Once We Were Starving Artists | Episode 21

Let's talk about when we were poor. Give me this. I went to a little bakery and I bought a bag of day old bagels and a cup of cream cheese. I was living at the Empire Hotel in a very small room and it had no refrigeration. So I kept the cream cheese. It was in January. I kept the cream cheese on the windowsill and I tied a shoelace to the bag of bagels and tied them to my radiator and hung them out the window and closed the window because it was cold. But that was my refrigerator because I hung my food outside the window. I'm glad a pigeon didn't come for that cheese or the bag. Yeah, I was going to say pigeon shit bagels my favorite. I still serve them at parties. Once we were spacemen. I tend to play weird people. Usually aliens and robots and things that don't have romance. I once didn't get a job where they were looking for a Nathan Fillion type. Once we were spacemen. Once we were spacemen. Alan. Ladies and gentlemen welcome back to another episode of once we were spacemen. Yeah, my space was vast. Oh, it was so vast. And it was expanding at all times. So when we were spacemen, we were adrift. Adrift looking at you wondering where are you? Do you see me? We on Friday nights at eight, but even then we met and now we're still spacemen. I had started. God, it started good. And then we got a little like you had a little remorse in there. Like you were sad about the memory. Oh, we were canceled. Yeah, I run once we got canceled. I got, yeah, I was still lost in space. And then yeah, we're here now. I remember, do you remember where you were when we were canceled on Firefly? I was on the bridge. That's where we all were. We were doing that one last episode where it was snowing. We're in the snow. But the announcement, like when they came and said, OK, look, we're canceled. And then we kept going. Yeah, we had a few days left of the episode to finish. So they came in and announced that we were canceled and said, we're just going to wrap it up tonight. Everybody go home and we're going to start fresh tomorrow. Oh, that was that that scene? Yeah. And I thought this is going to be the absolute worst. This is going to be so unfun. And I came back to work the following day and I was wrong. It was like everybody was determined to squeeze every last ounce of joy out of that experience. That they could. Yeah, it was great. I mean, it wasn't like what? This is fun. It was just we were just relished. We cherish. Yes. Yeah, we were cherishing and relishing at the same time. Yeah, so much ish ing. And you were cracking us all up with that. That it's in the outtakes of everybody who's seen it. Who's a fan of Firefly. I was seeing the outtakes where we're going around in the circles. It was such a sad episode and we were goofing around. It was fun. It was a fun last bit. But it was, you know, it was something that had been coming for a while. It didn't hit me till later. Being canceled. I mean, canceled was a dirty word in my vocabulary for a period of time. Mother canceled. I remember you always said that. And then it became funny. And then, you know, I kind of get on board with it and you know, I mean, there it is. It's it's canceled. And and then then it was the butt of the joke. I just remembered being canceled. It got funny after a while. Once you kind of eased into it. Yeah. You just had to. I mean, everybody gets panicked, you know, when you're canceled. Well, it's just like everything and enacting every job that ends. You worry you're never going to have another job again. So you have that fear. But then you're also leaving a very specific job, not just job and employment. We were leaving a very specific job that had so much of a family feel. It didn't make sense to us. You know, it felt like such a good show. We were it brought us closer together. We love the show so much. It was tough to understand. But there were other shows at the same time that that was going on with. They canceled Family Guy. They canceled Arrested Development. Like it was a time where a lot of things, it didn't matter if it was good or not. It could just be canceled. Yeah. And we were one of those. Yeah, it's true. That's very true. Alan. Yes. What's good? What's good? That's the quite what's good. Yeah, Alan. Hey, buddy. I haven't seen you in a little bit. What's good? I'll tell you what's good, man. This puppy, this puppy I got that Chris and I got. It was just like the last thing we ever needed and wanted. I mean, we wanted we not. Yeah, but we saw a picture of when we were. Chris and I were texting back and forth all the time, just sending each other rescue dogs on Instagram. And it was Chris's birthday was coming up. So I was kind of thinking, yeah, maybe, maybe, maybe. And then it got it was kind of like we were back and forth and back and forth. And it got kind of skin to a fever pitch. And we sat down and went, OK, calm it down. Hose it off. This is getting too much. We are about to move to a whole new city. We can't bring a dog into this. We've got two dogs already. You can't have three. And we got this is let's just let's just wait. Take a beat. We'll adopt a dog when we get to New York. And I think two days later, we adopted Maximus. Once you have two dogs, what's the difference for three dogs? It's a big difference. It's a really big difference when I walk these dogs, especially because he's a puppy. He doesn't know anything about the world. And people who have humans that they have as babies and children, they know what this is like. They don't know anything about anything. And it's funny because they're so stupid. But at the same time, you've got to teach them everything. So that's not just like they're the butt of the joke all the time. They're also very sweet and cute. Let my dog ate sand because it didn't know. And then it had poop that had sand. It had like half poop, half sand. I'm glad everybody could just visualize that with me. Half poop, half sand. See it with me now. Some dogs poop in sandboxes. Mine brings its own sandbox with it. Open is pooper. But man, he's the greatest. He's such a great life in our house. And my middle dog, Aunt Clara, she's 14. But she's just been sort of laying around for the last 10 years. She does a lot of laying around. And now that he's here, she has gotten active and she's so much more active. Her hips are moving a lot more because she kind of humps them a lot. But you know what? She's in her she's older and she's getting hers when she can. He's going to have a huge therapy bill because he's like, when I was young, my aunt humped the hell. This bump right here is a hump mark because she humps a lot. And we have to we're we're going to have to medicate her on that one. What I'm hearing is the new dog is a handful but has energized your household. Yes, brought