Jerry Seinfeld has enjoyed enormous success in his life. I have tried to think of other men named “Jerry” who have had similar fortune, and after Lewis and Lee Lewis, come up short. Help me out. Nicknames don’t work on serious people so well, even as friends knew him as Gerry Ford, and not Gerald. He was “Johnny ” Carson, not John.
I like Seinfeld, and do not envy him one dollar of his well-deserved popularity. Comics have a reputation of being angry. He is not angry at us. He is just annoyed. There’s a difference.
I wish him continued success, and also say this knowing he will never make another movie. He knows better, and learns sometimes the hard way. He works hard at his craft, even today trying out his material in comedy clubs to see what works and what does not. He never phones it in, never expects that people will laugh merely because he is Seinfeld. Each joke is finely crafted, each word in place, not to be substituted for another.
We were planning a trip to France, and I needed some books to see me through, and bought a few. One was Is This Anything, which is a compilation of Seinfeld’s standup comedy over the decades. At first I did not care for it, as I much preferred to hear Seinfeld speak the words. But I got over that. I did my usual, placing 3M flags on things I wanted to revisit. What I noticed was that that flags were more numerous towards the last half of the book. He was getting better, or maybe I was developing a better sense of him. For whatever reason, I thought all of his material was so original that I want to share some of it here. The man is a treasure.
Here are just a few that made me laugh out loud as I read. Hear his voice on stage to fully appreciate them:
Love my team. Even though we know, of course, they’re not really teams. We block that out. We have to. Players go to different teams. Teams move from city to city. The uniform is the only constant. Why am I yelling “Go New York, Go!” at a guy from East Illinois that’ll be playing in Phoenix next season? That’s sports. The uniform is the only constant. We just want our clothes to beat the clothes from the other city. We’re rooting for laundry.
Women have different ways of adjusting men’s proximity. The pocketbook is probably their main distance controlling unit. All of the equipment in there is designed to keep men within a certain optimal range. If they are too far away, they’re like “Too far. More makeup, eye colors, perfumes, bring them in.” But if they get too close, it’s “Oh, too close – mace, rape whistles. Keys between fingers. Back up dude.”
The tuxedo is also the Universal Male Symbol for somebody trying to pull a fast one. Think of where you see the tuxedo … the groom wears it to project an image of sophisticated refinement. He is hoping nobody at the wedding will notice the head popping out of the top of the suit belongs to the same degenerate, ill-mannered ignoramus everyone there has known for years.
You have a girlfriend? That’s Wiffle ball, my friend. You’re playing Paintball War. I’m in Afghanistan with real loaded weapons. Married guys play with full clips and live rounds. “This is not a drill.” Single guy is sitting on a merry-go-round, blowing on a pinwheel. I’m driving a truckful of nitro down a dirt road.
I go to these kids’ parties … the birthday clown always corners me and wants to talk to me about his comedy career. I don’t know what to tell him. “Listen dude, I don’t know how to get from these parties to having your own show on TV. I just went from having my own show on TV to these parties myself. I don’t know how to do it in reverse.
My wife has been bringing our youngest one in the bed every night at 3 o’clock in the morning. This is another beautiful experience. It’s like sleeping next to a laundry bag that has a live goat tied up inside.
A man wants the same thing from a woman that he wants from his underwear. Certain amount of support and a certain amount of freedom.
I was there at birth. All 3. Obviously. the most dramatic human life moment. Any time 2 people walk into a room and 3 come out – a major event took place in that room. At the end of life: We go back basically into the same room. Same bed. Same stuff around. And again, a different number of people coming out that went in. But that is the Human Being Business. We need to turn over the inventory. Fresh products. Keep the supply chain moving. We got to get them in. We got to get them out. The hospital is: Rest. Cleanliness. And if it doesn’t work out, they help get you to the next place. When you walk in the sign says “Hospital,” but it could also be: Bed, Bath and Beyond.
