Jerry Before Seinfeld Page #2

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How about Oaties? Squaries?"

"Oh, no. This is much bigger than that."

[laughter]

"This is Life, I tell you!"

"It's Life!"

What were the other names? How about

Almighty God? Why don't we call it that?

Who wouldn't want to wake up

to a nice big bowl of Almighty God?

Or New Almighty God with Raisins.

[laughter]

And if you don't like it,

you can go to hell.

[laughter]

So the beauty of the time, OK?

Parents, for some reason,

had no idea or no interest

that there's no food in any of this.

And it was great

until the Cookie Crisp people came along

and blew the lid off of the whole racket.

[laughter]

There's always somebody who pushes

a good thing just a little too far.

Cookie Crisp.

[laughter]

If you don't know what this is,

this is a cereal...

It's not like cookies,

it is cookies.

[laughter]

This is your breakfast.

A bowl of chocolate-chip cookies!

[laughter]

This cereal should have been called

The Hell With Everything!

[laughter]

Ice cream for lunch, cake for dinner,

bacon and cigarettes in between. That's...

That's the Cookie Crisp total health plan.

[laughter]

I liked the Good Humor man.

I would wait for him.

That was another huge thing of life,

the guy who was the...

You hear that little jingle bell,

and the white truck,

and the little white suit, and we would

stand in line behind the truck,

and all the different ice creams that you

could get was on the back of the truck,

placed right over the exhaust pipe.

[laughter]

If you had a Dixie Cup,

it was the equivalent

of smoking a pack of Camels.

[laughter]

Nobody cared!

These were good times!

[laughs]

[movie projector whirring]

[Jerry] There was no drama in my life,

or in my family, or in my world.

Would I have been funnier

if I grew up in Peoria

in a whorehouse, raised by prostitutes?

Absolutely.

But this is what I had to work with.

My parents were really nice,

Betty and Kal.

I had a wonderful older sister, Carolyn.

It was a nice family.

But I just always felt, like,

"Could you just leave me alone?"

My first thing I ever said -

my first words were, "Leave me alone."

I used to knock over lamps or something,

and they used to say, "Leave it alone."

And then, one day, I yelled back,

"Leave me alone."

I just didn't want the normal thing.

I just didn't want anything normal.

I just thought, "That world

that these people live in is very boring,

and I want to be in a more fun place."

[laughter]

I had glasses at ten, braces at 12.

I said to my parents, "Let's not stop now.

How about a hearing aid,

orthopedic shoes?"

[laughter]

"I'm thinking about talking to a girl

for the very first time in my life.

I want as much corrective apparatus

on my head as I can possibly get.

I think that's what women like."

[laughter]

I had a yo-yo. I-I liked that.

The yo-yo was pretty great.

That was one of my good toys.

I could do the yo-yo pretty good.

And I read about the yo-yo

and found out the yo-yo was originally

invented as a weapon in the Philippines.

An interesting

and obscure piece of information.

Hard to imagine

Filipino tribesmen warring with yo-yos.

Planes flying low over enemy villages,

they lean out the door...

[clicks tongue]

[laughter]

"I think I got the chief."

[laughter]

But I didn't have...

You know, there was no Chuck E. Cheese

and Toys "R" Us.

There was none of that.

So, you know, you just did

whatever your parents were doing.

Wherever they had to go,

you know, I would go.

So, my mother would want to go

to the wallpaper store,

that was my day, you know?

And that was my mother's favorite store.

She loved those giant books of wallpaper.

She would read them, turn the pages.

It was like the Koran.

[exhales]

Huge. She was looking at the patterns.

"Yes, I understand what they're saying."

[laughter]

[exhales]

And when you're a little kid

in these places, you can't really take it.

You know, the boredom is so intense,

it's so powerful.

[laughter]

When you're five and you get bored,

you cannot support your body weight.

You literally just... I would just...

I would just get down. I had to get down.

[laughter]

I remember going to the bank

with my parents,

and you don't even know what a bank is.

You just say, "Oh, I can't handle this.

I don't even know what this is."

And I would lie down, flat.

Flat. Just...

"Sorry, Mom. There's nothing I can do.

This place is so dull, I cannot get up."

[laughter]

This is what I think adulthood is.

Adulthood is the ability

to be totally bored

and remain standing.

[laughter]

You're in a long line somewhere,

no problem.

I wasn't going to Disneyland, OK?

That's not... That's not going to happen.

It wasn't one of those things

that you could do.

My parents were not taking me...

thousands of miles to another state

so I could sit in a teacup.

[laughter]

Both of my parents were orphans,

so the fact that I had a room with a bed,

they were like,

"That's your ride. You can go on that."

[laughter]

"You're fine."

And I was fine.

Sometimes, outside of these stores,

they would have, like, two red,

metal horses on the sidewalk,

and that was pretty good.

If you could get ten cents and...

It wasn't a ride.

You know, it was kind of a piece,

just a fragment chipped off of a ride

that landed there somehow.

And it didn't do anything

that would make you go, "Whee!"

It would just kind of grind

forward and back.

[imitates mechanical grinding]

[laughter]

It was like a grain-elevator motor

with just two horses welded on top.

[imitates mechanical grinding]

"Are we milling buckwheat

or am I at an amusement park here?"

[imitates mechanical grinding]

[laughter]

But compared to lying on the floor of

the bank, this was Space Mountain to me.

You know, I thought it was great.

I would get off. "Mom, that was fantastic!

I feel 1,000% better.

I'm refreshed, I'm calm.

I'm ready for the wallpaper store.

Want to go back there?"

[laughter]

"I'm into it. Throw pillows,

window treatments. Let's do it."

[laughter]

My mother, she was always talking to me

about uh... what she was going to do

with the living room.

This was her obsession.

She was going to fix the living room,

change the living room.

My mother would say, "You know,

if you make one wall of a room a mirror,

people think you have

an entire other room."

[laughter]

They believe this.

What kind of an idiot

walks up to a mirror...

[laughter]

and goes, "Look,

there's a whole other room in there"?

[laughter]

There's a guy in there

that looks just like me.

[laughter]

And my parakeet would fall for this.

I would let him out of his cage.

I always felt bad that he was in a cage,

so I would let him out,

and he would fly around,

and he would go "bang,"

right into the mirror

with his little head,

and the feathers would fly,

and he would hit the ground,

then fly off in another direction,

a little askew.

[laughter]

But even if he thinks

the mirror is another room,

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