Rubber Balls and Liquor

  Kareem gently said, “Where are you going, Gilbert?”

  I said, “Well, I finished my set, and I was just getting ready to go back to the hotel.”

  What I meant to say was, “Well, I finished my set, and I was hurrying out of here before you could find me and beat the crap out of me for ruining your party.”

  Kareem said, “Don’t be ridiculous. A lot of people want to meet you. Come back and join the party.”

  So I did. Call me crazy, but when a twenty-foot black man tells you to do something you should probably think about doing it, as I learned growing up. Kareem took me around the room and introduced me to his famous friends. Most of them found something nice to say to me about my performance, although a few tried to avoid eye contact with Kareem so they wouldn’t have to meet me. This was just as well, I remember thinking, because most of Kareem’s friends were big and black and I seemed to recall telling a few too many jokes about big black people in my act.

  Quincy Jones was there, and he came over to shake my hand. I congratulated him for fucking that blond girl from The Mod Squad. He seemed to appreciate my enthusiasm.

  Smokey Robinson was there, although I didn’t see any Miracles. I guess they couldn’t get a ride to the restaurant, which you would think might be something you could easily arrange if you were a Miracle. Smokey actually came over to say hello. He hugged me. Pretty tight, as I recall. I guess maybe he was trying to squeeze tears from a clown. So I started weeping openly.

  A short while later, I found myself sitting at a table, in between Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Pamela Anderson, which I suppose would make an interesting three-way. These two majestic physical specimens would go at it, while I would sit quietly in the corner and try to come up with a specimen of my own.

  At first, I was sitting at the table sneaking peeks at Pamela Anderson’s breasts, but then it hit me: with Pamela Anderson, you don’t have to sneak peeks so much as soak them in fully. Even she knows that’s why she’s there. Plus, even if you’re only peeking, they’re kind of hard to avoid. I mean, they’re so right there.

  The line of the night, though, went to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who turned out to be surprisingly funny for a twenty-foot-tall black man who used to sweat for a living. He leaned over to me at one point and said, “I bet you everybody in this place is wondering, Who are those two guys with the shiksa?”

  GRAND FINALE

  Too Soon

  Two weeks after September 11, I made one of the most talked about appearances of my career. Unfortunately, it was two weeks after September 11, 1985, so I don’t really know why this date has any significance.

  (LOL, as the kids say, which of course stands for Laugh Out Loud. Also, JK, which stands for Just Kidding. And, GTFOOHYCJBINFPF—Get the Fuck Out of Here You Cheap Jew Bastard I’ve Never Found Particularly Funny.)

  It was at a Friars Club roast for Hugh Hefner, and just to be serious for a moment, the appearance really did take place about two weeks after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States. For a while, there was some talk about canceling the event, out of respect, but then it was decided to go ahead with it as planned—also out of respect, only here it was a respect for making money. For a while, it appeared that many of the celebrities who had promised to appear would cancel at the last minute. This was understandable. Some of them were afraid to fly, or leave their homes, or be seen at a Friars Club roast for Hugh Hefner, who many people believed had now been targeted by terrorists who were a little pissed off that he continued to get more pussy than them, even at his advanced age.

  But those fears about poor attendance were unfounded, it turned out. On the night of the roast, the place was packed—probably because it came around at a time when people really needed some kind of escape from the horror and terror of those days and weeks, but also because it would take a lot more than out-and-out warfare to keep a bunch of old Jews from showing up for a free meal.

  One thing about these roasts: they’ve become a real institution. I remember watching them as a kid, edited for television. All the celebrities seemed to be having a real piss-your-pants good time, only I learned later that they used to shoot these out of sequence. Very often, they’d sit a guy like Milton Berle in a chair on the dais, and some schmuck director would say, “Okay, Mr. Berle, now we’d like you to laugh uproariously, as if you’ve just heard a really filthy joke.” Uncle Miltie would do as he was told and laugh it up for the cameras—careful to run his famously long dick down his pant leg, so it wouldn’t get in the way of the shot.