a lot of sex into the house. A lot of youth energy, which is a lot of playfulness. And then on the K9 level, it's a lot of sex. Yeah, because he humps. He has a big stuffed animal that he humps and he just lays his two front legs down and then his bottom his we come long bottom. He's got his many names, all of our dogs have many names, but he just his back end is just humping. And I think he learned that from Aunt Clara. My aunt taught me this. Get it. Get it. But he likes him girl, thick because he won't he won't do it on little stuffed animals. You got to give him a big stuffed animal. Then he's like, that's it. I remember Jule had a dog that humped a stuffed animal so much that it threw out her back and the vet said, you got to put that animal away. The stuffed animal, you got to put that toy. Good. I thought you were saying that. It's time for your dog to be put down. I realized how that sounded. Yeah, I luckily he still has a lot of youth in his back. And I'm hoping he grows out of this humpness. I mean, I know Clara hasn't. She's grown into it weirdly. But anyway, that's what's good is Maximus long bottom. He's bringing you some joy. He's bringing us a lot of joy and he's keeping us on our toes and we really have to who he's a lot of work to. But, you know, we've got him for life now for as long as his life is, which is hopefully going to be the very long. You've got some news received a text. I didn't text you back, but you said we sold the house. And you're moving now. You're in New York right now. No, I mean, we're I got to put now I got to put things in boxes. Oh, you're at that stage. Yeah, we're boxing. Well, we boxed a lot of it. And now we boxed all the stuff that you have to get out of your house so that when people come over to your house, they don't go, what a cluttered mess. We got rid of all of the clutter and that's boxed. And now we've got to get rid of the big stuff that's left. The respectable furnishings. Can I give you some moving advice? Yes. Is this going to be emotional advice or is this advice on moving? This is advice on moving. OK, good. OK. Well, OK, I'm hoping for moving story, but go on. For every room have a master box. Kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, master box, have a master box. The master box is like when we get to New York, you open this box and you unload this one box and the bathroom is now functional. The kitchen is now functional. The bedroom is now functional. Oh, because the master box, right? So you don't have to look for like, oh, where are the pillowcases? I don't know where the how come we don't have everything you need to make your bed an alarm clock, a lamp, that kind of thing. The sheets, the blankets, everything to make that bed functional. You can sleep in the bedroom, everything to make the bathroom functional, everything to make the kitchen select. Oh, let's stop and have a bite to eat. Where's the cutlery? Where's that? No, it's too nice, too forks, too pots, too pans. Like everything in one box just to make it. Now the kitchen works before you have to unload everything. Oh, that's good. Great. That is very good advice. It's weird. Master box is and Claire is nicknamed for her vagina. Because she's been masturbating. That's no, I get I know you don't have to explain. I don't need to explain it. You don't have to. Yeah, because that's yeah, I got that. But that is good advice for moving. Yes. And then I would say like, wrap it with like red tape. So like, you know, there's the master box and give me that. That's good, too. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've got some good, good colored tapes, too. Fantastic. Great. That's my that is my advice to you. Congratulations. I thought I thought for a minute you weren't going to sell the LA house. So did I, you know, it just happened. It all happened the way it happened. And now here it is. I think I'm probably going to be back to LA, you know, I've left before. I had an apartment here. The first time I moved here was in 2000. And I had an apartment over on Hollywood Boulevard. And I lived in this one bedroom apartment and the 9-11 happened. And I was in New York and my girlfriend at the time still lived in LA. And I was talking to her and she said, things are crazy here. People are stealing American flags from one another because there's no more American flags to buy. And so people have been stealing them from my neighborhood so they can put them up and they can be patriotic. And I said, I think LA is a stupid place. I'm not going to live there anymore. And I called a moving company and said, go to my next door neighbor. He said, this address, just the next one, it was an apartment like one of those small Spanish, like has five apartments in it. Yeah. And they went and got the key from him. And I said, everything you see in that apartment, put it in your truck, bring it to me. This address in New York and they did. So I had two apartments for the stuff in my little one bedroom apartment in New York in Hell's Kitchen. And then we got Firefly. Or I got Firefly. We did. Firefly was happening. It was like, it's time to move back. And remember when I moved into Venice, I didn't bring anything because I was like, I'm not I just got it. That I'm not. I'm just going to be in LA for a minute while I do this thing. Right. Yeah. You kept your apartment in New York for a while. Yeah. Yep. I kept it. I had a great. I have one of those rent controlled numbers that mom Donnie is trying to bring back. Dreaming. Mine was illegal. It was an illegal sublet, but that's 50 percent of what's going on in New York is under the table. I know they like to get under the table thing. And you know, you say, come on, you can give them, you know, Greece, Greece to Wales. I would almost be sad about the prospect of you moving back to New York. If it wasn't for the fact that I see you more than ever now that we're doing this podcast, I agree, man. It's nice. We see each other not just on, you know, line, but we see each other in person. And not just it's usually cons and things that we have to see each other or things like that or vacations. Nathan will plan a vacation with his friends just so everybody knows. I don't know if you have friends like that where he'll be like, hey, I'm going to rent a big house that's really nice in Hawaii. And then I'm going to invite all my friends to come and then he hosts you in the nicest place in Hawaii. How nice you're wondering so nice that when you go on to the Netflix in the house to like, you know, put your Netflix account in so you can watch a thing or show a thing, you're having to go Ben Affleck's Netflix. Margot Robbie's Netflix. Name drop. The house was in there. Was it was it just in Timberlake or Name drop. Somebody else was in there, too. It was a