Jerry Before Seinfeld Page #3

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why doesn't he at least try and avoid

hitting the other parakeet?

[laughter]

Look up!

What happened to bird's-eye view?

There's a... There's another parakeet

coming right at you!

[laughter]

But I couldn't take childhood

at a certain point. You get tired of it.

You actually get... I just couldn't build

one more balsa-wood glider.

[laughter]

You know what I wanted to do?

I wanted to do certain little adult

behaviors that I would see adults do.

Like uh... I liked the way adults

checked their pockets when I was a kid.

This is actually something I thought

as kid. I liked the way adults did this.

"Do you have those...?"

"I can't find those keys.

Bill, do you have my keys?

I can't find the keys."

When you're a kid, if someone asks

if you have something, you say, "No."

[laughter]

Anything you own is in your hand.

"Are you sure?"

You spread the fingers wider.

"No, I don't. I don't have it."

[laughter]

I wanted to ruin my appetite.

I got tired of hearing,

"You're going to ruin your appetite."

"Ruin your appetite."

As adults, we understand

even if you ruin an appetite,

there's another appetite

coming right behind it.

There's no danger

of running out of appetites.

I could ruin 100,

I still got thousands more.

[laughter]

Why am I being so careful with each one?

I've got millions of appetites!

[laughter]

I wanted to mess with the thermostat -

that was another thing

they wouldn't let me go near.

I don't know what the story...

When I was a kid, "What is with

that thing? Why can't I go near it?"

[laughter]

I even remember when my parents sat me

down to tell me the birds, the bees,

intercourse, procreation.

I'm like, "Yeah, when does

the thermostat come in here?"

"That's the secret

I'm waiting to find out."

[laughter]

I didn't touch a thermostat

until I was 28 years old.

[laughter]

I was in a hotel room in Pittsburgh

when I finally got the guts

to make it a little warmer.

[laughter]

I didn't sleep the whole night.

I was terrified my father

was going to burst in the door.

"Who touched the thermostat in here?"

[laughter]

"You know, I set it there for a reason."

[laughter]

Yes. Yes, sir.

[man] I recognize the bookends.

- Are they always here, or is that...

- No, I put them here. Those are mine.

That's a Superman.

You know, I love Superman.

So this is a...

This is Kal-El on Krypton.

You see that he's in there.

He's in the rocket.

And there's his dad, Jor-El,

and his mom, Lara.

And then he goes in the rocket,

and he lands...

Where does he land? Kansas?

- [man] Kansas.

- Kansas.

And there he is, and they have got

the little Superman baby... right there.

Yeah, those are mine.

- What else? What's that?

- [man] Whose books are those?

The books are a prop. They're fake books.

They're just props. This is show business.

I don't actually live here.

This is not a...

[laughter]

You need to get out a lot more.

I had every comedy album

and every comedy thing you could get.

I did a show with this puppet

when I was in third grade.

When I was a kid

and a comedian came on TV,

I would just freeze and stare at them.

Being obsessed with comedy

felt very liberating,

because it didn't have to do

with the real world.

You know, a Mad Magazine,

you would start reading it

and you're going,

"Well, these people

don't respect anything."

And that just exploded my head.

It was just, like,

you don't have to buy it.

You could say, "That's stupid."

"This is stupid."

Then, one day, my friend's older brother

told us there was this place in New York

where young guys were getting on stage

and doing stand-up comedy.

Not like the guys on Ed Sullivan

with tuxedos and cigars,

just young, crazy people.

Once I saw that this was going on,

that there was a world,

I went, "Oh, I want to be in that world.

I don't want to be in the real world."

So, I came into the city in 1976.

I told you that.

Uh... At that time, New York,

a little bit of a tough town.

Uh... But definitely the best place,

in my opinion, to become a comedian,

because, first of all,

everybody in New York is a little funny.

I'm sure you all think you're funny.

[laughter]

That's why you like comedy -

you feel you're pretty funny yourself.

You probably even think

you could do what I'm doing.

You think...

"I got interested in other things,

but if I wanted to, I could have easily...

I could have done it.

I chose not to."

[laughter and applause]

And that is a good place to learn comedy,

because in New York

you've got to really have something

to make audiences laugh.

And at that time, also,

New York wasn't doing so well as a city.

The city was going bankrupt.

It was also the same year that they built

the Roosevelt Island Tramway.

I used to say,

"Great, the city's going bankrupt.

They're putting up rides for us."

[laughter]

"Maybe eventually we'll get

a rollercoaster in the South Bronx...

which would be the first rollercoaster

where people scream

on the flat part of the ride."

[laughter]

And that was my second joke

that I ever thought of.

[cheering and applause]

So I had the left bit, I had the tramway.

I was rolling.

And I lived in a little apartment

on the West Side,

and it was very small.

It was just 15-feet square.

[laughter]

That is not a joke. You know

that New York apartments are like that.

And I brought my little bed from my room

to sleep on.

That was all I had. I didn't care.

I-I wasn't planning on really

getting anywhere doing this, by the way.

I just loved it and I wanted to do it.

And so I lived in that apartment.

Since I couldn't afford to fix it

or anything, I would paint it a lot.

Every time I painted it, I thought,

"Well, gee,

now it's a little bit smaller."

And I realize it's just the thickness

of the paint, but it is coming in.

It's coming in.

[laughter]

Eventually, someone's going

to come to visit me, open the door,

there's just going to be

a white block with an eye.

[laughter]

They will go, "Wow! That guy

painted that place a little too much."

And uh...

So, no money.

We performed here for free, by the way.

Absolutely free.

And audiences were packing in.

Just like tonight,

they're packing in to see us.

In the '70s, we were the new hot thing -

stand-up comics,

young people doing this thing.

So I would come over here in the middle

of the day and make a hamburger.

They let us have food.

That was one good thing about the place -

they would let us have food and T-shirts,

so I wore a Comic Strip T-shirt.

I would come here in the afternoon,

make a hamburger,

and then I would have another one,

another hamburger at night.

And I was consuming

about 30 pounds of chopped meat a month.

[audience groans]

I was like a trained seal coming in here.

I was just...

Just feeding me, and I would come up,

and, just,

"Tramway, left bit, good night,"

and that was, you know, that was it.

[laughter]

Somebody gave me a shower radio

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