marine. Marines protect our nation from its enemies, but Marines also protect their families. In one of our many conversations, Lee felt Ben’s rapid deteriorating health was a result of the anguish and guilt he felt for not being able to protect his family from a Category 5 hurricane. She vividly remembers the day after the hurricane, seeing a miserable, crest-fallen Ben sitting in front of their destroyed home with his head in his hands. From that day forward, his will, his ego was crushed. This tough as nails Marine thought he let his family down. Everyone knows he didn’t. Again, it was a category 5 hurricane. There’s nothing any human could do. But that’s not how Ben saw it.

New in Jacksonville with a lot of time on her hands, Lee looked towards comedy for an outlet. She had always been able to make people laugh and liked laughing with people. She had heard about the comedy workshop and decided to give it a go. Even though Ben was dying, he encouraged her to keep going since she enjoyed it. After all, it wasn’t like she was going there to become a stand-up comedian. She was going there for an extracurricular activity. Ben’s health weighed heavily on her, but she was able to make light of it. The truly gifted comedians don’t repress their pain, they joke about it and find ways to make other people laugh about it too. In his dying day’s Lee incorporated a new joke, “Ben’s health is so bad, I don’t buy green bananas …” I’m pretty sure that joke was never performed in a real show, but she performed it in the workshop because the workshop had become her therapy. After his death we had a tree planting ceremony in front of the Ramada Inn that housed the Comedy Zone. Many of us in the workshop had never met Ben, but because we all loved Lee, we planted it in the grass in front of the Comedy Zone. Without Ben’s poor health, we would not have Lee, and we wouldn’t know the star that was about to be born.

After Ben passed, Lee had all the time in the world. Instead of sitting around sad, feeling sorry for herself, she put all of her energies into stand-up comedy. Lee blew past the Make Me Laugh shows and stormed to being a regular emcee at the Comedy Zone. But Lee had difficulties as an emcee. Not because she wasn’t funny. Emcees come on first and maybe play with the crowd a bit. An emcee’s purpose is to get the audience in a good mood in 5 minutes and set the audience up for the feature and headliner. Lee doesn’t “play with crowds” and doesn’t do announcements particularly well. What she does well is tell jokes and make the audience laugh. She’s at her best getting straight to her jokes. The problem Lee had was that she KILLED it every night and was better than most of the features and headliners. Being an emcee was a great opportunity, but you had to wait six weeks between gigs.

Six weeks was too long for Lee. She would perform at bars, restaurants, poetry nights, dance clubs, including strip clubs but in a side room without the pole. She would perform anywhere that would give her five minutes and a microphone. It didn’t have to be restricted to Jacksonville either. She began road tripping with comics to Daytona and Orlando regularly, to Fathom’s in St. Mary’s Georgia. To Birmingham, Alabama to the Star Dome. Everyone in our workshop said they wanted to be a working stand up comedian, Lee lived it. She did what working comedians did and she did it for free, without ego, and without attitude. There are three stages of stand-up comedy. Stage 1: You hope you make the audience laugh tonight. Stage 2: You are pretty sure you will make the audience laugh tonight. Stage 3: You know without a doubt you will make the audience laugh tonight. Lee zoomed to stage 3 in no time. She had a humble and silent confidence.

Soon Lee was entering contests. And even if Lee wasn’t winning the contests, no one, NO ONE, wanted to follow her. For contests, seasoned comedy veterans wanted line-ups that had at least two performers between themselves and Lee. If it wasn’t a contest then seasoned (and confident) comics wanted Lee in their shows because they knew they’d be performing in front of a laughing audience. Everyone wanted to perform in a line up with Lee. She never bombed. Lee may not have had solid laughter from start to finish, especially in the earliest performances, but she always got laughs even in “bad rooms.”