star studded list of Netflix accounts in there that we graciously, I think we can't we erased all those sign ins. Yes, deleted those sign ins for them. I may have kept Margot Robbie's. I just like to see what she sees. She loves to watch documentaries, which is I wish I had something better than that. She loved. I just don't know. Watch Netflix that much. I don't know what's on there. How old were you when you moved to New York the first time? Twenty two. Twenty two. That's how old I was when I moved to New York. And then you're in New York. You were attending Juilliard. How did you arrange like live like where do you live and all that? How did you find a place? Like did you move there blind? Right. That was tough back then. That wasn't easy. It would have been harder for you. It was weird. Yeah, because going into school, you have a buffer. You have a home that they help you because I had to live in a dorm. So I had to I'm I'm in I live in Lincoln Center, which is an interesting place to live. Not great. I mean, it's OK. I was right there in that neighborhood. I was blocks away from you. So wild. Yeah. Yeah. So I had that and like I was able to get bank accounts because I had a school. But that was different back then. That was another thing I couldn't get a bank account. I'd yeah, first of all, I was running out of money. I was living in New York. They were paying me one life to live was paying me, but I wasn't on the air yet. But no one was like calling me saying, hey, there's a paycheck here waiting for you. I just so finally I asked and I had like all these backed up paychecks because I had to tell them my last 20 bucks. I refused to spend it. Let's talk about when we were poor. I went to a little bakery and I bought a bag of day old bagels and a cup of cream cheese. I was living at the Empire Hotel in a very small room and it had no refrigeration. So I kept the cream cheese. It was in January. I kept the cream cheese on the window sill and I tied a shoelace to the bag of bagels and tied them to my radiator and hung them out the window and close the window because it was cold. But that was my refrigerator. I hung my food outside the window. I'm glad a pigeon didn't come for that cheese or the bag. Yeah, I was going to say pigeon shit bagels. My favorite. I feel silver in the party. Like I was down to my last 20 bucks and I refused to spend it. I was going to an acting coach on the lower east side. I walked instead of spending money on a subway, which was only a dollar 25. I walked in January. I was losing weight. The coach was looking at me saying, do you want something to eat? I said, yeah, yes, please. She would feed me every day. Do you have any any condiments like pigeon shit? I just I'm missing. I've got a taste for it now. My checks were backing up at the office, but no one was calling me to tell me. And I didn't have the wherewithal to say, hey, I don't have any money. And then the bank wouldn't accept my Canadian identification. Yeah, I didn't have any New York identification. So I was I was kind of like, I got these checks and now I can't even cash them. I can't. What? Yeah, it was and then finding an apartment. There were listings. There were real estate people that would help you, but the cost was exorbitant. Yeah, you have to pay 15 percent of the annual. Yes, you had your first, your last and they pay this kind of thing. I thought, oh, my God, there's so much money for this little place. So for those people who aren't math like me, who's told a great math guy, if you had a thousand dollars a month, that's twelve thousand dollars. And then you'd have to pay 15 percent of that. You figure it out, math guys. We'll check your your. I couldn't I couldn't just finding a place to live was to I eventually found one. I found out later it was an illegal sublet that I wasn't allowed to rent this place. Oh, shit. I was subletting it from a guy who was illegally subletting it. Now, he said to me, hey, is it cool if I leave some of my I'm moving with my girlfriend is it cool if I leave some of my furniture here? I said, yep, because I had no furniture. So I had a couch, a coffee table. He left his TV, it was free cable in the building and he left a bed. So I had everything I needed and I had a little bit of stuff for my kitchen to set it up. But then eventually he came back and said, OK, we got a spare room and I'm going to take all the stuff. I was like, thanks. So I've been living in New York for a few months now and now I still have no furniture. It was. I was. But you but you had a girlfriend, didn't you? I eventually I dated some. Yes, I guess that. But that when you were dating my girlfriend, my dream girlfriend. Why didn't you just date your dream girlfriend's house? My dream girlfriend's house. Well, the girlfriend that you're referring to lived in Los Angeles. My God. Yeah. I feel like I don't even know her. That would be accurate. That would be accurate. Don't even know her name. Doesn't matter. Well. But that was so that was me scraping by when I first came up to New York. So but you had a place to stay. It's getting there, buddy. There's no skating. That is just grinding. That's grinding it out. That's body felt. I mean, I was a kid. I didn't know any better. If you're going to suffer and sleep on the floor, right, please do it when you're 22. Yeah, because you heal faster. The bed bugs, the bed bug bites that you got from the borrowed mattress from some random illegal sublet guy. In my mind, I wonder sometimes if I had if I had walked into Harry's burritos and said, hey, Alan, my name is Nathan, you don't know yet. But we're going to be good buddies. You and I, we're going to in the future, we're going to work together. We're going to be good buddies. What can you say? Those weren't years wasted. Our paths were crossing. We were feet away from each other. Yeah, it's wild. Wow, that would have been good to hang out. It would have been great. Oh, oh, but that's that thing. Don't you know, like if you could take what you know now back in the day, you know, you know, it is. Well, I came across a journal packing of me at my lowest, my most impoverished. I want you to read a page or two of that journal in the next podcast. OK. I mean, I don't know if I can. OK, maybe I'll be able to find a little piece of it. That's good because I was depressed, man. I'm you know, I was an emotional wreck, but I was living in an apartment on 10th Avenue, most apartment buildings, and it's part of heating gets paid for in Manhattan. That's sort of that's one of the laws. But somehow the building that I lived in was not zoned for that. And we had these weird heaters in the walls that didn't work during the winter. And it was a freezing cold winter. And I was freezing cold and I had no money. It was during the period where