“Looking back on my 11 year Vegas experience, I realized I made it longer than most, but in the end, I never had a chance. I was far from an exception to the rule. Sin City was going to beat me, just like it beats everybody else.”
That’s a little excerpt from Brandt Tobler’s memoir “Free Roll” in which he very candidly talks about his Las Vegas adventures and the road to becoming a stand up comedian.
Brandt Tobler is a Cheyenne, Wyoming, native, but, like many, came to Las Vegas for a second chance and to chase a dream.
Now, he performs at the Brad Garrett Comedy Club in Las Vegas, the L.A. Comedy Club and even tours the country doing standup.
Discussion Highlights:
Before you came to Las Vegas, how did you picture it?
Growing up in Wyoming, I never dreamed of becoming a comedian. It was the furthest thing from my mind because there are no comedy clubs. I wanted to a be P.E. teacher and a basketball coach. A lot of people say they wanted to be a comedian since they were young. It was just never an option.
I thought I had a better chance of going to Saturn than Los Angeles. I didn’t think about doing comedy until much later in life.
Why did you come here?
My father went to prison when I was a kid. My mom told me he was in college. I later found out it was prison. I was going to actual college in Phoenix and my dad got out of prison and he moved to Las Vegas. He was dating a cocktail waitress and I came out and visited him. I hadn’t talked to my dad in eight years. We re-connected and then I had five wonderful days with him. And like an idiot, I dropped out of college and moved here to get my dream job as a pirate at the Treasure Island. That’s what I thought was the best job in the world.
I never got the job. I ended up counting change at the Klondike Casino out on Boulder Highway. Just an awful job.
You write about this in your book how unglamorous it was when you got here:
I was living east of town in a trailer park. My dad’s girlfriend would kick us out a lot and we would stay at the Budget Suites. It was a different lifestyle than growing up in Wyoming because Budget Suites weekly hotels are just awful. I definitely came a long way from my little Wyoming town.
Did you think it was a mistake to move here?
At the time, I was just enjoying spending time with my dad because my dad was in and out of prison the whole time I was a kid. And then from the age of 12 to 20, I never really saw him. That first couple of months I was just really enjoying being with my dad and as a kid from small town in Wyoming, Vegas was fascinating to me.
You did end up working in the gaming industry:
I meet a bunch of professional gamblers. I would pay basketball every day at lunch in a gym in Green Valley. I ended up meeting some professional gamblers and they gave me a job as a runner. My job was I would run up and down the Las Vegas Strip carrying hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash and making bets on sports.
How did you get paid?
I was one salary. They would work out of an office. I eventually got to that point [of taking a percentage] A lot of times people would run off with their money. So, I had to build their trust. They didn’t know me that well at first. My boss thought I was an FBI plant. He said, ‘So, this kid just shows up out of nowhere at your gym and he moved here to be a pirate and he lives in a trailer?’
The first couple of months I had to spend a lot of time with them. In hindsight, I realize they were really questioning me and then they realized I’m just an idiot and not with the FBI.
When did the reality of Las Vegas start to set in?
I just didn’t know anything coming in. I just lived in this dream world. I had that runner job for almost 10 years. The whole thing was just an adult playground. When you bet that much money, not only did I always have a ton of money on me, I had comps everywhere because I was gambling so much. To be honest, I didn’t see what an awful place it is here until after I quit working.
Is this what you mean when you talk about “falling into the trap of Vegas?”
Everyone I know here has gambling problems or addiction problems. In the end, every relationship I made here fell apart. I just struggled with that because I come from a small town where everyone is genuine and nice. I made a few friends here, but in the end, everybody was just out for themselves. I seemed like everyone I came across here was addicted to drugs or gambling… I ran into a lot of off people here. My dad being the leader of it.
You are a stand-up comedy but you let your readers know that you’re going to take them through tragedy after tragedy. Do you think these tragedies made you a good comedian?
Everybody always says that. Tragedy plus time equals comedy. And the start of my life was kind of tragic just because my dad was really bad to my mom. But I didn’t know, my mom did a really good job of hiding all that from me.
When I wrote this book and I interviewed my mom, and she told me how awful my father was to her. I had a stepdad who was a great father figure that stepped in. I didn’t realize how bad it was when I was in it.
You came to Las Vegas to have a relationship with your dad. It was good at first, did that good relationship last?
No. I was going to college in Phoenix and then he sent me a letter and it said he would meet me at the airport. And this was before 9/11 and you could go gate to gate. I went to the airport and didn’t even know what my own dad looked like. I hadn’t seen him in almost a decade. I was looking in bookstores and bars. I saw a guy with a ponytail, wearing a wife-beater and pants, and there’s my dad.
The relationship was good with my dad. We lived in this trailer. It was every white trash stereotype you can think of. Cocktail waitress girlfriend, her kids, we were like seven in a trailer. Dogs, birds. Once I started making money, I moved us out. I rented a nice house on the golf course. Everything was good.
My dad was on parole, which he hated. He would always complain about being on parole. It felt like the government was running his life. We were always waiting for that day. He couldn’t do anything when he was on parole.
