“I’m not that good,” the comic says in that unmistakable voice, deep, growling, loud–a roar actually, something that should emanate from the mouth of a cartoon lion. “I’m really, really, really not that good.”
Take the entire city of Chicago. Beginning in 1983 the citizens heard Freeman’s term “Council Wars” so many times over the next couple of years that most thought he was a brilliant stand-up comic. He hammered Council Wars home at CrossCurrents, at Second City, during TV and radio interviews, and in newspaper guest editorials. It became a staple gag in Kup’s column and Walter Jacobson’s commentaries. Even national magazines, out-of-town newspapers, and USA Today adopted the phrase. Simple logic: Council Wars was Chicago, Aaron Freeman was Council Wars, ergo Aaron Freeman was Chicago.
Yet he can’t leave town without some gossip columnist blurbing about his trip. He becomes a father and “Inc.” has it. He considers converting to a different religion and Zwecker’s on it. How does this “mediocrity” do it?
“I verk aht der Pizza Hut,” Freeman says as we hit the Edens junction. “I hahv nutzing against zeez foreigners, alzough zey ahre everywhere and zey drive all ze trains.” Bob Curry sits in the backseat nodding his head vigorously and repeating, “Yeah, yeah, uh huh!” Curry is the show’s director. He smokes cigarettes, coughs, and then pumps an asthma inhaler into his mouth with alarming regularity.
“What do you mean?” Freeman demands in his own voice. “You told me the show was great!”
The exchange continues at this level for a bit. Then another controversial topic, the running order of the new show, somehow pops up. Freeman argues he should begin with a monologue because the audience expects his brand of topical humor and because a monologue can organize the points the show will make. “It’s like a business meeting. You tell them what you’re going to say, you say what you’re going to say, then you tell them what you said.”
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His grandparents’ farm produced only enough food to feed the household, which also included Aaron’s sister Veronica. But the young Freeman thought he lived in paradise. “That was a stupendous life I had on my grandparents’ farm. A walk of 25 feet would get you pears and apples, another 25 feet would get you strawberries and blueberries, another 25 feet would get you cherries and grapes. It was a garden. You’d just pull an onion out of the ground, blow off the bugs and eat that sucker! Big giant watermelons. Food–big food. Farm animals. The farm fed us.”
