Normally I'd post the link but the Post archives is only active a few days before you have to pay to retrieve stuff. Great show. I went Sunday night with my fiancee and we loved the wedding bit. --Bill
"So," said Jerry Seinfeld, sauntering onstage at the Kennedy Center on Saturday night, "we meet again."
We do, indeed. And the Seinfeld we meet this time is a semi-retired kazillionaire, a married father, living some indolent version of the American dream, where you wander through the world, mostly sticking to New York City, observing, taking notes and charging people $60 each to hear you think out loud.
We'll pay dearly and happily to hang out with Jerry Seinfeld, because his wealth and fame notwithstanding, he still is the keen, cranky and slightly antisocial court jester of all that is absurd, inflated and idiotic in this world.
That includes dating, naturally, a habit which Seinfeld has recently and gladly quit. "Twenty-five years of dating. Do you know how exhausting that is? Do you know how much acting fascinating that is? 'So your sister is leasing a Hyundai Elantra?' " he said, yawning amid an imagined dinner. " 'I'd like to sleep with you, but I'm having trouble hanging in, I've got to be honest. I don't want another drink. I'll take a Ritalin if you have it.' "
The only advantage of the single life, he explained, was its lack of complexity.
"The single man has a simple mind. The single man only thinks of three things: I'd like to buy one of those, I'd like to go out with her and I hope these guys win. That's why at sporting events you've got cheerleaders and some sort of car that drives around the field during the game. Guys are just, game, girl, car. Car, girl, game."
That simplicity, apparently, wearied after a while, so Seinfeld got married at an affair he described as a modest gathering of just 20 friends and relatives. Nothing onerous, nothing extravagant -- nothing like the nightmarish norm he strongly advised against.
"I know there are couples right here at the Kennedy Center that are planning big weddings, right here tonight. Please do not raise your hand or acknowledge me in any way. I want to tell you something about this big wedding that you're planning, something that your friends will not tell you, something your family will not tell you. But me, your estranged little TV friend, will speak the truth. Which is this: NOBODY WANTS TO GO TO YOUR WEDDING! Nobody else is excited about the three different kinds of melon balls you're going to be having. Most people got the invitation and said, 'Oh, Jesus Christ!' "
A wedding, he added, is nothing but a bad party. And the bride and groom know it's a bad party. "They leave early. 'We're going to Barbados to have sex. Enjoy the dry cake and our relatives.' "
He's a fan of marriage, though he objects to some of the games his wife forces him to play. Most annoying: the Do-I-Look-Fat-in-This Shell Game, which Seinfeld still hasn't mastered. Wife: "But if it did make me look fat, would you consider lying to not hurt my feelings?" Seinfeld, after a long pause: "Well, I'd never want to hurt your feelings."
Wife: "Well that means I do look fat, you must be lying, game over, you lose again!"
"Would you like to play Is-My-Friend-Pretty Roulette?" she adds.
Now that he doesn't need the money -- or us for that matter -- Seinfeld is the most self-assured of curmudgeons, a cynic in a three-button suit who can hysterically out-jade even the most jaded of worldviews. Thanks to his storied and self-titled sitcom, the guy long ago laughed all the way to the bank. These days, he owns the bank and is just loitering in the lobby, making fun of the suckers in line.
That includes women who draw dark lines around the outside of their lipstick. "We've had enough of that one," he harrumphed. "I'd just like to say on behalf of the men on planet Earth: We see your lips. We don't need ground marks. We're not parachuting in. It's not a dead body at a crime scene.
He ridiculed the 20-minute credit roll at the end of films ("Do moviemakers really think we're sitting there saying, 'The names, I must have names of those responsible! . . . I didn't catch the name of the gaffer. He gaffed the hell out of that movie' ") and the absurdity of TV award shows.
"They send you a letter with curlicues around the edge. 'We think that you might be the best. We're not saying definitely. We won't know for sure until we get you all dressed up in a room and on TV. If by some chance it turns out that you were not the best, we'd all like to see the look on your face when you lose.' "
A return to TV, it turns out, isn't out of the question for Seinfeld. "It's a definite possibility," he announced, when asked about a "Seinfeld" reunion during a question-and-answer session at the end of the show. A reunion could even be called likely once the careers of all four stars are down the drain, he said. Now that former co-stars Jason Alexander and Michael Richards have each flamed out in respective sitcoms, that could be sooner than you think. As Seinfeld put it, "Two down and two to go."