I was trying to become an actor that I didn't have a job and I would just be an actor. And it wasn't working. I had put in unemployment from my waiting job, which all the waiters made fun of me for. And I found out later behind my back when they finally got back to seeing me, give me like, let's just say this in front of you to your front. And I heard that the manager would always make fun of me, the guy who fired me. Whatever, Ron, whatever, Ron. So I had no money. I had done a play in Philadelphia. I come back. I was waiting for the play to find a theater. It didn't look like it was going to get a theater. I was waiting for any kind of unemployment. I had a bunch of checks that once it went through, I would have a bunch of unemployment money, but I didn't have it. I had a roommate that her and I did not get along and I was juggling bills. Like she would give me rent money and I would pay it on other things. Oh, it was awful. Like I would pay my electric bill. I would put my rent check in the electric and fill it out to my landlord and send it into the electric company. And then they would go, this is the wrong check. Oh, my gosh, I'm so sorry. Did I send you the wrong? I meant also I sent him the wrong thing, too. So I would buy. I was buying any amount of time I could. I was just trying to. That's stressful. Days just go in days. And I was eating chili that my parents, when I went to when I went to school, they would send me cans of Wolf Brand chili, which is disgusting. People who know this chili, it looks like dog food when it comes out of the can. And I wouldn't eat it. It was gross, but I saved it. And so I had cans and cans of this chili and I broke into it. So I would just I had a chili diet of I would buy Fritos and I would put Fritos in the chili and eat it. You must have smelled great. I know. And I lost so much weight. I looked really terrible. And that's when this journal entry is I'm freezing in my room. I had a small heater that I could put under my desk and it would put out just enough heat to heat my legs. And it would kind of come up over my body, but it was freezing. It was just like there was no windows in the place. It just draft would go through it. That was right before I got my last job. I had to get one more job before. Did I tell this story? My one more job. So the play Bunny Bunny, which was the first play I ever did, I was waiting for it to get a theater. And I was called and told by the producers, we can't get a theater. It's like there's only so many theaters in New York. It's like planes that are waiting to find a landing strip. So some planes get to go ahead and some don't. So I was called until we're going to have to wait till next theater season to get a theater. So we're sorry, Alan. I know you were hoping to get a job, but you need to start looking for another job. And so everything I've been trying to push everything off to that is now not going to happen. So I went downstairs and in the bottom floor of my building was a trans bar and it was called. I thought it was called Carlos to and right next door was called was Carlos. It changed names a lot. It was people. A lot of drugs went through there. A lot of I think a lot of sex stuff went. I know a lot of sex stuff happened in there. Cops raided at one time. But like for as long as I lived at this place and I lived in it for a few years, there would be in the mornings when I was going to school still, there would be limousines parked out in front of it. Like limousines and this dive bar did never make sense because we would always be like, there's drugs going on. My roommate at the time, Jamon, we're like this told drug scene. And then one night cops had raided it anyway. They renamed themselves Carlos to or in my journal, it was called something else. It was called I'll find it in my journal. But I can't find anything about this. It was on 10th Avenue between 54th and 55th. If you know the trans scene at that time in 96, 97, everybody I talked to in New York, they're like, oh, I used to love those. But which one? Which one did you work at? Because I went down, I sat down, had a drink there and the guy behind the bar was like, I need a bartender. And I said, I need a job. And he gave me a job. Oh, I worked there for one night because it was such a train wreck. I only work one night. What kind of a bartender were you? I had been a Mexican food bartender in Texas. It like a really busy bar, you know, where it's like four and five people deep. But you, you, you, you and then lots of margaritas. Oh, yeah, yeah, I was a term and Burnham baby. I was a I would, you know, a lot of frozen drinks. Just everything. I didn't know this Alan. Yeah, I was a bartender in Pennsylvania. When I was auditioning for Juilliard, I was staying in this little town in Pennsylvania, Milford. Should this be the should this be the let's get to know you better segment that I'm a bartender? Yeah, I think it's more important for you to know that I was a bartender at a trans bar for a night. This is all part of it. Getting to know you. Let's do this. Oh, let's do the song. I know you and you know me. Let's get to know you better. Go, Alan. You were a bartender. Let's talk about your cocktail adventures. So this night at not Carlos, too, there was a guy he was he was he was in makeup and he had his hair was done, but he just wore like a ratty t-shirt and sweatpants. And I really wish I remember his name, probably their name. But at that time in 97, it was his name. I remember he had crust around his nostrils. His nostrils were really dry and crusty. So I was like, oh, he does lots of cocaine. That's what I remember thinking. And he was going on and on and he had this accent and he was like, this is awful. This is my sixth shift. It's terrible. I used to. I believe this is where I ended up. It used to be a tightrope walker in the circus. What for me looking off into the distance? I was in the circus for years. Tightrope walking, swallowed fire for a little while. That's different things. This is the different time in a song. We're coming. It's like, oh, I used to dance to this in La Cajoffe when I was in Paris. I did that for a year and a half. Oh, you know, I'm actually I have a great swath of land in Africa, but I won't let anybody hunt zebras on it. It used to be a zebra hunting lease, but I refused to allow them to do that anymore because I love zebras and I don't want them to die. And he would go on all these stores. I'm like, uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh. And then halfway through the shift, he's like, oh, look, and he pulled out these pictures. And one of those little anyway, it's him on a tightrope with the with the bar. You're like the balance bar. I was like, I'm so fat in this picture. Look at me. I was stoned. Like, you