Showtime. This is what they drove 10 hours for (though it should’ve taken four), have looked forward to for about six months and blocked out their weekends for. This is the most important show of some of their careers, this Friday-evening performance for 152 Marines at San Diego’s Camp Pendleton. So help them, they are going to prove themselves fully competent, skilled professionals.
Half of the 2311 Field’s ammunition technicians gathered in this room report for six-to-seven-month stints in Iraq come February. The other half follow in August. And Keyon “Booya” Romone, Matt Markman, Brandon “Buffet” Jackson, Brandt Tobler and Brandon “Gooch” Hahn are five Vegas comedians whose duty it is to entertain them before they join 45,000 fellow Marines overseas.
Backstage, they’re nervous, pacing the few steps the small women’s dressing room allows. Marine Janelle Wilson, who made the initial contact with her godbrother Booya to set up the show, wishes them luck. Booya, meanwhile, still hasn’t discovered the green stickers his fellow comics stuck to the back of his jacket yesterday; two still hang for dear life.
“I already horked a little bit this morning,” Markman confessed earlier. “I just can’t figure out, since I throw up all the time, why I’m still heavy.” Performing his preshow ritual over the toilet, red-faced, watery-eyed and doubled over, he’d let fly with a series of guttural hacks and heaves. “Why don’t you just overcome that shit?” Tobler asked, snapping pictures. “Say, ‘I’ve worked hard, I know my material, there’s no reason to be nervous. Today is the day I’m going to overcome this shit.’”
“It’s worse when I can’t throw up,” Markman replied.
“Well, I guess I have to shit before every show. If I don’t shit I know it’s going to be a bad show.”
Back in the present, Tobler emerges from the bathroom. Markman assures he won’t further hork before the lights go down and, recalling the sing-along that took place earlier in the giant white van that brought them here, starts in on the theme from military classic An Officer and a Gentleman. “Love lift us up where we belong!” all sing-shout. “Where the eagles fly, on a mountain high! Love lift us up where we belong! Whurf ... uh ... something ...?”
Booya and Buffet’s pal Coby, along for the ride, has his laptop hooked up, but there’s no time to check out the mystery lyrics. The preshow dinner is starting.
Events in the past have been stiff, formal and ceremonial, always requiring Marines to dress in their blues. Tonight’s dinner-and-a-show is still formal, but it’s a welcome respite for the attendees to bust out their suits and dresses. Not only that, but Ammo Company is also the first to ever book comedians at Camp Pendleton. The professional pressure is on.
“Marines like jokes about sex, profanity and racism,” offers Marine Christina Andring, back from Iraq this past March. “If they can talk about that, they’ll be fine.”
•••••
Chief Warrant Officer Alvin Harewood and Master Gunner Sergeant Willie Lynch arrived at Harrah’s Wednesday night. With 28 years of service under his belt, Al describes his job as, “The boss of where we work. I’m the guy that’ll go to jail if something happens.” Will, a 23-year veteran responsible for the particulars of this excursion, is his right-hand man. Both stand tall and neat in wrinkle-free jeans and sleek metallic glasses, with shaved heads and massive upper bodies. They’re eternally polite yet subtly formidable ... and hopefully good drivers, as they were here to schlep the comedians to Pendleton the next day.
Al lived in Vegas back before there was a 215 or much of anything west of the Rio. Craps is his game, but he’s not much of a drinker. Will, meanwhile, doesn’t mind sipping a Red Bull and vodka, and he speaks freely about the difficulties associated with his job. If he leaves again in August, it will be his fourth tour of duty. “I’m basically a counselor,” he says. “I have an open-door policy. A lot of the kids coming in quit too quick. Some have a lot of problems. The divorce rate is pretty high. These young guys from small towns come out to Cali, meet these beautiful women. Then they’re called up—and I’ll be honest with you—they come back, their bank account is empty, and she’s gone.
“I’ve got seven years left until I get out. I’m going to get a mobile home and drive all around the country. And not a small one, either. I’m going to get the big one.”