Piece of Mindful 
I have no idea what contribution your boy had to his famous namesake show, but I could barely tolerate a group of such absolute weenies. I did laugh though… Kramer had some good lines, and the Opposite-George was decent. Wifey loved it.
~~~
Jerry Cantrell of Alice In Chains (guitar and singing); Down in a Hole:
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He and Larry David were co-creators and did much of the writing. That is why they still rake in royalties in syndication and streaming. The other characters were pay-as-you-go. Jerry was a Sam Malone-type central character around which there was much insanity.
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Easy to laughter, easy to tears, I think I might align well with wifey there?!
But at the base, comedy aside, the appeal of Seinfeld to an American audience is all about what it’s like to embrace the shallow and materialistic as normal and even desirable. The ‘soup Nazi’ is my favorite episode. He was like a modern-day Freud character, neurotic yet arrogant, in a similar way as Frasier sit-com, which is better than Seinfeld, in my opinion. And then of course, expelling the cost of that spiritual sacrifice through humor.
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It seems that comedy is once again, quite subjective… like music.
Where you see insanity, I see stupidity. I thought that Sam Malone was possibly once of the very dumbest characters ever shoved down our throats. It’s OK to be stupid. Another collection of turds.
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My wife and I sit down each evening and watch two episodes of Cheers. I like the Malone character a lot, as he is handsome and has a weakness for beautiful women while at the same time being in love with Diane. Shelly Long, says director James Burrows, is the reason the show ever made it past season one.
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It’s a really good study of that illusive quality of group dynamics. It’s funny b/c we were recently watching these, Hubby and I, but not for long. It gets kinda weird and soap-opera-esque and repetitive. But then that’s maybe why they had to introduce Lillith? We didn’t watch that far.
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Danson was excellent on “Becker”. Highly recommended.
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Cousins
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She had some sublime expressions… I clearly remember her from the shitty furniture commercials. Her expressions were in the class of Janine Turner who once fronted for a shitty american car company, I think. Mmm, her facial features and looks just grabbed me.
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My best girlfriend loved his show. I couldn’t fathom the appeal, but you can’t get your best gal to play ball if you rag on her favorite TV. He was amusing when he first showed up on Carson. He had a weaker clone named Paul Reiser who got his own Seinfeld show, Mad About You. Reiser had almost the same act and vocal inflections. He was also a better actor than Jerry, but that’s like Ant Man, shrinking to the size of an ant but retaining the powers of a human being. He’s the POS that tries to kill Ripley in Aliens. Very effective villain. I digress…
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Jerry Garcia, arch Operation Chaos spook. Faked his death and I know this because decades later his huge comic book collection went to auction. I know geeks like that. They don’t sell their shit. Their estate does.
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Ever go to one of the Dead shows sober? You’d wish you were a dead (head-bad pun intended!). On E-cstasy, you’d think you’d entered paradise. For about 8 hours.
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Old, old joke: What does a Deadhead say when he runs out of pot?
“Man, this music sucks.”
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I went to one Dead show in SF, then another in Holland, or was it Belgium. Anyway, what a study! Crow(d), drugs, movement vs. sedentary in bleachers with no(t enough) drugs. They didn’t ‘get it’ in Europe, just like they didn’t get feminism, bless their hearts. Of course, that was then.
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Wow Tyrone… NICE. You hit a bunch of winners there. At first mention of that asshole’s name I thought of his limp-dick role on Aliens.
I have argued, to no one in particular, that after an abundance of repeatedly disagreeable character parts that the actor, in fact, is such in his reality. That douche Reiser being a PERFECT example.
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the consequence of context minus laugh track…
https://tinyurl.com/3mec4rz7
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I liked the show but it was way too Jewish for me. 4 losers living for cheap in New York sleeping around being degenerates and earning top dollar for doing absolutely nothing.
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While it is not true that all Jewish people are funny, it is true that most funny people are Jewish.
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Whoa, whoa whoa… complete and unadulterated dawgshit. The second clause that is. YOU must be joking.
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Not at all. There are exceptions to every rule of thumb, such as Conan and Johnny Carson, but most comedians are Jewish. I say “funny people” too.
