What follows is sad.
Also frustrating. Also humiliating. Also very funny, albeit not necessarily in the way I’d have chosen.
The story begins two months ago, when — as you may have read in this very space — I shared the fruits of my hospitalization and recovery. Namely: a very long draft of a stand-up act I’d written amid the drug-induced haze of my convalescence. It was a routine that dwelt mainly in the vagaries of life as an aging Baby Boomer. It was an exercise that yielded three immediate results.
A modest amount of favorable comment, and none unfavorable. Not much of a sample size, so I thought of it as a tiny, tiny thumb’s up.
A Big Idea. If I could develop the (ahem) “act,” maybe there was a possibility for a touring hybrid of stand-up comedy and one-man show along the lines of “Defending the Cave Man,” which was a hilarious and gigantically successful battle-of-the-sexes piece that performer Rob Becker toured with for 15 years or so back in the 80s and 90s. Could I put together a similar act about the Boomers’ sunset years?
My 50th high-school reunion was coming up, and the organizer — my classmate Barry Nagelberg — got in touch to say: Why not do the act there? Hmm. Interesting, and a blank check for what I chose to say. Within a day or two, I agreed to use my 100 classmates as guinea pigs for the 15-minute armature of a much more involved show. And I’d have a live-audience recording to show producers, impresarios and agents that my history of 400 speaking engagements all over the world, and a briefly touring one-man show (“Ruggedly Jewish”), had prepared me for such an ambitious undertaking — despite my near-zero experience in stand-up comedy.
Then came two solid months of trimming, rewriting, memorizing and rehearsing — which involved me pacing back and forth in my basement holding a TV remote control to simulate a microphone. In its many, many iterations, I delivered the routine about 150 times. In the basement. Walking the dog. Driving to the supermarket. Taking a shower. In my head, drifting off to sleep. So, yeah, I put some time in it. Understanding that at least half of comedy is timing, physicality and stage presence, I nonetheless herewith offer the act I prepared. [A few highly targeted jokes for such a particular audience are deleted.]
Hello, classmates. So happy to see you all after all these years, and I hope you’re all feeling good this evening. As for me, my back hurts. Also my front. Oh, my aching … front. Look, everything hurts. Fifty years ago we thought we were “seniors.” Now we’re freakin’ seniors.
Hey, who here is retired? Me, too. Pretty good, right? I mean, the money is disappointing, but the hours are fantastic! I actually have so much time on my hands, I was more or less forced to take up a hobby: this.
I’m gonna begin this with a confession: I have a drug problem. Yeah, Lisinopril for blood pressure. Eliquis for blood clots. Trelegy for COPD. And 5 other prescriptions. I should probably take Viagra, too, but I can’t stand all the hugging afterwards.
I do have one drug allergy. Benadryl. Really. I’m so sensitive that once I just brushed past someone on Benadryl and my throat started to close. They had to rush me to the hospital and pump me full of shellfish.
Yeah, always imagined an exciting second career; didn’t think it would be “going to doctors.” Not loving it. Especially my internist, who’s always lecturing me. “Bob, you need to walk five miles a day.” As if. Dude, I Uber to the mailbox. I mean … walking. That’s so … pedestrian.
And then there’s his periodic interrogations about “elder substance abuse.” Oh, I’m honest; I tell him I drink socially, which means I log onto Facebook every morning at 9 and start getting hammered. And as for illegal drugs, I did cop to experimenting 2 or 3 … thousand times in the 70s.
And there’s plenty of other providers, so many -ologists and -tologists. Cardio, pulmo, rheuma, hema. I got feeling so feeble and shaky I even consulted a gerontologist. She took one look, and referred me on to a paleontologist. Yeah, they used a scale to check my weight. To ascertain my age they had to do carbon dating. Which I prefer to the old method, sawing me in half and counting the rings.
*****
The point is, we are, as they say, “people of a certain age.” Who here took chemistry or physics in high school? OK, so, that big chart of the Periodic Table of Elements? I think at the time there were 29 elements. Zinc was a rumor. How old are we? When we graduated, there was no Van Halen. It was 1973 A.D., or the year 10 B.C.M. — before Chicken McNuggets.
You know how I fill my grandkids with delight and wonder? I tell them that, when Grampa was little, there were no peanut allergies. And there was ONE ringtone. It went … rrrrnnnnnng.
They say, “Grampa, when you were a kid, did you have the Mandalorian?” I say, “No. Ford Country Squire.”