I eventually moved my little brother out because I was making a ton of money. And I had him come to try to make up for lost time and be a little family like we always wanted.
So it was good at first but then…
Then it turned, how far did it turn?
The second my dad got off parole that night I threw a big party for him and invited family and friends over. Catered it, got alcohol and everything. And he was so happy because he had waited for that day. Then at the end of the night, I remember it was just me and my dad and my little brother in the kitchen we were hugging him and telling him how proud of him we were. And that is last good memory I have of my dad because pretty much the next day he got back on drugs and started hanging out… with 20-year-old meth head kids and bringing them to the house.
The relationship changed. I was the father and he was a kid. Because he was up in the room locking the door, doing weird stuff. Then my friends came to town and stole their wallet, just embarrassing stuff. I never thought I would have to say, ‘hey sorry my dad stole your wallet.’
Once the parole was off, then he got back on drugs and then when he got back onto drugs I could see it start to spiral. It was just a weird thing to have to yell at your father. I had signed a lease to sign this beautiful house on the golf course. I didn’t know what do to. Then one day, it all fell apart for forever.
How did it fall apart?
As a runner, on Saturdays, I would get to the Strip at 8 a.m. and run up and down the Strip until 8 o’clock at night, betting football games. Then on Sundays, I would have to wake up and do the same thing for the pro games.
So, on Saturday night I came home at 9 p.m. and I was exhausted. When I got there, I could tell my dad was all coked out or on meth or something. I said, ‘Hey dad, I’m going to bed. I have to go to work early in the morning. If you want to come down tomorrow, I could get you comped and you could hang out.’ And he said, ‘okay, son.’ I went to sleep and at around midnight my little brother came charging in my room and he said, ‘someone stole my money.’ My little brother had saved up $350 to fly to Portland to see his girlfriend graduate college. So as the big brother, I jump out of bed and I run downstairs and I’m yelling for my dad because I’m thinking, one of these kids he hangs out with stole my little brother’s money. I didn’t think for a second my dad would do that for his own son. When I got downstairs, my dad was nowhere to be found. He had this crappy Camero that he always had to park in the garage and then when I went and looked in the garage the Camero was gone. Then it hit me that I had all my money upstairs. So I ran upstairs and he stole $80,000 in cash from me. I see my little brother crying and I made me sick.
I worked for guys who you don’t want to be $80,000 short with, not that you want to do that for any job. But I looked at my little brother crying. My brother was living good in Portland and I brought him into this mess…. Once you had the $80,000 why would go and steal $350 from your son? My brother worked in a stuffed animal store in Caesars Palace. He worked his butt off to save that money.
I saw my brother all sad, and in that moment I said, ‘That’s it. I’m going to kill my dad.’ That’s when I made the decision was going to kill my dad.
Did you try?
Yeah. In my defense, I was 23. I hadn’t tried to kill anybody before. This was before “Breaking Bad” or “Dexter.” This plan was ridiculous. My mom had told me a story that my dad would cheat on her and one time he cheated and got chlamydia and the doctor prescribed him penicillin to clear up the chlamydia not knowing that he was deathly allergic to penicillin. So, he took the penicillin and he almost died when I was 4 years old.
Once this happened, I called my cousin who lives in Phoenix and he’s a real gang member and the most loyal person in my life. I told him what happened and he drove straight up from Phoenix to Vegas and when he got to the house, he said ‘where’s your dad?’ I said, ‘Hold I got a plan.’
So, there is a Jamba Juice by my house and my dad loved to get these mango Jamba Juices all the time. I told my brother and my cousin, we’re just going to get a Jamba Juice fill it up with penicillin and my dad will drink it and then he’ll die.
I fly to Colorado. My cousin has no problem penicillin because he was a drug dealer back then and he can always get anything. The had everything all set up. I called him and he said, ‘We got the Jamba Juice in the fridge, we’ll call you in an hour when your dad is dead.’
An hour later, they called me and I asked ‘what happened.’ They wouldn’t take it. Looking back, I get it. He was in Leavenworth. He was maximum security. So, he knows you’re not going to take a gift from your enemies. At that point, we were enemies with him.
I told them to forget it. By my cousin said, ‘no, I didn’t come here for that. We do it my way now.’ So they came up with a plan. This was the plan they came up with. Like I said, my father had a crappy Camero that always had to be parked in the garage. So, they knew that. So they cut the power and the phone lines and they just waited in the dark for my father to come home and my dad came home and he parked his car in the garage. He hit the garage door remote and it wouldn’t shut. He got out of the car, manually went over and pulled the garage door shut and locked it. Then as he walked across the garage to get into the house, my brother and cousin jumped out with golf clubs and tried to kill him in the garage with golf clubs. The mistake they made was it was too dark. They were swinging away and they hit him a couple of times but they hit each other. There was a side door that leads to the backyard and at the bottom of that door, there is a little doggy door. That was the only light coming into the garage and my dad saw that light and he put his shoulder down and ran and busted through that door and fell into the backyard.
He jumped the back fence and ran through the golf course. I haven’t seen or spoken to him since and that was 17 years ago.
Brandt Tobler, author, "Free Roll"