Rubber Balls and Liquor Read online

  To be clear, my father wasn’t in the delivery room when I was born. I don’t think my mother was there, either. She was working at the time.

  We didn’t have a lot of money when I was growing up, but that didn’t keep my parents from wanting to indulge us with some of the finer things in life. Money isn’t everything, you know, even when it might appear to be most things.

  (Note to goyim readers: not every Jew who grew up in Brooklyn was rich. And as long as I’m on it, here’s another note: fuck you. That’s all. Whether or not you assumed we were rich, if you’re a goyim, fuck you. But keep reading, and tell your friends to buy the book.)

  Okay, now that I’ve gotten that bit of unpleasantness out of the way, I’ll share another childhood memory. This one is mostly true, and the parts I’ve made up are mostly inconsequential. One summer, my father decided we should all go away on vacation, so he rented a bungalow in Brighton Beach. Now, if you know anything at all about Brooklyn, you’ll know that Brighton Beach is about a five-minute walk from Coney Island, but this was my father’s idea of getting away from it all and making a family memory. (It’s possible he got this idea from Oprah, but she was still in preschool at the time and I don’t think her show had gone national.) We packed up our suitcases and threw everything into our beat-up old car and in less than two minutes we arrived at our bungalow. The whole way there, I sat in the backseat and kept asking, “Are we there yet?” I think I might have even thrown up, but that’s just me and long car trips. To this day, if you pick me up in your car and offer me a ride around the block, you’ll do well to put down some newspapers on the backseat, just to be safe. Actually, it’s probably better for both of us if you don’t offer me a ride at all, because the last thing you need is a motion-sick Jew and my cardiologist tells me I could probably use the exercise so I might as well walk.

  We pulled up in front of our rented bungalow and spilled out of the car and my father said, “Okay, everyone. Let’s have a fun vacation.”

  That vacation turned out to be a fiasco. The weather was lousy, so we packed up and went home.

  Another summer, my parents sent me off to a Jewish camp in upstate New York. I don’t remember the name, but it rhymed with Auschwitz. (Also, mostly true.) I think we were served three meals a week, which was plenty, believe me. I still have my old camp T-shirt somewhere. It’s faded with the years, but you can still make out the camp colors—smoke and ash. And you can still read the message beneath the camp’s spirited hammer-and-sickle-and-swastika logo. It says, “I survived the camp.” Only in my case I barely made it through a single session. My father made it through World War II, and I couldn’t handle one week of sing-alongs. (This might be another instance of delicious irony, but it still leaves a bad taste.) That should tell you something, and what it tells you is this: I hated camp. With a passion. Which worked out well, because the other kids in my cabin also hated me. Also, with a passion. I don’t think there has ever been so much passion passed around among a group of eight-year-old boys.

  The camp was run by a couple of Jews who thought it would be worthwhile to devote an entire day of activities to honoring those who died during the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I never understood why this was more meaningful to our camp directors than honoring the victims of Pearl Harbor, say, or the victims of the German concentration camps that seemed to bear a passing resemblance to our own little hellhole, but I was eight and I didn’t have it in me to question authority. And so we honored the fallen Japs. It was a politically incorrect time, so we ran through the woods with our eyelids taped down. This was our way of showing respect. Then we made lanyards. Then we hiked into the woods so the mountainfolk could rape us.

  It was like Deliverance, only with bug spray.

  (Yeah, yeah … I know. That makes two Deliverance jokes, and we’re not even halfway through this thing, but that should pretty much cover us, here on in.)

  Which reminds me … why is it that Jews play into all these offensive stereotypes when we have something to celebrate or commemorate? It’s innate to our species, I guess. On Hanukkah, we give each other chocolate coins. Whose idea was that? Jews running hither and yon with sacks of money, chocolate or not, doesn’t exactly do much to dispel the notion that we’re a money-grubbing lot. (And when was the last time you ran hither and yon, anyway?) You don’t see Asians taping down their eyelids on their holidays, unless it’s at Camp Auschwitz in the Catskills, on Hiroshima Day. You don’t see African-Americans walking around in blackface, eating watermelon and singing minstrel tunes. And on Irish holidays, the Irish don’t go running around, drinking themselves shit-faced and getting into fights in the street for no apparent reason and then puking their guts out in between parked cars … oh, wait a minute. Forget I said that.

  It wasn’t exactly a formative experience, my brief time at camp, but it was an experience. I never had to swim out to a raft in the middle of a lake, or go canoeing, or hike up some godforsaken peak only to turn around and come right back down, although I did participate in the camp’s arts ’n’ crafts program. The camp directors, for all their backwoods, backwards thinking, were ahead of their time in this one area. They offered a class in body art, so we all got tattoos. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a lot of artwork to choose from, so we were encouraged to burn our camp identification numbers into our forearms as a means of expressing ourselves. Plus, they had that nice mountainfolk raping activity, so we could experience the wilderness in all its splendor and express ourselves in nature. I think I even came home with a nice case of poison sumac on my sphincter, but that’s a whole other story.

