Knowing of my budding career as a stand-up comic, Howard Greenstein sent me a link to the newcritics Comedy Blog-a-thon posing that question and wrote, "You should write for this."
Before I actually read the post and learned the Comedy Blog-a-thon requirements, I imagined a contest that demanded I write something funny on cue. Such a challenge would only be funny if accompanied by the picture of my bewildered, deer-in-the-headlights face. It reminded me of the classic interview technique, that fortunately, despite a long career on Wall Street, never happened to me. The man (always a man) interviewing a candidate for a sales job leans over, pulls out a Bic ballpoint pen and barks, "Sell me this pen." Such pressure tactics never make me funny or persuasive.
Upon reading the post, I realized I did not have to participate in a "Be Funny Now" contest, but I initially misinterpreted the question. I thought, "What is the purest comedic moment you have ever experienced?" was challenging me to identify the funniest thing that ever happened to me. Trying to pick the one pure, comedic moment in my life from a group that includes truly funny events, those that eventually became funny and those that only I find funny, seemed like cruel and unusual comedy blog-a-thon punishment.
I soon understood that newcritics really wanted me to describe without over-analyzing the purest comedic moment I had experienced as a spectator or viewer. What moment in stand-up was most funny to comedians? What passages made writers laugh the most? It seemed the moment I chose needed to have influenced me and my art profoundly. Feeling some deer-in-the-headlights pressure, I could only remember moments in big swaths of time or what I call Meta Moments.
One summer in the 1970s, maybe 1971 or 1972, in my Shakespearean scholar period, every Sunday night I would watch the BBC program "The Six Wives of Henry the Eighth" on PBS. (Perhaps my biographers will consider that conceit my purest moment of personal comedy). I loved the soap opera-like story and episodic structure, the handsome lead actor Keith Mitchell and the sumptuous costumes. But I really loved the smug, intellectually superior feeling I got from watching the show. Unlike its latter-day, intellectually inferior, poor imitation replacement on Sunday night, "Desperate Housewives", it lacked comedic moments. Even if they had been there I took the show too seriously to notice.
The pure comedic meta moment came from "Monty Python's Flying Circus" that followed immediately after. Intrigued by the title, I started watching, overjoyed at its ability to make me feel smug and intellectually superior while also making me laugh. So many years later and I still laugh at the memory of John Cleese mistakenly entering "Abuse" and being berated until learning that the "Argument" he wanted was down the hall.
My love affair with British humorists led me to discover the late and still-lamented Marty Feldman. In one sketch this bug-eyed gnome, dressed in his pajamas and nightcap, gets out of bed, telling his hideous, shrewish wife, "I forgot to put out the cat", shuffles out of the room and then dashes off. He dons a tuxedo, gets on a flight and arrives at the luxurious hotel room of his beautiful date where they dance and drink champagne. He then turns around and comes back, all in the time it takes to put out the cat! Even now the idea makes me laugh, especially when a minute after returning and climbing back into bed, he gets up and says, "I forgot to put out the trash"...
Another comedic meta moment happened in the summer of 1976 as the networks broadcast the Democratic Presidential Convention. Describing it now makes it sound like life during World War I. We only had 3 TV networks! Each covered the convention gavel-to-gavel all day long! The convention was actually kind of real and intriguing! The choice of candidate wasn't a foregone conclusion days in advance, let alone a year in advance! The convention did not provide the comedic meta moments (perhaps that's an event that becomes comedic eventually) it came later in the evenings. My brother and I sat through the convention for the reward of seeing "The Honeymooners" at 11pm.
Watching as bug-eyed Ralph Kramden and dopey Ed Norton plotted, schemed and bungled their way through life made me howl with laughter, yet it never devolved into derision. Ralph captured your heart and gained your sympathy when he'd admit to his beautiful, occasionally shrewish wife Alice, "Baby you're the greatest." Not to over-analyze it, but "The Honeymooners" delivered pure comedic moments by making you feel intellectually superior and just as inferior as Ralph simultaneously. When you laugh at Ralph and Ed, you laugh at yourself, because you know you could easily make similar mistakes. Jackie Gleason's pure comedic genius showed in his ability to make the joke always on himself. His comedy had warmth and heart that my beloved British comedy lacked.
I watched the Honeymooners so much that summer and since that I can list many pure comedic moments. I still laugh at Ralph, embarrassed Alice has taken a job, when asked about it replies, "She's a career girl" only to have Alice retort, "My 'career' is stuffing jelly into donuts." (Perhaps most people wouldn't laugh at that but it reminds me of my 'career'). The deer-in-the-headlights moment when Ralph learns the wrong music for the "$99,000 Answer", I relate. Ralph, fearing Alice is having an affair with someone named "Harvey," leaves the Raccoon Lodge and shows up at Harvey's, only to learn she is baby-sitting him. Woken up by Ralph's bellowing, Harvey takes one bleary-eyed look at him and exclaims, "I didn't know Davy Crockett was so fat." I could go on. As much as I'm still laughing years later, I feel sad because as much as I want to emulate him, I doubt we will ever see comedic performers like Jackie Gleason again.
When I drafted this post initially, I planned only to describe those Meta Moments, even though that meant not exactly answering the question. Then I remembered my purest comedy moment.
From the time I was old enough to understand the concept of bedtime, but not old enough to determine it for myself, my parents would make me go to bed way too early for my taste. I would lie there for hours, thinking, fantasizing, fidgeting, doing anything but sleeping. When the book "Go Dog Go" came out and showed the whole houseful of dogs sleeping in one giant bed, my father pointed to the one with his eyes wide open and said, "There's Cathleen." As I got older and wiser, sometimes I would sneak out of bed and crouch on the floor near my bedroom door to try to listen to my parents' conversation or the TV.
One night when I was 8 or 9 years old, my father had cranked up the TV volume louder than usual. I got out of bed, went to the door of my room and stuck my head out to listen. Johnny Carson's guest, I believe it was the comedian David Steinberg, was telling a joke.
"God came to King Solomon and told him he would grant him either Wisdom or Riches. King Solomon had to choose. So he thought and thought and agonized over the decision. Finally King Solomon told God he wanted the gift of Wisdom. As soon as he got wisdom, he knew he should have taken the money."
Years later, I still laugh at that one single, royal moment of pure comedy. It includes many aspects of my ideal comedy writing and performances--intellectual premise, smug superiority and references to history, politics and pop culture--and the career dream of one day sitting on David Letterman's couch and telling him jokes. A comedy moment that rules to this day and has influenced me beyond the Monty Python and Honeymooners meta moments.
When I graduated from college, I thought and thought and agonized about what I wanted to choose as a career. Then I remembered that one moment of pure comedy, David Steinberg and the story of King Solomon.
I went to work on Wall Street.
