Los Angeles and New York are the acknowledged centers for stand-up comedy –because television exposure is one of the chief goals for every would-be funny man and funny woman, and Los Angeles and New York are where most TV talk shows and sitcoms are made.
But most comics come to those places from somewhere else, and in the last decade or so, the Chicago area has been among the richest breeding grounds for talent–having given rise to Tom Dreesen, Emo Phillips, Judy Tenuta and a host of less-celebrated performers who may well have what it takes to make a national breakthrough.
One of them is a rotund, aggressively jolly woman named Dea Staley, a 36- year-old ex-housewife who has parlayed her command of the stage and, you should pardon the expression, her broadly bawdy material into a career that has been growing apace. But as good as things had been going for Staley, she felt that her fellow Chicago-based comics had a problem and decided to do what she could to correct it.
When a ”name” performer from out of town appears in this area, a stand- up comic often is the opening act–usually one who also is from out of town. But there is, Staley thought, no reason why that should be so, since Chicago is full of good young comics who could do the job just as well and who certainly could use the exposure.
So Staley began to plead her case with some success at the Holiday Star Theatre and similar local venues. And from that campaign arose ”Chicago`s Hottest Comedians,” a show she mounted last Saturday night at Centre East in Skokie to present four of her favorite comrades in Chicago humor–John Midas, Vince Maranto, Stew Oleson and Tim Walkoe–with Staley herself serving as the mistress of ceremonies.
Leading things off, Staley informed the audience that her IUD keeps picking up HBO, and explained that she and her Catholic husband are a ”two-religion family: I`m Southern Baptist and Joe`s wrong” before she turned over the stage to Oleson–a 30-year-old native of downstate Moline who used to belong to a talented improv group, the Original Comedy Rangers.
Droll and slyly satirical, Oleson`s material had a real bite to it.
(”Have you heard about the Reagan Typewriter? It has no colon and no memory.”) And so did the work of Vince Maranato, another promising 30-year-old who hails from Schaumburg.
Tim Walkoe was next, eager to share his observations about life in Chicago (”Where men are men and the police take Visa”), the unfortunate fragility of pet fish (”They sneeze and it`s Tidy Bowl time, if I`m not mistaken”) and the morbid lyrics of the typical country-and-western tune
(”Oh, she`s a one-legged woman/in love with the Elephant Man”). Finally the youngest comic on the bill, 25-year-old John Midas, took over–brim-full of practical advice (”Fellows, never cook bacon while you`re naked”) and concluding with his epic and mostly unprintable routine about a humilating visit to a Nautilis fitness center.
The show, so it seemed, had accomplished everything that Staley and her friends had hoped it would–demonstrating to a large, appreciative audience that Chicago`s young comics can more than hold their own against the national competition. And afterwards all parties involved (except for Oleson, who had a late-night gig at, believe it or not, A Taste of Berwyn) gathered in Staley`s dressing room to discuss in the in`s and out`s of the comic`s lifestyle.
That there is a bond between most Chicago-based comics seems undeniable, but Staley explains that this air of good-fellowship has its downside, too.
(”That`s why so many Chicago comedians are just eaten alive when they go to L.A. or New York–because we have that camaraderie and they don`t have it there.”)
”I did music before,” Walkoe adds, ”and there`s a lot more competition and ego problems in that field. My theory is that when you`re a comedian, you`re doing you own thing; you`re not in the band thinking, `I should have sung that song . . . they`re not doing any of my material,` and then you get frustrated and hit a guy with a bass–which happened to me. But it`s not that way with comedy. I can think of only two or three people I`ve worked with that I couldn`t tolerate.”
Working, of course, often means working on the road–at colleges and on the burgeoning comedy-club circuit, where the clubowner usually puts up all his acts at a nearby condominium. And stories about the vicissitudes of road life are legion.
”I`ve usually found,” says Staley, ”that any club owner who hands me a free jacket, his check is going to bounce. That`s why what my husband calls gossip is business to me. I want to know who`s writing bad checks, I want to know who has a condo with roaches, I want to know everything.”
”Yeah,” Walkoe says, ”you have science projects in some of the sinks. There`s a classic club owner in Florida–he has done time and been involved in coke dealing–who actually tried to pay people off in dope. The lowest thing, and I really saw this, was one night when he tried to pay people off with hookers. It was unbelievable. But I`m sure there were a couple of guys who were lonely on the road and took him up on it.”
”The college towns,” Midas says, ”that`s where the killer gigs are.
(`Killer,` in this case, meaning very good.) ”The club is packed with 300 students, even on a Tuesday night, and you walk in, and it`s like gangbusters. And you drive from there to the next gig and the next one. It`s a circuit. You go through Indiana or Ohio or whatever, and then you go home.”
Performing at colleges, though, can be a different story altogether. (”I can`t work them,” Staley says, ”because most of those kids went to school to get away from people like me.”)
”There was a classic bad job,” Walkoe says, ”that (comedian) Paul Provenza did at Lewis and Clark College–yeah, Lewis and Clark discovered it and were the first students.
”Now the worst thing you can do is take a noon job, because the kids are playing ping-pong and don`t want to pay attention to you. So Paul went to this room, and the student activities people are out in the hallway and they give him a mike and say, `Here`s where you`ll be doing your show.` He says, `In this little room?` and they say, `No, in the hall–when people pass by, you tell them jokes.` And Paul says, `That`s what you think.` ”
”I just played the Northern Illinois University Spring Fest, which is held outdoors,” Midas says, ”and they had a dunk tank right next to the stage where I was going to do my act. I said, `You guys are going to shut down the dunk tank, aren`t you?` And they say, `Oh, well, should we?` `Yeah, it`s kinda hard to do the punchlines between splashes.` They had no idea of what was involved.”
”That`s not just in colleges,” Staley says. ”I was booked into a club once–the agent said, `They`re your type of people, good country folk`–and the mike I had to use was a short-order cook`s mike, the kind where you have to hold down the button to make it work. Then in the middle of my act, the waitress actually came up to me and said, `Can I borrow that?` and ordered two cheeseburgers and some fries. And it wasn`t my order; that`s what made me mad.”
Staley and her pals all seem like outgoing, gregarious people who never suffered through a bout of stage fright, with the possible exception of Maranto, who admits to being ”pretty quiet” under normal conditions.
”When I go to parties,” he says, ”people don`t believe that I`m a comedian. I`m much more aggressive when I`m up there onstage talking to people than when I`m in a room talking with people.”
Midas, however, seems like someone who is ”on” all the time (”John,”
says Staley, ”came out of the womb taking a bow”), and he knew he was going to be a professional comic while he was still in high school.
”I was doing a talent show in front of 750 people and I yelled, `I`m running for senior-class president, will you vote for me?` The next week they had the election and I won hands down, so I thought, `Hey, there`s something pretty nifty about this stage thing here.` I looked for places to do it, found the Comedy Cottage in Rosemont, and after my third time up there I got hired as a regular act. Since then I`ve never looked back.”
”The first few times can be horrifying,” Walkoe says, ”because you want to be accepted so bad. You do a line you think is funny and when nothing comes back, your whole life flashes in front of your eyes.”
”When you find your niche,” Midas says, ”that`s when it`s easiest
–because then you`re not just saying lines, you`re saying what you really think. Until then, though, it can be pretty tough.”
But despite all the gripes and the grief, the comic`s life does have its compensations.
”You know,” says Walkoe, ”what the best thing is? Because nobody works during the day, when you`re out on the road, you can always get a softball game up. I don`t know many guys in their 30s who get to do that.”