“Grampa, do you like Baby Shark?”
“You mean, ‘Baby shark do do do do do. Baby shark doo do doo do do?’”
“Yeah! We love baby Shark. Do you like Baby Shark?”
[Long pause] “I do not.”
“Grampa, when are you going to die?”
Yikes! “Boys, don’t worry. Grandpa won’t die ’til I’m very old.”
“But you are very old!”
Well what do you do with that? What the hell do you say to that? Here’s what I said: “Santa isn’t real.” Little shits.
It’s not just them. I used to get spam calls for extended car warranties. Now it’s hospice. “Hi! This is Nancy from palliative services. Our special offer expires June 30th. And according to our records, probably so will you.”
If you dwell on this stuff, you go crazy. I don’t want to go crazy. So instead I go … to Florida.
Why? Because, it’s the one place on earth where I feel relatively young. It’s like eco-tourism. You can see Buick Electras in their natural habitat. In every city park, there is a statue of Bob Barker. In Florida, mall walking is an adventure sport.
Last time I went, just a couple of weeks ago, I was checking into my hotel and saw an old man in the lobby struggling with a suitcase. He was about 105, 106. I said, “Sir, let me help you with that.” He said, “I’m the bellman.”
Went to my room. The little door hanger in the room — one side said: “Do Not Disturb.” The other side said, “Do Not Resuscitate.”
I don’t go in the water or anything. Because … the body. When I walk down the beach, women mentally dress me. But sometimes, just to feel better about myself, I rent a car and at 4:30 in the afternoon park outside of Old Country Buffet. Just to, you know, people watch.
*****
I was talking about my grandsons and what a different world they inhabit. Certainly in the toy category. We had dolls and puzzles and games. Lincoln logs and erector sets and Chatty Cathy. 100% analog. Now it’s all digital and electronic. Video games. Computers. My youngest grandson just got a very pricey Cyborg action figure. The closest thing we had to a cyborg action figure was Mr. Potato Head. Remember? Plastic prosthetic feet and facial features stuck onto the head of a potato. And not a plastic potato, either. Our toy was a potato. It’s like making jewelry out of asparagus.
All of my other playthings were toy guns. Very realistic looking firearms for every occasion. I owned a Fanner .50 western style cap gun that — in case one of my brothers needed an eye put out — fired actual projectiles. I had the Dick Tracy snub-nosed .38 that did exactly the same thing. They’re Mattel; they’re swell. I had the Man from Uncle semi-automatic pistol plus silencer just like Napoleon Solo and Ilya Kurayakin. And I had an air rifle that I kept loaded with dirt and rocks, in the event I needed to exercise my 2nd Amendment rights against [our classmate] David Becker.
Now, obviously, in 2023 we don’t give little kids toy guns. Not necessary. They have real guns. It’s unbelievable. Last month, on back to back days, two six-year-olds waltzed into first grade armed to the baby teeth. But God help the kid who tries to penetrate the school perimeter with a peanut butter sandwich; they'll stop him, beat him and drag his ass away.
*****
But I digress. Toys. In our day, they were kind of problematic. Because we were all slaves to the Fun Cartel: Mattel, Hasbro, Ideal, Kenner and Whamo. You think Exxon-Mobil is bad? Big Energy has nothing on Big Toy. I promise that air rifle was not the most dangerous toy in our house. Not even close. Once we got a life-size snowman. It came with these Styrofoam snowballs, and the game was to throw the balls at the snowman ’til they stuck. How did they stick? No, not Velcro. That didn’t come for another 15 years. They stuck because the snowman was covered with 2,000 razor-sharp plastic spikes. Or how about the Easy-Bake Oven, which mostly baked little girls’ hands into lady fingers. Or Vac-u-Form. Anyone have a Vac-u-Form? Toy? It was an industrial machine. Kids put a thin plastic blank in a mold atop a heating element the temperature of the surface of the sun. That year of the snowman — I think 1961 — 80% of American children died on Christmas morning. On the Fourth of July, they picked off the survivors with lawn darts.
That’s what we had. Then there's what we didn’t have. Like 911, childproof medicine bottles, and seat belts. It’s insane. Even in 1963, “seat belts” were my mother doing this: [extend arm]. Which she could do because I, her little 8-year-old, was in the front seat of the Country Squire, beltless, playing with my scout knife.
