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My Time At LCS by Josh Goguen
I stepped on stage, said my name and where I’m from then launched into a couple of jokes. First one came out fine, but didn’t feel right. I’ve never been good at auditioning in a situation where it’s a nearly empty club with all of the house lights on. It’s even harder when the people you’re auditioning for aren’t even looking at you and don’t seem as if they are listening. As I went into my second joke, I got out the important part of punch line with no response and for some reason, I blanked on the last word and just sort of trailed off. Audition over. My fault. “Well, you already know you’re not going to advance,” the gay one started, “but you got nervous. What happened?” “I’m in New York City on the stage of Carolines.” I made it a point that being in one of the most famous clubs in the country was a bigger deal to me than their show and I don’t think they liked it. “I haven’t had my say yet,” the fat one chimed in. “We’ve seen a lot of awful today and you certainly weren’t awful.” In the end, it was a no and that probably would have been fine if the rest of the day hadn’t gone like it did. The actual Last Comic Standing audition is only a tiny piece of the entire day. If it were just being rejected, it would be so bad, but waiting in line for 13 hours breeds bitterness. ------------------------------------------------------ “Clinton. What time were you getting up? Josh? It’s 3am.” Our early morning wake up call is my buddy Clint Nohr’s grandmother who has been nice enough to let us stay in her apartment. She isn’t supposed to be waking us up; an alarm is. At least it was supposed to an hour ago. We were supposed to wake up at two after going to bed at 1am. That was the decision we made after walking by Carolines at a half past midnight and already seeing a good 60 people in line freezing their asses off. After a quick shower Clint and I are out the door. We arrive; 3:30am at Caroline’s to meet the third of our North Carolina comedy connection, Scott Oseychik. It’s extremely cold. The cup of coffee I bought went from scalding hot to almost frozen in fifteen minutes. I’d like to sit, but the sidewalk is moist. Why is the sidewalk moist? The line keeps piling up around the club and daylight is breaking yet strangely, the morning only makes the air colder and lights up the jackasses that are in line with us. The chick in front of us pulls out her guitar and starts to butcher some song to the point that I recognize that I should recognize it but I’ve got no idea what it is. Right behind her is a creepy guy who keeps trying to get Clint to eat chips. “You want some chips don’t you? Come on chip boy, have some chips.” I wish there was someone funny around us, but instead I’ve got some guy behind us who already has said “Larry David” 32 times and each time his group of friends laugh. Have I stepped into some weird world where you only have to mention the name of someone funny be considered funny? The lunatic “want a chip” guy now has a green puppet on his hand and that puppet is an asshole. It’s yelling at us that we’re going to get in our car, not stop for snacks and just go home. What’s that lady? You’re going to play another song? Larry David count is now 47. Behind us some loud redheaded waste comes up to some guys and start talking about how she is last in line. “OH MY GOD, I’M LAST IN LINE. I’M LIKE OH MY GOD!!!” Unfortunately, my buddies and I aren’t lucky enough to avoid having an asshole of our own from the back show up and chat with us. This guy keeps doing the “thumbs up” while saying “thumbs up”. “What time did you guys get here?” “3:30” “Yeah, I got here at 5. I should’ve come earlier.” The Last Comic Standing film crew arrives and starts to set up for their big crane shots of this crowd filled doe-eyed hopefuls while the rest of the crew tells us to ignore the generous amounts of personal space we’ve given each other thus far. As we pack the line in tighter, Scott, Clint and myself realize just how horrible this experience is going to be. We also realized that the loud redhead and “thumbs up” have just used their being irritating as a means of jumping the line. They aren’t the only ones either because what started as about 80 people in front of us has now jumped to about 130. Larry David Larry David Larry David…63. Rich Vos walks by with a camera crew and starts interviewing a few of the women in line. He takes the guitar chick in front of us and has her play an awful song while throwing change into a hat in front of her. Vos knows what this is all about. Exploiting the dummies for good TV and I’m in line with them. What the hell were we thinking? Anthony Clark comes by with a camera crew of his own. His way of making good TV is to interview the people who look a little different. The six foot four black guy with long dreads gets TV time. The upstanding gentleman dressed as a hillbilly gets face time and then Anthony Clark and crew are out of my sight. Finally, the doors open and the line starts to move because finally people are being let in for their big break. Because of this, everyone starts pushing forward and the line goes from 4 people thick to about 7. A guy from Stern 100 is here to interview a few people. “O&A PARTY ROCK!!!” He moves on. Hey, have you ever heard of Larry David? I have, 73 times since 4am. About two hours have passed since the door to Caroline’s first opened and only one guy has come out waving his American Idol rip-off call back sheet. The door hasn’t opened in a while. We’re guessing that they’re on a lunch break, but wouldn’t you know it, they don’t let anyone know. After all, why would we want to grab something to eat or perhaps use a bathroom with out the worry of the line moving while we’re gone? A reporter and photographer from the New York Post have shown up. They’re taking pictures of people and getting them to tell a joke for the paper. People are rushing up to them to get their gems on tape. The crazy puppet guy with the chips is in there. So is this guy with sideburns so big I want to nestle in them for warmth. I want nothing to do with them because I can’t possibly imagine being associated with those guys would be a good thing. The doors finally open up again about 1:30. Everyone’s starting to get restless. We’ve been here since early morning and the line has just been cut off. About 70% of the people who showed up were told to go home. It seems that if you weren’t here by 4.30am, you were wasting your time. Of course, they knew that all along because given the amount of time they have and the number of people they can go thru per hour, it would seem obvious that they would know roughly where to cut the line first thing. What the hell though, why not waste everyone’s time? A lot of people have been yelling at line jumpers. Some guy is threatening to wipe his ass with the green puppet and the police are here saying that if the line doesn’t stay against the wall, we’ll be barricaded and we don’t want that now do we? Actually I do. It would cut back on the line jumping at least. Larry God damned David…100. Some guy from Connecticut has some how appeared near by and is very condescending about us being from North Carolina. He can’t believe there is a comedy scene there and if we weren’t so cold and tired, we probably would be dicks back, but at this point, we’re just trying to remain on our feet. Scott shuts his mouth though by dropping a name that the guy new who is giving Scott a showcase somewhere. We keep inching closer and closer to the door. As we do, people start to squeeze between Clint, Scott and I to get closer to the door. One guy slipped past me like a ninja and in the door. He’s one of the guys who was in the “Larry David 115” group. I’m bitter now because all day I’ve been in line, I’ve seen guys and girls who aren’t funny, they have guitars, puppets, and ridiculous sideburns. What are they doing here? What am I doing here with them? Finally, 13 hours after first stepping in line and one hundred twenty seven “Larry David” utterances later, the door opens to allow Clint and myself in. Sadly for my buddy Scott, we’re the last ones they’re accepting. I feel bad for him because he suffered with us all day and just missed out. We’re handed a packet to fill out and it’s damn near impossible because my fingers are so cold and stiff I can hardly write my name. Someone involved with the show is taking a break or something and one of the rejects complains to him about how he was treated. “What the fuck do you think this is? Do you think it’s really a talent search? It’s reality TV. They already picked who they want. They already know. All they wanted with this was a line around the fucking block.” Whip’em Out Wednesday! Clint and I can’t believe the total honesty that we just heard. Everything this guy said rang 100% true. Including that the two producers want to be more famous than the comics. The sad part is I’ve somehow convinced myself, hell, all of us here have, that some how everything had changed. After the huge controversy surrounding LCS 2 and the failure of LCS 3 we believed that these guys were going to put on an honest to God search for the fresh new faces of comedy. I’ve duped myself, but it’s too late. I’m next.
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