Foreward
(and Forewarned)
by CJ Sullivan

"W          e have to start hanging out with Sean
          Flannery.”

This was something I was told around 2003 in a Chicago bar called The Long Room. It was stated in a matter-of-fact tone, by a fellow comic and good friend, the late Pat Brice. “Yea, I saw him go up at the Den,” I replied, “he was funny, I guess.”

“Oh, he is,” Pat responded, “but who cares about that shit...have you actually hung out with him? He’s a hell of a time.” He made direct eye contact with me then repeated: “A Hell of a Time.”

For Brice to command appointment drinking with someone meant that we weren’t talking about an ordinary blotto bro. This was serious. It was almost like someone saying, ”Hey, we got to start betting on Tom Brady every Sunday...this could be beneficial to all of us!’

So, we T9Word-texted him on a Nokia and had him join us for an unannounced audition for debauchery, and he did not disappoint. The Long Room bar is exactly that: a long room. It had two private, but spacious bathrooms in the middle of the aforementioned long room that, appropriately, had locks. Sean disagreed with this feature. He believed that Men’s public bathrooms should be open to several patrons at a time, so he went ahead and removed the doorknob with a Phillips head screwdriver that he kept in his briefcase (more on that later). The problem, other than the petty vandalism, was that in the throes of his boozy vigilantism he had actually removed the handle on the Women’s bathroom door instead, creating a whole new set of crimes. When we pointed out Sean’s error, he “corrected” it by removing the other door knob, so now it was equal! I knew right then: I was going to be in the Sean Flannery business for the next 20 years. It’s not a profitable business, but it’s never dull.

The Chicago comedy scene in the early 2000s was undeniably explosive, equally for the stars that emerged from it and for the carnage it left behind. Yes, there were great names like Hannibal Buress, Kyle Kinane, Kumail Nanjiani, etc. All well documented, and all talents whose greatest achievement might have been surviving the nightly combat drinking that was Chicago comedy. A lot of us owe our lives to Sean for guiding us through the battlefields of stages and bars and then for having the decency to burn it all to the ground so no trace was left behind. Like all great leaders, he believes in his troops, even if he doesn’t believe in what he’s telling them.

Sean is a walking paradox in many ways, and it’s what makes him uniquely qualified to pass on these stories of places he can’t return to (how he didn’t title this book ”Oh, the Places You Won't Go” is beyond me). He has a legitimately brilliant mind that he uses to bail out his dumb mouth.

Sean’s intelligence combined with a genuine curiosity in people’s lives is also what makes his stories fascinating. In the wrong hands, these tales could easily be dismissed as boorish regrets doused in cheap beer with no charm whatsoever. Luckily for us, his advanced, but skewed brain power along with his deep, blue collar Cleveland roots allows us to ride along with him from one hilarious exit to another. He’s like if Matt Damon’s character, Will Hunting, was real and fun to hang out with instead of that dick who assaults people at Little League games and ghosts co-eds. Sean is the condescending everyman done right!

Sean’s live comedy storytelling show, “The Blackout Diaries,” which I occasionally take part in, is a great summation of why these stories are so good. The show has performers and civilians alike telling outrageous true tales usually related around dumb drunk decisions. It’s his championing of people that not only relates but draws our rooting interest as well. He guides city workers, plumbers, and whoever else through their regrettable trials of intoxicated mayhem, and promises it’s okay, because he has done worse. Way worse. Sean is a public defender for the fascinatingly dumb.

Sean even wears the public defender’s uniform of a cheap wool suit and briefcase to go out drinking. Oh, right, that briefcase. Almost forgot. In order to keep within his allotted $20 drinking budget set by his patient wife, Jessica, Sean would load an actual leather briefcase with assorted beers and a full wet bar in order to drink on the cheap. Sean would have to fake important business calls with Japan every twenty minutes and go into the bathroom stall to make his libation. They never throw a guy out in a suit, he claims.

Speaking of claims, there will be times during this book where you will ask yourself if this is real. To that, I say, Sean is never one to lie, but he doesn’t need truths to slow down a ride. He is never as wrong as you think he is, and that’s half the battle. Flannery doesn’t have time to be corrected—”Beautiful Mind”-style—and you’re slowing down the journey to the good part. The only damn part that matters!

Very few comics pull off being hysterical both on and off the stage, because nobody wants to be around someone trying to be funny. It’s sad and exhausting. Sean’s brilliant stage act is still actually tame compared to his real-life résumé; you get the feeling he is saving his best material for himself. I’m extremely envious of that and equal parts excited that for the first time we get to experience the Full Flannery, from a safe distance. Sean never forces anything, he doesn’t need to seek adventures at night, because he IS the adventure. Like Pat Brice said, “We have to start hanging out with Sean Flannery.”

—CJ Sullivan, October, 2021.

Preface/ Apologia:

This book is true stories, but it is not a memoir. It is a more an illustration—maybe a
warning —of what your life will look like if you decide to live every day like it’s your last. Because I followed that advice. I followed it for a good fifteen years.

I can’t re-enter most the places I visited in that time.

 

M>  any of these stories happened in Cleveland Ohio, in the 1990s.I was (and still am) a huge
    baseball fan, to the point where—as you will soon learn—I spray-painted the logo of my favorite team, The Cleveland Indians, on to my car. Yes, I drove around with Chief Wahoo on the hood of my car.

This will become a big part of the book. It was my car and my team.

Growing up watching that team, I never thought anything weird about spray painting a highly caricatured Native American face on my car. It was the logo I cheered for each night and I was proud to be from Cleveland.

That logo, Chief Wahoo, was racist. The name, The Indians, was racist. I was racist to put that logo on my car.

I made a decision in this book that I will discuss these topics—“The Indians” and “Chief Wahoo”—as though they were normal during the story. I do not apologize or address the inappropriateness of it in the text of the book because, at the time, they were normal to me. 10

But I wanted to be abundantly clear, since you won’t read it in the book: that name, “The Indians,” and that logo, “Chief Wahoo,” were racist.

Finally, I made a decision in this book to portray drinking and driving as mostly a struggle against bad civic planning and that I stand by.

—S. B-F