Private Parts (47 page)

I remember one time Dice called me at home and told me that now that he had a wife and a baby he was going to buy a house. He was finally going to move out of Brooklyn. Dice had a really nice house in Brooklyn, but he was a fixture in his hometown neighborhood. I didn't understand how he could have stayed there that long, but he didn't care. His whole thing is, he'll go anywhere, he doesn't give a shit, and if people come up to him and ask for autographs, he says, "Fuck off."

When Dice decided he was going to buy a house he figured he should live near me, so I agreed to go house-hunting with him. I called the realtor who sold me my house -- a really nice, sweet woman. Dice kept saying, "Don't call a realtor! I don't like realtors! Fuck those realtors!" I said, "Well, Dice, I really don't know what's on the market, quite frankly, so you've got to deal with the realtor."

"Well, does she understand what I want?" he said.

"What do you want in the house?" I asked.

"I'd like a ranch house. I've seen your house, you got stairs. I don't want stairs. I'd like a ranch house, but not so modern. I'd like it more regular, you know." Fucking Einstein could not have interpreted that description of a house, but I called the realtor I knew anyway.

Meanwhile, I can't believe he really talks like Dice, all the time! People who knew him early on told me that he didn't talk like that, but I think he's actually become that guy. So we made an appointment with the realtor. I took Dice and his humble assistant, Hot Tub Johnny, to a parking lot at the post office near where I live to meet the realtor. While we were waiting, a guy who appeared to be Indian came toward our car to ask directions. Dice rolled down the window.

"Excuse me," the Indian guy said.

"What the fuck do you want, you fuckin' dot-head?" Dice said. I was like fucking crunched down on the seat. I didn't even want to be seen with these guys because this is where I live. And Hot Tub

Johnny was videotaping it all on a camcorder he had brought along.

"What do you want? I don't understand you! Speak some fucking English!" Dice was yelling. He was totally rude, and I was just dying, but finally this guy left. I started yelling at Dice. I told him if he was going to act like a fucking asshole, I wasn't going to go with him.

"Calm down," said Dice. "We're going to have a lot of fun today. Because when Johnny and I go house-hunting, we like to run up and down people's stairs and videotape it."

"If you bring a video camera with you and start running up and down other people's stairs, then I'm not going with you!" I was getting the feeling the Dice was showing off for me. I just wanted him to act normal.

About this time the realtor pulled up. We were all going to go in her car. Dice said to me, "You think she'll let me smoke in the car?"

"I don't know," I told him.

"Well, smoking to me is like a big deal. And I don't like these realtors," Dice said. "But I've got a test to see if she's really okay."

So we got into her car and Johnny started videotaping the realtor. I was saying, "Hey, guys, can you put away the videotape?" Amazingly, they put it away. But then Dice had to light up a cigarette.

"Do you mind if I smoke?" Dice said to her.

She didn't really say anything but you could tell it was annoying the hell out of her. Before she could answer, Dice said, "Well, I'm lightin' up a cigarette anyway." He was puffing away, and I was dying.

We got to the first house and Dice and Johnny decided that they were going to run around. I didn't know if they were putting this on for my benefit but it was as if I was the dad now, and I was in charge of these two little boys.

At each house we went to, Johnny turned on the video camera and he and Dice went running through these people's homes -- while the people were there! Meanwhile, the realtor was looking at me as if these guys were crazy but she knew Dice had to have some serious dough because he was looking at really expensive houses.

One thing you find out when you go house-hunting is that the owners are very emotional about their homes. And one of the things you don't do, even if you don't like the house, is say anything negative.

But Dice would just turn and, at the top of his lungs, right in front of the people, bellow at the poor realtor, "This house is no good! This is not what I asked to see! You're not showin' me what I asked to see! C'mon, next house, next house." He wouldn't even go through the houses out of courtesy.

Finally, I pulled him and Johnny aside. "Listen, you two fuck-heads, number one, put away the fucking tape recorder -- you're making me crazy. Number two, you gotta fucking lighten up. This is this

poor woman's whole fucking gig. You're being totally rude."

"SHE LIED TO US!" Dice yelled back, right in front of her. "SHE TOLD US SHE HAD HOUSES THAT I WOULD LIKE. AND THESE DON'T EVEN FIT WHAT I LIKE!"

