Bill Dawes - August 8, 2007

It was about 14:50 Zulu (for those not in the military, that means I watch a lot of JAG) when our short bus arrived backstage at Camp Liberty for our first show in Baghdad. I poked my head out of the Connex storage container that had been fashioned into our green room to suss out the burgeoning crowd. Some were standing, arms akimbo, while others sat patiently, arms folded neatly over their chests. Most of the bleachers were filled up. I asked the officer who received us how long the group had been sitting there and he said, "Since about two." Now, stand-up is hard enough to perform in front of any crowd of complete strangers. When that crowd is a bunch of sober soldiers who have been waiting in the middle of a hot desert war zone for an hour, it only gets harder. I would use the phrase "shitting bricks," except it would be at odds with the complete colonic shutdown I'd experienced since nervously farting my way into Baghdad via military transport. Only one thing could make the atmosphere for stand-up worse.

Guns. Lots of guns.

Everywhere we went in Baghdad there were guns. This audience was no exception. Their guns either hung carelessly from their bodies or sat perched, like silent metallic pit bulls, on the ground next to their chairs. I don't know why I was so surprised. When we arrived in Baghdad, Tracy warned us (theme?) that, from here on out, all of our audiences would be heavily armed. At the time I wasn't sure if she was warning us so we would be prepared for the visual, or so that we would stay away from offensive material that might set off an itchy PTSD trigger finger. I guess I assumed it was the former because we were told explicitly that once we left the cushy confines of Kuwait City (Club Ach-Med, as we liked to call it), we could be as filthy and un-PC as we wanted with our acts. It was a twisted inversion of logic: Jamie and I were told to soften our material for the non-armed troops in Kuwait City, but were encouraged to be offensive for combat-seasoned, possibly shell-shocked, M16 toting grunts in Baghdad. It was a comic's Catch 22.

Even more ironic was the fact that, after the Kuwait show, the USO took biggest issue with a song, not a bit. Specifically, one of Jamie and Stu's raps, entitled "I Like Your Left Tit." It's a mini-rap about how Jamie's ex-girlfriend's left fun bag hung lower than her right one. The lyrics of the rap shower said tit-sac with attention and praise in order to make the girl feel better about the discrepancy. It's really just a sweet boobie empowerment song that's about as edgy as the children's classic "Everyone Poops." I guess the USO has its reasons. Perhaps disproportionate breasticles is a serious issue for women in the military and we were being unintentionally insensitive. I don't know, but it was just one more thing to worry about.

Normally, when I get nervous, I slick the frayed ends of my nerves with some pain go bye-bye juice--preferably, Red Bull and vodka. From a performance perspective, two or seven of those help me move smoothly between anger and ennui, hyperactivity and apathy. The physiological interplay between the caffeine and serotonin, however, is a double-edged sword: soothing the nerves, while twisting the tongue. Unfortunately, like all infidel booze, RBVs are illegal in Iraq, so I could only occupy myself with "thoughts." How boring. So I bummed a cigarette from Stu and paced behind the stage like a 7th grader gathering the courage to crash the Sadie Hawkins dance.

The show was completely outdoors and completely uncovered. Although it was after 3pm now, the sun appeared to be stuck at high noon. It beat down relentlessly, its rays dissolving into a sheen of sweat over every body part they touched. It was the type of heat that enveloped all sound and swallowed it like a sucking vortex. There wasn't even the hint of a breeze. There were just folding chairs, three sets of bleachers, and increasingly impatient people waiting for something to happen.

Before I could settle the butterflies, DJ Joey Nicks got the go-ahead and scrambled on stage. He started his "mixing," alternately prompting the 800 people in the audience to "put their hands up" and "get excited!" The soldiers sat there blankly. Nobody waved their hands in the air. And they DEFINITELY didn't wave them around like they just didn't care. I don't blame them. It looked miserable to be sitting out there. It felt like a long drawn-out graduation ceremony for a private Catholic high school in southern Arizona or something. Hot, boring, and nobody knew what to do or when to do it. Specifically, I had no idea when or what my cue would be.

