This Is Exactly What Happened

by Rebecca Schoenkopf

I have accidentally spent sixty percent of my expected paycheck for this freelance gig, even though they put me up and fed me. (Lavo at the Palazzo is traditional Italian beautifully done, while SAMBAsushi’s good fusion food is overshadowed by the weird fact that the sushi chefs aren’t allowed to talk to you even though you’re ordering omakase and sitting at the bar.)

My little brother Cakeyboy has cut off my roulette habit of chasing good money after bad for my 33 that never hit, which was very bad for my self-esteem of somehow thinking I’m magic. Plus we were tipping very well (valet parking is freeeee!), and oh hell I don’t know where the rest of it went.

I have come to Vegas with my brother and my son to look at the comedy scene with my jaundiced eye, for a new paper there (hooray, new papers!), and I will be as nice as they want me to if it means more work. I’ve been to Paris to see the naughty hypnotist act of Anthony Cools. (Funny! And impressive! But a little bit mean!) I’ve been to the Improv at Harrah’s, where the openers were lame but the headliner, Vince Morris, was so handsome! A black guy with hipster glasses! So smart and funny! And when Cake and I did laps around the Palms casino the next day, playing, “Who here would you sleep with?” I pointed out, eventually, after like 45 minutes of laps, a Chinese guy, and Cake said, “No Asians! They don’t count! You can’t be the girl who only likes Asian guys!” and I said, “I don’t just like Asians! Vince is black!” And Cakeyboy had to agree. I think I am done with white guys for a while—I mean besides the fact that I already have a boyfriend anyway. So, you know: in the future, or something.

Vince Morris

Jimmy is mad that we didn’t walk up and down the Strip more, and that he has to stay in the room and watch TV while Cakeyboy acts as my date for the evening. Kid, quit the bitching! Every time I try to take you anywhere in L.A., you insist on staying home to watch wrestling. And we did walk the Strip, a little; we went to the new Aria in the new City Center, and it was exquisite! We ate fancy food, and you liked it! Honey, turn down the sulk!

Eventually, it is time for comedy in the Palms’ Playboy Lounge. We are sitting in the back, where the other comics occasionally punctuate the still air with a ringing cackle.

The opener is April Macie, a pretty little thing with an open, happy face talking about the cuteness of black men’s balls. They couldn’t be any cuter unless they were Easter peeps! she says, and Cakeyboy begins planning ways to make her his. She gives a little love to the table of “giant group of rapey dudes,” who are in fact a multiethnic Benetton ad of Canadian engineers led by a bespectacled Chinese guy getting married; she does a really good imitation of the Nosferatu-like way men hunch over while furiously jacking it; and then—and we are sad, and we miss her already!—she is done.

Next will be Nick Youssef, a tall, disheveled man with a crusty, blackened heart. I effortlessly pinpoint the neighborhood of L.A. he’s come in from—Los Feliz, though my brother’s dark-horse bet of Echo Park is a real possibility, if only because all the men there, just like Youssef, wear girl jeans. We are open-minded! We are ready to laugh! But then his big closer turns out to be that he was mean to an old lady who had too much plastic surgery and deluded herself that she might be beautiful. Nick Youssef, ladies and gentlemen! Hate machine!

Finally, here is our headliner, Marc Maron. He talks about preferring Indian casinos, because when you lose, you feel like you’re helping! We agree, and thus we chortle! He goes after an old man from Orange County who hates health care because then the poor won’t die early, like they’re supposed to! He tells him, “Sir, despite your fears, the future is not Mexican!” Oh, we laugh and laugh at that mean old man!

The crowd of about 90 is mostly attentive, but there are a few problems in the audience: a girl turning 24 who probably didn’t realize the comedy she was going to see was being headlined by a crusty Jewish former Air America host who does not in fact care to make the evening all about her; the young fan who was so very drunk and fawning and so happy to see Marc Maron in the flesh but missed half the show when he stumbled off to puke; a couple of people who dared to wander off to pee. We too are happy to see Marc Maron! (And did not wander off to pee.) We are Jewish Socialists! For fuck’s sake, we actually used to listen to Air America! We would have bet one hundred dollars that we are currently the only people in the Palms (excepting the young puking man) to have done so! He mentions socialism, and we lustily cheer! We are the best Marc Maron show attendees (in Vegas) ever! But then he leaves the politics aside, and starts down the sad, black rabbit hole of his divorce. Here is a joke: “She leaves for two hours, and when she comes home, I scream at her, ‘WHERE WERE YOU? WHO WERE YOU FUCKING?’” And we make scared faces at each other that mean, simply, “Gah!”

The Playboy was really fun!

Later, we go out at one in the morning, drive to Harrah’s (home of Toby Keith’s I Love This Bar and Grill, and all the down-home folks you’d expect to find there), and hang out with Vince, because I am making him my new friend. We invite him to break in on the John and Rebecca Show (my little brother’s name is John), where we are being funny? And adorable? But maybe incredibly annoying? But he is tired from entertaining people all night, or at least that’s what he claims. But he also claims that if he didn’t like us, he would have just left. We all go outside, to the outside dance party, and watch John take a shot from the Asian shot-guy who stands on the bar and holds the bottle at wee-level. We watch the drunken idiots. We get hit on, and escape! We get home to the Palms at like four, and wake Jimmy up with intense, college-dorm-like four am feelings-talk. We have feelings! That is true! We talk about how when I interviewed Marc Maron after the show, I talked too much about me, trying in vain to build a rapport (and I always do that in interviews anyway), and how within about ten minutes, he said, “I’m just here to gamble. Are we done?” We talk about how everyone hates us.

“Maybe he didn’t hate us!” John says. “Maybe, right now, he’s talking about how he met these cool Jewish Socialists in Vegas, and he likes us!” We decide that that’s exactly what happened. Everyone loves us. I love you, man.

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