NEWARK, New Jersey. Steve LaFontaine is a lawyer by day, handling workers compensation and employment discrimination claims for a small, high-volume firm. “It’s a job, but it’s not my dream,” he says as he puts a file away at the end of the day.
Shecky Kalman
By night, Steve has a long-running gig at Spanky’s, a comedy club downtown where he is regularly heckled and booed. “I’d say Steve’s a joke,” says Bob Hambricht, a regular who sits at the bar rather than take a table so he can avoid paying the $5 cover charge, down from $10 since Steve started. “But that would imply he’s funny, which he’s not.”
So how does the would-be comic keep going in the face of such clear audience dissatisfaction? “I got an injunction,” Steve says with a sly smile. “They can’t fire me.”
Steve suffers from Kalman’s Syndrome, a disease that afflicts otherwise-talented entertainers who believe they are also funny, named after Shecky Kalman, a regular on the 50’s quiz show “I’ll Bet Your Life!” who is still plying his trade at state fairs and auto dealership grand openings across the country thirty-five years after the show was cancelled.
Spanky’s first moved to fire Steve two years ago after a particularly rough night that saw patrons throw chairs and swizzle sticks onto the stage. “It was brutal,” says owner Bob “Spanky” Christopher. “People were booing Steve, and he tried to salvage his routine by telling Jewish mother jokes he’d bought from Solly Weinstein, who’d been here the week before. Steve’s shirt was open at the collar and he was wearing a crucifix, so it didn’t go over too well.”
“Councillor, please don’t waste this court’s time with your stupid lawyer jokes.”
Christopher told LaFontaine not to come back, but the next day the frustrated comedian served the club owner with a summons, complaint and motion for temporary restraining order to keep his coveted 8:30 p.m. slot.
“The Americans With Disabilities Act protects people from workplace discrimination based on their handicaps,” LaFontaine says, drawing on his area of legal expertise. “My handicap is I’m not funny.”
“Some of you folks have asked that we play louder, so we’re going to crank it up a notch now.”
The club’s lawyers admit that LaFontaine has a handicap, and say they have tried to accommodate him, as required by the landmark federal statute. “We offered him the Sunday brunch spot because we thought the live jazz would drown out his pseudo-Seinfeld cracks like ‘What’s up with airline peanuts?’ but people complained that the band wasn’t loud enough.”
LaFontaine says he’s willing to talk settlement but plans to continue his fight on behalf of those who, like him, just want to make people laugh but can’t. “After I get some money from Spanky’s,” he says with a determined look on his face, “I’m going after the hecklers.”