Here’s a Grandma Lee nugget that I don’t think a lot of people know. There was a club in Ocala, Florida that she worked often. She was working with a headliner who had worked with her before and loved working with her. He would always follow Lee on stage and say, “Thanks for the blow job Grandma, that was great!” which would get laughs because of her closing bit. By the way, her closer is the best closing joke in stand-up comedy. You cannot argue this with me. Anyway, on one particular show, Lee finds out that the audience made up of telephone operators who are at the hotel for a convention. For those not in the know, one of Lee’s many careers was that of a telephone operator. She had 10 to 15 minutes easy on operator jokes, but she rarely did all 15 minutes. On this night, at this particular show, she did everything she had on operators and even created some new stuff. The audience loved it; they ate it UP! The headliner was outside and ran in when his name was called. He hadn’t been in the comedy club and didn’t know that Lee didn’t close with her gold standard. All he knew was that the audience was laughing hard. Oh my god I’m laughing as I’m typing this, so this young adult runs out onto the stage and says, “Keep it going for Grandma Lee! By the way, Grandma thanks for the blow job, it was great!” The audience was pissed! How dare this young kid come out and besmirch the character of this hilarious clean comic. He didn’t have a good show that night.

There are thousands of comedians in the United States and some of them are amazingly funny. Maybe hundreds are, but you don’t know who they are and even if you saw them, you don’t remember their names. But you remember “Grandma Lee.” I used to think the bridge from nameless funny comedian to name-recognition comedian was a magical invisible bridge, but it’s not. The bridge is hard work, professionalism, and kindness. Lee had these in spades. Professionalism for example, time is money. Emcees do 5 to 7 minutes, features do 25 to 35 minutes, and headliners do at least 45 minutes. Contests and competitions have strict time windows as well. It’s bad for comics to go over their time, but it’s also bad for comics to leave the stage early. Early on in her career Lee bought a digital timer and kept it in her pocket. She knew exactly how long her closing bit was, so whenever the timer went off, she would cut to her closing joke. Lee never left the stage early and she never went over. I cannot emphasize how important this is to get re-booked at a club.

Lee out-hustled every other comedian in search of work. Some of them a third her age. She’d call, she’d send resumes, she’d send video tapes (when they still had to do that). Then when she got to the club all she ever did was make the audience laugh. She never showed her ass, she never tried power plays or used ultimatums. She engaged the club owners, the club wait staff, and the other comedians all the same way – like they were her loved ones. In the later years, her adoring audience became her club bookers as well. They would convince local venues to hire this hilarious comic who was on America’s Got Talent. I know this for a fact. I witnessed it. After being away from Lee for almost 20 years, I drove 6 hours to see her perform in upstate NY. She was booked at a casino (if you know Lee, you KNOW how excited she was about that) because two people who had seen her out west, convinced the casino owner to book her. She sold out 4 shows in 2 nights, standing room only. When I walked into the casino, I saw her at her merchandise table. She looked remarkably the same if a bit more feeble, hell she was almost 80. I looked straight at her and I didn’t see recognition in her eyes and I was sad, but then she said, “Hairpin, I’m glad you came.” The couple who had booked her treated me like I was a dignitary and reserved a seat for me in the front row. Before and after the show, the couple went on and on and on about how they loved Grandma Lee and how funny she is. I know exactly how they felt. Sitting in the front row for her show, I was saddened again when she had to use a stool to perform. I wondered how she would do. From her first sentence to her last, she had them hooping and hollering. I was very impressed at all the new material she had. But that makes me a fool. No comic does the same exact material for 20 years in a row. Having said that, my heart smiled with every joke I knew from the early days. We hugged goodbye. I thought I’d see her again. But that’s the fragility of relationships, right?

There’s a general rule of thumb in the comedy business that if you want to “make it,” you have to move to Los Angeles or New York. Lee never came to the clubs in New York City. She didn’t need it. You see when you hear comedians trying to “make it,” they are saying they want to be the star of a television show or the star of a movie. They want to be the next Robin Williams, Jim Carrey, Ellen DeGeneres, Kevin Hart, or whoever the flavor of day comic is. Lee didn’t want that. She wanted as much mic time as a club owner would give her, so she could make people laugh. She already had a pension from BellSouth so she didn’t need money. Every dollar she made was an added bonus to mic time. Grandma Lee “made it” at what she wanted to do. And she worked so hard and she endeared herself to SO many people that she made it to the finals of America’s Got Talent.