"Andrew," she said calmly, "I'm trying to get an idea of what you like, and by seeing what you don't like ..."

"NO! NO! NO!" he interrupted her. "I know what you guys do. What
youse
do is you don't have anything to show us, but you
wanna
hook us in. You knew you didn't have what I wanted. I want a ranch!" He was all pissed off. Meanwhile, he was talking about a house that didn't exist anywhere except in his head.

This went on all day, and I was going out of my mind. We took him through new construction -- everything -- to no avail.

That night the realtor called me. "What's with this Andrew?" she said. "He's a little wild." I said, "Let me call him up and see what he thought of the day." So I called him up.

"Ahh, I don't know, that realtor, I didn't like her," he said.

Dice wanted to live in my neighborhood, but Satan chased him away.

"Listen, you really did her a disservice," I said. "Why don't you just go out with her a couple of times? Now she has a good idea of what you want, she'll be able to find you something you'll like." So he called her up and he made an appointment to go out with her. And they went off on their own, thank God, because I didn't want to be there for this.

So they went out and Dice found a house he liked. It was a new construction, and the guy who built it needed some quick cash. Dice called me up. "I don't know, you think it's a good house?" So I sent my architect out. The guy did me a favor, he looked it over. He said the house was a steal -- it was fantastic. I told this to Dice.

I didn't hear from Dice after that. I figured he was going ahead and buying it. Next, the realtor called me. "Do you know what happened with the house?" she said. "Andrew didn't call me. We went to contract and then I never heard from him again. Does he still want to buy the house?"

I called him up and he said, "Look, I had a problem with that house, I couldn't buy it. I just couldn't buy it."

"What do you mean you couldn't buy it? We spent weeks working with you."

"I don't want to say. You'll think I'm crazy. Don't tell the realtor. Don't tell anyone." Okay, so I agreed to keep it a secret. "The house had a bad vibe." "What do you mean a bad vibe? What happened?" I asked.

"Well, we was going to contract, and I walk into the lawyer's office, and I sit down and the guy's got voodoo heads all over the walls," Dice said.

"What do you mean, voodoo heads?" I said. "The walls was lined with voodoo heads. They were like shrunken heads," Dice explained to me. "Okay, I tried not to react to that, but then, when she handed me the key -- 'cause I wanted to take someone to see the house -- on the key chain they had a voodoo head. And then I still was hanging in there, but I said to the real estate lady, 'How could I reach you at your phone?' So she says, 'Here's my number,' and it had 666 -- sign of the devil." "Yeah, so? What's that got to do with the house?" I said.

"Howard Stern is one of the most positive people I ever met. He believes in winning. Even at times when the media was all over me, Howard would tell me, 'Never back down and show no fear, ya hear?' I hear you."
-- Andrew "Dice" Clay

"Hey, those are too many bad signs, so I just backed out," he said.

"Okay, Dice, I was just curious because the realtor called me," I said.

"Well, don't tell her what I said," he cautioned me.

So I called her back and I said, "Look, Dice backed out for various reasons. He was uptight about your phone number, because it had 666."

"Everyone in this area has 666. It's the exchange," she said.

"Well, he told me not to tell you this, but he said the lawyer for the other guy had voodoo heads all over the wall."

"Voodoo heads?!" she screamed. "The guy is an African art collector. He's collected some of the most expensive artwork in the world and he has it on display in his office. It's the most beautiful African sculpture and art that anybody could ever find!"

That's the last time I'll ever go house-hunting with Dice.

SAM KINISON

I remember when Sam Kinison first burst onto the comedy scene. It was with rage and fire and I never laughed harder in my life. He really changed the face of comedy. Only Sam could do a bit about the people in Ethiopia who were starving to death from the drought and scream at them for not moving. "Why don't they go to where the water is. THEY'RE LIVING IN A DESERT! IT'S ALL FUCKING SAND!"

Then he'd do a bit about the people who worked in funeral parlors having sex with corpses. He'd talk about dying and his body would be on the slab in the morgue, and it would finally be over. No more worries, no more pressure. Then a guy would come into the room and start boning him up the ass. "IT NEVER ENDS! IT NEVER ENDS!"

