LOS ANGELES, CA—There was a time when Ben Weber could get a table at a trendy restaurant anywhere, anytime, but that’s been several years ago, his hot streak ending in 2007, the year his television show was cancelled after just four episodes.

Weber, who, alongside Jeff Daniel Phillips, portrayed one of the urbane cavemen in the longstanding Geico television commercial campaign, spends less time auditioning for new roles these days, the majority spent drunk and badmouthing the Geico gecko.

“I can do a killer British accent,” uttered Weber, seated cross-legged, his back against the side of a 7-Eleven store a block off Sunset Strip. He alternated swigs with label peeling from a 40-ounce Budweiser bottle. “I’m sure they got that squirrely little freak for a lot less money than I was getting. Let’s see a lizard carry a sitcom…for four episodes!”

Weber turns up the bottle, the last of the warm foam spilling into his mouth. “I’d like to beat that little sucker with a shovel. Or maybe let a cat bat him about for a day or two before eating him, tail first.” Weber looks up. “Is it really hot out here? Is my face glue dripping?”

According to Morey Turtletaub, Weber’s former agent, “Bennie just needs to take off the caveman get-up and get on with his life. It’s creepy. And he’s classically trained, for God’s sake! Most people don’t know that.

“If I had a dime for every time I’d get a drunken call from him demanding I find another caveman role, I’d be able to buy a time machine and send him back to the Paleolithic Era.

“I got him an audition to play the apple in the Fruit-of-the-Loom ads. He shows up dressed as the caveman. Some herpes drug maker needed”—he air signs quotation marks—“a ‘family man’ type for their ad. Bennie the creepy caveguy shows up. You want the audience wondering who—or what—gave a caveman herpes?” Nussbaum shudders at the thought.

“They [casting agents] started making jokes about me, asking if I’m going to send Herman Munster or Fred Flintstone over to audition. In this town, your reputation is everything. And mine, well…mine ain’t so good. The last thing I need is some nut with a caveman fetish passing out my business cards.”

According to a spokesperson for Geico, “We were not aware that Mr. Weber is still dressing as the caveman. Not that we really care. We don’t deal in neurosis, we sell insurance.

“The caveman is a thing of the past. We’ve moved on to bigger and better things. You’ve got to keep re-inventing yourself to stay ahead of the competition. In fact, the gecko’s going to look a lot different in the future. We learned through focus groups that Americans think the gecko’s too wimpy, too…foreign. I don’t want to reveal too much about our next ad campaign, but look for the AFLAC Duck to spend a lot of time dabbing blood from its bill.”—Citizen Dick Arneson reporting