It wasn't really anyone's fault, though. DJ Joey Nicks was doing his best to elicit a jubilant, late-night crowd response. At the end of each track, he would shout, "You guys ready to get this party started?!" and I would run from the Connex storage unit/trailer/green room to the area behind the stage. Instead of bringing me up, however, he would go back for yet another fantastic P Diddy diddy, and, confused and annoyed, I would wander back to the green...container. Each time he did that, I assumed that I was the answer to the party starting question, only to find out that the question was rhetorical in nature. I must have made 14 false entrances by the time his abortive let's-get-this-party-started exhortations were all said and done. Although DJ Joey Nicks is one of the nicest guys I know, I started to hate him. I started to think he was a vaginosis queef with shoes.

Finally, the madness stopped and he brought me up with, "Coming to the stage is a comic who's been with us all week. He's pretty funny, know what I'm saying? Give it up for Bill Dawes." Wow, what a rousing introduction, huh?

Luckily for most everyone, Intense Irritation Mode tends to override Nervous Mode at times like this and almost any uncertainty on my part gets covered and overwhelmed pretty quickly. I was so goddamn irked with Joey Nicks by the time I went on stage that I snatched the microphone from his hand, and belted, "Give it up for Joey Nicks and his 3-act opera DJ set! Motherfucker, if they wanted to listen to CDs, they could have done it inside with some air conditioning! We could have looped 'Gotta Get It HITS! Volume 17' and started the show better, you goddamned Mexican! FUUUCK, maybe it IS time to seal that border up, 'Know what I'm saying?' El Presidente Bush was correcto! And no, I'm not a racist against our neighbors down South! Hell, I lost my virginity to a fuckin' wetback!" (True story.)

I don't think this is particularly funny, but for better or for worse, this is ME. I've had impulse control problems my entire life. Although it's gotten me suspended numerous times in school and has resulted in many lost friendships, it usually works to my advantage when given a stage and a microphone. Luckily, nowadays, even without a mic--i.e., if I'm at a dinner party, an industry fete, a funeral--most of my inappropriate, quasi-Tourette's outbursts can be excused with the, "Oh, he's a comic" caveat. Sweet, huh?

There wasn't a barrage of laughter when I lambasted Joey. There were some quick staccato laughs and then it just got quiet. It was hard to tell what brand of "quiet," though. Was it the bad, "This guy is an asshole" quiet? Or was it the good quiet, where the entire audience has imperceptibly shifted forward in their seats and engaged with a common thought, "IS this guy an asshole?"

For the record, I'm not remotely racist. I don't march, discriminate, or believe in legislation that is exclusive. I am more liberal in my beliefs than Harry Potter and would only call someone a "Mudblood" if they cut me off on a broom or if I was in the privacy of my own turret. But fuck if I don't think racially challenging humor is funny, across the board. I had a bunch of English girls call me "racist" after a show this past Fourth of July weekend. They told me that comedy in London is soooooo much better and more "clever" and not so racist. They were attractive, so instead of saying, "You're from England, and it's the Fourth of July, so suck my dick, limey bitches!" I said, "The color line is still the biggest issue in the United States. There is so much hatred, ignorance, and anger surrounding issues of race, I think it's really important to introduce laughter and lightness into the dialog. It's a way to remind people that racism IS absurd; pointing out and picking apart these stereotypes can go a long way towards healing that anger. Oh, and by the way, it's Fourth of July, so suck my dick, limey bitches!"

I really believe that--not that they should suck my dick (I mean, not with THOSE ugly British snaggleteeth)--but that edgy material regarding sex, race, and religion only benefits a society rife with problems of that variety. If people want someone to smash fruit into an audience, they can Google "Gallagher." He probably works FOR fruit now. If they want "clever" material, they can read Charlotte Bronte or something.

I, on the other hand, like to make people uncomfortable. Soooo...

