I'm Not a Terrorist, But I've Played One on TV (8 page)

“Dat's not deh point. You are man of deh house. You must eh-stay.”

“I'm only twenty-one.”

“Deh shah ran a country at your age.”

“His father was a dictator.”

“And yours vasn't?”

“Leave Dad out of it.”

Leaning in for the kill, she whispered, “People in deh community vill talk!”

Man of the House

The guilt worked. In the back of my head was this tiny voice reminding me that what I really wanted to do was comedy. Had I gone to New York, I would've been far away from home and might have had the guts to give it a try. But my mom pulled her Jedi community trick and I gave in. I decided to attend UCLA and live at home to be the man of the house. When you accept such a weighty role, you soon realize that the reality doesn't live up to the title. Whereas the shah got to run a country with ministers and generals and armies, and possible access to all the unmarried women in the land, I got to help my mother read her mail, drive my brothers to school, and help Grandpa with the English
pronunciation of his cursing. I was more of a chauffeur/butler/profanity coach, a.k.a. a utility player.

Once in a while I got other man of the house duties, when my mom would make me sit my brothers down and talk to them. My father's departure left a void of male energy in the house, so my two younger brothers had run a bit rampant, putting my mom through hell in the process. Now, as the man, I had to fix the problem and get the boys back on track. Being an older brother and trying to act like a father did not go smoothly. Especially since my younger brothers had grown up in America, on the American hormone-­infested diet of Big Macs, Whoppers, and Twinkies, which made them bigger than me. It isn't only the fries that get super sized—it's also the immigrants. I would sit them down and do my best, giving them fatherly advice, but it never sunk in, mostly because the “when I was your age” speech isn't as effective when you were their age only five years earlier. Real fathers told their sons about fighting in Vietnam or World War II. My war stories were much more passive.

“You should be grateful,” I'd holler at my indifferent brothers. “When I was your age we had the Falklands War. It lasted seventy-four days and I wasn't even there. Then, of course, the invasion of Grenada. That lasted at least two weeks and I had to watch it on
Nightline
with Ted Koppel and his big hair. Every. Single. Night.”

Screw the Ph.D.

I wasn't scaring anyone straight. Man of the house by night, Ph.D. student by day, I had delusions of grandeur. I had studied abroad in Italy my junior year as an undergrad and met a professor who inspired me toward academia. His name was Vincenzo Pace, but
he went by Enzo. He had a goatee and would wear professorial blazers with elbow patches to class. He also had a gold pocket watch that he would pull out every day and look at as the last few ticks counted down to the beginning of class. Then he would flip the watch closed, put it back in his pocket, and very dramatically hold his hands in the sky in a pensive way, calling out the subject of the day in Italian.

“Allora . . . Maometto.”
Which meant, “So . . . Mohammad.”

This was a sociology of religion class. We would discuss the prophet Mohammad or Jesus or Moses and their philosophies. Something about the way he carried himself, how he spoke about these deep ideologies, made me believe that being a professor was exactly the vocation for which I'd been searching. On the one hand, it would make my mom happy because it would be an honorable profession that the community would look upon favorably. On the other hand, it would place me at a university where I could discuss ideas and debate with like-minded people, a modern-day prophet of sorts. Plus, I would be surrounded by young coeds the rest of my life. What prophet doesn't want that? It was all coming together splendidly—until I started studying for the actual Ph.D.

One thing you never hear about in the prophet business—it takes a shitload of studying to get a handle on all those complicated philosophies and theories. I remember getting into my Ph.D. classes at UCLA and discussing what our purpose was in the practical world as academics. The professor kept telling us that our goal in life would be to publish or perish. So basically we had to keep writing books on our theories and go around the world defending ourselves. If we were lucky enough to come up with a theory that a politician actually liked, then we might get
to apply our ideas to the real world. In essence, we were living in a theoretical world, but every month when I got my tuition bill it didn't feel theoretical at all. Eight thousand dollars a year so that I could live in a theoretical world? At least they gave us student identification cards which got us two-dollar discounts at the movie theaters in Westwood. I figured if I saw four thousand films I would break even. In theory I had come up with a solution that was brilliant. In reality, I was an idiot.

I wasn't happy, either as the man of the house or a prophet in training. Something was missing. Eventually I dropped out of UCLA and began working at an advertising agency. I had to do something in an office just to get my mother off my back. I figured if she saw me going to work in a tie every morning, she would think I was doing something useful.