The question is not whether we’re old. It’s: How did we even get this far? See, a lot of people don’t realize this, but in olden times, parents didn’t care whether their children lived or died. How many times did your mother send you out to play? Alone. Where? ANYWHERE. She didn’t know and she didn’t care. You could have hitchhiked to North Korea. One crisp autumn day my older brother and I sauntered into the heavy woods at the bottom of Oxford Road in Bala Cynwyd, to try an experiment with a magnifying glass. And the experiment was a huge success. Not a one, not a two but a three-alarm fire. It was like a please-touch museum with flames. God I love science.
*****
And I still cherish that youthful exuberance — which I try my best to stay connected to. Sometimes, for instance, I’ll rock a crop top. Unfortunately, it’s a bumper crop.
Last week — OK, bragging here — I participated in my first Iron Man … Yes. Thank you. It consisted of plugging in the iron. I didn’t finish. But, goddammit, I gave it my all.
I even considered going to one of those escape rooms, you know where you’re trapped inside and have to find a way out? Then I said, “Why spend the money?” I’ll just go to a Bed Bath and Beyond. The labyrinth of Satan. Now they’re in liquidation, which is kind of a pity. I mean, I'll miss their postcards. And their broad selection of goods for bed and bath items we can just shop on Amazon. But where the hell will we buy our beyond?
But really, escape rooms … $200 an hour to be locked in a prison of anxiety? Why? I’m already married.
Kidding. Kidding. Marriage joke! That also used to be a thing back in the day, like corporal punishment and Bonomo Turkish Taffy and moderate Republicans. So long ago. No wonder, Class of 1973, that maybe we've lost a step or two.
My wife doesn’t even trust me to go shopping — because one time I came home with grade B eggs. OK, the other day my daughter sent me to CVS for a box of Always pads. I was so flummoxed. First of all, “Always?” Shouldn’t they be called “Periodically”? Luckily, a kind employee helped me find the item I needed.
Come on! Pay attention! That’s obviously not true. This is 2023. There are no employees in a retail store. Same day I went into the supermarket for bananas. Self-checkout, of course, and I couldn’t figure out how to weigh them. So I hit the “for assistance” button. A digital voice came up and said, “If this is an actual emergency, dial 911. Otherwise, why don’t you just go fuck yourself?”
But I couldn’t. Because, like I said, no Viagra.
Hey, friends. Thank you so much for being my guinea pigs. Enjoy the rest of the reunion. And, for God’s sake, please, please, please: Don't forget to take your pills.
All right. That was the set — two thirds of which was heard by approximately 14 of the 100 or so 68-year-olds in the room. The final third was heard by nobody, because I had to give up before finishing.
Because I froze or lost my place, as I was so terrified I’d do? Nope. I remembered the lines. Because the jokes didn’t work and I was making a fool of myself? Nah. The jokes seemed to work fine.
But I still made a fool of myself. That’s because the sound system did not work fine. At all. The volume was extremely low and the mic kept feeding back with speakers somewhere far overhead. What 86% of the audience heard was indecipherable muttering and piercing squeals. What the two tables immediately in front of me heard was all of the above, plus the lines I was basically shouting to be heard. Obviously, they are friends and acquaintances, and therefore in my corner. And of course they pitied me this horrifying turn of events. But I’m pretty sure they were genuinely laughing at the jokes. So there’s that.
At the 11-minute mark, a hotel employee took the microphone from me and then stared quizzically at the sound-mixing board like a car mechanic in a George Booth cartoon. He fiddled with the faders for 5 minutes and changed the mic battery. Then he handed me the mic back and disappeared.
But there was no point in going on. I slouched back toward the bar, cartoon-like myself — as hangdog as Charlie Brown after being caught stealing home. Some friends stopped me with condolences. Others edged away so as not to be sunburned by my pain. It was a debacle.
But not my first. No, this was some haunting déjà vu. About 35 years earlier, I was emceeing an awards show in a vast Chicago ballroom. About 1,000 people in formal wear filled 100 tables. There was an entertainer on stage, but I welcomed the crowd with some of the jokes and patter I’d perfected in presentations around the country and the world. But the same thing happened. The sound volume was insanely low and corrupted by feedback. Nobody could hear a word I said, or react to my jokes. It was a shitshow, and a team from the hotel descended on the sound system to get it fixed for the actual talent. He was a comedian. And as a veteran of mishaps large and small in his burgeoning comedy career, he showed me kindness, empathy and compassion.
“Hey, Bob,” he told 1,000 people in gowns and tuxedos. “Don’t worry. We know you didn’t write that shit.”
Ha ha. His name was Jerry Seinfeld.