can see how stoned I was. My eyes are just flits and pictures of him from La Cajoffe. Oh, I didn't see anything. The one-horn. But everything he said was like, you got it. You're telling the truth. What a character. He was wild. I thought that night I was like, if I want to write a book, I keep this job because I can just write about this place. There was Chichi the bitch. That's what she asked people to call her. And she was Filipino and she was trans sitting at the bar and she she fancied me. And she wanted me to take her duck hunting and she would go fetch the ducks for me. And there was this guy, this depressing guy who was like, straight kind of guy. We're like, talk like this. Like, hey, Alan, I give my drinks for free so you can give me my drinks for free. And then the other guy would go and don't give him anything for free. He doesn't work here. He doesn't. And he's like, I work. It's not telling him that I work here. I tell him I do jobs here and he's I can't. I don't know what to say, man. I can't get anything from free. And he go, look, just so you know, I'm not gay. Okay, I'm not gay. I'm just I work here. That's why I'm here and I get my drinks for free. And as the evening went on and as he drank more, Chichi the bitch moved over to his lap, his hands like up her skirt, like finding home. There was some other, oh, there was a couple of these old black dudes. There was a pool table in the back, very untransmary. I imagine I don't know, but like, it's like it, like it looks like a roadhouse bar in Texas pool table warped with crappy sticks. And these two old black guys back there drinking vodka and milk. And they just kept getting vodka and milk. And my girl, I was dating an actress at the time who was on Broadway. And she said, I'm going to bring the cast by to come see you at this bar. Everybody loves dive bars. And they want to come to you. I was like, no, no, no, no, no, you cannot do that. This is not that kind of dive bar. It's not that kind of dive bar. This is the kind of dive bar that's depressing. Like they taught me how to pour the cheap vodka into the absolute bottle because absolute was the expensive vodka. Right. Wow. Which is not a great vodka. And when I, you know, I don't think that's a great, but anyway, I'm not a sponsor, obviously. And everything was just dirty and it just was not good. Somebody stole all my tips. Fuck anyway. But it was pre cell phone days. So there's no way to get her to know that after the show don't come. So she brought in her cast, a few of the cast members, but one of the people she brought was this fantastic actress who was making her Broadway debut. Her name was Alice and Janney. Don't know what happened to her. Alice and Janney. Namedron. And so I'm there with Chichi the bitch and this guy doing LaCajá phone numbers and the two guys in the back and I'm making the shittiest martinis with these desiccated little olives and giving them to Alice and Janney. And they're tipping me big and all of those tips got stolen. It stayed open till four in the flippin morning. And one of the reasons why nobody knows about it, who knows those bars is because it was a bridge and tunnel bar. It was right up 10th Avenue. You could come from Jersey. And this was not a bar that people that were trans or I don't know all the words, I don't know all the right words, but they weren't they weren't out. They were guys who were going to work nine to five had families at home and they would then like on their after they get done with work, put pantyhose over their unshaped legs. You know what I'm talking about? Like they're like putting their kid on like, I've got to get this is for me. And then this is the quickest place you could get out of the out of the Lincoln tunnel as you hit Carlos to or whatever the hell it was called. Anyway, here's the kicker to this night. This is incredible. Keep going. After the night, I was like, I can't work there again. I don't think I can work there again because it was dangerous. It was right on 10th Avenue. And we stayed up to 40. He's like, you're going to do it tomorrow night. It's also all my money was gone. He's like, you're you're going to be the only one here tomorrow night. And I was like, I don't feel comfortable being the only guy working here. And he said, there's a bat by the door. If anybody gives you any trouble, like, huh? And I yep, that's me. And the and there was another guy who worked there who kept coming and going, you're going to have to start wearing tank tops or no shirt at all. Because you've got a great physique and we need it. I'm like, oh, Jesus, man, I can't. I can't. Anyway, that next day, I got a call from the producer of Bunny Bunny. And he said, we got the Lucille Lortel Theatre. We're putting the play on and it's coming. It's going to be soon. So I didn't need the job anymore. And then this is what's crazy is that play did so well for me. Like I did 20 is that role I've told you about. I did 20 roles in the play. So I got this really flashy to just like a come on as one role. He said French person that I come on is this woman who is very upset. It was when I'd come on as a guy, you really heavy, like big fat suit on with no thumbs and he's like, I got no eye because I used to work the lathe. And then I'd be this other character and this other character. So I did 20 something roles in that play and it got a lot of notice. And at the end of that year, 1997, they give away two awards. The Clarence Derwent awards, the cash prize. You get to the two best New York debuts in New York Theatre. And one man and one woman get that award. And I got it. And I got it with Alice and Janney. It's like just months before I was serving her drinks at whatever the name was. Yeah, pretty crazy, right? I don't. And it's sad because her career hasn't done well. I mean, I'm doing good. But in that moment, we were both on top. You know, actually when I bartended, I've had these experiences in my life where things have gone in slow motion and it's like my body going, something has changed. You're in a place where maybe you didn't plan to go down this road. And that happened at Carlos too, that night at one point where the main guy was trying to remember the steps from La Cajoffe. There was a song came on, he was trying to do them. And then and then while he was doing that, I was like looking around and the guy who kept saying everything's free. He had his hand up, chee chee, the bitch's skirt. And there was a guy down at the end of the bar who was this guy who was creepy out of color on and he just went, you're hot. He wouldn't say anything but you're hot, you're hot, you're hot, you're hot. And anyway, a Clef Palate commercial came on for helping kids in the foreign country on a TV. And the guy started screaming, who was doing the La Cajoffe. And