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New York, New York I'd never really heard such a noise before, a wall of sound that started way back in the balcony before ricocheting around the Austin auditorium and bouncing off the man onstage. I'd heard laughter, loads of it, but not like this: coming from every crevice and corner of the place. Not a roar – more like an uproar. Yowling from the second he came on, and played to perfection as he allowed the swells to rise and die away – before delivering two, sometimes three punch lines in a row, shots to the G.Lo spot…Memmer? U Memmer! I'd never really seen such a connection before, between a comedian and his audience. I think if George Lopez had told that Texas crowd to strip naked and two-step down the aisles they'd have crawled all over each other to get ‘er done. It's the kind of connection that – with all due respect to Dane Cook and Larry the Cable Guy – makes Lopez the No. 1 stand-up comic on the planet these days. An uncommon comedian for the common man. Think not? Well, try these numbers on for size: A record-breaking seven-night run – 7,500 fans per night – at the Gibson Amphitheatre in Los Angeles; 11,833 tickets sold for a show at the Arrowhead Pond in Anaheim; the largest crowd (12,461) in the 30-year history of the Haskins Center in El Paso; packed houses in Abilene, Denver, Albuquerque. Which is why in the most recent Forbes "Celebrity 100," Lopez ranked No. 85 with an estimated annual income of some $12 million.  El Mas Chingon Truth be told, I knew just a bit about George when I met him in Los Angeles a few years back to discuss collaborating on what would become his autobiography, Why You Crying? I knew actor, comedian, up-and-coming Hispanic power broker – but nothing about the man, his life, and more importantly – how well or willing he'd be to open up about it. The answer came quickly – in a rush, really, in the first few hours of our initial Q&A. His life would – literally – be an open book; I asked, he answered. Deep, thoughtful, often agonizing answers tied to – as we would call it – a life so sad it had to be funny. If comedy comes from pain then George was mining a mother lode. Abandoned by his migrant worker father at the tender age of two months; deserted by a wild, mixed-up mom at the age of 10; raised by grandparents who thought love was a four-letter word. So it was growing up angry, alone, teased and tormented, he found solace in the afternoon TV variety shows and the comedy of JJ Walker, Richard Pryor and George Carlin. It was through that electronic box, in the summer of 1974, that he met his new best friend and idol, Freddie Prinze, inspiring a stand-up career that would take Lopez from hole-in-the-wall Open Mic Nights in L.A. to stardom as the first – and only – Hispanic to have his own network television show to the cover of Time magazine.
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