The next morning, comics, drivers and a few entourage members are due to leave Harrah’s at noon, though it’s past 12:30 by the time they’ve thrown their crap in the giant white cargo van, thrown themselves into the giant white 15-passenger van and made sure Buffet, returning early for a Saturday-night show, points his Kia in the right direction. Then it’s on to the open road ... after a brief tour of Chinatown in search of the printing shop where Booya has yet to pick up the 150 event fliers he’s commissioned. The groans of disbelief unnerve the newest comic of the bunch, who at a year and half into the game hasn’t quite accepted the hectoring, one-upping and good-natured put-downs that come with the territory. “Isn’t it going to be great once this weekend is over and we can go back to being mean to him again?” quips Markman. Booya promptly gives us the silent treatment until Gooch places a faux-concerned hand on his shoulder. “Stop touchin’ me, man!” Booya explodes. “Gawd, stop makin’ this shit more stressful than it already is!”
Booya decides to wait outside the van for his fliers, where a middle-aged, highly vocal Ron Paul advocate assures him that “Ron Paul supports black people!” and poses for pictures. Forty-five minutes later, the $50 order is ready, and nine out of 10 passengers agree that neither the cost nor the time was anywhere near worth it.
Just under an hour later, immediately after gassing up in Jean, both giant white vans come to a screeching halt. Traffic on the I-15 south is at a standstill, and a huge plume of white smoke billows ahead off the right shoulder. “That’s Buffet’s fart,” Booya offers.
Wave after wave of cops and ambulances begin shrieking past on the left; helicopters circle and land. Drivers exit their vehicles to gather some news, and comics and entourage do the same, walking a half-mile along the shoulder toward the smoke and sirens. The officer manning the roadblock estimates it will be “hours” before the bus that skidded off the road, crashed and caught fire will be cleared and the interstate reopened.
Al and Will hatch a plan: Hop the dirt turnaround, head back on 15 north, then take the side road that is the old 15 south around the accident. “Hurry up, we’re leaving!” Booya shouts at Tobler and Markman, currently taken with shoulder-side cacti. “I cannot believe I just heard that come out of Booya’s mouth,” mutters DJ Mr. Twist, along to man the turntables during the show.
No sooner do the giant white vans reach the entrance to the side road than officers shut it down. Special military privilege, just this once? No go. “You just had to take your sweet-ass time walkin’ back, didn’t you?” Booya hollers at the cacti enthusiasts.
“This is your fault we can’t get on the side road!”
“Yeah, it sucks, man,” consoles Twist. “But at least we’ve got these fliers.”
Turning back to Vegas, everyone stonily focuses on iPods, video games and text messages. Gooch begins covertly applying neon-green Harrah’s stickers to the back of Booya’s blue Pistons jacket. It very well may be the quietest a group of comics trapped in the same giant white van has ever been.
•••••
Six hours and two cases of Coors Light after re-leaving town through Blue Diamond, the giant white vans reach the Ramada parking lot in Temecula, California. Yet in a larger sense, it’s taken far more effort to get these Las Vegas comics out of Las Vegas. It’s an impossible city for those coming up in the comedy trenches, as unlike most cities, the local clubs are run by casinos that want to keep things semi-clean, somewhat predictable and forever broadly appealing. In other cities, comics at this level would open and even feature at their comedy clubs. Not so in Vegas, where burgeoning talent can’t rise much further than open mics and one-nighters. And even the shows that manage to start rarely last. A partial list of venues that nixed comedy in the past few years: The Bunkhouse, Stripburger, Take One Nightclub, The E-String, The Hurricane, Tequila Cantina, The Downstairs, The Brass Rail, Dick’s Last Resort, Mickie Finnz, The Freakin’ Frog (one patron got offended when a comic asked if she was a lesbian, someone wrote “Beaners rule!” in the bathroom, money was stolen from the bar) and City Lights Bistro (someone got stabbed and died). “If we could get one room to promote a dirty comedy show it would probably do well,” predicts Markman. “This is Sin City. Everything this place stands for and advertises should totally welcome our brand of humor, but we’re constantly held back.”
Thus this show for the 2311, as Gooch confirms, “is really a big thing for us. This is like the night before Christmas for me. I just want to fall asleep, wake up and find a bunch of Marines under the tree.”
•••••
It’s a gorgeous Saturday morning. “I’m shitting blood,” Markman informs the giant white van.