  My favorite line from a Friars Club roast came to me in a once-removed sort of way. Ed McMahon told it to me. He heard it from Jack Benny, who delivered the line himself at a roast for Georgie Jessel. As far as I know, there’s no footage of this particular roast, but it lives on—in my memory, at least, because everybody else who had anything to do with it or who saw it firsthand is probably dead: “Georgie Jessel is flying to Israel tonight,” Jack Benny told the crowd, and of course he was careful to put his trademark pauses in all the right places. “You see, he has a cunt in Haifa.” (Pause, pause, pause.) Then he continued: “No, I don’t mean a woman. I mean an actual cunt. He wears it for a toupee.”

  (Pause, pause, pause again—because with Jack Benny timing was everything.)

  For a while, these roasts were presided over by my friend Jeffrey Ross, who over the years managed to convince all kinds of interesting, unlikely giants of the entertainment business to submit themselves to the cruel and unusual punishment they’d receive as the butt of all these jokes—and for this particular roast, Jeff came up with a master stroke of casting. Hugh Hefner was a roast master’s wet dream, presenting an endless possibility of jokes about getting old, getting laid and getting to do whatever the fuck you want for an entire fucking lifetime. Plus, it was also a master stroke because Hef once had a stroke while masturbating.

  (A note of clarification: Although Mr. Hefner does in fact masturbate and did in fact have a stroke, there is no conclusive proof that these two events took place at the same time.)

  If you remember, this was an interesting period in the history of American comedy. Basically, it was a dark, nothing time, because all of the comedy clubs and concert halls were dark and there was nothing for us comics to do. We weren’t even telling jokes to each other. Typically, whenever there’s a tragedy of national significance, or a crisis, or a health epidemic, there are dozens of jokes that immediately spring up and get passed around on the Internet, or over watercoolers, or on college campuses. A joke can go from lightbulb-over-the-head to viral, in no time. Readers might recall the terrible crash of the space shuttle, which coincided with the terrible rash of product-tampering deaths traced to tainted bottles of Tylenol, which led to the memorable punch line: “Gee, this is a terrible year for capsules.”

  Or, when Rock Hudson died, and the joke everyone was telling was, “Rock Hudson had no friends, but he had Nabors up the ass.”

  (Note to publisher: the misspelling of neighbors is intentional. It refers to the legendary Jim Nabors, TV’s Gomer Pyle. In fairness to Mr. Nabors I have no reason to believe he is actually gay. In fact, I offered to suck his dick once and he turned me down. I don’t know whether this was because he is straight or because he looked at me and realized I was Gilbert Gottfried.)

  As long as I’m doing Rock Hudson jokes, I’ll slip in another—the one about the doctor who had just prescribed that he drink a gallon of prune juice each day.

  “Will that help my AIDS, doctor?” Rock Hudson asks.

  “No,” the doctor replies, “but it’ll remind you what your asshole is for.”

  But this was different. There were no viral jokes because the world was still in shock. Everyone was numb, even comedians. It was a sad, uneasy period in our nation’s history, especially in New York City, which had been the site of the most devastating of these attacks. We celebrities and semi-celebrities didn’t know what to do with ourselves. There was even talk of canceling the Emmy Awards t
hat year, until someone realized there was still a buck to be made, whether or not we were in a time of national mourning. Besides, if you didn’t hand out Emmy Awards to hardly deserving television personalities, the terrorists would have won—and as far as I knew, Osama bin Laden didn’t have a suitable mantel for an Emmy Award. Also, I don’t think he was nominated that year.

  There was a lot of tension and uncertainty in the Grand Ballroom of the New York Hilton when the roast finally got under way, but I believe most of this had to do with the presence of Ice-T as one of the presenters. He can be a menacing fellow. I can’t be sure, but I believe Jeff Ross, Freddie Roman and the Friars Club roast committee invited him because he was a bad-ass black guy with lots and lots of bling, and his appearance at the roast might distract us from the Arab comics who were on the bill with us that evening.