I started flirting with an attractive black female soldier in the front row, looking at her and winking. "What's up girl?" I said, grabbing at my crotch. "Awww, shit, I wanted to do that cool hip-hop thang where you grab your package but all I got is jeans. Damn, it's just fabric and air pockets. A'iiiii, I'll keep it real up in this bitch!" Then I pinched my thumb and forefinger on a small fold in the middle of my pants. "I'm Irish, what can I say?"

Now, this isn't really true (Google "Bill Dawes" + "Penis" motherfuckers!), but I find the self-deprecating, "Hi, nice to meet you, I'm Irish with a small package!" is often a good way to garner some laughs, if not some sympathy. Seinfeld it ain't, but it works, and it gives me some lee-way when I start to make fun of every other race on the rock...which is what my plan was today.

Despite a fair amount of nervous laughter, the female soldier looked at me non-plussed and unamused, arms still folded. I stayed with her: "Yo, baby girl, unfold your arms, and give me some love. You don't smell what I'm cooking, do you? Even if you WANT to laugh, your arms are folded. It's going to try to come up, get constricted by the arms, and then shoot out the other direction. Laugh now, fart tomorrow your choice!"

Nothing. A smirk.

"Hey, baby, you ever dated a cracka before?" I said in my sexiest voice.

She then blanched and looked at me like I was crazy (black people don't realize that "cracka" is merely funny to white people. If you're white and you get offended by "cracka," you should wear a helmet).

It was deathly quiet. A vulture cawed in the distance. The next line was going to make or break my set.

"....because you know what they say, girl! Once you go white...your vagina stays tight!" The place erupted. Gut laughs. Guilty laughs. The best kind. An explosion of laughter followed by an attempt to quickly cap it; the superego trying (unsuccessfully) to bottle up the id. The wave of laughter afforded me the opportunity to take a chance. "Baby, you should date me. Because you know what else they say? Once you go pale...you never need to post bail!"

Not so much.

Awwwwwwkward. It was that weird hybrid laughter when an audience is geared up to roar, so they yuk-yuk at the rhyme, retrospectively play the joke back in their head, decide they shouldn't laugh, and then decide they might actually hate you. If I could encapsulate the audio with some onomatopoeia, it would go something like: "Yaaaa! Haaaa! Aww! Oooooo! Boooo!!! Tsk tsk! Mmmmmm." I looked around in a slight panic, thinking best how to recover from a fairly new joke that had no safety valve.

I noticed in the front row that there was a large black guy with a gun on the ground next to him, and it was pointed directly at me.

I jumped at the opportunity: "Motherfucker, don't point your gun at me! It was all yuk-yuks when the white guy has a little pecker--that's a real knee-slapper! But I make a political statement about how the system is unfair to young African American men, and now I gotta look down the muzzle of your M4?"

I shit you not: without missing a beat, the guy took the camouflage hat off his head and placed it over the top of the nozzle.

Everything slowed down in my head in Matrix-like fashion. I never know what set I'm going to do when I get on stage, and I like to think I have never done the EXACT same set twice. I try to feel where the audience takes me. Sometimes I get lucky. This was one of those times. Without knowing it, that guy had just mapped out my whole set. He had inadvertently given me the opening that I knew would give me permission for the rest of the act. In a split second, the set list unfolded inside my head (take a breath, Bill, smile, then lay into him, then go back to Joey Nicks, go back to the black guy, fight, your gay, your life, then the knockout....) .

I smiled, the calm before the storm. I knew the crowd was mine. They didn't know it yet, but I did. I felt like Bobby Fisher at a chess board, four steps ahead, knowing it was now all beautifully lined up...

"What the hell did you just DO, man?"

I took a beat and looked at him so everyone could see what he did.

"Did you just cover your machine gun with your CAP, asshole!?"

Laughter.

"Is that some magical hat that can stop bullets? Is that like Mormon panties for machine guns? If your piece goes off on accident or because your feelings get hurt, that bit of canvas isn't going to protect me! I meant point your gun AWAY from me!....Preferably aim it towards the Mexican DJ Joey Nicks hanging out at the side of the stage right there."

