The ultimate ordeal - filling in for a comedian - Editorial

Frank McConnell writes in this issue about the joys, hopes, griefs, and anxieties experienced by any person in the modern world who tries to do live comedy. This induces me to recycle a story I've told before, but not in this space.

The unlikely fact is that I once performed, for pay, as a standup comic. For about an hour. Well, no, for maybe a minute, during which I experienced a degree of anxiety unmatched anywhere except, I guess, in childbirth. There was a stool handy; I sat down. I learned, instantly, that sit-down comics also suffer.

I had been booked as a speaker at a meeting of religious journalists-and, later, to help create amusement at a St. Louis coffeehouse run by Protestant clergymen who, in their zeal to recapture Alienated Youth, provided nightly entertainment along with the coffee. I was billed to engage in profound but witty dialogue on Christian sarcasm, or something like that, with an editor named Stephen Rose. Since he was known to me as witty but profound, I had cast myself as appreciative straight man.

But Rose-get this--didn't show. The M.C. turned on the spotlight, introduced me, handed me the mike, and walked away. I observed that every person in the place had at least two large, stating eyes. The men looked like hostile sphinxes, the women like hostile lady sphinxes. Over the years, as it happened, I had become aware of what happens when I tell a joke off the cuff. Nothing. Or, sometimes, puzzlement might rise. You talk about anxious ! I was rescued, in absentia, by my longtime secretary at the National Catholic Reporter, Betty Fitzpatnek. In my jacket pocket, thanks to her foresight and diligence, was an envelope containing a year' s file of a column called "Cry Pax!" (subtitled "A Column without Rules") which ran in every issue of NCR in its early years, consisting of various kinds of funnies contributed by our readers and staff. I stumbled through a preface and read an item from one of the columns--maybe this one, which reported the wording of a sign on the wail of a Baltimore estate: "Trespassers will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Sisters of Mercy."

There were titters out there. I tried another. Giggles. Wow. A few more, and I was interrupted by applause. There is no sound quite like that except perhaps the majestic-yet-swinging chorus of praise rendered by the nine choirs of angels, which I have not yet been in a position to savor.

More samples? Sure. From a Montreal Catholic publication called Challenge we borrowed a monsignor's explanation of the slight tonal difference in the shades of purple in monsignors' robes and those worn by bishops. The dye for the monsignorial purple, he said, was pressed from sour grapes. A separate item disclosed Father Bernard Hitting' s proposed canonical rule: Monsignors should be permitted to wear their purple robes, but not in holy places.

Not everything in the column was churchy. Noting a Los Angeles Times headline--B-52 cRAsHEs oFF GREENLAND WITH H-BOMBS: DANES IRKED--Cry Pax! remarked: "A sensitive, melancholy people, the Danes." And from the Kansas City Star: KIDNEY RECIPIENT/TO LEAVE BED/SEVERAL TIMES.

Mangled figures of speech provided grist. A quote from a Commonweal [!] piece by Harvey Cox---'"Tomorrow, so the argument runs, universities will provide the cog around which the rest of the society's spokes will rotate"--drew this response: "Let' s roll that metaphor down the road and see if it meshes." No comment was necessary on the lead sentence in a Michigan Catholic story about a meeting that was to present the Catholic view on abortion. The story began: "In an effort to erase misconceptions...."

A parish bulletin in NCR's home town, Kansas City, Missouri, urged Mass-goers to "pick up your copy of Our Sunday Visitor, the Official Catholic Weekly Newspaper, as you leave the Church." "You've got it all wrong," said Pax! "It's the unofficial ones you read as you leave the church." But when the first action of a newly organized parish council in Jessie, North Dakota, was to cancel a bulk order for NCR, the column hinted that maybe the increase in lay responsibility was getting out of band.

I don't remember how I ended my coffeehouse gig. It's likely I had something stronger than coffee. Judging from the context of Frank McConnell' s column, he' s done stand-up more than once. Not I. Never again, not for the holiest of good causes. Doing penance is good. Masochism is evil.

Later, NCR published a book drawn from the column. Its final item: "The U.S. Government Printing Office offers a pamphlet called Writing Guide for Naval Officers which 'presents suggestions on how to start, expedite, and stop writing.' That last part is easy. In order to stop writing, you just"

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