it was just like everything went, my girlfriend was there and Alice and Janney's there. And it was like, oh, like I am not what what's happened. How am I here? What is happening? And the same thing happened when I was bartending in Pennsylvania. It was before I had already auditioned for Juilliard, but I hadn't gotten in. And this was my only hope. So in Pennsylvania, I was bartending and it was a busy night. It was like the snow had melted enough. It was wintertime snow melted enough that all the hill people came down. There's a lot of hill people and this guy on Saturday nights would play the piano or the keyboard and he would get people to give him song names to play. And they were he was bad. I mean, he was bad. I thought he was bad. Everybody did, I think, because like he would have to go you at that table. What do you want to hear? And they'd be like, try not to look at him. And he's like, yeah, in the red. And I mean, it's a small room and they're like, I don't know. They'd be like, how about some Michael Jackson? You're like, no, don't do that. And then. But he was playing piano man. And he got to that one part in the song where he goes, John at the bar is a friend of mine is the lyric. And he said, Al at the bar is a friend of mine. He gets me my drinks for free. And he points to me and everybody looks at me and I realized, oh, I do give him his drinks for free. He drinks Molson and he gets them for free. And he's quick with a joke or a lie to your smoke. And there was a couple of like hill folk that pulled out cigarettes because it was you smoked in bars back then. But there's some place that he'd rather be. He says, can I believe this is killing me as the smile ran away from his face? Because I'm shocked that that could be a booist. And it was like everything went. Oh, my God, you were living the lyrics to that song. You were literally like when lyrics speak to somebody, they were literally speaking to you. Oh, my goodness. I got tears in my eyes. It was so scary because I didn't. I had auditioned for school, but I hadn't heard back yet. So I was in this and I was in a relationship that was terrible. I was living with this girl who loved cheating on me. And she she loved some other person or at least sex with them. And I was in this frozen land and it sounds like limbo. It was really bad. And I stayed after I would lock up afterwards and I'd have to put all the money in a bag and then I would close up and do all this stuff. And then there was another bar underneath that bar, like down. There was a sports bar and I would have to give my receipts to them. And that place was like dangerous. People fought in there all the time. And it was like, that's what you did in that town. You would everybody fist fight. It was dangerous for me like they would want to kind of anyway. I stayed upstairs for a while that night with a bottle of Glen Levitt. I just pulled it off the shelf and sat it down just trying to like I have gone. I'm I've somehow I've turned the corner and I'm not. This is not where I'm supposed to be. Anyway, incredible, Alan, to hear the parts of the journey that because because your career and everything you do, it's big, it's flashy. You're a tremendous success. But it's wonderful, I think, for people to hear the part about the struggle, the part about the uncertainty, the part about you have to love it. If you're going to if you're going to do it, you have to love it. And this is this is evident right now, right here. Yeah, that was even before it's stopping so long. Gosh, yeah, there's so many places along the journey. That are a struggle, you know, just to get to the next because that was even before school, which was its own struggle. And then getting out of school is its own struggle. And then every, you know, that's something you might not have known about me there. What an incredible story. Crazy, right? Oh, Greenhorns. That's what it was called Greenhorns, which is pretty good of a name, I guess. They're green and they're horny. But you said you'd had bartended before in Texas. Yeah, yeah. Was that your head? You received any formal bartending training? No, but I had to be a good bartender in Texas because that was a real high volume. Can you make a gimlet? I used to be able to. OK, I did that more when I worked in Pennsylvania, gimlets and old fashions and all of that shit. How many times have you been a bartender? I was once in Pennsylvania and once in Texas. And then that one day in New York City. That's it. You know, my brother was a bartender when we were working our way through university. He made money hand over fist. Yeah, it's good. You drink a lot. I mean, I did. That was how I got through it. I guess that's one of the dangers of that. Yeah, it's it's a fun. It's a great job, especially if you're waiting tables like when you're waiting tables because I started waiting and then I moved up to bartender. You are their servant. But a bartender, you hope for their favor. It's a different relationship. It is because you have an illicit beverage. You have got something they want now. Yeah, you're like a minor drug dealer. And so they give you respect. And if you're cool with them and they're cool with you, they feel like they're like you have the ability to, you know, the difference between bring me my food and I need a drink. Yeah. Well, sometimes they're like, I need food and it was bad for you. I need a drink. You'd be like, all right, take it easy, old guy. Wow. Maybe I'll give you one. Maybe I won't. Got to be nice. So, Nathan, what is something I don't know about you? Alan, I don't know if you know how cool I'm not. Oh, but I have like a plethora of stories where it's like incredibly embarrassing moments or like in those moments of if only you could do this really cool thing right here, right now, everything would work out just great. Those moments, they seem to blow up in my face a little bit. So I was going to tell you today about the time I was never very good with girls. I just, I just wasn't good. Yeah. When I was in university, I was not a cool dude, but I had a very cool job. I met this fella. He owned a couple of double-decker buses. This is back in Edmonton, Alberta. And he would take you on a pub crawl. So you meet at this location, you get on the bus. Everybody gets a little wristband or a sticker of some kind. I take him to a bar, they get like specials on the drinks and we're there for about an hour. And then I gather everybody up and I put it back on the bus. I would do three different bars or clubs or pubs that the company had a deal with. And I would just facilitate the evening. I was there was a bus driver and there was me and I would entertain them on the bus. I would make sure they all get in the bar. If you know, some of the people weren't dancing, I