Back in the early 90s when she began to rise, it would always bother me when any comic would say, she’s only getting laughs because of shock value. I was so fucking mad when I read an AGT critic who wrote that Grandma Lee didn’t deserve to be in the finals and that she was a formulaic comedian who made this far because she was cute and old – BULLSHIT! Lee has always been old. And Lee is formulaic if the formula is a quick set up, followed by a punchline that makes audiences laugh, then repeat. Yes, she does this. There are thousands of comedians who use shock value and very few of them use it well, so don’t say Lee is where she’s at because of shock.

I am going to share an anecdote about success I once heard at a convention for want-to-be models. A young man climbed a mountain to ask the village wise elder what the secret to success was. The Elder asked “Are you sure you want to know what the secret to success is?” Yes, that’s why I’m here. That’s why I climbed up the mountain. I heard you know the secrets of the universe. “Okay,” said the old man, “follow me and I’ll show you the secret to success.” Both men walked to a beautiful pool of water that had formed at the top of the mountain. Then the Elder waded into the middle of the water. The young man followed him hesitantly. The old man pointed to something in the water. What? What am I looking at? asked the young man. “Look closer” said the old man. What? I don’t see anything. “Look closer” said the Elder. The young man’s head was so close to the pool that his nose was almost brushing the water. The Elder quickly and violently shoved the young man’s head under water and kept pushing. The young man fought and struggled and fought and struggled. Just as he was about to lose consciousness, he pushed with all his might and grasped for air. The Elder watched silently without moving. What the hell is wrong with you? Why did you do that? The old man replied, “I showed you the secret of success.” What? You didn’t show me anything. You tried to drown me! “Did you drown? Are you breathing now?” asked the Elder. Puzzled and frustrated the young man blurted yes. The old man continued, “If you want to succeed at something, you must fight for it with all of your might, just like you fought to breathe.”

Comics come and go, and sometimes even funny ones don’t “make it.” They don’t have the stamina; they don’t have the fortitude. Grandma Lee had both. She never doubted herself. She never doubted what she wanted to do and how to succeed at it. A lot of people are winding down their lives at the age of 62. Lee reinvented herself. She went from an old, bingo-playing slot loving telephone operator who didn’t belong in a comedy room workshop to a highly sought-after road warrior comedian by clubs, managers, waitstaff, comedians, and audiences all over the nation.

In 2009 I was in a hospital room in an Air Force base in Japan. A friend was recovering from a serious condition, the television was on. A show I never watched was on, it was America’s Got Talent. I freaked the fuck out! That’s Grandma Lee! That’s Grandma Lee! Oh my god! That’s Grandma Lee! I started comedy with her. I was visiting a friend who was recovering from a pretty severe illness and here I was jumping up and down cheering for someone on the other side of the world.

I was fortunate to be Lee’s “driver” in the early years. She didn’t like to drive long distances, so when she started getting booked all over Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, and Alabama, she needed a driver. Before the Bob Bauvers and the Danny Niblocks, she’d ask me. And she would always make the club owner give me stage time whether they knew me or not. She was my confidence back then. If I didn’t like my show, she’d only focus on what I did well. She’d tell all the bookers how talented I was and to give me stage time. She encouraged me to audition for a Regional Booker in North Carolina with our friend Wayne. The booker was considering bumping them both up to Headliners and while in his office she spent the whole time talking about how he should book me for his clubs. She was well on her way to where she wanted to be, now she wanted to pull up her friends.

Sometimes we’d stay at friends’ houses. All of Lee’s friends loved her. They all treated me like her younger son and they’d retell stories from the days of traveling in the military. They’d often forget that I had no idea what they were talking about, but I didn’t care they were good times. If she had a hotel room, we’d play gin rummy, work on jokes, talk about comedy, comedians, past shows, future shows, where the next gig would be, where we hoped it would be.

In 1998, I moved to NYC to “make it” in comedy, but I just succeeded at becoming a really talented alcoholic. I turned things around and now I choose to look towards the future, not towards the past. One of the things that empowered me to sober up and know change was possible, was the story of a little old woman who at the ripe young age of 62 decided to pursue a dream of hers to become a stand-up comedian. I said I choose to look towards the future, but I will also tell you this, when I stroll down memory lane, some of my fondest memories are Sunday comedy workshops, road trips to Orlando, road trips to Georgia, comedy competitions, and the all stories and conversations that resulted from stage time.

In the comedy club of my soul, the Grandma Lee/Hairpin duo will always have top billing.

I love you Lee.

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