"The Loser" - (The beginning)

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 11, 2009

How I became "The Loser" (A three-part series)

See, I had moved to Orlando, Florida in the hopes of working for Walt Disney World and getting back into the world of professional entertainment. After the fiasco with the dinner theater in Lexington, Kentucky (Thanks to Satan's Sister), I had spent about ten years licking my wounds in the wonderful world of retail home improvement at both Lowes and Home Depot, and I had frankly had my fill of it...

Unfortunately for me, I moved to Orlando merely one month after 9/11 and since the tourist market had taken a dive into the toilet, they informed me at Disney that they had just let about 400 equity actors go, and jobs were hard to come by...I auditioned anyway, and to my credit, I managed to land temporary holiday gig playing one of the Three Kings (aka Wise Men) at Epcot that winter.

At the time, I did not realize the extent of the gay communities infiltration of my beloved Disney, or the entertainment market as a whole here in Orlando, but after spending a winter locked up in a small trailer with the other two "Flaming" kings...I got the idea... That winter, I watched hours and hours of gay porn, and learned all sorts of useless information about gay kink, (like what snowballs were...and, if you don't know, don't ask!). But, after watching the other two kings goose each others hinnies, and play tongue mambo on the way to tell stories to kids about the birth of Jesus, I was ready for something else anyway...Whew! What an induction into the underbelly of Orlando Entertainment...

After a short gig at Mark II Dinner Theatre as the Indian Cheif in Annie Get Your Gun with the "Director from Hell", I was again looking for work...So, I decided to do what alot of professional actors do between jobs, namely wait tables...So, I found myself working at a local steak house schlepping tables for a bunch of ungreatfull schmose...What to do? What to do?

So, I decided to focus my attention on the local dinner theatre market...I had owned one once upon a time, so I figured that I could at least find out what was going on in the "Biz"...What I didn't realize at the time, was that I was about to embarque on a quest, a journey, an Odyssy that would be the basis for a film script, roughly patterned after "The Jerk", using my Resume as the plotline...

My first stop was Medieval Times...I managed to pass the interview, got myself a nice pair of black tights, black ballet shoes, and a brown tunic and was ready to rock and roll...Well, it was a complete dissaster...The tights, always got bunched up sideways, I kept getting yelled at for entering the kitchen through the wrong door, the other servers were downright cruel, and my job was extremely dangerous...

See, they give the new guys the nosebleed seats as far away from kitchen as possible, and being a little overweight....You can imagine the fat guy with the bunched up tights, running frantically up and 15 flights of stairs, spilling hot soup on everyone...the other servers had a betting pool that I wouldn't last a week...Ha! I bet on myself, and won when I last 2 weeks! (I showed them!)

One time I entered the arena just as a knight on a charging horse threw a javelin at a target which happened to be inches from my head...(Woops, wrong door!) Another time, I found myself ducking a mace that swung inches from my face....And, some chinese guy got hot soup down his pants....It wasn't MY row...So, what the hell, I was still getting tipped that night...But, the other server was waiting for me in the parking lot with his buddies that night...(But that's another story...)

You know...They had told me emphatically not to be in the arena when they released the Hawk...And I got the fact that a standing waiter amoungst 3000 seated patrons becomes instant prey...But, I was too busy schlepping hot chicken and broccoli (Which always ran out), to notice until the Hawk dug his claws into my right shoulder...Hitting me at about 400 miles per hour...(Did you know that they break their preys back when they hit? That is how they kill...FYI, just thought you should know...)

Some lady got a bunch of hot chickens down her top...She was a double D, and I think she got about 12 scalding chickens in with her boobs...So, yada, yada, yada...I got fired...But, ever the optimist, I figured that "Now, I have some experience" so I offered my services to Pirate's Dinner Adventure....What a disaster THAT was...

At Pirate's I was happy to be out of black tights, and into black pants, but this time I was about the only server who spoke English....And, I really shouldn't have made friends with the alcoholic who was secretly hitting the Sangria every night...

I really don't remember much about working there...Because I was wacked out of my mind most of the time...But, I have a faint memory of sweating servers running around frantically in the dark, loud music (Painfully loud), clashing swords, explosions (Did I cause a fire to break out? Not sure...), spilling hot gravy from the Salisbury Steak on some ladies nylons....(I tripped on the stairs when I was trying to look up her dress...) Oh and, walking past the cannon just as it went off...I think that's how I lost the hearing in my left ear for about six months...I'm not sure...It's all a drunken blur...

So, I dried out, sobered up and got a job at Dine With Shamu at Seaworld...It's a budwieser park you know...Anyway, the upshot is, they had to evacuate Shamu stadium when I accidentally set off the fire alarm while smoking in the men's bathroom...And, I popped a top off a beer bottle that landed in the water, and was immediately sucked into Shamu's blowhole...So, they had to drain the pool and get Shamu out with a huge crane....I managed to escape without the local news media finding out who I was...

At about that time, I got a job at Dolly Parton's Dixie Stampede...I had finally mastered the whole schlepping tables thing...I was in the original crew that was hired...And, none of us knew what we were doing, so it was a level playing field... I even worked up two funny characters to serv in....A "Yankee" if I was serving for the north, and a "Reb" if I was serving for the south...I was battle hardend in the trenches of the underbelly of Orlando dinner theatre, I got to march in the show, I was making killer tips....and basically, I had arrived...

About six months into it, the were looking to replace the comedian in the show, so since I knew the lines by heart at this point (since I heard them three times a night), I auditioned for the part, and was immediately put in the show...Life was good!

Here I was, doing five shows a day in front of crowds of 3000+ people from all over the world...I got to ride horses every day...Chase Chickens...Guide Ostriches into their pens...Handle baby pigs...Open the door for the stampeding buffalo...I was the MC's sidekick...I signed autographs after the show...During Christmas I even got to ride with Santa in his sleigh for the big fanale...

I felt like a regular cowboy...and, it seemed like the perfect gig for me...But, little did I realize at the time...That this would be the beginning of the end for me in the underbelly of Orlando
entertainment...

(Stay tuned for the next installment in this story)