  (Technically, this still counts as an extension of that second Deliverance joke, delivered just a few paragraphs earlier. It’s just that sometimes, in the comedy business, you can wring an extra few drops of funny from a routine a beat or two after the punch line, which is what I’m trying to do here.)

  School offered its own brand of childhood trauma. There was no ass raping that I can recall, but I was upbraided on more than one occasion—and, trust me, you haven’t suffered until you’ve been upbraided by a representative of the Board of Education of the City of New York. Speaking personally again, and once more from the heart, I would have much preferred an upbraiding from the Catskills mountainfolk to the special brand of interaction they offered instead, and possibly even to the special brand I had to stamp onto my forearm, but I can’t really complain. After all, I did get that T-shirt out of the deal. And I still have all of my old report cards, to memorialize my extra-efforts in the classroom. (This is another one of those “true” parts, I’m afraid.) I don’t know why I saved them, but I take them out from time to time, and reconsider my options. Someday, I suspect, I’ll donate them, along with my other important papers, to some institution of higher learning. It’ll probably be to one of those schools that advertise on late-night television, but still …

  One of my elementary school teachers, Mrs. Coulborn, wasn’t too impressed with my work ethic. She wrote, “Gilbert exerts very little effort and concentration. He seems to dream in class and does not review the necessary information.”

  On another report card, a teacher named Mrs. Sobel wrote, “He is not doing well. Please come in to see me.”

  (Those two words, see me, were perhaps the most dreaded two words in the annals of public schooling—and if I had to make an uneducated guess, which I’m afraid is the only kind I’m equipped to make, I’d say annals ran a close third.)

  One of the best things about these old report cards was the “Parent Comment” section on the back. At the time, I probably didn’t think it was so wonderful, but after all this time it’s nice to have a record of my mother interacting with my teachers. (It’s also useful for legal purposes, I’m told, to be able to produce even this meager paper trail to demonstrate that my parents took an interest in my education.) Most parents simply signed the report card, which we underachieving children had to return to the school the next morning to prove to our teachers that our parents
had been given the full measure of our underachievements. However, there was also a section for the parent to share a note or a comment. Remember, this was back in the stone age of two-way communication between parents and teachers. Parents couldn’t e-mail their child’s teacher, or leave a voice mail, or post threatening messages on their Facebook page. They could only write a short note or comment in the tiny space on the back of the report card … and my mother certainly did her part.

  On one report card, my mother summed up my academic performance with a phrase I have often thought of displaying on a theater marquee, outside one of my comedy shows: “I agree that Gilbert needs to learn how to work,” she began, responding to Mrs. Coulborn’s report card. “Too much verbalizing just puts a blanket of words over gaps in actual knowledge.”

  (Note to editor: how about that for a title? “A Blanket of Words over Gaps in Actual Knowledge.” Works for me. The bonus here is that there’s a nice symmetry, granting naming rights to my mother for my first book. After all, she didn’t do such a bad job naming me. I could have been a Bernie or a Milton or an Akmed, and then where would we be?)

  (Note to reader: do me a favor and flip back to the cover. If “A Blanket of Words over Gaps in Actual Knowledge” doesn’t appear as the title, you’ll know who wears the pants in this writer-editor relationship. It’s just one editorial battle after another with this guy. Also, as long as you’re flipping back to the cover, check to see if there’s a picture of me and let me know if I’m wearing pants.)

  Another teacher, whose name I can’t make out and can no longer recall, thought it was appropriate to criticize my handwriting. This, I would later learn in an odd, inexplicable moment of concentration in high school, was known as a paradox. “I thoroughly recommend he be in bed by 9:00 p.m.,” this teacher wrote. “He falls asleep in class.” At least, that’s what I can make out, although with his poor penmanship I suppose it’s possible that what the teacher really wrote was, “Never before in my middling career in education have I come across such a brilliant, inventive mind as Gilbert’s. Surely, if he gets enough rest, and gets to bed each night by 9:00 p.m., he will grow up to be a comic genius.”

  And still another teacher, the fortunately named Miss Goldfinger, marked me with straight Fs, which in my school stood for Fair. I was like the poster child for slightly below average academic performance, but I did earn a couple of Us, for Unsatisfactory, in Spelling, Handwriting and Gym. In my defense, I knew it was only a matter of time before someone invented spell-check, before computers replaced pens and pencils, and before I reached the stage in my development where the only physical activity that mattered would be masturbating—one area, as I have indicated, where I could certainly hold my own.

  The last I heard of Miss Goldfinger, she had gotten into a bit of a tiff with Sean Connery. As I understood it at the time, things didn’t work out too well for her on that score.

  Now, I don’t want you readers thinking my grade school career was an unmitigated bust. It was merely a mitigated bust. (Personally, I don’t know what this means, but it sounds good.) I seemed to show a certain talent for art, which was something—not a whole hell of a lot, mind you, but something. Quite a few of my teachers commented on my ability to draw, and on my active imagination. Just what I was actively imagining, I cannot say with any certainty all these years later, although if I had to bet I’d say it had something to do with monsters. You see, before my deep and abiding interest in not getting laid, I developed a deep and abiding interest in monsters. Movie monsters, mostly. I read all the movie monster magazines, and I had my firm opinions on who was the best Dracula, who was the best werewolf, who was the best Frankenstein monster. (For the record, it was Bela Lugosi, Lon Chaney, Jr., and Boris Karloff.)

