I'm Not Gonna Lie Read online

  Lee bent over and stuck his ball and tee into the ground, stood up, and measured the distance from the tee to the green by extending his arm straight at the flag. He then pulled a one iron out of his bag, a tough club to hit, an unusual choice for this shot. But given the rain and wind, Lee knew that the one iron was the right choice, maybe even an inspired one. Few people struck a golf ball with the precision of Lee Trevino, and nobody hit with more swagger or more style. Lee took a practice swing and wiggled his shoulders as the rain slapped at his shirt and dribbled off the brim of his cap. He picked up his right foot and knocked off a clump of wet grass caught in his metal spikes.

  Lee stepped up to his ball, swung, and smacked his drive through the pelting rain, now a torrent, jabbing the pond like a million needles. He locked his eyes on the flight of the ball, the one iron held straight up in perfect follow-through, aimed like a conqueror’s sword. The ball arched toward the green, plopped onto the fringe, and rolled toward the cup, stopping a birdie length away. Thunder clapped. A flash of lightning zigzagged in front of him and spiderwebbed the pond.

  Lee slowly lowered the one iron.

  The lightning jumped the water and hopped across the grass, pulled by the attraction of a lightning rod. . . .

  Lee’s metal spikes.

  Broosh!

  The lightning smoked him, wrapping him in a cloak of fire and light.

  Then the smell of something burning engulfed him, drifted into the air.

  It smelled like someone was having a cookout, making carne asada.

  And then far away, he heard the sound of footsteps squishing into the wet ground, followed by voices and screaming.

  “Lee!”

  He lay naked on the ground. The lightning had burned off his clothes. Towels flew through the rain, finding him, covering him.

  More screaming, running, panic.

  “I heard everything,” Lee told me. “I didn’t know the lightning burned off my clothes, but I heard all the commotion and then I heard somebody say, ‘He’s dead.’”

  “You heard that?” I said.

  “Yes. And then I felt myself being lifted. I started going up, up into the air above the golf course. Floating. Hovering. I was above the whole thing. Then I looked down and I saw myself. That’s when I realized I was dead.”

  “Unbelievable. You actually died.”

  “Yes. And then I saw that light. It was exactly what people talk about. But it’s warm. Soothing. It bathes you. You feel very warm and comfortable and calm. Then I saw my mother. And I saw my grandmother. I saw my whole family, everybody who died. Then all of a sudden I heard a voice coming from far away, like from down a hallway. ‘Lee, Lee.’ The voice got stronger and stronger, and I saw my family standing there and I wanted to go to them. I tried to go to them, but the voice calling my name got louder and I turned toward it and the faces of my family got dimmer and then they all faded out.”

  “What about the light?”

  “It went out. It sort of clicked off. And then I woke up and I was on the ground, people all around me. Then I realized I was alive, but I had died. My back hurt like hell, and I was thankful to be alive, and from now on I’ll think twice about hitting a one iron.”

  He paused.

  “But, you know, when it’s time for me to go, I’m not afraid anymore, because I already know what it’s like. I’ve been there. I know it’s not horrible.”

  So, thanks to Lee Trevino, I’m not afraid of dying. And after Lee told me about seeing that light, I heard it from other people, too. A guitar player who played in the band on my show had the same experience. He had a terrible accident; he died, saw the light, and came back.

  When you hit fifty, you do think about the end. It all feels as if it’s coming at you a little too fast. Maybe that’s because it is. There are more days behind you than ahead of you. It’s that simple. But when the end comes, I’m ready. Or as ready anybody can be.

  I hope I’m not hit by lightning, though. I don’t want to be smoked and barbecued. Especially in public. I’m gonna try to stay out of storms. I’m sure as hell not running to lightning. It’s bad enough that I have to see myself with no clothes on.

  THE LAST DAYS OF CREEPY LITTLE WHITE GIRL

  AND now a word about the executive at TBS who canceled my talk show, Lopez Tonight, less than two years after it began, and gave me, my staff, my crew, and my band thirty-six hours to get out of the building.

  Fuck that puto.

  I know. That’s not right.

  That’s three words.