I pointed to Joey.

"We already talked about the immigration problem back home, it would be considered an act of patriotism by the Minutemen! 500 toothless Texans can't be wrong! YEEEEEE-HAW!"

The audience cheered. I was close to reaching that rare synergistic point where the audience would never leave me. I just needed two openings. First, I knew I had to wait for the next opening. A few people in the back made the universal sound of "I'm offended," which is "Oooooooooo." There was the first opening.

"Oh, calm down! I'm just kidding. I love Joey. He's my boy. His SISTER was the wetback I fucked!"

Just enough laughter to punch out. It was time to take a left off Mexican Lane, and drive down the Avenue of the African Americas. Back at big boy. I was hoping he hadn't actually turned the gun away. He hadn't. There was the second opening.

"You still got that shit pointed at me? Whatever, I'll fight a black guy...that went to private school....Did you go to private school?" He shook his head, "No."

"Damn! Well, check it out, I almost got in a fight with a brother in LA last week. Let me rephrase that: I almost got my ass kicked by a brother in LA last week. I was driving, and I got cut off by this guy. And he was a THUG--he had the work boots, the tats, the grill....Not in his mouth like Paul Wall, he had a barbecue grill in the passenger seat--he was cooking up some chicken, playing dominoes with a dude in a wheelchair sucking on a pacifier. THU-UG! And huge, with corn rows! He looked like Fat Albert and Flava Flav fucked and had a baby!"

Sometimes people slip on the diarrhea coming out of my mouth so much that they just submit to the confusion and decide not to hate me. The jokes don't have to be the best, it's about the connection with the audience and finding the tone that happens to sync up best with them.

I knew I was hitting my stride because I heard a woman say, through her laughter, "What the fuck is he talking about?" Everyone was still laughing. I was PAST the "Next joke please, you dancing monkey!" energy that most audiences have. The laughter was coming in waves now, waves that never fully subsided. Whenever that happens, it's like finding the right stroke on a girl's clit. Once you have it, you can relax and go with the flow (although I hate it when they say, "Right there?" and you're like "Shit! Where was I?"). Unfortunately, both events are rare for me.

I finished my "road rage" bit and immediately went into some self-deprecating "I look gay, don't I?" material. Finally, I went into a series of stories about my recently failed relationship with my ex-girlfriend. They loved me. The king was in my sights and all the pieces were aligned to take it--exactly like I planned. I had paved the way to a killer set. I was going to be the darling of the USO! Word was going to spread, and I was going to be a favorite performer for troops all over the world! I would get to go to Dubai!

And then I got cocky and did the "Nestle Knockout" bit...

A while back, while doing a couple weeks of shows at the LA Laugh Factory, a famous comic who we will call Lane Brook rebuked me for doing the Nestle Knockout bit during a show I emcee'd. At one point, I considered putting him in a reverse cross-over toe hold into a triangle choke, but I thought about it later, and he was right. He is one of the biggest comics in the world for a reason, and I was being a bit selfish doing that big of a raunchy joke. I should have been thinking about elevating the whole of the show instead of just my own personal agenda or making everyone laugh and/or involuntarily clench their sphincters into uncomfortable Gordian knots. I temporarily retired the joke right there.

For reasons I still don't understand, I spontaneously decided to resurrect it for the good men and women of the U.S. Armed Forces! Although on one level it is just another sex bit, the Nestle Knockout is also an elixir of jokes about AIDS, Puerto Ricans, Jamaicans, Asians, Blacks, vaginas, kindergarten teachers, and anal fisting, amalgamated with physical comedy, quotes from The Exorcist, and a dash of memoir-style truthfulness. All together, it puts the joke into rarefied air. It is, by far, my dirtiest and most aggressive joke.

