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put me down like that? Was he my father giving me life lessons? But he may actually have been right. As much as that stung, it did help. Now I try to only say what I can’t do once during an interview, never twice.
    Then came my David Brenner experience. Brenner was one of my favorite comedians. In 1986, he hosted a short-lived late night talk show called Nightlife . I got booked and my act went over very well. I mostly talked about my mother, how she always says the phrase “again.” “Again with the TV on.” “Again with the candy.” She’d say it to anything. She’d come into my room at four-thirty in the morning and go, “Again with the sleeping. Again with the feet at the end of the legs.”
    But what I enjoyed the most was sitting down and interacting with Brenner on the panel. I talked about how exciting it was the time he had followed me at the comedy club Catch a Rising Star. I had a good set and during our interview reminded him that he had said, “That kid is going to be a star, unless he gets hit by a truck.”
    “Yeah, I think I remember saying that,” Brenner admitted.
    “Well, the only problem is,” I said, “last week I got hit by a truck.”
    After that show, I felt comfortable enough with Brenner and his staff to come by and say “hi” a few times. Dave Wilson was Brenner’s director and had been the original director of Saturday Night Live . His son, Mike Wilson, was Brenner’s talent coordinator. I put together a few sketches, thinking perhaps I could write for Saturday Night Live . I thought Mike Wilson would have a contact there. Instead, he gave my material to Bob Tischler, Brenner’s executive producer.
    Tischler called me up and said that my sketches were good and noted that their sensibility seemed to be based around my distinct persona. One sketch was about a timid guy who decides to do risky things, called “The Thrill Seeker.” My Thrill Seeker would do dangerous things like step into a pool ten minutes after eating a tuna fish sandwich, or eat an apple at a deli without washing it first. Another bit was about a guy who volunteers to be a Big Brother. There is a mix-up and he is matched with another guy like him who wants to be a Big Brother. They each think that the other is the little brother and they take each other on rides and play tag.
    Tischler then offered me a staff job on Nightlife where I’d come up with little walk-on bits for myself, like what Chris Elliott did on Letterman .
    At first, it was amazing. I had my own office! Sure, it was a little room that never would have passed an electrical safety inspection, there were exposed wires and twisted pipes all the way to its high ceiling. But that didn’t matter. I had a steady salary and a break from vying for stage time at the competitive clubs and Jersey bars and discos. I was earning about $800 a week, the most I had ever earned in my life.
    My first piece they did was a corny little bit in Brenner’s monologue. He did a set up for a joke. “Yesterday it was so cold…” He waited until he got the standard Carson-like, “How cold was it?” response from the audience. He said, “Ever wonder why audiences scream that out? I’m going to show you a showbiz secret.” And in the mode of an applause sign, they showed instead a flashing sign that prompted the audience to scream out, “How cold was it?”
    But the most exciting moments of my life were the bits that they hired me to perform. First, we filmed the “Thrill Seeker” video. It was a minute routine in which, wearing a silly jumpsuit and a crash helmet, I stepped onto an escalator and bravely raised my arms in the air. Then, I entered a bar after I had counted that it had exceeded the safe occupancy limit. And on panel, I did more Thrill Seeker jokes that would end up becoming a mainstay in my stand-up act: “I did the TV Guide crossword puzzle with a pen!”
    Once, I actually took bandleader Billy Preston’s place and sang the theme song to the