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The Seventies
“Is this anything?” is what every comedian says to every other comedian about any new bit.
Ideas that come from nowhere and mean nothing.
But in the world of stand-up comedy, literal bars of gold.
You see that same comedian later and you will be asked,
“Did it get anything?”
All comedians are slightly amazed when anything works.
Picture me in the mid-1960s, living room floor, legs crossed, bowl of cereal,
one foot from our twenty-five-inch Zenith measured diagonally, jeans, horizontal-stripe T-shirt,
white, low-top US Keds, staring at a comedian in a dark suit and tie on
The Ed Sullivan Show.
I could say something funny once in a while but everything out of this guy’s mouth is hilarious.
“How are they able to talk like that?”
I was so mystified and fascinated by them.
But I never, ever imagined I could be one of them.
They were like astronauts or Olympic athletes to me.
Some different, other breed of humans.
Not even really part of the world.
* * *
I grew up on Long Island and remember, sometime in the early seventies, hearing my friend Chris Misiano’s older brother, Vince, say that there was a place in New York City where young people were getting onstage and doing a new kind of stand-up comedy.
That there was a guy who would tell a story while playing a conga drum, and then he started crying and playing the drum in rhythm to the crying!
That sounded so crazy and hilarious to us.
We thought, “We have to see this guy!”
So we started going into the city, which was incredibly fun and exciting anyway, to see these new comedians at the Improv and Catch a Rising Star.
That comedian, of course, was Andy Kaufman.
And there were lots of other amazing comedians there too.
Like Ed Bluestone, Elayne Boosler, Richard Lewis, Bob Shaw, and Bobby Kelton.
We even saw big stars performing at these places, like Rodney Dangerfield and David Brenner.
Hearing live laughs burst out of these crowds in these packed little rooms was almost a scary sound.
How did the comedians know that what they said would get such huge laughs from a crowd of total strangers?
I could not figure it out.
Then in 1974, two things happened that tripped my head out of whatever thick, suburban haze I was in and off into a whole different realm of life.
I read a book called The Last Laugh and saw a movie called Lenny.
The Last Laugh by Phil Berger was the first book completely about the world of stand-up comedy.
Lenny was a Dustin Hoffman movie about the life of Lenny Bruce.
The poster for Lenny showed him in a smoky nightclub hunched over a microphone.
There’s a scene in the movie where Lenny Bruce is having dinner late at night in a cafeteria after a show that did not go well.
Tie undone, still in his suit, he pushes his tray along and meets a stripper, Hot Honey Harlowe.
I think that was the scene that did it.
The absolute lack of glamour and/or normalcy drove me wild.
What a completely offbeat, nonsensical existence.
Comedians seemed to hurtle through space and time untethered to anything but the sound of a laugh.
I thought, “Oh my god.
I want to do that.
But—
What if I can’t?
What if I’m not funny?”
I remember thinking,
“Well, but I wouldn’t have to be that funny anyway.
I would just have to be funny enough to buy a loaf of Wonder bread and a jar of Skippy peanut butter a week.”
I could easily survive on that.
It was all I ate in my parents’ house, anyway.
And even if that’s all I had, it would be a better life than any other I could envision.
I was more than happy to accept being a not-that-funny comedian over any other conceivable option.
Without realizing it, of course, this attitude is the exact right way to start out in the world of comedy.
Expect nothing. Accept anything.
I had only ever tried to make my friends laugh.
That wasn’t that easy.
How in the world do you make people that don’t even know you laugh?
In The Last Laugh I read about a joke Jimmie Walker did at Catch a Rising Star one night.
How great is that name for a nightclub of new comedians, by the way?
Still the best name I’ve ever heard.
And still the coolest club I ever walked into.
I love that it’s the very first place I ever stepped on a stage to try and do comedy.
Anyway, Jimmie Walker’s joke was that it was raining so hard in New York that night he “just saw Superman getting into a cab.”
I thought that joke was so simple but so funny.
How do you think of something like that?
It just seemed like a miracle to me.
I still don’t know exactly for sure where jokes come from.
I think it’s from some emotional cocktail of boredom, aggression, intense visual acuity and a kind of Silly Putty of the mind that enables you to re-form what you see into what you want it to be.
I was a very, very nervous performer when I first began going onstage.
But I was encouraged by my Queens College friends Jesse Michnik, Joe Bacino and Mike Costanza.
