AN  EXCERT FROM MY BOOK:

New York City  1977: 

             New York City was the best city to begin my comedy career.  It was super dangerous but the comedy clubs were amazing. There was so much crime in the late 70s.  Son of Sam was shooting people.  Times Square was nothing but strip clubs, pimps and drug addicts.  New York was the murder capital not the nice tourist city it is today with a Starbucks  on every corner.   The comedy clubs were tough to break into and the audiences were tougher   But I wanted to be a great comedian and New York City made some incredible comedians  in the late 70’s.  When I told my sister I was going to New York, she warned “  Well whatever you do don’t get  murdered” This was her way of showing her love for her little sister.  My sister was good friends with Danny Ackroyd before he was on SNL.   They were a comedy team in the late 70s doing a lot of local theatre  and radio in Ottawa.   My mother loved Danny.  He made her laugh.  Sometimes he would come for dinner and try too scare  me by rolling his eyes back showing the whites then stare at me.   This combined with his unibrow made him frightening.  Val and Danny did endless sketches improv and characters.  For some reason they made fun of my forehead, not that my forehead is freakish,  but I guess they thought it was big    Danny would say “Lois, you could turn a  truck around on your forehead”  To this day, I have a complex  After Danny got SNL he and Val stayed in touch so when I planned my trip to NYC. Val asked him to take care of me.   I guess she didn’t want me to get murdered after all.   Danny got me a small part on SNL as an extra.  I was so excited.  This was the first time leaving  the comforts of  Canada.   When I arrived in New York, I was in awe, staring up at the buildings and almost getting hit by taxis.  I didn’t have a lot of money just enough to stay in this scary little hotel on the east side of Manhattan. I mean crappy  and bordering on dangerous.   The lobby was crawling with roaches and there were homeless people sleeping on the stairs.  It was a little foreshadowing of  things to come. 

Danny was so sweet, he picked me up at the train.  By yelling “ LOIS LOIS LOIS ”  Then took me to lunch at this run down  diner where everyone was rude but the food was great. Then to the SNL studios where he  introduced me to the cast  as Vals little sister….with the big forehead!!     I watched a rehearsal  then  Loren Micheals put me in two sketches as an extra.  I was nervous as hell,    This would be my first time on television.  I had one line in a scene with John Belushi.   I was a passenger on a bus. He asked if the seat beside me was taken?   With a major cotton mouth I managed to get my line out . “ Yes its taken” After the show  Danny took me to his office and handed me 600 bucks  from a trash can under his desk. This was where he kept his cash.  I guess he hated banks.  He told me to stuff the money in my socks. “If someone looks like they’re going to rob, you just hit them with that giant forehead” Okay, enough of the forehead jokes.   I walked around New York by myself for the next two days.    At one point, the money Danny gave me was sticking out of my socks.   But I didn’t notice, I was too busy looking up.  I returned home on the train but couldn’t wait to go back.  I told my friends I was an extra on SNL and they could give a shit. Twenty years later, they were impressed.