“You are not a lawyer, but at least you look like von!”

The first day on the job, the others in the agency told me to lose the tie. “We're much more laid-back here, so just dress casually.”

When I told my mom, she almost rescinded my man of the house duties. “Casual? Vhat the hell does dat mean? It is an office. People vear ties in an office. You tell dose Americans dere is notting casual about vork. You are supposed to be uncomfortable at vork, from vhat you do to vhat you vear. I swear if it vere not for dis regime I vould move you back to Iran and make you vear a tie.”

“Mom, they've banned ties in Iran.”

“Den you vear a turban. Anyting to make you uncomfortable!”

A few months earlier I had seen Roberto Benigni receive the Grand Prix award for
Life Is Beautiful
at the Cannes Film Festival. I had become a fan of Benigni from my year in Italy. Seeing him win
the award and rush the stage to kiss all the judges as well as Martin Scorsese's feet (who was the president of the festival—Scorsese, not his feet) inspired me. I remember thinking,
I want to be THAT excited about what I do in my life.

One day I was dubbing a video copy of a play I had performed in and there was an older man who worked at the agency who saw bits of my play. He was a producer at the ad agency, named Joe Rein. Joe had always been complimentary to people and was one of those gems you meet in life. Watching me dub the play, Joe asked me if I had ever thought of pursuing acting professionally. I told him it had crossed my mind and that I was hoping to save money and pursue it when I turned thirty.

He took me into his office. “Look,” he said, “I'm in my sixties. When I was in my twenties there were some things I really wanted to do. I kept putting them off and never got to them. So if you really want to do it, then do it.”

It was the light bulb moment I had been waiting for. I realized that you live once and you cannot live the life your parents expect of you. All those years of struggling with my Persian identity and the obligations I had to my parents and the community had finally been revealed as futile. From that moment, I decided to prioritize acting and stand-up. Now there was only one last obstacle. In hindsight, a rather monstrous one. I had to tell my mother.

“Deh acting crap again?”

“Not just acting. Acting AND comedy.”

“So da man of da house vants to tell jokes?”

“It's my passion, Mom.”

“Your passion should be to make your modder happy.”

“We're not in the old country. In America you're supposed to pursue your dreams.”

“Okay, den I vould like to pursue my dereams, too. My deream is dat you go to law eh-school, get your degree, get a good job, and buy your mother a car. Preferably a top-of-the-line black 401(k) Mercedes, vith leather seats. Or ve can vait till next year and you get me a 402(k). Something to make the community talk.”

Los Angeles had gone to her head.

Part Two

Stand-Up and Pat-Downs: Life on the Road

Hollywood, California

C
omedy didn't just begin the day I had the light bulb moment at the advertising job. It was something I had been subconsciously pursuing since I was a teenager. I've developed a basic philosophy throughout my acting and comedy life that applies to everyone, regardless of one's career or passion: You're either inspired by greatness or you're inspired by mediocrity. One of those two extremes is what throws everyone into pursuit of his dreams. Meaning, you either see something that is so great and inspiring that you leap into action and attempt to replicate it. Or you see something so mediocre and pathetic that you immediately think,
Look at that sad bastard. I can do better.

Take fire, as an example. Some younger readers might believe that fire came about when the iPhone created the lighter app for use at concerts, but I've got a different theory. Fire came about either when a caveman saw a fellow cave dweller successfully light
fire and then get laid by all the hottest, hairiest cavewomen that same evening, or it came about when the same guy saw a fellow cave dweller rub some rocks together and explode in flames and said, “Well, I can't do any worse than that.”

My inspiration came in both forms. Yes, the greatness/­mediocrity principle is not a mutually exclusive principle and is not a zero sum theory. It can be simultaneously applied as a paradigm and, when looked at as a bell curve, the greatness factor has an inverse relationship to the mediocrity factor. If you have no idea what I just said don't worry because neither do I. It's just something I picked up in my three months in the Ph.D. program at UCLA and I figured I might as well use some of that language since I spent eight grand acquiring it. I dropped out of academia and with that abandoned my dreams of being a learned prophet. I let down Professor Enzo, my mother, and the entire Westwood condominium community. But there was another mentor I'd always looked up to, and I intended to do right by him.

