Party of One: A Memoir in 21 Songs - Dave Holmes Page 0,84

words to a thing that already doesn’t make any sense. I did it again the exact same way and he said “Perfect!” and I got a callback. I think Alfonso Ribeiro went on to book that job.

Once upon a time, I got a call from my manager. I was new to Los Angeles, I was new to having a manager and going out on auditions, I was just new. He said: “NBC wants to have a meeting with you now. Now! Go there now!” Of course this is happening, I thought. This is how it’s going to happen. I am in Los Angeles and I am going to be a STAR. “There’s a new reality show they want you to host, and they’re not telling me anything about it, but you need to get there now.”

So I went and had a very nice lunch with some guys who at least pretended to be very nice people. We talked, and they said, “We have a new reality dating show with a twist, and we can’t tell you what the twist is, but there is an element that you possess that is right in line with the concept of the show. We’d like you to consider hosting it.” This was in the months after the first season of Joe Millionaire, so every network had a reality dating show and every reality dating show had a twist. I said yes, yes of course I would.

The show’s twist is that it will be a funny show, is what I told myself. The thing that I possess that makes me perfect for this show is that I’m funny. Now, nobody had told me this. Nobody said anything remotely like this in the meeting or in any of the phone calls I had with my manager. I just decided that it was true, and so it became true. I rolled open the sunroof on my Jeep Liberty, turned up the first Phantom Planet album as loudly as I could without compromising sound quality, and drove back to my tiny one-bedroom in the Miracle Mile. On the way, I passed the line for the Tonight Show, all those people in pantsuits and golf shirts standing around all day for the chance to see Jay Leno up close. “See you all soon,” I said. I honked. I waved. I was ready.

I was a real asshole.

I had been warned that they had also been talking to “a name,” and that this name was interested but might not take the job. If the name didn’t take it, then it was mine. They didn’t say who the name was, and I didn’t push it. There is always a name. There is always someone who has had a successful run on a sitcom who would be happy to swoop in on your job and slum for a steady paycheck, and that’s the way it goes. But sometimes they don’t. Sometimes they go back to counting their money or designing their line of casual separates for QVC, and you get the gig. You never know what’s going to happen.

I did a little bit of digging and I found out that for this show, the name was Kathy Griffin. Great, I thought. She’s funny. Like me. She’d be a good choice for this show whose twist is that it’s funny, which again is a thing that nobody had ever actually said to me at any time. I would be happy to lose this gig to a Kathy Griffin. We had a history, after all.

When I actually did lose the gig to a Kathy Griffin, I was less happy than I had predicted, but still, NBC had called. NBC thought I was funny, and I knew that because I had hypnotized myself into believing it. Things would work out. Back to the drawing board.

A couple of months later, I swung by my place in the middle of the day to make myself some lunch and watch Passions, a show that you needed to watch for about five minutes a year, because they were at the same party they were at last month, holding the same birth certificate, and swearing they’ll tell everyone you bastard, dammit, they will. As I pressed a slice of bread onto the top of a ham sandwich, I heard the siren call that is Kathy Griffin’s speaking voice in the unmistakable boom of a network promo. I ran to the TV to see a teaser for the show I nearly booked,