A personal thing.
I got some bad news a couple of weeks ago. Mike Irwin, a guy I’ve known for 22 years — half my life — somebody I started out with in comedy, a guy who was my best friend for a while, who taught me a lot, and whom I remained close to for a number of years… has cancer.
It’s pretty advanced. Stage four bone cancer in his jaw, already spread to the lymph nodes.
Two months ago, he thought it was just a toothache developing.
No obvious cause. Mike has never smoked a cigarette in his life. Doesn’t gargle with benzene. Doesn’t juggle asbestos. This could be you or me just as easily. Just, bang, cancer, stage four, tip your waitstaff, and good luck.
Now suddenly I’m here, and he’s there. Somebody hit the fast-forward button when nobody was looking.
But we were young together.
There was this clear spring night in Chicago, me and Mike and his first wife and a bunch of other young hopeful comedy people, having a barbecue on Mike’s front porch. I was young and broke and full of hope and fear and jagged edges, and I couldn’t afford the YMCA anymore, so my friend Mike, who didn’t have room, made some for me under his stairs. It wasn’t much — hell, it was barely anything — but it was home for a while.
Or this one night doing stand-up comedy together, very early in our careers, in this giant barn-like building in a small farm town in western Ohio, with picnic tables for the seats and a lone spotlight that made the stage feel like an interrogation with punch lines.
Or a whole week working on our acts in the back of a Howard Johnson’s hotel in St. Petersburg, Florida, hanging out with a half-dozen other comics Mike had invited, all of us wondering where the odd life we’d chosen would eventually take us.
Later on, in New York, where we were both finally working big clubs, finding a bowling alley in Brooklyn that had ancient lacquered lanes so we could spin the ball from gutter to gutter, whether we wanted to or not. And laughing like happy clowns. Which we were.
As the years passed, our lives diverged. I moved to L.A., and Mike stayed in New York doing the comedy thing, and doing it well. He hasn’t yet caught the big break, but you may recognize him from frequent TV appearances during the cable comedy boom of the early ’90s — Evening at the Improv, Carolines Comedy Hour, MTV’s Half-Hour Comedy Hour, and so on — Mike did them all. (Mike’s family has even kept an old nightclub poster from those days. Mike was headlining; the two opening acts were Ray Romano and Jon Stewart.)
Now it’s later in the story.
I just came back from a few days with Mike in the hospital in upstate New York, and it will admittedly take some serious balls to get through this. But I’ve also seen him do 3 am prom shows and one-nighters in small-town hotels on severe sleep deprivation. Bone cancer sucks, but really — if there’s anybody I’d be willing to put money on right now to find a way to laugh, push through, and get home just like always, it’s Mike.
Meanwhile, Mike and his family could use all the help, love, and support they can get. Fortunately, not only are comedians lining up to do benefits, there’s also the Mike Irwin Cancer Fund if you’d personally like to chip in with a donation yourself right now.
Strangely, as much as I find myself feeling fear, worry, and all those things for Mike right now — what I also feel, maybe more than anything is… gratitude.
Sometimes you only appreciate things when you’re forced to, I guess.
Meanwhile, my point for you — besides tossing a few bucks in the kitty — whoever you are, and whenever you may visit, the thing I want to write most as I think about my buddy Mike Irwin:
As you’re reading this, you probably have a few old friends you’ve lost touch with. Maybe you want to find a minute and say hey.
Call them. For no damn reason. Be young with them, as young as I was while I was thinking about living under Mike’s stairs in Chicago and doing stand-up comedy in a barn. As young as you are right now while you’re thinking of them.
Cherish your days like you do your friends. We don’t get many of either.
And be grateful.
PS — when Mike makes it through this, I am so gonna drag his butt back to that bowling alley in Brooklyn. We’re not done being young.