The Persian Eddie Murphy

I got into comedy because I was inspired by greatness—that of my earliest influence, Eddie Murphy. Growing up I was a big fan of Eddie on
Saturday Night Live
. His comedy was ingenious and he was everything I aspired to be. I had his albums at home and Eddie even taught me and my six-year-old brother how to cuss. We would go around the house practicing: “Goddamned, motherfucker, punk-ass son of a bitch!” Our parents, being immigrants, had no idea what we were talking about. “Dere English is getting good! Dey are using multisyllabic vords. And complete sentences! Who says American public eh-schools are bad?”

I studied all of Eddie's sets and TV appearances, and I decided that I was going to make it as a comedian, only younger and better and edgier. My first opportunity to give it a shot was at age seventeen, the peak of my sexual perversity. There was a high school talent show that was looking for acts. I had no discipline and no game plan, and my comedy back then was solely sexual in nature. Things like, “Why are genitalia located in the least agile parts of the body? Wouldn't they be more accessible if they were on the hand? Then you could go around having sex all day simply by high-fiving each other.” I would write it down and think,
Wow, this is brilliant stuff, I'm on my way!
The next day I'd read what I'd written and have second thoughts:
This is total horseshit. Who the hell wrote this?
I was only a teenager and I had no idea how stand-up worked. I had yet to learn it takes years of writing and honing and trying out stuff for it to become good material. Given my lack of confidence, I chickened out of performing at that event, and it turned out to be a good decision. When I showed up to watch the other performers, I saw that the audience was made up of juvenile delinquents from a nearby prison. Somehow the organizers had neglected to relay that small detail. I counted my blessings. The last thing I needed for my comedy career was to be shanked at my first performance. Talk about a discouraging start.

As inspired as I was by Eddie Murphy, I still did not have the courage to do stand-up onstage. I'd been in a lot of school plays up until then. But with acting, there are writers, directors, other actors, the orchestra—an entire army of folks to blame if things go wrong. With stand-up, there's only one person to blame, and I was not confident enough to risk it. In college, I had no more confidence. I had taken a few acting classes and attended some shows. I remember wandering into a bar, and they were having this
stand-up comedy competition for National Lampoon, which was looking for the funniest unknown comedian in America. There were only two guys in the competition, and they were onstage doing their thing. They were both awful. I sat there thinking I could have climbed onstage right then, without any practice, and done a better comedy set than either of them. And boom—just like that, based on witnessing utter mediocrity, I told myself that the next time an opportunity to perform came around, I would take it.

One day I was listening to the biggest hip-hop radio station in the Bay Area and they announced that they were hosting a Dirty Dozens comedy competition for local comics. I had no idea what Dirty Dozens was, but I figured it meant there would be twelve people competing and maybe they wouldn't have to shower before the show. It was open to anyone, and even though I still had not performed stand-up comedy onstage, in my mind I was the next Eddie Murphy and funnier at least than the two guys I had seen bomb in the bar. I had a buddy record a video of me doing character impersonations and I sent it in. There were more than one thousand submissions, and I was one of sixteen finalists selected to go down to the radio station to promote the competition that would take place in front of thousands of people in a theater in Oakland. I put on my best outfit, strutted down to the studio, and prepared to take my place among the comedy greats. After a few moments, I realized my mistake: Dirty Dozens meant a “yo mama” comedy competition. While it was very Eddie Murphy in nature, I did not yet have the chops to hang with those guys.

All the other comics were black. And they knew one another from the comedy circuit, whereas I had never performed stand-up. Paranoia set in quickly. I decided they had not chosen me because my act was tight; they chose me to be the dude who everyone
would laugh at and boo offstage, like they do on
American Idol
or
Showtime at the Apollo
. They were laughing at me, not with me.

But I couldn't just leave, and I had made a promise to myself that I was going to try. We were shuffled into the deejay's studio, and the other comedians were going around the room doing their best yo mama jokes directed at one another.

“Suki's mama so fat she can't wear a Malcolm X T-shirt because helicopters try to land on her.”

“Coco's mama so ugly, she make blind children cry.”

“Yo mama so fat people jog around her for exercise.”

I just sat in the corner in silence, thinking,
Oh god, please don't let them notice me.
I don't have any yo mama jokes. And if my mother found out someone insulted her on the radio and I didn't defend her honor, she would never let me hear the end of it.

“You let dem call me fat? On deh radio? And you didn't beat dem vith a hanger? You are a disgrace to deh Jobrani name and deh entire Persian community.”