  Do I seem bitter?

  I’m not.

  I gave up being bitter, angry, vengeful, and feeling stabbed in the back when I turned fifty.

  I still might feel a little pissed off. . . .

  Hey, at least I’m not lying.

  In 2004, a dear friend, Jim Paratore, a top television executive, asked if he could meet with me.

  “You ever consider doing a talk show?” Jim asked me.

  “Thanks, Jim, but I got a job,” I said. At the time, I was working day and night on The George Lopez Show, which was still going strong on ABC. I also had kidney disease and was fighting for my life. I felt kind of overextended.

  “Your sitcom won’t run forever,” Jim said. “Think about it.”

  “I will.”

  Two years later, we shot our one hundredth George Lopez Show episode. By the end of that season, the sitcom’s run on the network came to an end. Jim didn’t waste much time. He called me a few weeks later and again pitched me a late-night talk show.

  Jim was passionate and convincing. The more he sold me, the more he won me over. I started to embrace the idea. “If I do a late-night show, I want to use Arsenio as a template,” I said. “I want to do a show that you can’t see on TV right now. I want the show to be diverse and inclusive and edgy.”

  “So do we,” Jim said.

  “I want the show to be a reflection of me,” I said.

  “Us, too,” Jim said.

  With Jim as our champion, we put together a top-notch staff and crew and added the unbelievable Michael Bearden to lead our kick-ass band. Sadly, Jim recently passed away. I’ll always be grateful for his support. He was one of the truly good guys.

  Lopez Tonight debuted November 9, 2009. My first guests were Eva Longoria, Ellen DeGeneres, and my friends Carlos Santana and Kobe Bryant. That night our ratings blew the roof off. We beat everybody—Leno, Letterman, Kimmel, Conan, and Jon Stewart. We beat ’em all.

  Of course, we couldn’t keep it up. We strove to keep the show honest and fun and diverse as we struggled to maintain solid ratings. Creatively, we wrote sketches and introduced segments that definitely went outside the box. Way outside, like the popular “Creepy Little White Girl,” featuring a little kid holding a headless doll and singing “Ring Around the Rosie” before she gave me terrible news. Some sketches worked, some didn’t, but we kept trying to push the envelope. All new shows suffer growing pains, and we experienced our share. We adjusted. We brought in a new executive producer who had worked with David Letterman. We knew that in order for us to succeed, everyone had to commit to the long term. Talk shows are a grind, and most experts agree that it takes at least three years to find your groove. Some say you need a minimum of five years.

  I never worked harder. Some nights after doing the show I would walk into my house, have a few bites of dinner, and literally collapse. I loved the show, loved the people I worked with, felt proud of what we were doing. But sometimes I wondered if this grueling schedule was worth it. I would ask myself, “Am I doing the right thing? Is this what I should be doing, spending my career talking about other people’s careers?”

  Every so often something would happen that would energize me and validate all our hard work. That first year our bookers scored a major showbiz coup. They booked Prince, who never does talk shows and rarely does TV
. When he sat down next to me on the set and the audience frenzy died down, I said to him, “I have one question. Why? Why choose me?”

  Prince said, “I find this show represents all people. I see all kinds of guests on here.” The audience erupted in applause, and while the cheering nearly drowned him out, he added, “I’m on this show because you’re kind to everyone.”

  That moment gave me chills. Prince made me feel that we were offering viewers a real alternative, and that on this night, at least, we were doing something special.

  By then, TBS had assigned a new executive to our show, a guy I’ll call Mel after Mel Cooley from the old Dick Van Dyke Show. I thought I’d start hearing from Mel pretty regularly after the show with Prince, because with that show I felt we’d turned a corner.

  No.

  Didn’t hear from him.

  Silence.

  Then, in early 2010, the late-night talk-show world exploded.

  NBC’s experiment of moving Jay Leno to ten o’clock, five nights a week, while handing over The Tonight Show to Conan O’Brien, had turned into a ratings disaster. Basically, America—yes, the entire country—decided not to watch either of them. Trying to correct this mistake, NBC handed The Tonight Show back to Leno and bought out Conan—for $40 million. TBS immediately swarmed in and went after Conan to do a late-night show. I pictured Mel in intense closed-door meetings selling Conan, as if Mel were a used-car salesman. What I didn’t expect was the closed-door meeting Mel had with me.