Halfway through the elongated, Peer Gynt version of the "Nestle Knockout," right around the time I was trying to wrest my index finger into an imaginary African American woman's balloon knot, I saw an official-looking person tap Tracy on the shoulder out of my peripheral vision. He took Tracy off, presumably to chastise her for allowing such filth. I got distracted and started flubbing. I was already into the momentum of the ending, so I finished the joke as best I could, despite an increasingly befuddled and lackluster response from the audience. I closed out my set to a modicum of applause and brought Jamie up, who gave me a bemused look as if to say, "Maybe 3pm in the desert isn't the best time for fisting kindergarten teachers, buddy."

Jamie did really well and they liked him a little better than me, which is okay. It's one of the few great things about being an opener--if you kill, you steal the show; if you bomb, you make the headliner look good. Either way, you've done your job.

However, the setup of this show was different than any show I had done before. After the DJ Nicks-apalooza concert, my 20 minute opening, and Jamie's 30 minutes of standup, he launched into comedy/rap with Stu Stone (sans the banned "Left Tit"). After a few of their songs (which are actually really fucking funny in case you never saw "Blowin' Up!" on MTV. Haven't? Congratulations, you have a life!), Casper came out and put on a two-minute breakdancing exhibition.

Then Jamie called up Paul Wall to the stage.

The pandemonium caused by his presence floored me. The troops simply went bat guano. I got so caught up in it, I think I even peed a little in my crusty undershorts. I knew he was popular, but it blew my mind when 800 troops--across race, color, and gender lines--rapped along to "Grillz" and "Sidewayz." Actually, I'm not sure there's a "z" in those, but it's a safe assumption, according to my rudimentary knowledge of Rapanese. I stayed onstage the whole time with a microphone and pretended to rap along to songs I had never even heard of before. When he did "Grillz," I chimed in with the words I knew, namely repetition of the word "Grillz." I was old and irrelevant.

After the show, we sat at a table for the pictures. Soldiers came behind the table, five at a time, to get their pictures taken with us. They would come up high-fiving, trying to get their picture close to Jamie and Paul, while Stu and I would look at each other like, "Whatta you gonna do?" I am certain that there are at least 2,000 shots of me from the trip with half of my head sliced out of frame. I am equally certain there is twice that number without me in them at all.

As soon as the Canons clicked, the captain assigned to us would yell "NEXT FIVE!" like they were taking Bunker Hill.
The soldiers currently behind the table would then quietly and obediently leave in single file. You could instantly see the conflict between the kids wanting to play and cavort with us, and the men realizing it was time to go back to war.

At one point, after a bellow of "NEXT FIVE!" one fresh-faced kid, who couldn't have been older than 19, piped up with, "My friend wasn't able to get the shot off, hold on a second."

The captain took a pointed step towards him and said, "WHAT DID YOU SAY, SOLDIER?"

The kid's smile disappeared in a flash and he meekly responded, "Nothing."

"NOTHING WHAT?" the captain shot back.

"Nothing, Sir."

The kid slunk back into the departing line of soldiers without a picture. For some reason this depressed me. I blinked ferociously like a Japanese camera shutter in Disneyland, holding back whatever crazy emotion this was giving me. I was just tired, I told myself, and besides THIS is the military way. You don't sign up for this life unless a part of you wants it.

I sat there and continued to study our mirthless captain as he aggressively stared down a new bunch of privates who were lingering a little too long in the photo line. Once again, the civilian/military dichotomy struck me: an hour ago, I was busting his balls, calling him "dude," and saying horribly offensive things about jerking off with ground beef and eggs. I had done it sitting next to him on the short bus, for the sole purpose of getting his tough demeanor to crack. And yet here he was, once again taking alpha dog steps towards another pimply-faced kid, inches away from physically redressing him. That guy could snap my neck in an instant. He had probably wanted to, come to think of it. It was humbling and mind-boggling. The Cesar Milan pack mentality approach to group dynamics was in full motherfucking effect, and we got to be obnoxious Jack Russell Terriers and Chihuahuas (hey, we did have a Mexican in the group), completely exempt from the rules.

Or so I thought....In truth, the "rules" were about to rear their head in an ugly way.

Posted by Bill Dawes at 10:32 AM