A word of advice from your elder

It is a beautiful October in Manhattan thanks to global warming and I understand it’s a balmy fall in Minnesota too, though Minnesota needs a good freeze to tell the farmers it’s time to harvest. There are few farmers left still farming in Minnesota, thanks to robotic harvesters — old Zeke looks up from his computer screen and says, “Alexa, pick the pumpkins,” and it’s done.

There are twice as many professional humorists as farmers these days as well I know. And now everybody’s son and stepdaughter are lining up to get a degree in Stand-Up. Yes, you’re right, it’s a B.S. and that’s all you need nowadays, and so I’ve had to take up teaching. And I do stand-up at nursing homes where all the jokes are fresh, even the one about the old man who came into a bar and sat next to a young woman and said, “Do I come in here often?”

I like young people so I shop at Trader Joe’s where the clientele is less than half my age and the conversation in the checkout line is eager and fresh, not full of resentment at the high prices, and I look at the cashiers and wonder which of them are actors and which writers, working p.t. to make rent and snitch some produce and breakfast cereal. You can tell the dancers by the fact that they look agonized — the truth is dawning on them: I can’t do ballet because I have the wrong body, I have hips and a butt.

I was spared the torture of ballet because my parents were fundamentalists and believed that dancing was erotic and sinful, even if you did it on your toes with your arms above your head, so I became a comedian. As you can see.

I read Thurber and Perelman and Benchley in the eighth grade so my goal was to be published in their magazine, The New Yorker, to see my own brilliant wit in narrow columns between stylish ads for Van Cleef & Arpels and the Ritz (from which we get the word “ritzy,” which only I use anymore) and the 1956 Oldsmobile DeLuxe.

I alone am left from that era. I remember when fiction was written with fountain pen on paper, which was the equivalent of cutting soybeans with a scythe and loading the crop onto horse-drawn wagons, and fiction writers under the age of forty don’t realize how much they’ve lost. I can distinguish dialogue that is handwritten with a pen from that which is computed and so can most readers: the plasticity gives it away.

This brief but heartfelt essay was written with a No. 2 pencil on a Roy Rogers tablet. I tell my creative writing students at Juilliard that all you need is that first big success. And your chances are improved about 85% if you write by hand on a tablet. There’s a connection between hand and ear — ask any otolaryngologist.

Yes, I said Juilliard. That was not a typo. People waste decades in repetitive practice trying to master the violin only to become “fair to middling” and why bother when you can tell a joke perfectly the first time you utter it. Go ahead. Read it aloud.

How many violinists does it take to change a lightbulb?

How many?

Fifty.

FIFTY????

Read the contract.

I had two students, brothers Peter and Patrick Peabody, who were violinists and conjoined at the hip, which was fine in a string quartet but Patrick was gay and Peter was Baptist and homophobic. But Peter found Sarah and Patrick had Harry and somehow they made it work, don’t ask me how. But Peter was a terrific violinist and Patrick was so-so.

I suggested to Patrick that he become a writer, that a novel
about a gay fiddler conjoined to his disapproving brother might be an interesting premise; he said, “I promised Harry I would respect his privacy.”

Did I mention that Harry discovered, watching Mary and Peter, that he was bi? Well, I should’ve. And it’s hard to keep this secret when you’re dealing with conjoined twins.

In a fit of rage, Patrick practiced his ass off and outshone Peter at an audition and Peter took to drink and because they shared the same circulatory system both were drunk and Patrick shot him with a pistol and Mary killed Patrick and married Harry and in Minnesota a husband cannot testify against his wife and so all turned out well in the end. All it needs is the music. Where is Mozart when you need him?

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