  “I have a chance to get Conan,” he said. “It’s a track meet, and we have to beat somebody else to the finish line. We’re gonna win. We want Conan bad.”

  “Great, okay, good luck with it,” I said. “And what does this have to do with me?”

  “We want you to slide to midnight,” Mel said. “We’re going to put Conan on at eleven.”

  “My time slot.”

  “Yes. But it’s all good. We’ll promote you as a block, you and Conan together. The new faces of late night. It’s win-win.”

  “When would this happen?”

  “November.”

  “November,” I repeated. “Our show will be less than a year old.”

  “Correct,” Mel said. “So what do you think?”

  Even though I hesitated for probably less than five seconds, I felt that time had stopped. I thought, “Should I do this? Should I slide over? Do I really need this? Should I say no? But you know what? You’re a team player. It’s the nice thing to do. It’s the right thing to do. Yes. You should do it.”

  “I’ll do it,” I said to Mel.

  I never should’ve done it.

  I know the old saying that hindsight is twenty-twenty, but I believe moving Lopez Tonight to midnight did us in. But I tried to please everybody. I wanted to be Mr. Nice Guy, the good soldier, the team player.

  I should’ve listened to what my idol, Bill Cosby, said years ago. I look up to him more than anybody. Cos said, “I can’t tell you the formula for success. But I can tell you that the formula for failure is trying to make everybody happy.”

  That was my problem. I tried to make everybody happy.

  It turned out that I didn’t make anybody happy, including me.

  After TBS announced that they signed Conan for a billion dollars, or whatever they gave him on top of his $40 million buyout from NBC, I brought on Chris Rock as a guest. We caught up with each other on the air for a minute or so, and then I said, “You heard that Conan’s coming to TBS?”

  Chris said, “Conan’s coming?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where you going?”

  “I’m staying,” I said. “I’m going to midnight. He’s coming on at eleven o’clock.”

  “Get the hell outta here.”

  “It’s true.”

  “So you gonna move for the white man, huh? I hope he appreciates that.”

  “I think he does,” I said quietly.

  “And you don’t have to clean or park nothing?”

  “No,” I said. “And here’s the best part: I get to go to work an hour later. It’s a Latino’s dream, man.”

  The studio audience roared and Chris cracked up and I felt pretty good. At that moment, I was convinced that Conan and I would form an edgy, fresh, powerful two-hour block of late-night entertainment that the network would nurture and promote the hell out of.

  I was wrong.

  I drank the Kool-Aid.

  TBS did promote the hell out of Conan. They just lost sight of me. Or they lost faith in the show. Or they thought that we had too much “flavor” for the time slot. Or the “flavor” of our show caused the Conan audience to drop off. Or—

  I really don’t know.

  I do know that TBS canceled Lopez Tonight less than two years after we started.

  When the media reported the show was canceled, the Reverend Jesse Jackson himself stepped in and tried to save it. He called Mel at TBS directly, and said television needed more diversity, and without us there would be a void. But TBS shot him down, too.

  Mel never broke the news to me directly. He never called me. He told my agents the news. I got an e-mail. Mel also informed us that we had thirty-six hours to vacate the building. All of a sudden he became the Creepy Little White Girl.

  Man, talk about night and day.

  Conan got $40 million to leave NBC and I got thirty-six hours to get out of town.

  I took the high road. I wanted our last show to be a party, and it was. I invited a few friends, Slash, and some other rockers, and I booked Derek Fisher and Metta World Peace (then Ron Artest) from my beloved Los Angeles Lakers, and Eva Longoria, who appeared on my first show. In the monologue I joked about being unemployed.

  “Now that I lost my job, people want to know what I’m gonna do next. Well, like every other unemployed TV star, I’m gonna find me some crack. Yes. I’m going on the pipe. I’m gonna lose that unwanted hundred and ten pounds.”