  I was scheduled to go last in the program, which was just as well with me. Usually, I like to get my performance out of the way, so I can turn my attention to playing with myself or rubbing up against some of the beautiful young starlets who tend to show up at these things, but here I really felt for the comics who had to go on first. People seemed unable or unwilling to laugh. It’s like they were waiting to give each other permission. Of course, I suppose it’s possible that the people they’d gotten to kick off the roast weren’t very funny, but I remember thinking there were a few good lines being tossed around up there on the podium, and no one was responding to them.

  The Friars Club always puts together an interesting guest list for its annual celebrity roast, and this year’s event was no exception. There were the usual character-actor-types like Danny Aiello, Keith David, and Vincent Pastore and Joe Pantoliano from The Sopranos. There were the usual fringe show-business-types like Donald Trump, Dr. Joyce Brothers, the Amazing Kreskin, the artist LeRoy Neiman, MTV’s Carson Daly, Patty Hearst (another famous heir of William Randolph Hearst), and Kiss guitarist Ace Frehley.

  Like I said, an odd mix.

  Jimmy Kimmel was the master of ceremonies. In his opening remarks, he said, “What can you say about Hef that hasn’t already been mumbled incoherently by thousands of young women with his cock in their mouths?”

  On any other night, people would have been doing spit-takes and choking on their food, because Hugh Hefner was such an easy, obvious target, but this was a tough assignment. There was laughter, but it was mostly polite laughter. Embarrassed laughter. Sheepish laughter. Basically, a whole bunch of different kinds of laughters—none of which, I’m afraid, are among the best kinds of laughters.

  My favorite line in the early going was delivered by Alan King, one of the great Friars Club old-timers, who said that Hugh Hefner had smelt more beaver than a furrier—a killer line that was only warmly received, which made me feel bad because I always liked Alan King. He came up to me later that night and put his arm around me and told me my own personal joke. He took out his trademark cigar and said, “A Pakistani dies and goes to heaven. He’s standing at the Pearly Gates, talking to Saint Peter. He says, ‘I wish to speak to Jesus Christ.’ And Saint Peter turns his head and yells, ‘Jesus, your cab is here!’”

  When it was finally my turn, I decided to fuck with Ice-T, because it’s not often that a small, whiny Jew gets to fuck with a menacing black man without fearing for his life. I pointed to where he was sitting on the dais and said, “Ice-T did my whole act, but I’ll do it anyway. I’m gonna follow you white motherfuckers home and rape you fucking white bitches.”

  Then, I waited for the people to stop their nervous laughing and said, “See, it’s such a strong bit, it still works.”

  I worked my way around the room, saying unpleasant things about the various people in attendance. At some point, I landed on Hef, the guest of honor, so I said some things about him. I said, “Hugh Hefner doesn’t need Viagra. He needs cement. He needs to take an ice cream stick and tape it to his dick and use it as a splint.”

  I said, “Hugh Hefner is so old his first condom was made out of bark.”

  I told some dirty jokes. I told some not-so-dirty jokes. I told some funny jokes. And I told some not-so-funny jokes, judging by the reaction of the crowd. It was hit-and-miss, but for the most part things seemed to be going well—or, at least, as well as they could have gone under the circumstances, because everyone was still in shock. But then I decided that doing well wasn’t really enough, so I dug a little deeper. I said, “Tonight, I’ll be using my Muslim name, Hasn’t Been Laid. Which reminds me, I have to leave early tonight, because I’m going to Los Angeles. I couldn’t get a direct flight. We have to make a stop at the Empire State Building first.”

  It was the joke that stopped time. Really.

  For a long, terrible moment, there was a long, terrible silence. I had no idea what to expect, coming out with a line like that, but I expected … something. Instead, for the moment … nothing. This one little line had completely changed the mood of the room. From where I stood at the podium, I could actually feel people jumping back in their seats. I could feel chairs moving, rustling. There was a giant gasp, like a huge sucking sound, taking all the air out of the room. There was grumbling, and lots of nervousness. There was hissing. From the back of the ballroom, one person yelled, “Too soon!”

