December 2, 2019 – davidbruceblog #2

Television

• Larry David, one of the creators of Seinfeld, did not want the show to be one of the sentimental varieties of sitcoms in which everyone hugs at the end after learning a lesson. This is evident in the way in which Seinfeld showed that each of the main characters could at times be shallow and manipulative. In fact, people involved with the show wore jackets that bore this motto: “No Hugging, No Learning.”

• During an appearance on the quiz show You Bet Your Life, a man was completely paralyzed by fright and could not speak a word. Groucho Marx said to the audience, “Either this man is dead or my watch has stopped.”

Travel

• Americans can be incredibly ignorant about other countries. When he was a young man, comedian Lewis Black traveled throughout Europe, and of course in France he was able to speak very little French. He asked about the location of a bathroom, but the French proprietor of the very inexpensive lodgings simply pointed to an odd contraption that looked like a toilet without a seat but with running water. Mr. Black crapped in the contraption, and he learned that it is a bad idea to crap in a bidet because you have to clean the crap up. Of course, people from other countries can also be ignorant about the United States. Mr. Black’s grandfather emigrated to the U.S., where he once got in trouble because he had not paid his taxes. When the tax people informed him, “You have to pay taxes every year,” he replied, “Really? I didn’t know.”

• Life on the road can be hard for a stand-up comedian. For a while, Margaret Cho was so busy that she often woke up not knowing in which city she was performing. Whenever that happened, she would look for a telephone book to find out where she was. While sleeping in her own home, she occasionally had a nightmare about missing a flight. She would wake up, quickly get dressed and pack a bag, then realize that this was a rare day off and she didn’t have to travel anywhere.

• Comedian Rita Rudner once rented a house in the Kensington area of London, England. On her first morning in the house, she went to her terrace and looked out over the neighborhood, where she saw a group of horses sunning themselves. This sounds normal — but the horses were on the top-story balcony of a high-rise. No, this was not a drug-induced hallucination. The horses belonged to the Queen, and she kept them in this horses-only apartment building.

• In 1939, the Three Stooges were invited to perform in London at the Palladium. They did not pay for first-class passage on the ship that took them to England, but the captain of the ship was a fan, so he upgraded them to first class at no cost to them. Moe Howard, the leader of the Stooges, remembers with amusement a newspaper headline that he saw when they arrived: “STOOGES ARRIVE IN LONDON — QUEEN LEAVES FOR AMERICA.”

• Humorist Frank Sullivan used to dream about sailing overseas, but unfortunately, he never did because he suffered from seasickness. He told a friend, “I doubt that I’ll ever be cured, but I’ll still hoping eventually to go abroad. Every day I’m stepping over larger puddles.”

• Jack E. Leonard, a much-overweight comedian, once squeezed into a taxicab and ordered the driver, “Take me to a larger cab.”

***

THE COOLEST PEOPLE IN COMEDY

Buy the Paperback

Amazon Kindle

Smashwords

M	T	W	T	F	S	S
						1
2	3	4	5	6	7	8
9	10	11	12	13	14	15
16	17	18	19	20	21	22
23	24	25	26	27	28	29
30	31

Day: December 2, 2019

BLACK FRIDAY CRAZY

davidbrucehaiku: the number is wrong

Music Recommendation: Marco Maenza — “1.1.11 Blues”

David Bruce: The Coolest People in Comedy — Television, Travel