Hey Mom Read online

  “Wouldn’t that be a nice break, Louie?” you said.

  And we really could have used one, especially after the previous night, like so many others, we’d had with the maniac.

  The real flea market experience was never like that, of course. Not only did we not make a killing, we never made any money. You priced everything too high because you had no real intention of selling. “Oh, that’s not supposed to be out there! That’s not for sale. I’m keeping that!” Instead, while I unfolded our table and unpacked our boxes, you walked around the market, buying things. Everybody there knew you, everybody liked you. You’d come back ten minutes later with one or two or four items. “Look at this cruet, Louie. It’s an oil and vinegar cruet. It has a couple chips in it, but for two dollars, how could I go wrong?” I was still unpacking and we were already in the hole. And that’s not even including the gas it took to get down there.

  We always returned home with more than what we came with.

  I realized much later it was not about selling, it was about us spending time together.

  Unsaid no more,

  Louie

  Daily Prayer

  Hey Mom,

  I wasn’t doing this back when you were around but these days I start my day by praising God and praying for everybody I know. I ask for forgiveness for all those I’ve hurt. I want to be bighearted. Mom, I learned this from you. You were always bighearted toward Dad despite all the things he did to you. You still forgave him, still loved him. Was that a defect in you or grace from God? Anyway, I try to start my day outside myself, so I don’t go crazy. I should honor something other than myself first. I find it’s helpful. Sometimes I’ll do my prayers before getting out of bed, sometimes I’ll make my bed first and then do my prayers. I’ll say what I have to say out loud. Then I get ready for the day, the kind of place I need to be. If I know I’ll be running in circles most of the day, it’s good to prepare for that. Then again, it’s never good to run in circles because you always end up right where you are. You should run in a direction that brings you in touch with a new way of life, a new world, new people. So many people today run in circles, Mom, more than they used to, it seems. I don’t want to be like that. Maybe I’ll start running in ovals.

  I don’t know if it’s right to pray for things like professional success. Maybe it’s the opposite of honoring something besides yourself. But now and then, I confess, I have prayed for work that is really, truly fulfilling, not just for my benefit but so that people have a chance to see what I’m really capable of. I’m not just this comic doing fat jokes. In my life right now I think I finally have a deep understanding of humanity and my soul. You’re the genesis of that, Mom. And if you’re the genesis, Dad’s the Deuteronomy. I don’t know what that means, Mom, but you gotta admit, Deuteronomy’s a funny word.

  So I do my daily prayers, then make some coffee and eat my food. Food doesn’t become the most important thing to me. I try to make it more ritual than reward.

  Trying to run in a straight line,

  Louie

  The Hair Twirlers

  Hey Mom,

  Were you a hair twirler?

  Remember when Billy twirled his hair? I thought it was a weird habit but lots of people do it and here’s my theory: hair twirling isn’t just a physical tic but a mechanism to cope with stress or the other upsetting thoughts in our noggins. It’s what you do when you can’t tell the world what you’re thinking. I’m so fricking crazy, nobody knows it but me, I wish I could get them to lower the lights in this room, I wish the phone would ring, I’m crazy . . .

  Billy always twirled his hair. God, I miss him. He was a lovely human being.

  I had hair twirlers sitting in front of me on each of my last two flights. The woman in front of me on my flight to Omaha (on my way to perform at the Great American Comedy Festival in Norfolk, Nebraska, childhood home of Johnny Carson)—she was twirl and untwirl, twirl and untwirl, twirl, untwirl. I wish I could get this flight to be over already is my guess. Maybe she was thinking something else.

  Doesn’t everyone know a hair twirler? If they don’t, they should find one.

  The hair twirlers on my flights made it through okay. Thank God they had hair. What about hair twirlers who happen to be bald? Do they twirl their children’s hair?

  I wish Billy knew things could be okay. But he was afraid. He was paranoid. Who was trying to get him?