I am still grateful to those guys.
I was not a naturally outgoing person or really even attention seeking in my normal personality.
My favorite thing was to whisper something funny in class to the kid next to me and crack him up so he got in trouble.
I tried being in a couple plays in high school and college but unless the part was all comedy I couldn’t stay interested in the scenes.
I was also reprimanded several times for trying to make a part funny that wasn’t supposed to be.
Loved doing that.
Even in the early years of Seinfeld I had difficulty focusing on the story aspects of the show.
I would only perk up when Larry and I got to writing the dialogue and we needed funny lines for the characters to say.
I got better at story structure as the years went on but still find that kind of work a bit dreary.
But at twenty years old, when I walked into the Manhattan comedy clubs for the first time, every neuron in my little brain just lit up.
I felt like I had finally found my home on planet Earth.
And it wasn’t just that I could now immerse myself in the art of comedy, it was also the world of comedians I was suddenly in.
I have many great friends who are actors, writers and artists of various kinds.
But when I’m in the company of other stand-up comedians I feel like I’m rolling around in a litter of puppies.
* * *
To this day, I feel that same excitement when I walk into a comedy club.
And I have to say, part of it is also this feeling that wherever comedians are working, it is a place of battle.
I am totally in love with the very c
lear winning-and-losing outcome that a stand-up set can have.
In some ways, it’s more sports than theater, really.
This might work tonight.
And it might not.
The real problem of stand-up, of course, is that you must constantly justify why you are the only one talking while a room full of people sit quietly.
And in the beginning, to just put yourself into what is—let’s face it—that fairly untenable position, you have to love it badly, madly, maybe even sadly.
Getting live laughs is a druggy kind of lifestyle.
Adrenaline, dopamine, oxytocin.
The drugstore of the brain does not ask if you have a prescription.
It’s like those yogurt places where they let you pull the handle yourself.
Oxytocin is sometimes known as “the love drug” because the brain releases it when it receives positive social and/or amorous stimulation.
And let me tell you, when you’re on a stage all by yourself
under a hot light,
with a hot mic,
and those laughs are crashing down around you,
it’s a strong, pure hit of every addiction you’ve ever wanted.
When I was young, I was obsessed with race-car driving, big-wave surfing, skydiving
and really fast motorcycles.
One year into doing stand-up comedy I lost interest in all of it.
I learned very quickly that stand-up comedy survival has a lot to do with how much and how good your material is.
I never met a stand-up who wasn’t funny at all.
But for the most part, it was the people who killed themselves to keep coming up with great new material who were able to keep rising through the many levels.
And whenever I came up with a funny bit, whether it happened on a stage, in a conversation or working it out on my preferred canvas, the big yellow legal pad, I kept it in one of those old-school accordion folders.
So, I have everything I thought was worth saving from forty-five years of hacking away at this for all I was worth.
And I know for sure it was because I loved doing it so much that I was able to spend endless amounts of time on some of the silliest ideas you can imagine.
And they’re all here.
* * *
Looking back, I like that I was successful.
I’m happy I made money at it.
But honestly, I swear I have really been in it for the laughs since day one, day two and every other day, including today.
I still go out to the clubs every week.
Still love working on the bits.
And appreciate every set I get to do.
And I still get excited meeting and talking to the other stand-up comedians that live for this peculiar, precarious existence.
It was my agent Christian Carino that convinced me people would like to see all this stuff and that we should put it out as a book.
A lot of people I’ve talked to seemed surprised that I’ve kept all these notes.
I don’t understand why they think that.
I don’t understand why I’ve kept anything else.
What could possibly be of more value?
* * *
In the sixties and seventies they would say on TV about certain comedians,
“And he writes all his own stuff.”
Because that was a new thing.
Comedians like Bob Hope and Jack Benny would actually joke about their writers as part of their act.
Stand-up comedy in the sixties made the same turn that music did with singer-songwriters becoming the way it was done.
I’ve never done anything else.
There is something exciting, I think, about being in the same room with the person who originally thought all the ideas you’re hearing.
One of my favorite stories about stand-up comics is from my friend Barry Marder.
Barry is a writer, comedian and creator of the Ted L. Nancy character.
In the eighties Barry was making a living selling jokes to comedians at the Comedy Store in LA.
The going rate was $75 a joke.
