Crash and Burn Read online

  On the cover, you see, was my hero, Bruce Springsteen, and there was my name just above his picture. After I’d read the first five words of the article on me, I literally prayed to God that Bruce flipped by those pages on me on his way to his article and never, ever read it. Let me tell you why, the photo was terrible, but the tagline was worse, it quoted me calling myself a loser. How can you ever really come back from that?

  I remember Norm MacDonald being on the Stern Show the week the article came out and defending me when Howard suggested that I appease Rolling Stone by not bitching out the writer on the air as enthusiastically as I’d started to do. Norm cut Howard off actually, which is not something anyone does and gets away with.

  “Howard, that fucking broad really railroaded Artie,” he said. “He shouldn’t be nice about it at all.”

  I’m pretty sure I was still drunk that morning, and I was definitely high on painkillers, so Norm’s comments really got me going, so much so that when I went on The Wrap-Up Show with Gary I really let it go. The best way to combat a blatant attack like a shitty article is to avoid giving it any attention, which I didn’t do, of course. I started insulting everything about the reporter and the shitty job she’d done. In the process I called her a “cunt” about eighteen times, give or take a few cunts. Someone told her about it, of course, which is generally what happens when you say anything insulting about someone on a radio show with six million listeners. The broad responded—of course she did—on some blog somewhere, calling me low-class and obnoxious. Now, if she’d done her homework for the article, she would have known this about me already, just like she would have known that I’ve made those two traits work wonders for me professionally. Stating the obvious is no way to get back at someone who advertises what they are to the degree that I do, so her comment stung about as much as a bee would a rhino’s ass. Anyway, that’s the last I heard from her, which depresses me because I thought we’d really connected and that these differences were just growing pains. I was looking forward to summering together on Cape Cod each August.

  When you’re a comedian with any visible degree of success and you meet comedians on their way up or those just struggling to make it to the middle, most of them ask you for advice. I’m sure it’s like this in every industry, but comics are so full of overanalytical self-loathing that I’d bet my bank account that these little pep talks take longer to get through or get out of than they would, say, a CEO of Boeing Aviation chatting with a recent business school graduate. Comics think too much, they feel too much, and most of them really hate themselves, so you can imagine what happens if you open up that can of worms. You’d better want to, is all I can tell you, and if you don’t, you’d better have an escape plan.

  Norm MacDonald has perfected the art of this conversation because he’s had years of practice. It started in the mid-nineties when he was on Saturday Night Live, and it only got worse in 1999, when he starred in his own network sitcom, Norm. I’ve seen comics latch on to him hoping to get pieces of wisdom long before I ever had to deal with anything like that, and I envy what he came up with, because it’s both true and the best way to keep the conversation brief. Here’s Norm’s line when a comic asks him how to break into the “major leagues” of the business: “Well, I don’t have all the answers, so I can’t tell you how to get in, but I sure can tell you how to get out.” A quick review of his television career will confirm that he’s an expert at achieving and then abandoning success, so you should take his word for it. The rip cord out of a mainstream career for any comic according to Norm is a well-placed racist or homophobic joke. He’s not wrong—just ask Michael Richards: that guy got out of the business in literally two minutes.

  After that stint in rehab, I kept going to work, no matter how fucked up I was. I’d show up with my ass crack hanging out, in three-day-old clothes, stinking and high to heaven, but I still showed up. There’s this theory out there among Stern fans that I missed work a lot of the time, but that’s just not true; I didn’t miss work. I was there all the time and when I wasn’t sleeping live on the radio, I was funny all the time, every time. I was able to seem normal somehow . . . crazy, sure, but normal and functional. Only in my last few months on the show did I ever miss a day, because by then things were really falling apart. That’s because I knew what I was doing: if my dealers couldn’t get me what I needed I knew how to score on the street in downtown Newark or Jersey City. I could keep myself supplied well enough so that I would seem normal for those four hours a day that I had to be on the show.