  Was Billy always a little different? No one knew it when they first met him. He was so good-looking, like one of the Kennedys, and people talked to him for a little while and probably went, Okay, but then Billy would say something, like, Hey, those people over there are taking pictures of us, and the person he was talking to would say, But they don’t even have a camera, and Billy would say, Their glasses are cameras. Or he’d say, What are you looking at? And they were looking at nothing, certainly not at him. He loved adventure, and hunted for gold and diamonds. Then again, he could get upset over something, storm out, and not return for a couple years.

  But if Billy were alive today, in this day and age, he’d probably be one of those people to invent the next big thing. He was a dreamer and a schemer. He gave me some of my best ideas. He wanted me to come out with Louie’s Extra Sugar Louie Gooey Candies. “Be sure to say extra sugar,” he said. “It’s the extra that makes it.”

  He was so right. William David Anderson. My brother Billy. Hair twirler extraordinaire.

  Was I ever a twirler? I remember when I got really worried, I would take out a deck of playing cards and turn them over one by one, and if I got more aces and face cards than number cards I felt better about things. How crazy is that, Mom? A queen, a jack—my day is going to be just fine!

  I don’t do cards anymore. Today, I try to deal with my anxiety and insecurity by taking a deep breath and saying a prayer and knowing that I’m strong enough and brave enough to handle anything that comes my way.

  Mom, you used to rub your right hand up and down your left arm, probably to comfort yourself or to find something, your way of saying to yourself, Everything is going to be all right. When Dad would have one of his episodes, I remember you going to the kitchen sink, turning on the faucet, and washing your hands. Or sometimes you’d straighten and smooth the doilies on the sofa over and over again, even when they were already as straight and smooth as could be.

  You know what, Mom? You were pretty much a hair twirler, too.

  Love,

  Louie

  © FX

  Finding Ora

  Hey Mom!

  We just started filming the first season of Baskets, and already it might be the most creative adventure of my life. Christine Baskets is pretty important to the show and if this thing takes off, or at least holds on, I can honestly say that it’s not just me you’re keeping in a job, it’s other people in their jobs, too. Nice trick considering you passed away a quarter-century ago.

  Okay, I can see where that might sound big-headed. There are quite a few creative geniuses I’m working with who have a huge impact on what happens with our show.

  So, how I got the job:

  I’ve been in Vegas for about eleven years now. I’m not sure if it’s eleven. I’m terrible with dates. In fact, I often forget the birthdays and birth years of some of my sisters and brothers. Maybe it’s forgivable when you have ten to remember. I’m digressing again, Mom. Anyway, I moved there ten or eleven years ago and got a job at the Excalibur Hotel and Casino, in the old Catch a Rising Star room. For the next half a decade, I did five to six nights a week there, then moved for three years to the Palace Station (playing at the—what else?—“Louie Anderson Theater”), then headed downtown to the Plaza Hotel and Casino, where I’d been for about a year when I was heading to work one day and my cell phone rang. (Yes, Mom, people now carry their phones with them. More on that later.) It was my agent calling. He said that Louis C.K. needed my number.

  A couple minutes later, he called.

  “Hey, Louie,” said Louie.

 
“Hey, Louie,” I said.

  “I’m with Zach Galifianakis,” he said. “We’re doing a new show and we’d like you to play a part.”

  In less time than it takes to say “Yes!” I said, “Yesssss!”

  I didn’t need to know what the part was or the show. Zach Galifianakis is a great comic actor and an excellent serious actor, too, a creative genius. Mom, he looks like Billy with a beard. And Louis C.K.’s TV show had won a couple Emmy Awards and been nominated for many more.

  Then Louis told me, “We want you to play Zach’s mom.”

  Immediately I said, “Yesssss!”

  Zach said that when he was considering who he wanted to play the mother of his characters—he plays identical twins—the one thing he knew was that the mom made a nasal, Midwestern sound sort of like “Aaaaaaaah . . .”

  Which made Louis C.K. say, “You mean, like Louie Anderson?”

  “Yeah, like Louie Anderson,” said Zach.