  My mother was only too happy to see me take an interest in … something. Up until this time, she worried I would have a hard time making a living with my hands in my pants and my head up my ass. I was young, and I suppose there was still hope for me, but my mother liked it when she had something to worry about. She signed me up for an art class at the Brooklyn Museum, where it turned out I had a talent for papier-mâché. At least, I didn’t suck at it, and it seemed to go well with my active imagination. I started making these papier-mâché monster puppets, which I guess is what you do when you discover you have a talent for papier-mâché and a deep and abiding interest in monsters. They were actually pretty good, and before long I developed a whole puppet show to go with them. The story wasn’t much, but I spent a lot of time on the special effects. For one dramatic showdown scene in my acclaimed production of Dracula, I cut an ice cream stick in half to use as a stake, which I planned to drive through the heart of my papier-mâché vampire. One half of the stick was its regular color, and the other half I painted red. For the first part of the scene, where one puppet rushes the vampire puppet, I used the regular-colored stick. Then, after I stabbed the vampire puppet repeatedly, I withdrew the red half of the stick from beneath the vampire’s cape, which was really an old black kerchief I’d borrowed from my mother’s closet.

  It was a clever sleight of hand, meant to show that the vampire puppet had been stabbed and that the stake was now covered in blood, and the audience seemed to really appreciate it. Of course, when I say audience, I should probably mention that I’m referring only to my mother and father and two sisters. I would have invited some of the neighborhood kids to one of my performances, but I didn’t know any.

  Another special effect: for a papier-mâché version of Jekyll and Hyde, I prepared a few Dixie cups as props. During the scene where Dr. Jekyll is meant to be in his laboratory mixing some new formula, I poured water from one Dixie cup into another cup where I had placed an Alka-Seltzer tablet, which of course started to fizz and bubble.

  Once again, the audience was thoroughly entertained. I might go so far as to suggest that they were wildly entertained, but I’m afraid this would be overstating. Let’s just say they were mildly entertained, and leave it at that.

  After one performance, in fact, my mother came up to me and patted me on the head and said, “That’s nice, Gilbert.” Then she told me to clean up after myself. In our apartment, that was the equivalent of a rave review.

  To this day, after every show, I wait patiently for a kind older woman to approach me backstage and pat me on the head and say, “That’s nice, Gilbert,” and then tell me to clean up after myself.

  Hey, it could happen.

  4

  Don’t Forget to Tip Your Waitress

  I had no choice but to go into show business. No other business would have me—and, frankly, there have been times when those on the receiving end of my show business transactions might have preferred it if I’d chosen another line of work, like taxidermy or middle management. And yet here I am, making a go of it, even though I’m not entirely sure what that expression means. Making a go of it … what the hell is that? Seems to me that if you make enough of a go out of something it’s probably a good idea to leave, or maybe even stop at some point, so let’s just say I’m making a name for myself, which seems a whole lot less confusing. Also, it’s way more useful than making a name for someone else.

  I always tell people that I went to the greatest film school in the world, which prepared me for this career I am now making a go of. (Or, perhaps it should be this career of which I am now making a go … I’ll make a go at getting back to you, but it’s one or the other, I’m pretty sure, although I suppose you English-as-a-second-language types can make an argument for this making a go of career.) This line never fails to impress, although when it later comes up that I didn’t bother to finish high school it begs a whole set of follow-up questions I’d prefer not to answer.

  Here’s the long-story-short version of why I stopped going to school: I wasn’t that interested. Basically, it felt like a waste of my valuable time. At some point I figured out that whatever I really needed to learn I could read at the library. So that’s what I did. I left the house for school each morning b
ut went to the library instead. I didn’t tell anybody—and, for the longest time, nobody noticed. That tells you what kind of impression I was making at school, I guess. It wasn’t the most thoroughgoing institution. My teachers didn’t know what to do with me. The other kids didn’t know what to make of me. Even the school guidance counselor couldn’t figure me out. She sat with me one day and tried to match my interests and talents to an appropriate career choice, and at the end of our meeting she threw up her hands and said, “Gilbert, I’ve got nothing. Good luck to you.”

  Then, just in case I missed her point, she said, “I can’t even see you making money giving blood.”

  How’s that for encouragement? I believe this woman took a special graduate school course in this type of guidance counseling, on how to handle underachieving Jews of no discernible intellect or aptitude. And I believe she paid careful attention in this special graduate school course, because the way she threw up her hands in exasperation was particularly effective. It told me in no uncertain terms that I wasn’t cut out for this sort of thing—this sort of thing meaning an education, or a more traditional career path, or even a real job.

  So I went to the library instead, and pursued my own independent course of study. I read a lot, back then. Books, magazines … whatever grabbed my interest. Usually it was books about monsters and magazines about monsters. Newspapers, I tended to avoid. Who had the time? Usually, there wouldn’t be any stories about monsters, so I didn’t see the point. Plus, as soon as you got through one edition, there was another to take its place and tell you everything it had gotten wrong the first time.