Friday evening returns in foggy flashes: Dinner (shrimp cocktail, rolls, salad, chicken or sirloin, cheesecake) beginning in civilized fashion. Dinner turning uncivilized as bottles of wine appear on each table. Marines dancing, roof-raising and going absolutely batshit before the show. Marines dancing, roof-raising and going absolutely batshit during the show. Markman killing with this line: “I’m datin’ this girl right now, and I’m not a hundred percent sure, but I think she’s a tranny. It’s something she said the other day when I was sucking her dick ...” Tobler annihilating with, “If you’re driving at night and you hit a black kid, should you really get in that much trouble? Easy, easy, easy. I’d feel the same way if you hit a white kid in a blizzard. Or a Mexican in a dust storm. Or an Asian in a crosswalk. F--k it, he hit you. He hit you, that might even be his name!” Gooch flailing downward on the punchline, “Guys can’t do anything remotely gay ... If I’m hangin’ from a cliff: ‘Ahhh! Help me, I’m gonna die!’ ‘Hey, man, gimme your hand, hurry up!’ ‘But if I do that it’ll be two guys holding hands and that’ll be so gaaaaaaay!’” Booya’s masturbation material segueing into drinking material segueing into a bit about hooking up with a girl plagued with roaches: “She gave me a coaster. Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but people with roaches shouldn’t be concerned about water stains on their tables! She gave me a coaster; I put that shit on top of my drink.” Will prompting an uproar by taking to the stage dressed as a fuchsia-and-zebra-striped pimp. Standing ovations all around. Group dance-along to Soulja Boy’s “Crank Dat” at show’s end. Marines doling out “Terry Schiavos” (Jagerbomb, energy drink, vodka shot—so named because after downing, one’s brain goes, “bluuuuuuhhg.”). Rampant punching. Booya and Twist screaming at each other about payment for services rendered on the giant white van ride back to Ward Lodging. Coby condemning, “We SUPPOSED to be professional! We SUPPOSED to be grown-ass men!” from the front. A Marine taking $40 from the group with the solemn promise to return with alcohol and snacks; said Marine returning with precisely one (1) bag of chips. And on. And on.
Somehow Buffet and Twist managed to head back to Vegas in the Kia around 8 this morning. The rest are supposed to congregate in front of the motel at noon. It eventually happens around 12:30.
Will tried to get clearance for the group to shoot guns, throw grenades and ride in helicopters today. No luck. Instead, they’re going on a mile-and-a-half hike. But few had the foresight to eat first, so Will kindly schleps everyone off-base to Denny’s and calls ahead to postpone the hike time an hour. Then it’s back to Pendleton grounds. Except ... Booya forgot to wear the correct shoes. “Man, these are brand-new Air Force Ones!” he rationalizes over the shrieks. “I ain’t scuffin’ these up!” Back again to the lodging.
Driving across the base, which houses 66,000 of the 185,000 total Marines across the country, takes about 20 minutes. At first it’s just rolling hills and slabs of concrete off in the distance, a few glimpses of the Pacific, then “Tank crossing” and “Explosive trucks entering roadway” signs appear, and suddenly a whole city opens up. There’s a McDonald’s, a paintball course, a gas station, a library, the Fisher Children’s Center, a hospital, a lime-green structure called the Mechanized Museum and a strip mall housing a Wendy’s, a Subway, a UPS, a dry cleaner, a tax-prep services and a grocery store. There’s a herd of grounded, double-bladed CH46 helicopters and “artillery houses”—row upon row of monstrous guns that fire up to 30 miles. A baseball field near the Taco Bell and Starbucks hosts riot training. Passing the chapel, Will estimates about 50 percent of the base is religious, though “that number increases as they get nearer to shipping out ... and while they’re over there, too.” Off on the left, there’s a cluster of brick, sage and beige buildings straight out of a movie: a $5 million, not-quite-operational-yet Iraqi town, complete with gold-domed mosque in the center. Training grounds for the real thing. “Man.” “Dang.” “Wow,” float up from the rear seats. For the second time, the van falls silent.
We each get 35-pound camouflage backpacks, outfitted with a rubber-foam bedroll, straps across the shoulders, stomach and chest and approximately 7,000 buckles. Then it’s back outside to giggle, snap pictures and pray to various deities for the strength to overcome certain death. Or at least certain embarrassment.
At first it’s easy going; a downhill jaunt following a tire-worn path. Will talks about the deer, buffalo, coyotes, bobcats, mountain lions and rattlesnakes that make their home in the area. Then he turns left and stops, and everyone else turns left and stops, necks craning upward. A big-ass hill rises up, and the comics are expected to climb it.
