Is This Anything?

by Jerry Seinfeld

  “Yes, moron. What did you do now?”

  “Well, I got lost.

  Then I crashed.

  I’m hanging off the side of a cliff by the seatbelt

  … and I’m trying to find a good Italian restaurant.”

  “All right, moron. Take it easy, we’ll walk you through it…”

  Opposite Clothes

  For some reason humans like to dress in clothes

  that are the exact opposite of who they really are.

  Can’t play the sport?

  Wear the jersey.

  Morbidly obese?

  Walk around in a jogging outfit.

  No talent, skills or ability of any kind?

  Put on a fancy suit.

  Announce you’re running for office,

  and would like to be in charge of everything.

  Liberace

  I saw this thing on Liberace on TV.

  Apparently, Liberace made his limo driver, who was also his lover,

  get all this plastic surgery so he would look like a young Liberace.

  And he was on the show and he looked just like a young Liberace.

  I definitely see two potential problems here with this.

  First, creating a living, breathing, human blow-up doll in your own likeness

  so you can sodomize yourself as a young man.

  That’s number one.

  Number two,

  getting involved with someone you work with.

  That can get awkward too.

  They must have had some weird fights.

  “Listen, buddy.

  You being the new me may be new to you,

  but it’s getting pretty old to me.

  And don’t look at me like me when I’m talking to you.”

  Movie Garbage

  Took the kids to the movies the other day.

  New announcement in the movie theater

  I had not seen before,

  “Please pick up the garbage from around your seat after the movie.”

  “Oh, okay.

  Maybe I’ll bring my orange jumpsuit and wooden stick with a nail in it too.

  Maybe I’ll work my way down the highway after the credits roll.”

  I’m not picking nothing up.

  I’m the one that threw it down.

  Because we have a deal in place with the movie theater people.

  The deal is,

  you’re ripping us off.

  In exchange for that, when I’m done with something,

  I open my hand.

  And let it roll down eight rows.

  I am not sticking my hand down into that dark, scary hole

  to try and pry out three Goobers that have been soda-welded there since The Shawshank Redemption.

  What have they given us?

  A cup holder growing out of the armrest?

  Is that our “luxury feature”?

  How about an automatic popcorn shooter?

  That fires one in every five seconds?

  To complete this corpse-like experience.

  Grip

  The cup holder.

  That is the object that defines our culture.

  We’re not holding cups.

  Too much strain on the hand.

  Give me a belt clip for the cell phone.

  Give me an earpiece so I don’t have to hold the phone up.

  And not one that I have to take in and out.

  Just drill it right into the side of my skull.

  * * *

  If I have two beers at a ballgame,

  give me a hat where I can put one in each side

  with a feeding tube coming down.

  If you’ve got a dog, you’ve got a leash with

  extra leash wound up inside,

  in case he pulls it,

  I just let the line out like he’s a marlin.

  I go on Amazon, I set one-click ordering.

  One click.

  That’s it.

  You want me to click twice?

  I don’t even want it anymore.

  Public Restroom

  I go in a public restroom

  I expect a motion detector on the

  toilet, sink, urinal

  I’m doing nothing in here.

  Why is the sink never as aware of us as the toilet?

  You always have to go into a David Copperfield magic act to get that to work.

  Go over to the paper towels,

  do another “Dance of the Seven Veils” over there.

  And why, by the way,

  are public restrooms constructed from the most sound-reflective materials on earth?

  Metal, glass, rock-hard tile?

  So that every tiny human noise is rendered in Dolby ProLogic Surround Sound quality?

  Is it not bad enough in there?

  Who designed the bathroom stall?

  With the under-display viewing windows?

  So, we can all see the pathetic, collapsed pant legs

  And tragic little shoe fronts just barely poking out from underneath?

  The impotent belt just lying there…

  How much more money is it to bring this wall down another foot?

  It’s the cheapest wall in the world.

  It’s a metal panel.

  They don’t even make the panels meet up tight in the corners.

  Why can’t they cinch that up?

  “You got a gap in a bad spot, dude.”

  Sometimes you’re walking by, you see a frightened terrorized human eye.

  Just a flash of eye-white in space.

  A darting pupil.

  I’m not a horse.

  I don’t want to be in a stall.

  If it’s a stall, why don’t I hang my head over the front door?

  That’s what the horses do.

  I’m sure my co-workers recognize my shoes,

  let’s let them see my face too.

  “Hey, Bob, how you doing?