  Everybody laughed and applauded, and at the end of the show the band played “Rock and Roll All Nite,” and everybody stood up and danced.

  We had a party, man.

  It’s all good.

  But late night lost a little flavor.

  THINGS YOU SHOULD DO BEFORE YOU DIE, I MEAN, TURN FIFTY

  WHEN I turned fifty, I decided not to think about the future. I mean, what if I didn’t have a future? The future is now, man. I live in the moment. I try to be as present as I can. I don’t like to plan and I hate to anticipate. That’s why, when I came across this Web site that asked people over fifty what they would like to accomplish now that they’ve reached this milestone—things that they’d never done but that they finally might be willing to try because it’s pretty much now or never—I thought, “You know what? I’m pretty adventurous. I’m game. Let’s try some of this. Bring it on.”

  So, here we go.

  Here’s the first thing I found on that Web site list that people wanted to do. The first adventure.

  “Ride something bigger than a horse.”

  Okay, let’s think about this.

  For starters, I paid a fortune for these teeth. My luck, I’ll get up on a bull or an elephant, the thing will buck and throw me, and I’ll swallow one of my veneers. I am not losing those $100,000 Chiclets. I’ll have a surgeon go in after it, cut me open, and pull my veneers out. I’ll wash it off and pop it back on. Those teeth are expensive, man. Plus they look good.

  So, what would I ride?

  Got it.

  I’d ride a camel.

  I would.

  At least I think I would.

  Camels can be nasty. They spit and they sweat and they smell like shit. They also have a lot of dander, and I’m violently allergic to dander. I know I’ll inhale that camel dander and start sneezing and coughing and throw my back out. I can’t handle camel dander. I know that sounds made-up, but
it’s not. That dander wrecks me. If I have to, I’ll get a doctor’s note. You know, like the kid who brings a note to school that says he can’t get anywhere near peanuts. I can’t get anywhere near camel dander.

  But there’s actually something else about riding a camel that makes me even more nervous. There is something I dread.

  What if I didn’t fit in between the humps?

  That would get to me.

  Okay, I may not look fat to you—and I may not actually be fat—but I am fat in my mind. Seriously. I’m fat.

  So, yes, the worst thing would be if I approached the camel and the camel wrangler looked me over and said, “I’m sorry. This camel won’t work. Can you come back Thursday? We have a camel in Phoenix that I think would fit you.”

  That would crush me.

  If the camel wrangler informed me, “We don’t have a camel on hand that’s your size, but we can special-order one for you. An extra-large. You don’t want the space between the humps to be too snug. You want some room to breathe. A too-tight fit can be extremely uncomfortable. Jostle your balls. Cause some permanent damage. You might upset the camel, too. You do not want that. So should I put through the special order?”

  Yes, that’s my fear: that I would be too large for the camel.

  I’m also a little concerned about getting up on a camel. My first thought was that I would need a ladder, but I’m too old for that. I don’t want to be halfway up the camel, he turns around, smells me, makes a face, and bolts, leaving me in midair holding on to the ladder like I’m Francois the Clown in the Cirque du freaking Soleil.

  I know that most professional camel riders and people living in the desert who ride camels all the time don’t use a ladder. They mount by getting the camel to sit on the ground. They make a clicking sound; then they say, “Jit, jit, jit”—which is how some Mexicans pronounce the word “shit,” so I know I can handle that—over and over, until the camel bends his knees and slowly lowers himself onto the ground.

  This sounds great, except that after the age of fifty, your range of motion starts to go. When I was a kid, I used to climb trees and hop fences, no problem. I was as athletic as anyone. I even learned to climb the rope at school. Everyone hated climbing the rope. I did, too, at first. But I was determined to conquer it. Took me weeks. Every day in gym class, I worked my way up the rope a little more, then a little more, literally inch by inch, until I got all the way to the ceiling. I remember that feeling of triumph and accomplishment. What a rush! I felt like a fireman. Then I realized I had to get down. I hadn’t factored that in. I came down, shinnying hand over hand, but I went too fast. I burned the hell out of my palms. I walked around with salve on my hands for a week. I smelled like an old person’s ass.