The next—minutes? hours? days?—are torturous, all aching shoulders, gasping lungs and burning thighs. Not only is the hill big-ass, it’s steep; there are a few times the only thing preventing us from toppling backward under the pack weight is the constant shouted reminder to lean forward. That and the proper shoes.
Reaching the top earns us a few minutes’ rest. Starting up again, the land plateaus a bit before rising as yet another big-ass hill. And the comics are expected to climb it.
Atop the second summit, the air is impossibly fresh and the surrounding hills Ireland-green. As stragglers catch up, Will describes how this whole area was decimated in the recent West Coast fires, how the blaze jumped the roads and just kept going. Markman arrives, collapsing on the ground. Booya—his pack riding atop the pack of one of the three Marines accompanying us—takes a long pull off his water, heads to the edge of the group and horks.
But there’s more. After a treacherous, loose-dirt descent, an obstacle course comes into view. This is the part of the hike, Will explains, where the company traditionally raises its spirits and pushes exhaustion to the back of its collective mind with a few cadences: “Used to drive a Cadillac/Now I’m humpin’ with a pack.”
The 43 Area Obstacle Course encompasses around 20 different formations of wooden logs, metal beams and knotted ropes. Though there’s a great deal of balancing and hoisting involved, the primary goal seems to be maneuvering over various structures while retaining a low profile, an invaluable skill in gun-heavy combat areas. All perform moderately well until the final obstacle, four ropes tethered 18 feet in the air. Only roly-poly Markman, much to everyone’s amazement, reaches the black ring at the top. “Damn, Matt, good job!” Will thunders. “Holy (pant) shit (pant)!” Markman gasps. “That’s (pant, pant) hard!”
It’s enough to spur the far more athletic Gooch into action. He had flown through the course earlier, even “smoking the wall,” according to Will, but remained stumped by the ropes. “That f--kin’ rope is killin’ me, man!” he says, marching forward, grabbing ahold and somehow wriggling right the hell up. Back on the ground, he’s winded but jubilant. “I couldn’t let that rope win!” he shouts, pumping his rope-burned arms.
“Let’s get that boy signed up!” Will thunders.
“Uh ...” Gooch replies.
Will originally planned on the group hiking back, but as that’s very clearly not possible, he radios the giant white passenger van for rescue. It grows chilly as the sunlight fades behind the big-ass, Ireland-green hills. Sergeant Ramirez, meanwhile, remembers how the temperatures he experienced in Kuwait reached 130 or 135.
“You’d just walk along with a bottle of water, drinking every other step,” he recalls.
“Sounds just like Vegas, only without the strippers,” Markman counters.
Tonight’s the final night on base. On the ride back to Ward Lodging, everyone confirms the plan: Leave at 9 the next morning. Al and Will will each drive a giant white van to Vegas, drop the comics off at Harrah’s, walk around the Strip for an hour or so, then head back.
“Hey Will?” Markman asks.
“Yeah?”
“Don’t forget your walking shoes.”
•••••
It’s 9:30. Outside the van, a lone green Harrah’s sticker clings to the asphalt. “Hey, are SHOE ready to go?” Markman queries Booya, who ignores him and cracks a Coors Light. “It’s so simple,” Markman sighs to the rest of the van. “It’s so stupid,” Gooch answers.
The ride back is long, even without a flipped bus blocking the way. Lots of sleeping, texting and iPod-ing. Lots of groaning and shifting on sore leg muscles.
Harrah’s comes into view around 2. “Hey, let me off right up here,” Booya tells Will.
“I’ve got to cross the walkway and get my car from the other parking garage.”
“But you’re not wearing your getting-your-car-from-the-other-parking-lot shoes!” Markman cautions.
Will pulls over to the sidewalk, where an oblivious casino employee passes.
“Watch this,” Tobler giggles. “I always do this to my friend Justin.” Booya opens the door and hops down, Tobler sticking his head out after him. “Get the hell out!” Tobler screams, blue sweatpants hanging off his ass. “I can’t believe you did that to my sister! I better not EVER see you again!”
The sidewalker glances nervously and speeds up. Booya throws a middle finger in the air without looking back. “Hey Booya!” Tobler continues.
“What?”
“See you at the show Sunday. Rest up, man.”
Julie Seabaugh is a Weekly staff writer.