come, let's go dance. Come on. Oh, you'd be perfect for that man. That was my job. That was my job. And one evening we did a lot of staggettes, a lot of bachelorette parties. All these ladies would get together. So it's it's it's me and a bunch of girls. And, you know, the whole idea was, you know, don't flirt with like one girl and be that guy. You want to flirt great. You got to flirt with them all equally. You have to be a host for everyone all in the evening. And I think the word is whore, not host. I tend to whore myself out to the stragglers, the ones on the edge. But you know, there's the ones in the center who are having a great bring the ones on the edge, bring them into the good time. That was my kind of thing that I would do. Just make sure everybody's having a great time. Cut to one evening, a bunch of girls on a bachelorette party come in and one of them happens to be a girl from my school, my university, who I had a tremendous crush on. I'd had a class with her where we'd never spoke. The class was over, but I would see her once in a while around school enough to say hello and say, hi, I knew her name. She knew mine. And here she is on this pub crawl and she's all with her friends and they're all having drinks and everything's all the stars are aligning and everything's working out really great and everybody's having fun. I'm making sure everybody's having fun and she's kind of looking at me with a different in a different light, you know, everything's fine. It's working out masterfully. One. Yes, I'd like. Yes, great. Wait, was she a straggler or was she in the center of the pack? She was in the center of the pack. But I think that ladies would see that when I pulled, you know, the stragglers in the date, they do, oh, that's really nice that he would do that. Such a nice. They was it was like adopting a puppy, you know, they go, oh, like that kind of thing. But like the puppy that has like a gimpy leg or broken tail. What? Yeah. That's kind of like my dog Max. This particular evening happened after a bunch of raining. The weather had been rainy. It wasn't raining the particular moment, but it was wet. It was all very wet outside. And I'm helping some girls jump onto the bus. I'm sitting right at the back door and here comes the crush and she does this little skip over a puddle and she kind of jumps up onto the bus and then loses her balance and starts falling backwards off of the bus. And we lock eyes. Time is moving slow for me. I go, I got this. I have a hold of the bar that you, you know, you kind of hang onto the railing bar as you get on the bus and I lurch out and I reach out because her hand is out towards me now. I reach out to grab her hand. I said, I'm going to snag that hand and I'm going to pull her right up onto the bus. It's going to be a moment. And I'm, and it's like I said, it was in things time slowed down. And you can just see in slow motion, imagine these two hands coming for each other just about to reach, but there's that moment of, oh, he's not going to make that. And then I just touch your fingertips and she falls bam on her ass in the puddle that she just skipped over. And it was deep. Eyes locked with me the entire time. She never, she never even looked at me again. She never once looked at me, spoke to me at all. I bet she was embarrassed. Well, of course she was. Yeah. I mean, she, you would let her down in totally, totally. I failed entirely. Yeah. Yeah, you failed her, but she was probably more like when she was like, I can't look. I bet she has a version of the story, which is like, and then the guy. But I fell too fast because I was truly a straggler in my heart. I'm sure that in her eyes, it's like, he could have saved me. He could have. I, yeah. And that was not the first nor was it the last time I embarrassed myself in a huge way. Did I ever tell you about the cocktail straw? I did. Do we save that for another thing? I was just going with this one. Cocktail straws will be my next embarrassing story. Okay. Cause I'm still absorbing this one. Bad poor girl. I'll never forget that look on her face. I had a similar, I had a, there was a girl in when I was in, I mean, elementary school, I know her name was, I mentioned her name in a firefly outtake. Patricia Grisanti. I'm a leg man from way back. Patricia Grisanti. When I was 13 years old, first year I had hair down there. If you know what I'm talking about. Remember? Yeah. I know this line. I was wondering, is that a real girl or she makes it? It was a real girl. But I mean, I was really young and she was, it was so elementary school. We took a field trip just at school. There was a creek behind the school and we walked around the creek and they pointed out tadpoles and things like that. And I was right behind Patricia Grisanti and she slipped and was about to go in the creek and I grabbed her from behind and pulled her up and saved her. And she just kept walking and never turned around and said, thank you. And I've wondered to this day, was she really slipping or was I just like in my own weird like, oh, she might slip and I just grabbed her. I don't know. I don't know. Maybe I just grabbed a girl. Was she saved or was she mugged? Yes, I don't know. I may have assaulted a girl when we were both in elementary school and I don't, I don't know what it was. She didn't give me the time of day either way. So she was definitely not a straggler. I was more of a outside of the. I wouldn't like to give you the funny guy in school. The funny guy in school goes to all the parties, but he gets the last girl. I don't, but he doesn't. He does not. He gets, he gets a girl much later. Girls don't want the funny guy unless he's like the good looking funny guy or like, you know, like the jock funny guy, you're not going to get like that weird funny guy until much later when women have been through the other guy and they're like, I'm tired of that. Oh, hey, this guy actually cares. You'll have your day. I'll have my day. Yeah. But it takes, the day takes a while to get there. But you know, it's here now. Things were down for you, Alan. You, you married your, your school crush. I did. I did. I did. I mean, it wasn't, it was a crush. I definitely had, I was, I was sweet on her, but I was dating somebody else. So I didn't, you know, it wasn't. It was better than a crush. It was pure and chased. I was just, I liked her and we, we had, I don't know that she realized at the same time that we were back in the day. She definitely didn't see me the way I saw her. Like we stole that boat. We stole a boat on Central Park. We were out, like our group of friends and I was like, Hey, I know how to steal a boat in Central Park. I figured it out this week, I think if you want to come and it was like two in the morning and she was like, hell yeah. And that's