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PROFESSIONAL comics… those ALLOWED into the industry? Well of fucking course they are are of that breed. Who owns the business? Christ.
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Exactly. You pretty much cannot get a contract in the entertainment world, and you sure as hell won’t be mass promoted, unless you’re genetically Jewish, or were adopted or raised by Jews.
And the more crypto, with fake sob and Christian-upbringing stories, the better.
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My father wasn’t anywhere near Jewish and he got regular work behind the scenes. He was a union man. No, he’d never go any higher, but there aren’t enough joos to carry all the water. Does anyone know if Ronald Reagan was Jewish? Davis is a jewishy name, but no one got more promotion from the hidden hands than Ronnie Rayguns.
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I should clarify. My father hit a ceiling because of lack of talent, not lack of foreskin.
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Bonus points for using “Christ” in a post about Jews. Go to the 4:23 mark here for a laugh.
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Thank you. I thought people might cry.
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Almost all “successful”—that is, allowed to have careers and fame via unfair casting, promotion, and nepotism—comedians and comic actors are Jewish, but most of them are not funny.
And, actually, most funny people are not-Jewish.
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Why would a humorous attribute be the sole possession of any one race, color, creed, or sex? I would imagine that your life history, where, with who and when ever, would be the largest factor. That and the ability to bring forth the material in a way that other humans can share the laugh.
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Bought the entire series on dvd years ago but have yet to open them. I’m sort of afraid to watch it again with contemporary lenses (that is, ruin it), given all that I now know from spending these past few years finally waking up and learning.
Jerry and Larry present themselves as unapologetic Obama-worshipping hardcore leftists, and obviously they’re uber-connected, high-ranking billionaire Jews. It’s worrisome.
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There is a reference to Ob. in the show, a poster in the appartment. They knew. There’s that meeting of Ob. and S. in the Beast car, them joking about ordering a strike from a submarine. Soup Nazi, Aids Walk, they mocked the ‘rona psyop before it was released on us. That strike next? Who knows, but them.
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Yessir. The power behind that screen… ugh – I hate them.
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Do you think the Michael Richards incident at the Laugh Factory a psyop / humiliation ritual or was it organic?
I watched it a couple of times then started to doubt the clip. They definitely got a lot of mileage out of that.
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Miffyx, after reading this post and comments yesterday, I started thinking about that Michael incident for the first time in ages, and it occurred to me that it probably was indeed staged.
They took this one-trick-pony dork and made him rich and famous. Now it was time to return the favor for his Godfather, to use the classic film reference. Part of the never-ending Whites Are Racist Scum project.
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I absolutely think the Michael Richards incident at the Laugh Factory on november 17, 2006 was a psyop to create a racist type of weepy for the masses. They were on Letterman that same week with an apology. Obama was campaigning soon afterward.
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I’ve never known Seinfeld to offer any political material in his standup. He’s more likely to talk about raisins and Pop Tarts. He did entertain Obama in his Comedians in Cars series, and other that featuring the man’s charm and sense of humor, which was Obama’s main strength, there was nothing political. George W. Bush was also charming in this manner, and played dumb for his Republican following, so that they would think “he is like me.” That’s just how they do politics, giving us actors and scripts.
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Jerry was tapped/bribed/ordered to push the Obama massive psy-op, is all I’m sayin’.
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Please refresh my memory on the Ob. poster and them mocking the ‘rona psy-op?
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Horst, what was the reference to Ob. on Seinfeld?
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A comedian writes,
“Laughter or surrender”
https://americanmind.org/features/court-jesters/laughter-or-surrender/
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SeinLanguage was an entertaining read. However could we put Jerry in the “doesn’t write his own material” category? I would assume he writes most of it, but maybe not. His standup isn’t knee slapping funny, more like snarky observable comments about life. Hard to measure the kind of success he has had from that type of act. The comedians at your local comedy club are probably alot more funnier. I’d say everyone involved with the Seinfeld series is apart of the club. I think Miles exposed Julia Louis Dreyfus pretty well. Yet when I watch the episode reruns, hard to stop watching, somehow they just pull me in regardless of how many times I’ve watched them.