  Then people started booing, and hissing some more … echoing the same sentiment. All of a sudden, I was the most wanted man in America—only here what these people most wanted me to do was leave.

  You have to realize, I’d never really had the crowd. I was just mildly amusing them. Probably they were all being polite and waiting for me to finish so we could all go home. But now they’d gone in the complete opposite direction. Now it looked like I was about to be set upon by an angry lynch mob—made up primarily of rich, white, old entertainers.

  Now, when I first heard this one guy in the back shout out “Too soon!” I of course thought I hadn’t taken a long enough pause between the setup and the punch line. I heard it as constructive criticism, and I could have kicked myself. I thought, Damn, it should have been, “… we have to make a stop at the [two, three, four, five…] Empire State Building.” It felt to me like Lesson One, and I was ashamed of myself for not realizing it.

  Clearly, I had now lost the audience entirely, and it felt to me there might be a riot, so without any logic, or perhaps under the misguided notion that it would be a good idea to make these people even angrier, I shrugged my shoulders and said, “Awww … what the fuck do you care?”

  People told me later that at this point I started moving my arms like a lunatic, or like I was conducting an orchestra, but I have no recollection of this. I watched the tape afterward and it seemed to me there might have been a swarm of gnats flying around the podium at just that moment, and I was frantically trying to shoo them away.

  Then, for no good reason, I launched into a retelling of a famous joke that was known to be one of the most offensive, outrageous, off-putting jokes in the history of comedy. In my defense, all these years later, I can only say that it seemed like a good idea at the time.

  People also told me later that there was an unusually long point of pause, between the booing and what happened next—that is, if you don’t count all of that arm flailing. That happened right away. But I didn’t say anything for the longest while. It was so long that people had time to think that maybe the microphone wasn’t working—or, more likely, that someone had thought to shut it off before I could say anything else.

  But I finally opened my mouth and went on with the show.

  “Okay,” I said, after my too long pause and the people had seemed to settle down a little bit. “A talent agent is sitting in his office. A family walks in. A man, woman, two kids, and their little dog. And the talent agent goes, ‘What kind of act do you do?’”

  Without any introduction or fanfare or warning, I’d launched into a bit that would either send my career off a steep comedy cliff, after which I would never be heard from again, or leave me to be ripped apart by the mob of angry old fucks who hadn’
t quite managed to leave the Grand Ballroom in a huff just yet. The bit was a timeless vaudevillian joke that was well known in comedy circles. For as long as I could remember, it was referred to with great reverence simply by its punch line: “The Aristocrats.” Once in a while, you’d hear it told as “The Sophisticados,” and on Wikipedia it suggests that it sometimes goes by the kicker “The Debonairs,” but most people know it as “The Aristocrats.” That is, people who tell jokes for a living know it this way. People who don’t tell jokes for a living don’t really know about it at all—or at least they didn’t, until Penn Jillette and Paul Provenza made a documentary about it, featuring all these different comedians, telling all these different versions of the joke, and putting their own little spins and flourishes on it. The movie made it seem like the joke was a beloved jazz piece, and that every comic brought his own style to it, which I guess was true enough.

  In the documentary, a bunch of comics remarked that the joke was like a secret handshake among comedians, and it talked about how we tried to one-up each other with our retellings backstage, between shows. It was only rarely told onstage, to general audiences, and was mostly passed back and forth among comics, looking to impress or shock or otherwise entertain their peers.

  Here’s an interesting side note: some years earlier, I told the joke to Richard Belzer’s brother, Len, who kept asking me to tell it again. And again. Len just loved the crap out of that joke, and every time we got together he asked me to tell it. Each time out, I told it a little differently, depending on what was going on in my head at the time, or in the world, or in the room where I was doing the telling. One day Len came up to me and said, “Gilbert, this joke is just so hysterical, and it never comes out the same way twice. It gets more disgusting, more hilarious every time I hear it.”