When Barry’s father, a home improvement salesman, heard this, he couldn’t believe it.
“Why would they pay that much for a joke?” he asked.
Barry told him,
“Because the guys that need them, really need them.”
And we do.
I can personally guarantee you that every comedian you’ve ever seen feels inside that they don’t have as much good material as they really wish they had.
The biggest comedians you can name still go onstage with a little worry in the back of their head, that whatever they have might not be good enough tonight.
We always want more.
I deeply love the endless, somewhat torturous struggle of never quite feeling that you’ve got your act where you want it.
Because I don’t want it to ever end.
And when a new bit breaks through and gets a real laugh,
that’s when you feel like you’re at the beginning of the journey all over again.
You feel like you’re just starting out.
And maybe you do have what it takes.
I love hearing a laugh that’s never existed in the world before.
Because every laugh is slightly different. Unique even.
So these pages are the map of the forty-five-year-long road I’ve been on to become this odd, unusual thing that is the only thing I ever really wanted to be.
And I wish I could recommend it to you as an experience you should have.
But it’s like recommending that someone become an iguana.
If you don’t have those crazy eyes, leathery skin and the long tongue, it’s tough to get there.
* * *
But I hope you enjoy taking the ride that has been my life with me through these pages.
I’m a little frustrated that if you do laugh at something in here I won’t get to hear it.
And that’s why I’ll probably be out at a club in front of an audience somewhere tonight.
“Because the guys that need them, really need them.”
The Left Bit
I’m left-handed.
Left-handed people do not like that the word “left”
is so often associated
with negative things.
Two left feet.
Left-handed compliment.
Bad ideas are always “out of left field.”
What are we having for dinner?
Leftovers.
You go to a party, nobody’s there.
“Where’d everybody go?”
“They left.”
Bumper Cars
Another exciting day in my childhood was when we got to go on the Bumper Cars.
You really find out what you’re made of on the Bumper Cars.
A brutal contest of man and machine.
Driving as an act of pure hostility.
All confrontation, no destination.
Except, when the ride starts there’s always one kid stuck in a pack of empty cars.
Can’t get out.
This is the same guy you see later on with the attendant hanging off the back helping him steer.
I always feel bad when I hit somebody I don’t know.
Feels too much like a real accident.
I get out, exchange registrations.
Inspect the damage.
There’s always some guy a little too into it.
Lives for the sensation of impact.
You’ll see this guy with saliva on his chin.
As he puts a helpless father-and-son team through a wall.
Cotton Balls
I like women.
Although, I find their bathrooms one of the most frightening places in the world.
I don’t even want to see what happens when they crank up some of that equipment.
You have that makeup mirror.
With the aircraft landing lights on either side.
The rows of hot curlers in that plastic thing.
Do you put those in with your hands or do you just launch them right out of the box?
Like little cruise curlers.
I suppose once you got the curlers in your hair,
you can cook potatoes on those things sticking up.
Lot of cotton balls in there too.
Women use a lot of cotton balls.
A LOT of cotton balls.
The thing I don’t understand is, I have never needed a cotton ball.
Never.
Not one.
We’re both human beings.
What’s going on?
I’ve never wanted a cotton ball.
Never bought a cotton ball.
Never had a cotton ball.
Never been in a situation where I thought to myself,
“I could use a cotton ball right now.
I could certainly get out of this mess.”
Women need them.
And they don’t need one or two.
They need thousands of them every single day.
They buy these bags, they’re like peat moss bags.
Big steel straps around them.
They have them dropped on the front lawn with a fork lift.
Two days later, they’re all out.
They’re on their way back to the store to buy more cotton balls.
The only time I ever see them,
there’s always 2 or 3 in the bottom of your little waste basket
that look like they’ve been through some horrible experience.
Tortured, interrogated.
I don’t know what you did to them.
A woman once left 3 cotton balls over my house.
Took me a year to get rid of them.
I put one on the floor of my kitchen.
I thought maybe the cockroaches would see it.
Think it’s a tumbleweed and go,
“This is a dead town, let’s move on.”
Or, I’d go to the doctor.
Before they give you the shot,
they put the alcohol on your arm with a cotton ball.
And when he went for his, I’d go,
“Maybe you could use this one?
Come on, Doc, give me a break.
I’m just trying to use them up.”
Sometimes he’d use it.
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