  When I got on the road I had to sleep all the time because that’s where my ruse was up. From Teddy to my road manager Tim, and J.D., who did video for me on the road, they began to see what I couldn’t hide. I never wanted to travel with drugs, so the road became a test; I’d get as much shit as possible into me before I got on that plane, trying to plan it all so that I’d not go into withdrawals until I was back home, safe, in range of where I could get enough drugs to get me on track to show up for my job at Stern. When I left town for a weekend of stand-up I’d time it out so I’d get to my room and pass out and still be high when I woke up to go onstage a few hours later. If I could get on a plane home just as my withdrawals were starting, I knew I’d be fine because I knew I had something stashed in my apartment and if I didn’t I knew exactly whom to call or where to drive to make those cramps stop. Coming home was literally going to heaven for me for all those months I was doing all those lucrative stand-up gigs every single weekend. If we landed and I was hurting, I knew as soon as I was in my car I could make it. I had it planned out that far. I mean, any flight delay was like death to me, so you can imagine just how often this fragile ecosystem I lived in got completely imbalanced.

  This was far from exact science, let me tell you. We are talking about a guy who was trying to do all the drugs he’d need in a weekend by the time the five-o’clock bell rang on Friday. The road became going from the plane to the car to the hotel room where I’d blacken out my hotel room. I mean, blacken. Literally I’d duct tape the curtains down. Around that time, a friend of mine had told me that a buddy of his who was a heroin addict would get so light sensitive that even the little green light on the smoke detector was too much light for him. What this guy would do is chew a piece of gum and stick it over that little green light. I’m not sure I’d ever even noticed those lights before I’d heard the story, but all I know is that I couldn’t sleep an hour in any hotel room bed if I could see that light from where I was lying. I’m not even a gum guy, but I started to buy gum at the airport just so I’d be able to stick a piece over the little green light. I obsessed over it, and there were terrible times when I found myself with no gum to chew, and before then I’d found gum to be a completely useless item. But once it became my method of blacking out the light in a hotel room, gum became very important to me. There were, however, times when the hotel I was staying in would need to send a maintenance guy with a ladder to place my piece of gum over the smoke detector light. I’m not a diva; I was happy to do it myself, but sometimes the ceilings were too high for me to reach. It got to the point that I couldn’t sleep properly without gum on that light. Chewing gum, strictly to place over the smoke detector light, became part of my ritual, and ask any drug addict—the ritual is what it’s all about.

  I was starting to lose it. And thank God that at this point stand-up was all instinct for me, because I’d stay in my hotel room until the last possible minute and take the stage without mentally preparing in any way. If I had to go on at eight p.m., I’d be in the room, in bed, until 7:55 p.m. The promoter, my road manager, everyone, would be ringing incessantly; they’d knock on my door nonstop, but it didn’t matter. There were many times when they all thought I was dead, and to be honest, I don’t blame them. All I’d ever say was that I was real tired, which I suppose I was. I was never lying; then again, was I ever really telling the truth?

  It was this crazy: I’d get up when I absolutely had to, and if I couldn’t deal with m
y hair situation I’d put a hat on. Usually I’d be wearing the same clothes, so I didn’t have to worry about getting dressed, and I’d go straight to the stage, literally from bed, and I’d do an hour of comedy. I guess that is some kind of miracle. And if I was anywhere within range of my home in New Jersey, I’d drive there myself or demand that I be brought right home afterward because home is where the heart is, and in my case, it was also where all of my drugs were.

  I was scared to travel with drugs, which is why my life on the road got so nuts. I’d read all those stories about Keith Richards and the Stones smuggling shit and getting busted, so there was no way I was going to do that as one dude on my own. So I did what I could: I top-loaded my consumption so that I’d be high enough to get through the weekend until I could get home and get more. I didn’t have much of a choice, really. It wasn’t logical at all and it was a risk every single time, but I did think it was fun in a very sick way, and I know why—because I love gambling. Gambling is my biggest vice and this was a huge bet I was placing every week, wasn’t it? Taking all the opiates I’d need to get through the weekend and home again before the withdrawals kicked in and stabilized me enough to make it to work in some kind of decent shape the next morning? That’s one exciting fucking wager! It sure beat betting on college basketball.