I was sweating, panicking. I had no idea what to say when it was my turn. I was scared to do a yo mama joke because black guys take their mamas seriously. Back in California in those days, you could get killed for insulting someone's mama, especially if the yo mama joke hit too close to home. Finally after what felt like an hour of yo mama jokes, but was actually about two minutes, the deejay asked all the comics in the room to introduce themselves. They had gotten to the part of the show where I could participate. After all, I did know my own name. I listened as they all gave some cool shout-outs to their friends—“This is Suki from Viejo, shout-out to Pookey. You gonna be out of prison soon, homey!” “What-up, this is Coco from Oakland. Shout-out to the good Lord!”

Finally it was my turn. I'm not sure what happened, but
suddenly I transformed into a black comic: “Yo yo yo! What's up WHAT'S UP?! This is Mazzy J, sayin' what's up?”

Mazzy J? Who the hell was Mazzy J? And how many times was I going to say, “What's up?” I left the radio station feeling less funny, but more black, which was an interesting trade-off.

Fortunately for me, the promoter had a hard time selling tickets for this show, and it was canceled. Again, the comedy gods had smiled upon me by taking me out of a situation in which I would have been scarred for life. I dodged getting shanked once, and now I was dodging getting booed offstage at a black comedy competition.

I Used to Wash Toilets

My comedy dreams took some time to marinate, about five years. A fresh dropout from UCLA working the advertising gig, I decided I had to get serious about this comedy thing, so I enrolled in a stand-up class. The first thing they teach you is to write what you know and what makes you unique. In a class filled with guys, girls, straight people, gay people, short people, tall people, Asians, and even an Arab, I was the only Iranian. I'm guessing that's because most other Iranians were in law school or medical school, making their mothers happy and my mother jealous. The teacher told me to write about the struggles of being Iranian in America. This was easy, because Iranians had been vilified for so long. They say comedy comes from tragedy, and being Iranian in America from 1979 on had been quite tragic. I'd had some struggles myself, but in stand-up comedy I was able to take the reality and exaggerate it. Sometimes it would come across a bit cheesy, but the audience still laughed. Some of my earliest material was about my family life and how difficult it was to invite other kids over
to spend the night because their parents were concerned we were going to take the kids hostage. I know, rimshot. But it worked.

We honed our material over the course of seven weeks and ended with a showcase at the Melrose Improv, where we were told big-time managers and agents would be in the audience to discover us and send us on the road to fame. A lot of acting and comedy classes in Los Angeles use these showcases to lure students in and get you to pay five hundred dollars to train with them. You're actually convinced that after less than two months of doing stand-up, someone will see you and put you on
Saturday Night Live
. The reality is much different. Now that I've been a stand-up for seventeen years, I know there is never one big night when everything comes together. It is a series of big nights and many years of hard work that, if you're lucky, will eventually pay off. If you ever take an acting or comedy class and after only two months a big agent wants to sign you, chances are he's trying to get in your pants. The night of my big showcase, there were no agents or managers, but someone much more important did attend: my mother.

I was a bit wary, because my mother had attended a play I had done a few years before called
Belind Date
. (Basically
Blind Date
, said with a Persian accent.) It was a comedy about a Persian guy who's a big bullshit artist and who goes on a blind date with a Persian girl who's a gold digger. It turned out to be a huge hit. At the time I was still living at home with my mom and I needed the ego boost. I came offstage and people were congratulating me and buying me drinks. I was getting a big head as I waved and shook hands with my hordes of new fans. I found my mom and escorted her to the valet line so that she could get her car and head home. Even as we waited in line, people congratulated me and I thought that she would finally realize what a star I was. That's when my mom chimed in.

“You vere good.”

“Thanks, Mom.”

She got in her car and started to drive off, but not before pulling down her window and blurting out one last thing.

“Just remember, funny man, dat tomorrow is your turn to vash the bathrooms.”

This was said loud enough so that my fans could hear, bringing me back down to Earth. Head back to normal. Mission accomplished.

So when my mother appeared at the stand-up comedy showcase it made me nervous. I knew how high her standards were. If it didn't go well, she would never let me hear the end of it. Even if it went well, she would probably still embarrass me in front of everyone: “You did a good job, Maz. Next time make joke about how you vet your bed until you vere ten.” This woman had a lot of secrets on me. I had to be careful when I took her out in public.

In a show with a bunch of lousy amateurs, I succeeded in being one of the better lousy amateurs. Afterwards, as people congratulated me, again I found my mom and braced myself for her to blurt out an inappropriate comment.

“You vere good!”

“And?”

“And vhat?”

“Aren't you going to say something to deflate the compliment?”

“I vould never do dat!”