Joel Chasnoff - The 188th Crybaby Brigade - A Skinny Jewish Kid from Chicago Fights Hezbollah - A Memoir

If Dorit and I end up staying together for the long haul, there’s a good chance we’ll live in Israel one day—and I told Dorit that I could never live in Israel without first serving in the Israeli Army. Every Israeli gets drafted when he or she turns eighteen. If I lived in Israel without serving, I’d feel like a freeloader and an alien.

I’d assumed Dorit would be thrilled that I wanted to join the Israeli Army—especially because part of the reason I’d be going was her. Instead she tried to talk me out of it. “The Israelis you’ll meet in the army aren’t the lovey-dovey Israelis they send to your Jewish summer camp,” she warned. “Real Israelis are animals. They’ll eat you alive.”

When I told my father I wanted to join the Israeli Army, he slammed both hands on the table and yelled, “What?!”

It was April of my senior year of college, and we were sitting in an IHOP. Any time my dad wanted to discuss something important, he took me to breakfast at an IHOP. Past IHOP conversations included Where Your Mom and I Think You Should Go to College, and I Think Your Friend Neil Smokes Pot. Today, the final Sunday morning of spring break, we’d come to discuss Your Future.

For a few seconds, nobody spoke. From across the table, my father glared at me like I’d just announced that I was Republican. And Muslim. And gay. When he finally regained the power of speech, my father sputtered the only argument he could think of: “You realize if you move to Israel you’ll have to pay double taxes the rest of your life.”

“That’s not true,” I countered. “I went to the consulate—”

“Consulate?”

“The Israeli consulate in New York.”

“You went to the consulate?”

“To look into it.”

“How long have you been cooking this up?”

My dad and I have a complicated relationship. On the one hand, I worship him for his accomplishments. On the other hand, I resent these accomplishments because it’s impossible that I could ever achieve as much.

A quick look at my father’s intimidating curriculum vitae:

He was born in a Houston housing project and raised in a Podunk town called Bay City, Texas. By age twelve, he was an Eagle Scout; at fourteen, a lifeguard. He was valedictorian of his high school class and played Curly in Oklahoma! Senior year, he was voted Mr. Bay City High School. He then put himself through college and medical school and is currently one of the world’s leading experts on babies born addicted to cocaine. In 1986, he was a guest on Oprah.

In high school, if I had trouble falling asleep, I’d tiptoe downstairs to my dad’s office and read his yearbook. I’d stare at the photo of my father on the first page. With his buzz-cut hair and chiseled jaw, he looked like a prince. Then I’d read the caption—“Mr. Bay City High School, 1965”—and wonder what challenges I might overcome to achieve his level of greatness. I, too, wanted to be a self-made man. But how the hell was I supposed to pull myself up by my bootstraps when my ass was already strapped so firmly into the saddle?

“It’s not definite,” I hedged.

“What about acting, and comedy?” my father asked. It was an ironic thing for him to say. The last time we’d spoken about career plans, in December, I’d told my dad I wanted to be a comedian and actor, and he hadn’t been thrilled. “How in God’s name are you going to support yourself?” were his exact words. But compared to the Israeli Army, show business sounded as stable as med school.

“I’ll pursue comedy when I come back,” I said. “The comedy clubs will still be there in a year.”

My dad took out a pen. On a napkin, he wrote the word momentum. “Right now, your career’s headed in the right direction,” he said. “You’ve got momentum.”

He had a point. The previous fall, I’d begun touring college campuses with my stand-up comedy act. I’d just been cast as Dave the Wife Beater in an educational theater company that would perform in battered women’s shelters across Pennsylvania. And I was about to begin my second season with the Philadelphia Phillies as an on-field and in-the-stands performer in their new improv troupe. Not exactly Broadway, but the ball was rolling.

“But you know what happens if you go to Israel?” my dad asked.

I shook my head. My father drew a big X through momentum.

“Got it?”

So I moved to New York. I rented a “furnished garden studio,” as the Village Voice had called it, in a Brooklyn neighborhood of Hasidic Jews. The apartment was a dungeon. It came with a beat-up futon and a black-and-white TV. The kitchen sink belched rusty water in spurts. There was one window, but it was plastered over with cement. And all for only four hundred dollars a month.

To make ends meet, I temped at a trade magazine called Dressings and Sauces. “We’re the New Yorker of condiments,” the publisher, Bruce, explained to me my first day on the job.

“Neat,” I lied.

Nights, I pursued my plan to become an A-list comedy star. I figured this would take about a year. First, I’d do my act in the clubs. A couple of months later, around November, I’d land an agent. A few months after that, I’d book a spot on Letterman or Leno. Then in May, at the start of pilot season, a network scout would fly me to L.A., cast me in a sitcom, and I’d be set.

Four months after college graduation, I walked into New York’s most prestigious comedy club, the renowned Comic Strip, and signed up for the next available audition spot—a Monday night nine months later, in early June. Seinfeld, Sandler, and Rock had all started out at the Comic Strip, and rumor had it that once a comedian passed the Strip, he could work any club in the city. I was sure I’d pass my audition because like most beginning comics, I was pretty certain I was God’s gift to comedy. The way I saw it, the only difference between me and Jerry Seinfeld was not that his jokes were funnier, but that he had more of them: whereas Seinfeld could perform for an hour, I could do nine minutes.

You should’ve seen my audition. I killed. When the MC brought me offstage, the crowd went wild, cheering and whistling as I left the showroom.

Around eleven, an emaciated man with a black mustache appeared next to the bar. It was Lucien Hold—the legendary booker of the Comic Strip.

Lucien motioned me into his office. The room was cramped, his desk littered with Chinese take-out containers. My heart pounding, I sat on a wooden stool next to the door.

“So, Joel,” he said in a raspy voice. “You said onstage that you’re from Chicago. Is that true?”

“Yes, sir,” I said.

“In your opening bit, you talked about how people in Chicago are nicer than people in New York.”

“That’s right.”

“Something about how, in Chicago, people will actually say ‘Excuse me’ when they run into you with their cars.”

“Exactly,” I said, beaming. I was proud that he’d remembered my joke.

Lucien shook his head. “Nothing original there. Everyone knows New Yorkers are tough. Then you did a bit about Wheel of Fortune in China. Not an ounce of truth in that joke. Soon as I heard it, I knew you were amateur.”

“But people laughed,” I said, my heart sinking.

Lucien pulled a folded-up piece of paper from his pocket. “This is my roster,” he said. “I’ve got three hundred comics on here. Most are white guys with dark hair, like you. Now, if you were black, or a woman, or gay—are you gay?”

I shook my head. For the first time in my life, I was genuinely disappointed I wasn’t gay.

“If you were gay, maybe I’d pass you. But if you’re a white guy with dark hair, you need to show me something original. Talk about your family. Every comic who’s made it big talks about his family.”