  Remember, Mom, how I said I sometimes prayed for a job like this? Those prayers were answered.

  As soon as the call was over, I looked up and said, “Hey Mom, what do you think? You’re finally going to be in show business. I hope I do you justice.” I was surprisingly calm about this call that might change my life, and the challenge of the role. But I was Mr. Cool because, hey, in my act I’d been doing your voice and facial expressions forever, Mom.

  The idea of playing a woman didn’t faze me at all. I grew up with five sisters. Once, I played a maid in a scene with Dom Irrera, for his comedy special, the only time I could remember playing in drag. But from what they had told me about Baskets, I didn’t look at this as drag. The character would just be real.

  It was months before I got a call about shooting the pilot. I was given an address in Sylmar. That’s California, Mom, in the Valley. Anyway, I got there and in a gigantic trailer, I put on the clothes they had for me. I don’t know if it was a skirt or slacks. It was still dark when I arrived and I wasn’t quite awake. TV and movie shoot hours are very different from live comedy show hours. After I got dressed I went to another trailer, where they put makeup on me, then I moved over to the hair person, who put a wig on me, then back to the makeup person, who put lipstick on me. There’s something about putting lipstick on when you’re facing the mirror, even if someone else applies it for you. You can’t not purse your lips, kind of pucker them, and say to yourself, maybe even out loud, “Hey, I look pretty good!”

  To be honest, Mom, I was nervous as we took a shuttle van up to the set, which was kind of a cute, ticky-tacky row house. I had already met the cast, the director, the writers—Zach, who’s an exceptionally nice guy; Martha Kelly, a very talented stand-up who’s one of the main characters; Jonathan Krisel, one of the show’s co-creators and lone director. I loved the script and I’d been thinking a lot about how I was going to play Christine. Now, to Jonathan, who also seemed very sweet, I said, “Hey, I’m not gonna change my voice for this character.”

  My voice can get up there but, honestly, it’s pretty deep.

  He thought about it for a moment. “Okay,” he said.

  I was going to play this woman in my own voice. Because I wanted to do as little “make-believe” as possible.

  Throughout the filming of the pilot, Jonathan’s direction was always smart and sensitive and minimal. I could tell he had very specific things in mind but he wouldn’t ever push you to do it his way. He would never say a take wasn’t good. He would say, “Why don’t we try it . . . ?” and then give a word or two that nudged it in a different direction. Sometimes I would say to him, “Can I just say it how my mom would?”

  He always said yes. And it always worked best that way, for everybody. I had so much fun playing this lovely mother.

  Christine Baskets actually has two sets of twins, the pair Zach plays—Chip and Dale—and an adopted pair, Cody and Logan. Not quite eleven children but still a handful, even though they are supposedly grown-ups. Mom, you were pregnant with twins, twice, but miscarried both times. That must have been so sad for you. I love you, Mom. I’m so sorry.

  (Wow. That could have been fifteen kids. Makes eleven look like child’s play.)

  Hey Mom, remember the Wonder Bread store where we used to buy day-old bread, ten loaves for a dollar? God, how crazy was that? Those cinnamon buns. I always wanted the cinnamon buns, and cookies by the bin for a dollar. I loved that. That was a real high for me. I can still smell those rolls and those cookies, hold on, I gotta lie down for a minute. I’m kidding. Anyway, I bring it up because Costco (Mom, were they around and popular before you died in 1990? I’m not sure. I’ll check. But they’re a big big-box store chain. Did we use the phrase “big-box store” when you were around? I don’t know, I’ll check), anyway Costco, which is like our Gem Store, the everything store especially for veterans, anyway Costco (can I go even thirty seconds without breaking off for a tangent? Can I be serious for thirty seconds? What fun is that?), ANYWAY COSTCO let us, the Baskets show, use their Kirkland brand products in the kitchen. So the kitchen on set was overflowing with cinnamon rolls, bread, just about every delicious fattening food you could think of. And as soon as I walked into that kitchen, I thought of the day-old store. Was it a Wonder Bread store or a Gold Medal Flour store? I entertained the cast and crew with ways you might describe all that bread and those muffins and stuff courtesy of Kirkland and Costco. Remember how you used adjectives for food that are usually applied to works in a museum? “Did you ever see a more beautiful muffin? . . . How about those donut holes? Jeez, they’re like pieces of art. . . . Look at the swirl on this cinnamon toast—if it isn’t a Picasso, I don’t know what is.”