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One eye!!! (past pant gasp!) That’s the Bat Signal to his overlords that they will always own him, funny or not- aaaaaiiiiieeeee!!!
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Jews tend to be very talented at writing and synthesizing and consolidating old material to make new TV shows because of their past storytelling history. However, I’ve searched high and low for the ‘original’ source of Seinfeld. Was it taken from a play or a past movie or inspiration from something else?
The show seems to span every single modern social meme imaginable (or perhaps it was meant to be that way to program you) and the running gag throughout was that it’s a show about nothing, laughing at nothing, doing nothing, etc — which clearly isn’t true.
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Start with Aristophanes, follow to Terence, African/Roman (Jewish?), jump to Molière, give a back handed wave to Rabelais on your way to the modern era where Frank Fay, the original stand-up waits in the stink and suet of back alley vaudeville and up to our own time with shows produced by Norman Lear and Sherwood Schwartz. That’s the gene pool from which Seinfeld derives. By this late date, the ‘situation’ doesn’t matter. Just the comedy- although in Seinfeld’s case, if the show was about anything, it was about promoting perpetual adolescence, a major plank in the mind bender’s culling of the herd agenda.
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That is such a good point. I was just thinking the other day about how grown men run around with jerseys with athletes’ names on them. I first took note of this phenomenon in Phoenix during spring training when Albert Pulholz had signed with the Angels, and looking over the crowd from behind was his name on the back of hundreds of grown men’s backs. Not only do they pay too much for his royalty, but they never grew up! My first encounter with baseball was as a young child in the 1960s when Hank Aaron was a Milwaukee Brave. Not one person in the crowd at that time wore anything but their own shirts and t-shirts. Marketers had not yet discovered arrested development.
I make it a point that my clothing is free of brands, and for the life of me, no team or athlete logos. I once owned an orange shirt, and wore it one Sunday to the grocery store nearby, and gasped that I was in Denver Bronco mode on a Sunday when they played. Jerseys all around! I never wore the shirt again, sending it off to the local resource center.
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Hmm, I could write a chapter or two on this… oh wait, I did – and lost more “friends” and “family.” You know how covidmania actually sorted out some of the nitwits for you (hopefully never to be seen or heard from again); my writing accomplishes that as well. Wifey asks why am I so frequently angry. Mark nailed it (in a response): “Disappointment.” Not that I have a remedial plan, nor that humanity needs to live to my [sub]standards, but they’re fucking games – as the world crumbles.
At heart, and in practice, I am a runner; it is near impossible to find appropriate active attire logo-free. My shoes are the most important item. I found that Saucony shoes fit my narrow and high-arched feet nearly perfectly; and the size (length) is consistent and accurate (as feet measuring goes). I stock last years model to save 30% or so on the ridiculously high price. I have been satisfied with a particular model for years – many other runners apparently feel the same – else the model would be dumped. Considering all that, I now buy and wear Saucony attire – NO ELSE (while running or otherwise working out). You might find me wearing a Mountain Hardwear micro fiber shirt when it is above 90F and it is appropriate that I even wear a shirt. They have some quality standards and good customer support. I won’t advertise for those other fux (especially Nike). Same goes for jerseys n shit.
Fuck “professional” sports</>… corrupt beyond measure. Fully endorsed and promoted harmful drug usage and exceptionally well-trained violence. The cheating, ugh. The officiating – preposterous. The sporting aspect was jettisoned eons ago (purposefully). No ethics and no morals to be found. The vast majority (american fans and athletes) appear to be illiterate. I do think that college [distance] running may have some [justified] comradery still – truly shared misery. Go TEAM! Go College! Fuck off. Not really a team, and no longer college.
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https://mobile.twitter.com/hfranqui/status/1567238872278437890
Lovely, but is it funny? Owned and operated from behind the curtain.
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