REVIEW: Jerry Seinfeld’s best bits
Mankind is Jerry Seinfeld’s business. His mission is to explore tiny human stupidities, leaving the larger idiocies to other comedians. His tool is a microscope. His result is universal humour. EVERYBODY’S done the dumb little things he talks about, we’re all guilty of the trivial human mistakes he’s built a career on – even Jerry Seinfeld. That’s why it works.
Here are some of the best lines heard during his run of sold out shows at the Jubilee Auditorium July 8-9 – that is, the ones that drew bursts of spontaneous applause over and above the more or less constant laughter:
“Why does rain affect traffic?! It’s just drops! The car goes right through it!”
“The human body is designed to sit … you have an ass. What do you think that is? Why is there an ass growing out of your body? It’s a seat cushion!”
“They even have a special bed for death. A death bed. Why would you even buy a bed like that? … we also have the death clock radio. There’s no snooze. You either get up or you don’t.”
“The beverage industry has come up with a drink that covers every moment of the human experience … like alcoholic coffee drinks, when you need to be whatever the opposite of tired and sober is.”
“You order the first beer. And that beer orders the next beer. Next thing you know you’re completely outnumbered. The beers are in the front of the car driving and you’re squished in the middle of the back seat. Where are we going? To get more beer. OK.”
“There is a war going on between us and cookies. Cookies live like the military in those plastic Gomer Pyle-style barracks that slide out of the box. It’s like a D-Day beach landing troop carrier, all the cookies lined up to go into combat. You get the end of a row of cookies and stop for a second, I don’t care how crazy you are. You go, what the hell am I doing? I was just going to have a few and I just mowed down a whole row!”
“Sucks and great and pretty close, you know … you get a hotdog at a baseball game. It’s cold, the bun is not toasted, the vendor is an ex-con on work release. But you are loving that hot dog. Does it suck? Yes. Is it great? Yes. That’s how close they are … in fact, they’re the same thing. Your ice cream falls off the cone and hits the ground. That sucks. What do you say? Great.”
“When your phone is running out of batteries, do you feel like you’re tired, too? It’s the end of the day, you’re just trying to make it back to your charger. A call comes in and you say, ‘I don’t know much time I have left.’”
“I’m aware of the presence of the Blackberry people. I’m surprised you’re even paying attention to this.”
“A man is really nothing more than an extremely advanced dog. Why would they make a painting of dogs playing poker? Where did that idea come from?”
“A man wants the same thing from his underwear that he wants from the woman in his life: a little bit of support and a little bit of freedom.”
“No object in history has ever made it from the garage back into the house … really eBay is the only thing can save the item at this point. There’s another advance in human culture: Hey, why don’t we mail our garbage back and forth to each other?”
“Golf is a great avoidance activity for the dysfunctional dad. The letters can only possibly stand for Get Out, Leave Family.”
Bathroom stalls: “Is not bad enough that we shatter the dignity of every decent, law abiding individual who goes into one of these hideous stalls with this under display viewing window of their lifeless, collapsed pant legs and the tragic shoe fronts poking out underneath? … And the cheap metal panels with the spaces in between? Why can’t they tighten that up?! Sometimes you walk by and you see a frightened, terrorized human eye in there. Why are we doing this to people?!”
In the encore Q&A: “What kind of car do I drive? Any kind of car I want … Why do I love to drive? It’s because when you’re driving, you’re inside and you’re outside, and you’re moving and you’re completely still – all at the same time.”