  Then we filmed a whole scene about a Costco product, a scene that called for me to drink a whole can of Kirkland brand sports drink. I got about halfway through and knew I wasn’t going to make it, so I spit some out and tried to save the scene. I ad-libbed, “Oh, that was refreshing” or “Oh, that hit the spot,” something understated, and wouldn’t you know? We used the whole take in the episode! I guess that’s what they really mean in show business by “the spit take.”

  Sometimes mistakes make for the best scenes.

  After we shot the pilot, I heard nothing for a long time. I was really hoping to play the part again but I didn’t know if the show would get the green light. (That’s a Hollywood expression, Mom. It’s also a traffic expression.) Yes, our show had known comedy names “attached” to it, which really helps, but you never know with Hollywood. You don’t.

  Then one beautiful day I got the call that the FX network had committed to a ten-episode season of Baskets. (Thank you, FX!) It’s a bittersweet comedy. Jonathan calls it a “slapstick drama.” He’s a genius, I think, really special. I learned about complimenting people from you, Mother, you’re the master at it (that’s not to say I’m being insincere in what I just said about Jonathan). You made people feel better all the time. I keep that tradition going for you. I try to make people feel good. I ask the crew and other cast members real questions about themselves and their families and their partners and their career hopes and dreams, and I don’t shy away from discussing hardships and disappointments. I would call you a “super-communicator,” Mom. You really knew how to connect with people. And you passed it on to me—though I’m a big ham on top of it. You were funny, too, Mom, very funny, actually.

  At the beginning of the first season, Jonathan said something smart: Don’t think of this as ten episodes but as a three-and-a-half-hour movie, the whole season. That gives it a sense of an arc, like it’s moving toward something clear, not just going on and on, driven by ratings and how many seasons we get renewed.

  I wonder how many people look at their own lives as having an arc, and live their lives accordingly, given the built-in certainty of cancellation. We’re all going to get canceled someday. We just don’t know how many seasons we’ll be around for.

  Baskets is scheduled to premiere early next year but I’m not thinking yet about the reaction. I’m having
too much fun.

  I love playing you, Mom. It feels so natural. Maybe it will help me understand you even more. What you had to put up with.

  Love,

  Louie

  One Thing I Really Miss

  Hey Mom,

  Being in the kitchen with you when you were making something delicious—how great was that?

  Dad wasn’t home from work yet. No one else was there—well, maybe Lisa, she was always helpful, but often it was just you and me. You’d begin the ritual of taking all the vegetables out and cleaning them. “I hate dirty celery,” you’d say. “Celery should be clean and crisp.” You’d cut them precisely, each piece the size of knuckles, then wash the radishes, then cut them in half. You loved radishes. You loved a good cucumber. “Peel a cuke for me, Louie.” You’d put them in vinegar and cut up onions and let them marinate. As delicious as they were then, when I think about them now they seem even more so, because the older we get, the more we like things pickled. Dad was always pickled, wasn’t he, Mom?

  “That was a good one, Louie!”

  What a good laugh you had! You’d keep cutting vegetables and you’d purse your lips and your eyes would go up, the same expression Christine uses. It comes close to looking like exasperation but it’s not. It’s satisfaction. It’s approval.

  “That was a good one, Louie.”

  Then you’d say, “Louie, grab that roast—isn’t that a gorgeous roast?” I never thought a word like “gorgeous” applied to something like a roast but you did, maybe because you knew how to make anything beautiful and valuable, the way you made us feel safe no matter how much danger we were living in.