Gasping For Airtime: Two Years In the Trenches of Saturday Night Live

I ingested my first Klonopin tablet whereas status on the counter, considering that this can be most likely how drug addicts behave. I walked domestic to St. Mark’s position with a half-milligram capsule of Klonopin in my abdominal and a tablet bottle with fifty-nine extra in my pocket. by the point I reached my condominium, I felt sandbagged and groggy. the sensation of heaviness gave strategy to a primal exhaustion that hardly allowed me to take off my outfits. I lay right down to take a snooze and slept for 3 hours with out relocating. whilst I aroused from sleep, I lay completely nonetheless, a convention I had fallen into so i may time how lengthy it took for the typhoon clouds i'd hold round with me for the remainder of the day to roll into my chest. I waited for an hour and learned that the typhoon wasn’t coming. I wasn’t made from GASPING FOR AIRTIME 117 eggshells. i used to be human. I checked out my arms, my hands, my ft, my pores and skin to determine if any of it stricken me. I took my pulse persistently, and it was once continuously round sixty—the comparable as the other person who has simply woken up. It was once as though a person informed me that the ice was once thick adequate to stroll on, so I stepped out of my mattress with a renewed confidence that I wasn’t going to fall via and drown within the chilly water. I felt common, which for me was once not anything in need of euphoric. It was once Monday, and in a couple of hours i might need to pass as much as Lorne’s office and pitch rules to whichever host sat within the leather-based chair subsequent to Jim Downey. I had no rules and knew it didn’t topic. Weeks in the past I would’ve been up pacing my house racking my mind for ideas for the looming pitch assembly. I now knew higher. The pitch assembly wouldn’t commence until eventually after dusk. I didn’t care in regards to the pitch assembly; all I cared approximately used to be that I had felt general all evening lengthy. I carefully made my strategy to the bathe. I stood there and permit the new water run down my again, noting that cleaning soap used to be cleaning soap, towels have been towels, doorways have been doorways, they usually weren’t making me worried. As I dried myself I seemed within the replicate and spotted that i used to be ghastly skinny. “Good,” i assumed, “ ’cause I’m ravenous. ” I obtained dressed and walked around the road to St. Mark’s Café and ordered a 5:00 p. m. breakfast. I seemed round the 118 JAY MOHR restaurant and desired to hug every body in it. I paid the invoice and boarded the N/R subway to visit the office for the pitch assembly. It wasn’t until eventually I acquired off at forty ninth highway that i spotted I in simple terms felt like I had ridden the subway, not anything extra, not anything much less. popping out of the stairwell from the subway, i used to be virtually blinded by means of the solar, and that i puzzled how lengthy it have been there. It was once 6:30 p. m. whilst I arrived on the 17th floor. whilst I stepped off the elevator, Mike Shoemaker used to be passing through, mumbling over his shoulder that the pitch assembly was once approximately to begin. I positioned my backpack down at the sofa in my office and made my solution to Lorne’s office. His door was once nonetheless closed, so I sat at the hallway floor and waited. i wished to be one of many first ones there so i may sit down at the giant sofa throughout from him. If I have been going to be fired for having no principles, i used to be going to be sitting down while the ax fell.