  There were more than a few times when I think I OD’d before I even left the house on Friday. I gave myself these seizures a few times that I can’t accurately describe because all I know is that I blacked out and then came to a few minutes later. I was a doctor without a degree: I’d tally up all the hours I had to be gone from my stash and then dose myself as I saw fit. At the time I was doing one-nighters in theaters instead of two-nighters in a club. And thank God I was, because I’d be dead right now otherwise. I’m not kidding; if I’d been doing clubs at that point in my life I would have either been arrested or I would have died. Most likely I’d have been arrested for trying to take drugs on a plane. And then I’d probably have died.

  The Stern Show was my priority, and I kept it that way until the very end, when I was so far gone that I did miss work and it was glaringly obvious that something was very wrong with me. Up until then, I was fine. But I’m still not sure how. There were weekends where I had those ministrokes before I even left my house and was still so banged up by the time I got to the gig that my body would hit some sort of wall. Can you blame it? I was hardly in the best shape to begin with. I’d get off work at, say, eleven and have to fly at four, and would spend those three hours before my flight to St. Louis doing as many lines of heroin and popping as many pills as I could manage. I’d arrive, go right to bed, and then wake up the next day and fulfill my obligations. There were times when I’d sleep a full day, do what I had to do, and go right back to my dark hotel room to sleep until the flight home. There were times where I didn’t shower for three or four days while on the road, slept in my clothes, got home, and slept in my clothes again for a few hours, then went right into work at the Stern Show. I wasn’t capable of showering until I was high enough to function.

  Listen, I didn’t look good because I was heavy, but if you listen to those shows I was always funny, and I always showed up. The times I didn’t show up on Stern became very famous because they blow everything out of proportion on that show. If it happened as much as it seemed like it did, I’d have never kept that job as long as I did, and that’s the truth.

  I was tired and my road schedule was crazy and that’s what I told them, and they had no real reason to believe otherwise. I would say the Stern Show knew I had a real problem only in the last few months I was there—the fall of ’09. And that’s when Howard came to me aggressively with his agent and suggested that I stop the stand-up schedule. Their plan didn’t work out, mostly because I was making 100 grand a weekend, and why would I even think of stopping that? I had money coming in hand over fist, I was juggling people getting me off drugs and bringing me drugs—what else could I want? It was the kind of action that I found exciting.

  I was successfully able to keep what I was doing in my private life away from the Stern Show because I showed up there and was proficient at my job. The rest of my life, however, was chaos on a level I can’t even describe. I had to keep all of that as far away from the Stern universe as I could. And I did, successfully—until the fall of ’09, that is.

  CHAPTER 4

  PARTIE LANGE AIRWAYS

  In late 2007, I remet someone whom Stern fans will remember from my final days on the show, a guy known to me and mine and them as well as Helicopter Mike. I don’t know how much any of you believe in fate, but there have been too many coincidences in my life for me to ignore the possibility that fate is fake, and this guy is one of the biggest reasons for that. I have no recollection of meeting Mike the first time, but when I heard the facts, enough of them lined up to make a believer out of me. I’ve got a strange type of memory, by which I mean if you mention a date to me, whether it’s last month or twelve years ago, there’s a ninety-percent chance that I’ll immediately remember exactly where I was that day without needing to check a calendar or date book. If I played a gig on the day in question, most likely I’ll remember the venue, as well as the promoter and who opened for me if anyone did. If any major-league play-off events took place on that day (excluding basketball), I’ll probably also be able to tell whether I placed bets that day and whether my team won. My recall is basically prejudiced because those facts and a few others are consistently the only things I’ve retained. It’s a window into my soul that very close friends, bookies, drug dealers, hookers, and ex-girlfriends are the characters that most densely populate my memory lane, and that’s only because they are the ones who were there when my favorite activities occurred. I can’t help it, and it often offends me on behalf of those who should occupy more space in my mental scrapbook, but what can I say? My lopsided mind chooses to retain most clearly memories of the activities that involve the action my nature loves best. I hope everyone else understands and hopefully realizes I do care . . . I’ve just got my priorities.