what I liked about her, that she was that person. They would be like, yep, let's go, let's go, let's go. I didn't have anybody else to do that with. Everybody else thought it was a bad idea, which, you know, maybe not a great idea, but the only person who wanted to do something wild with me was her. And when we stole it, we just borrowed it, you know, you're not going anywhere at Central Park. They locked up the oars. So we didn't have oars and I found this long two by four. So it was kind of like a gondola. Nice. As I was going, which is why I asked her to marry me on a gondola in Venice. So there was a lot of weird things that, you know, like, oh, coincidence. But when I was on that boat, gondoling her and she was like checking out like in the middle of the lake, she was, she was loving it and she was smiles and all that. In my mind, I'm putting a romantic cast over the whole thing. She was still in adventure land. It wasn't years later till she saw me, till she told me after a performance of Spamalot, she came and saw it with her boyfriend who I did not know was her boyfriend. I thought he was just her gay friend who was a dancer. She said, asked me what I was dating and I said, I don't date anybody in LA. It had been three years since I had a date. She goes, you could date anybody. I said, anybody. Cool. I'll date you. And she got flustered and changed the subject. And and then she let me know that that guy that I went to, just gone like, ah, it's just some gay friend was not in fact gay. And he was in fact her boyfriend. But you opened the door, I guess, at that point, if she hadn't thought about it as a possibility, I did. I opened the door and asked her boyfriend to leave. That was a bit of an exception. Could you go? Yeah. And it did. And after that moment, then we both knew where we stood. I had made a point to say, I like you as if I have a choice. And she had already said you can date anybody. So I knew that she valued me. Plus she'd seen me in a, when you see somebody in a play, you know, a good play like that, like Spamlet's a really fun time. When you get to show your stuff. Yeah. You get to show off and it looks, it looks a lot harder than it is from the audience. Anyway, Alan, that was, you're a romantic. Absolutely. You are a romantic, my friend. That's I am. Yeah. You are largely guided by your heart. Yeah. That's lucky. I think that's an easy thing to be like, I'm a poet and you live on the road and you don't like on the side of the road, not like going from down to down. Like, get out of here. You know, Alan, one of my goals for this podcast is I have such a wonderful time spending time with you always, always. I always have so much fun. Likewise. One of my goals is people getting to know you a little bit better, like in the way I know you. And I got to tell you, man, I learned a lot about you today that I did not know. This whole, a whole episode was that let's get to know you better. Yeah. Of Alan. Yeah. Wow. You know what? It's this move. There's a lot going on. There's some plumbing people who are supposed to come by. They didn't show up. There's a lot of emotions. Moving is among the top three most stressful things. You can do. I get it, man. I agree. It feels like it just seems like it shouldn't be, but it is the only comfort I will give you is that there will be a time when the move is over and it's all done. It's all behind you. It's just a transition. That's all. It's a transition. So yeah, there's some like time limits and a lot of work to do is a lot of work, but there will be a time. Yeah, transition is over. I'm looking forward to being, you know, we have a place, you know, to moving there. We, yeah, it's great that we were able to sell this when we did it backwards. Usually you sell the one you have and then you buy a new one. We went and found one first accidentally. I came across it when we were in New York and was like, oh, we have to have this. Can we please? By the way, yeah, I have a Christmas gift for you and in there is also a housewarming gift for your place in New York. So you're going to have to come and get this. I'm going to have to bring it to you before you leave. Oh, I have a gift for you too. I know you can't come get it because the car I gave you. Has broken down twice now. I know. I'm so sorry about this, Alan. You know what's sad was I was going to, before I gave it back, have it wrapped. You know, I was trying to think, how am I going to wrap this thing? Put a big bow on it. No, no, no. Wrap like how? Like a wrap wrap. Yeah, yeah. Were you ruin it or like, were you? Or you make it look like a sandwich or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Freshly painted because that's such an expensive prospect. Yeah, but it's a good gift. I think if it's done right or if I put flames on it, that would have also, I would have accepted that would have been really cool. I would like that if when your mother came to town, she was driving around with flames. That's how I thought it was. Think of your mom. Alan again, always always an amazing pleasure. Yeah, brother, you too, man. I learned so much about you today and I learned about you as well. We talked a lot about New York, which really brought me back. I was like that. What's interesting is I was introduced to you as the man who was dating my dream girl from afar. And to hear that you had these moments where you were in your first college, not feeling, I just assumed you always were dating everybody's dream girl. Oh, no, no, no, no. I was not, no. Yeah. I was a late bloomer, Alan. Shocking. I don't, it took me a while to kind of come into myself, you know. Wow. Nice. I'm still blooming. Something's growing. I don't know. It's a bloom. Might be a fungus. Fantastic job, Alan. Till next time. Cool. All right, brother. Oh my God. Thank you for listening. You just bless your heart. You know what? If you haven't yet, why don't you head on over to our Patreon? You're going to get some bonus content. That's extra content. They're longer episodes. There's more there. You know, it's better than less more. You also get a chance to get your hands on some incredible crap. The kinds you don't need to wash off after you're done. And if you love the show, please leave us a review and tell your friends. Once we were Spaceman is a collision 33 production. The hell that is. The show is produced by Michelle Chapman, Chavon Holman. Oh, yeah. And Josh Levy. I wear them jeans. He is of collision 33. It's all starting to make sense. It's edited and mixed and produced by resident recorders. So special thanks to Courtney Blomquist and Adam Townsend. Our theme music is done by Carlos Sosa, the groove line of Warren's guy. Yeah. And Joshua Moore. Our work is done by Lewis Jensen. Until next time. I swear to God, I love you. Humpness.