So I said to myself, “I’m tired of this. I could do stand-up. I’m funny. How hard could it be?”
I was playing Scrabble with my wife and she knocked her rack of letters off the table. Her letters scattered across the floor and I saw she had a bunch of i’s. I said to my wife, “Don’t roll your i’s like that!” So that’s just what she did.
After college I had a girlfriend who was obsessed with modernist sculpture. She broke up with me because I never Calder.
I hate that modernist stuff! I hate those massive whimsical metal mobiles – you know, just "hanging there" all "heavy" with irony.
I actually tried to make a scrap-metal mobile once. I couldn't get the hang of it. Then I saw one in a pawn shop. The pawnbroker whispered to me, he says, “You should get this thing, it’s a steel!” I was tempted to walk out with it, but I didn’t want to get a rusted.
See what I mean?
Back in the eighties I went to hear Gladys Knight and the Pips in concert. My friend Leifer and I heard them in Saratoga Springs. They sounded weird, though, because one of the Pips – the short one – had laryngitis. So I said to Leifer, “Man, did you hear that little Pip squeak?
Leifer was smoking weed. I said, “Give me that thing!” and yanked it out of his mouth. Leifer just looks at me with his mouth all disjointed.
You see, I used to work as a newspaper reporter. They assigned me to write this story about new trends in infant mortality and fired me because I missed this one tiny little deadline.
Then I went to work in a pillow factory. I got injured my first day from falling down.
Anyway, remember Lassie? Did you know that dog got really depressed later in life and killed herself by running in front of a car? Somebody at the Andrew Mellon Foundation was so moved, they endowed a university fellowship to study canine mood disorders....But who wants to be the Mellon Collie Fellow?
Our choir director at church is a frustrated composer. He wrote a new song and tried to teach it to us. He has this terrible lisp. “Thing, people!” the choir director shouts at us, “Thing!” I asked him what he was referring to. “My thong!” he says. “Show it to us,” I said. And the whole choir goes, "No, don't!"
I would have bought a hunting license, but I didn't want to waste nineteen bucks.
A bunch of those little pieces are missing from my chess set, so I went to get some more at the pawn shop.
Then I went to a music store to buy a set of drums. I found a really nice set that came with a cow bell, but it was too expensive. So the music store guy says to me, “You look like a musical genius. If you buy this drum set, I’ll give you the no-bell price!"
And the drums go, "Ba-da-boom!"
So this lady named Robinson retires to California and gets a part-time job bagging groceries. Who should walk into the store but Dustin Hoffman, coughing and sneezing with allergies. Dustin Hoffman takes one look at her name tag and says, "Coo....Coo....Ca-choo, Mrs. Robinson!" She's about to bag up his groceries and she goes, "Is plastic OK?" (Dustin Hoffman. Plastic. Get it?)
OK, OK, what if Al Pacino goes into Starbucks and there’s this really thin, gorgeous German barrista? And Al says to the barrista, “I want a tall skinny Frau Pacino!”
Come on, that's funny, right? It's not?? This is like trying to dance on a slippery marble floor. You fall down on your butt and say, "Man, how hard could this be?