  I meet a lot of people in my line of work, and back when I was all Partie Lange (which, by the way, will be my on-air name if I’m ever forced at gunpoint to become a “morning zookeeper” on Z100) I spent a lot of time whiling the night away with strangers. I loved every minute of it; I just don’t remember much about it. So right now, once and for all, I’d like to apologize to all those people I’ve hung out with after a gig or at wherever the party has taken me over the years because I probably don’t remember shit about you. All of you strangers who became fast friends, please don’t be hurt; I know we may have figured out the cure for cancer and the meaning of life that night all before the sun came up. I mean you no offense, but don’t be surprised if I look at you in terror when we meet again, as if you’re my own personal Mark David Chapman.

  Since getting sober, the limitations of my biased recall have become crystal clear to me, and I’ve got no choice but to embrace them and acknowledge their existence. I have to work with them or else they’ll be a huge problem. I did this begrudgingly at first, like a government admitting a budget deficit or a KKK Grand Dragon admitting that we have a black president. But eventually I did admit the truth to myself in the only way I know how—by finding the humor in it. Here’s an example from a few months ago that says it all. I was in Midtown Manhattan, walking to work from the parking garage at about seven p.m., going to the studio where my radio show on DirecTV/Sirius is recorded. I was almost there when a kid stopped me to say hi, like my fans usually do. He started telling me about how we’d met at a rest stop just outside of Portland a few years back, where I was heading to do a show.

  “Man, that sounds great, but it couldn’t have been me,” I said, laughing, thinking the kid should have done a little homework before coming up with this ruse to get a photo and my autograph. “Must have been a different fat, homeless-looking guy, buddy; I’ve never been to Portland.”

  “Yeah, you have, Artie, I swear to
God,” he said. “It was totally you. We shot the shit for about twenty minutes. Here, I’ll show you.”

  He pulled out his phone and proceeded to show me a picture of the two of us standing under a sign, at a rest stop, that said WELCOME TO PORTLAND.

  “You don’t say,” I said.

  That moment was more sobering than half the AA meetings I’ve attended. Not only did I not remember the kid—like at all—but I didn’t even recall one thing about being in the city. Nothing about playing it, nothing about the hotel, the motel, or the Holiday Inn—I’m talking, I drew a complete blank! I had to have spent at least a full day there plus the day I did the gig, so it was crazy to me that it was all a black hole. It made me think and wonder just how many more moments of my life I’ve lived through in complete blackouts, and I’ve come to accept the fact that the number is quite high. Now that I’ve pledged to do my best each day to keep myself on the other side of that void, I see every reminder like this one—as uncomfortable as they are—as a welcome reminder. Which is good, because in my case they’re going to be plentiful. In fact, those of you who see me again, do me a favor and tell me where we may have met, because I could use a clue. Just watch my expression when you do, so that we’ll both know it if my memory dice are coming up snake eyes again.

  Anyway, the first time I met Helicopter Mike is an event occupying space in one of my blackouts—from the sound of it, one of my better ones. The following will be my version of a Law & Order recreation, because the facts were all gathered from the eyewitnesses there, me not being one of them, though I was playing myself.

  The season: winter. The location: the Patchogue Theatre, Patchogue, Long Island, which is a great, intimate performance space that holds about fifteen hundred people. I’d headlined there a few times before and I’ve always found the great people of Long Island to be nothing but a welcoming and wonderful audience, so I was pretty excited for this show. I was even more excited because it is striking distance from my apartment in Hoboken, aka the Arthur Lange Resort and Spa, where I would be able to adhere to my proper health regime, take my constitutional, and get large doses of that all-important cure-all, “rest,” that I was so fond of at the time.