As great as he was on stage, I think he was at his best on my show, ad-libbing and talking about his life. It was like a spiritual purging for him. He'd come in and just open up. Nobody would consistently exorcise demons on the air the way Sam would on the show. He would not hold back one iota. And afterwards he would say to me, "I'm ruined, I'm ruined. Thanks a lot, man," as we walked him to the door. Meanwhile, he was the one who brought up all these subjects ... but I ruined
him!

He was a true outlaw -- of comedy and of life. A friend of Gary's once came up to the show. She always thought that whatever went on during the show was just shtick, but they were sitting in Gary's office at eleven in the morning right after the show broke and Sam walked up to them. He was wearing that long preacher's coat of his and he had that famous black beret on. In one hand he had a glass and in the other a bottle of Dom Perignon.

"Gary, could you call down and order us some hamburgers and some Milky Ways and stuff?" Sam slurred. Gary's friend couldn't believe that stuff went on. But Sam was always roaming the halls up at the station with a bottle of champagne in his hand. Plus, he used to come into my office and plop down at my desk and lay out huge lines of coke.

"Sam, what the fuck are you doing?" I'd yell at him. "This is a radio station. We're regulated by the United States government. You could cost me my job." I felt like my father screaming at Symphony Sid to get straight.

But he gave magic radio.

One time he asked me who my favorite comedians were and I told him he was in the top three.

"Hey, man," he complained, "I do everything for you and I'm only in your top three?"

I couldn't take his whining anymore.

"SAM KINISON WILL BE THE GREATEST COMIC THAT EVER LIVED!" I exulted. Sam got so excited, he pulled his penis out of his pants. He just whipped it right out.

He ran over to the glass booth where Robin was and started waving his penis around the studio. It was thick, but not that long. Jessica Hahn said he was the best lover she ever had. She must be wide, but not deep.

There are so many Sam memories. We were out at the Grammys once and Sam was up for an award in the comedy album category. Sam was up against Andrew "Dice" Clay, Sandra Bernhard, Erma Bombeck, and P.D.Q. Bach. He was so sure he was going to win that he had an elaborate speech all written out. "I don't care if I lose to Clay," he confided, "but there's no way I'm going to lose to Erma Bombeck or P.D.Q. Bach. That's a fuckin' music record."

They got to the big moment.

"And the winner is ... P.D.Q. Bach."

"Man, do you believe that?" Sam moaned. He was drunk and depressed. "P.D.Q. Bach? Aw, man, it was a setup," Sam said. "It's a setup, dude."

Everything to him was a conspiracy. Sam was scheduled to make a presentation that night at the televised portion of the Grammys and he was plotting how he was going to ruin the presentation.

"Oh, man! Tonight I'm going to tell those motherfuckers off!!" Sam growled. His sycophantic entourage, which usually consisted of about twenty people, all egged him on. Owing to his out-of-con-trol coke problem Sam had just blown a movie deal with Columbia and cost the studio five million dollars. No one in Hollywood wanted to do business with him. He had a shot at a series with Fox, but they had to make sure he was in control. They were on the fence about the deal and if they saw a crazed, coked-up, rambling drunk Kinison at the Grammys, he would have destroyed his career permanently.

He really wanted to get off the road and the Fox deal was his way out, but these misfit hangers-on all around him were reinforcing his destructive behavior.

I really cared about him, so I pulled Sam and his manager Trudy over to the side. She had been pleading with him not to do it, but he wouldn't listen to her.

"Let me tell you something, Sam," I said. "You want my advice? Just go up tonight and read those stupid fucking cards the way they want you to. If you want to still be the show-biz outlaw and not do business with Fox, then tell them to fuck off. But you say you want to get back in the movies. You want that? Read the cards straight."

His manager turned to me and said, "Thank you, because everyone here is telling him to go up there and trash the place." Can you believe that I, the King of All Idiots, was exhibiting good judgment? Why couldn't someone have pulled me aside as I singlehandedly ruined my own career by trashing every single employer I ever had -- including Fox-TV, when I had a deal with them; MCA-TV, when I had a deal with them; New Line Cinema, when I had a deal with them; every fucking radio executive I ever had a deal with, and every human being I ever had a deal with?