  Yeah, this is why I had to run out of that big meeting…

  Had a little PowerPoint presentation of my own to do…”

  All Awards Are Stupid

  “HBO COMEDIAN AWARD” ACCEPTANCE SPEECH:

  At moments like this, I like to quote my good friend Carl Reiner, who has often said to me,

  “You don’t give awards to comedians.”

  First of all, comedians don’t need awards.

  Awards are for people that are looking for work.

  We’re not looking for work.

  If you’re any good as a comedian you’ve got tons of work.

  We’ve all got wrinkled suits and smelly shirts from packing and unpacking

  and schlepping all over the god damned country doing 10 million different kinds of gigs.

  More importantly, your whole career as a comedian is about making fun

  of pretentious, high-minded, self-congratulatory, BS events like this one.

  The whole feeling in this room of reverence and honoring

  is the exact opposite of everything I have wanted my life to be about.

  I really don’t even want to be up here.

  I want to be in the back somewhere saying something funny

  to someone about what a crock this whole thing is.

  And I don’t want to give the wrong impression

  that I’m not very honored by this, because I am.

  But it doesn’t change the truth, which is this:

  All awards are stupid.

  Every real estate office has some Five Star President’s Award plaque.

  Every hotel check-in has some Gold Circle Service thing.

  Every car salesman is a Platinum Jubilee Winner.

  And it’s all a big jerk-off.

  The hotel stinks.

  The real estate person is stupid.

  And the only thing the car salesman is good at is ripping you off.

  Because the awards don’t mean a god damn thing.

  They’re all stupid.

  How many more times ar
e we going to feel the need to set aside a night

  to give out these jag-off bowling trophies so all these people can congratulate each other on

  how much money they’re making, boring the piss out of half the world?

  And if I hadn’t already won all these awards I would not be talking like this…

  The truth is that the comedians should be the only ones getting awards.

  We’re the only ones that have to actually think of something original and funny and interesting for ourselves to say.

  I don’t know why we are so fascinated by actors in this culture.

  They haven’t got a thought in their stupid bedhead hairdo.

  “We must honor this man.

  Why, he pretended to be Bill Jones.

  He’s a genius, I tell you.”

  Roll the cameras.

  Put on these clothes.

  Stand on this spot.

  Ready…?

  And say what we told you to say.

  He did it!

  Give him a huge golden trophy.

  He’s a god damn genius.

  Walking down the red carpet in these ridiculous outfits like they’re Senators from Krypton.

  I should bring some of these things so you can see how stupid they really are.

  The Golden Globe.

  It looks like something you’d get for third place in a pie-eating contest.

  It’s about this big…

  The plaque on the front is the thinnest fake, yellow metal in the world.

  It’s glued on crooked.

  The glue is coming out around the sides.

  My name isn’t even spelled right, it’s Seinfield.

  No one cares.

  It doesn’t matter.

  The Audience Decides

  (AN AUDIENCE AD LIB AT THE COMEDY CELLAR ONE NIGHT)

  You all get to make the decision if something is funny or not.

  All these people come up here with all their experience and their TV credits and their careers.

  And you decide.

  And what the hell do you know about it?

  Nothing.

  You’re not funny.

  You’ve never written a joke.

  If you were funny, you wouldn’t need to come to this.

  You’re not even really paying attention.

  But it’s your call.

  That’s the system.

  And as comedians we accept it.

  But think how you’d feel if I just came into your office and went,

  “I don’t agree with the things you say in these meetings.

  I don’t know anything about your business.

  I don’t even work here.

  I just thought I’d come in off the street and give you a piece of my mind.

  What gives me the authority?

  I bought two drinks.”

  Your Job

  I don’t know the occupation of one person in this audience.

  I don’t know where you work.

  I’ve never set foot in your place of business, but I know one thing about your job.

  I know, wherever you work, you cannot believe how dumb the system they have there is.

  “How did they get so many idiots in one place?

  And this new nincompoop that’s in charge of these morons

  is an even bigger pinhead than the last jerk those numbnuts hired.

  I’d quit but I could never make the same money someplace else

  doing as little work as I do here.

  Are you kidding?

  I love it here, I do nothing.

  I just don’t understand why the company’s doing so bad.”

  The Offensive Brain

  Why does the brain do that?

  Why as we try our best throughout the day to act normal and pretend to be not weird,

  why is your brain always thinking of obnoxious comments that you could make?

  Rude behaviors, inappropriate actions that would only horrify, disturb and offend.

  Why?

  Where do these thoughts come from?

  “Why not trip this person carrying a large box that can’t quite see where they’re going?”

  Why does my brain present me with these options?

