Jerry Seinfeld - Is This Anything?

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 guys 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.

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I grew up on Long Island and remember, sometime in the early seventies, hearing my friend Chris Misianos 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. Theres 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 cant? What if Im not funny? I remember thinking, Well, but I wouldnt 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 thats 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 wasnt that easy. How in the world do you make people that dont 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 Ive ever heard. And still the coolest club I ever walked into. I love that its the very first place I ever stepped on a stage to try and do comedy.

Anyway, Jimmie Walkers 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 dont know exactly for sure where jokes come from. I think its 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 couldnt stay interested in the scenes. I was also reprimanded several times for trying to make a part funny that wasnt 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 wasnt 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 Im in the company of other stand-up comedians I feel like Im rolling around in a litter of puppies.

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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 clear winning-and-losing outcome that a stand-up set can have.

In some ways, its 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 islets face itthat 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. Its 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 youre on a stage all by yourself under a hot light, with a hot mic, and those laughs are crashing down around you, its a strong, pure hit of every addiction youve ever wanted. When I was young, I was obsessed with race-car driving, big-wave surfing, skydiving and really fast motorcycles.