Alive and Kicking

Minutes before his interviewer calls, Robert Schimmel says he watched "fire coming out the back of my Power Mac G5. It was blowing, like, black smoke rings. It's fried."

"This can only happen to me," he says.

It seems like a lot of things can only happen to Schimmel.

Like fetching goat-meat tacos for the supposedly vegetarian "pottery guy" who was hitting on his wife.

Or sitting in Howard Stern's studio while his wife and daughter on either side of him (who are friends of roughly the same age) discuss specific sex acts.

Or watching a stripper dance in front of his elderly parents who, it's worth noting, are both Holocaust survivors.

But if anyone can keep computer meltdowns, strippers and goat-eating Lotharios in perspective, it's Schimmel. After all, his book is called "Cancer on $5 a Day -- How Humor Got Me Through the Toughest Journey of My Life."

The comedian's stint at the Monte Carlo today and Saturday marks the eighth anniversary to the week that he was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, right after finishing a weekend of stand-up in the same theater.

But Schimmel returned to the stage a year to the weekend, though he was still skeletally frail. He's been back to the Monte Carlo at least twice each year during his encouraging recovery. Now he's trying to close the distance in what almost has become three careers.

There's the raunchy stand-up comic. And on Stern's radio show, the brutally honest confessor of a decidedly unconventional life. And now, the cancer survivor who inspires others through previously off-limits mediums such as "The Tonight Show" and satellite radio's Catholic Channel.

"I didn't want to become the cancer comic," he says. In fact, he made sure his stage routines were as raunchy as ever to serve as "definite proof that cancer did not touch my sense of humor or my spirit.

"If I would have come back and been some middle-of-the-road comic," he says, "I didn't want to hear, 'Remember when Schimmel was funny before he got sick?' That's a negative message to people."

But he started using 10 or 12 minutes of his act for a comic monologue about his ordeal, eventually adding a slide show of his chemotherapy. After one show, a woman told him he should write a book. "Who's going to give me a book deal?" he asked her.

" 'I am,' she says."

Schimmel believes the book, already in its third printing since February, is helping families and friends as well as patients. "I try to explain in the book that humor is very disarming. If they see you smile, maybe you let them off the hook emotionally. They can go back to being themselves emotionally instead of some phony 24-hour cheerleader."

The book also allows him to keep his act as is, while still giving voice to all the people who come up "to hug me or say, 'I went through what you went through.'

"I get to tell the audience for (them) that this guy exists. And a lot more people survive than you think," he says. "You hear 'cancer' and you go, 'He's dead.' It's not necessarily true. I mean, really not as much anymore."

The next step is perhaps the inevitable reality show, something akin to the cable TV exploits of Kathy Griffin or Gene Simmons from Kiss. It's not a big departure from what Schimmel already details on the radio. And it's no longer so detached from his stand-up.

The comedian says that after the whole "pottery guy" episode, he walked onstage at the Monte Carlo last June and did an unrehearsed rant about the teacher who was giving his wife extra attention ("When does the scene from 'Ghost' happen?"). The strict vegetarian's eyes lit up at Schimmel's joking mention of barbecued goat: "You can make exceptions," the guy claimed.

"Yeah, I'm Jewish, but I'm going to make an exception and serve crab claws and shrimp cocktails at my bar mitzvah."

Schimmel secretly recorded the teacher propositioning his wife. His wife was outraged because he recorded them. The saga was re-told to Stern, and led to the recent shooting of a "presentation film" for a reality show. The producer put up Schimmel to hire a stripper for his daughter's 30th birthday. "I hire a female stripper. They meant a guy stripper. I didn't know."

Because of the TV cameras, the stripper wore pasties. With his picture on each one.

"She's shaking them in front of my mom and dad's face. They're in their 80s."

Later, the stripper wanted to know what the occasion was.

"I said, 'I wanted to make sure I'm getting into hell for sure.' "

Contact reporter Mike Weatherford at mweatherford@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0288.