  “What if I stood up in this important meeting

  and made an outrageous sexual overture that would get me instantly fired?”

  Are you ever in the middle of a conversation with someone and think,

  “I could probably kill this guy right now.

  He’d never see it coming.

  He asked me to hand him a scissor.

  What if I took that scissor and stabbed him with it?”

  Why do I have suicide fantasies to go along with my homicide fantasies?

  I go over to someone’s place that has a terrace or a balcony.

  I always have to go out on it, look over the edge, and think,

  “Oh, I could fall right over this thing.

  Everybody here would freak out.”

  “Oh my god, he killed himself?

  I can’t believe it.

  … I was just about to stab him with a scissor.”

  Everything Is Garbage

  I believe that all of the objects and possessions that we own

  really just exist at different stages of becoming garbage.

  To me, the world is comprised of garbage and pre-garbage.

  I hate the garbage, and I love to throw it out.

  That is my personality type.

  I love to throw anything out.

  I find if I have something, I really don’t want it.

  I wish there was a store where you could buy something,

  pivot, and just throw it down a chute into an incinerator.

  Complete the whole inevitable process right there.

  I like to walk the streets of New York.

  If a garbage man says to me, “Love your work,”

  I go, “Right back at you.”

  Because every object on earth is actually part of a giant, slow parade to the dumpster.

  While you’re walking into your house excitedly with your shopping bags,

  the garbage man is driving by in his truck.

  And he looks at you like, “Oh, I’ll see you soon.”

  Your home is really just a Garbage Processing Center.

  You buy new things

  You bring them into your house

  and you slowly Trashify them over time…

  A new purchase in the house begins its life full of hope and promise.

  The box is opened on the kitchen table.

  The Place of Honor for the New Arrival.

  You read the instructions.

  You fill out the registration card.

  You may even join the club of other idiots that have this thing.

  You repeat some of the lines the salesman used on you.

  But they don’t sound the same when you say them.

  And you start to realize that maybe you’re not going to be quite as keen on drying out fruit and

  storing it in your basement

  as you thought you were going to be.

  From there it is demoted to the closet.

  That’s why we have that.

  So we don’t have to see all of the huge mistakes we have made.

  It starts on a shelf, where it’s easy to get to.

  Then to the floor, where you start to step on it to reach things.

  It’s cracking and breaking under your foot.

  You don’t even give a damn.

  Because you’re now only interested in some other, newer item that is just beginning on its Journey to Junk.

  The next step down for the object is the garage,

  one of the longest phases in Trashification.

  But one of the most definite.

  No object in human history has ever successfully made it

  OUT of the garage and BACK into the house.

  Even the word “garage” seems to be a form of th
e word “gar-bage.”

  Once you’re living in the same room as the garbage cans,

  well… it won’t be much longer now.

  Really eBay is the only thing that can save the object at this point.

  eBay, of course, another great step forward in human culture.

  “Hey, why don’t we mail our garbage back and forth to each other?”

  “No, no, Jerry, you don’t understand.

  The things I get on eBay, they’re collectibles.”

  “Oh, I see.

  So you purchased this item from a collector

  who collects these collectibles because even he didn’t want it.”

  Or the personal storage area.

  This is the saddest of all.

  Now instead of free garbage, you pay rent to visit your garbage.

  It’s like a prison visit.

  Everything is rusted and broken.

  You lift up that rolling steel door, make your little speech.

  “Listen, I am trying to get you guys out of here.

  There’s no place for you in the world right now.

  That’s why you are incarcerated.

  But I’m working on it, and I will be back.”

  Everything is thrown out in the end.

  Even we are thrown out in the end, my friends.

  And when I hear about someone that died and wanted some important personal possessions put in with them when they’re buried, I am all for that.

  Take your crap with you.

  They say you can’t take it with you.

  I say,

  “Let’s try.”

  DNA

  Why do we try so hard?

  Why all the desperado, go for broke, personal attractiveness choices?

  Why do we take these chances?

  Where is the brain when these decisions are made?

  The brain is not involved.

  The brain is intelligence. We’re not using that.

  It’s our DNA. That’s what’s in control.

  67 years old.

  “Put paint on your head. People will think you’re 28.”

  And color in your eyebrows with a squeaky Sharpie.

  DNA says, “Toupee—good thinking.”

  DNA says, “We’re going to get you a cheap wig and a tight girdle and we’re going out.”

  What DNA wants and will do anything for, is to just get itself to the next generation.

  DNA stands for Damn Near Attractive and that’s all we’re trying to get you up to.