Is This Anything?

by Jerry Seinfeld

Let’s face it, the human body is like a condominium apartment. The thing that keeps you from really enjoying it is the maintenance. There’s a tremendous amount of daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly work that has to be done. From showering to open-heart surgery, we’re always doing something to ourselves. If your body was a used car, you wouldn’t buy it. You’d go, “Nah, I’ve heard about these human being bodies.

A check is a very emasculating experience. It’s like a note from your mother. That says, “I don’t have any money, but if you contact these people… I’m sure they’ll stick up for me.

I will never be able to understand how a woman can take boiling hot wax, pour it on her upper thighs, rip the hair out by the root. And still be afraid of a spider.

we’re honking car horns, making kissing noises out the window. These are the best ideas we’ve had so far.

Psychiatrist Then there’s the psychiatrist. Why is it that with the psychiatrist every hour is only fifty minutes? What do they do with that ten minutes that they have left? Do they just sit there going, “Boy, that guy was crazy. I couldn’t believe the things he was saying. What a nut… Who’s coming in next? Oh no, another head case.”

What is the problem that we can’t have a regular faucet in an airport bathroom? That they will not give us a “twist-it-on, twist-it-off” human-style faucet? Is that too risky for the general population? Too dangerous? “We better install the one-handed, spring-loaded, pain-in-the-ass Alcatraz-style faucets.” Those ones where you have to go, “Hey, I got a little water there. Oo—a couple drops.” What is it that they think we would do with a faucet? Turn them all on full? Run out into the parking lot, laughing,

Why does a doctor need that little office anyway? I guess he doesn’t want people to see him looking stuff up— “What the hell was that?” (quickly paging through a book) “Jesus Christ. That was kind of gross.

the essential building blocks of comedy, very often, are an elegant intertwining of really dumb and really smart.

Cookies know in the morning, you are strong, they are weak. At night you are weak, they are strong.

I don’t understand gambling addiction. I don’t find losing money addictive.

they know once our coat is off, that concludes our involvement with anyone or anything in the house. Which is the second male domestic instinct: Avoidance.

My wife has been bringing our youngest one in the bed every night at 3 o’clock in the morning. This is another beautiful experience. It’s like sleeping next to a laundry bag that has a live goat tied up inside. All night long the goat is punching and kicking, trying to get out. He has somehow mounted himself onto a rotating display wheel that works its way around the bed raising his body temperature to 189 degrees. How does that little body pump out all that heat?

When I say I love being a parent, I certainly don’t mean to give you the impression that I am in any way effective at it. I tell my kids to do things. But they say, “No.” And so I have been reduced to threats, fear and intimidation. I have become a small-time mob boss around my house. I figure out what they like, and then I threaten to hurt those things. “I notice you’re becoming quite fond of that little stuffed Curious George that sits in the corner of your room. It would certainly be a shame if something were to suddenly happen to him.

Why are your friends so annoying? These are the people you have chosen to be with. And yet, you cannot stand them.

These are the people you have picked to be with in life. And yet you cannot stand them. You’d get rid of all of them in a second if it wasn’t an even bigger pain in the ass to find new people, learn a whole new set of different annoying problems that they have and never do anything about.

Husbands and wives that arrived here tonight intact get special credit. The Simultaneous House Exit is the highest level of marriage difficulty. You can have kids, they win the Olympics, get the Nobel Prize. That is nothing compared to getting out of that god damn house together.

I tell all my guy friends. “Make your woman happy.” You? You’re not going to be happy and that’s good. Because that cuts your work in half. Now we’re down to one person that we have to worry about

I could not have flowed more smoothly into being a husband and having a family because I already understood life to be a nonstop, twenty-four-hour repetitive cycle of, “What? What the hell? What the hell is going on now?”

Your parents paid attention to you. Our parents didn’t even know our names.

When we were kids, our parents didn’t give a damn about us. Here’s how you grew up. You were born to people. You lived in their house. The day you moved out you turned around and went, “That was insane. I did not understand 90% of the last 18 years. But I appreciate it. And will be back to visit the minimum acceptable number of times. Nice doing business with you.”

Then to the bedrooms for the pillow arrangement blanket adjustment and stuffed animal semi-circle of emotional support. To help the little cretins get through 9½ hours without constant positive reinforcement. I had to read each kid eight different moron books. You know what my bedtime story was…? DARKNESS. My favorite character was the complete absence of light. That was the book I read every night.

When the piñata comes out you can feel the tone of the party changes a bit. “Today you’re five. It’s time you learned about blind rage and senseless violence.”

I think the gutter ball is really the only life lesson a kid really needs to have. You either do the thing you’re doing right, or there’s a huge ka-klunk sound and total public humiliation. Just roll the gutter ball. Roll it! Walk back… Take another bite of your Nestlé Crunch bar. You tell your friend he sucks too, and you’re done. Parents, if your child is traumatized by a gutter ball, the kid’s not going to make it, okay? Just forget the whole thing. Don’t even finish raising them. We can’t use these people.

But that’s what marriage is. It’s two people. That’s it. Trying to stay together, without saying the words “I hate you.” Which you are not allowed to say. Don’t say that. You can feel it. That’s okay. Just don’t let it come out.

in your car, dual zone separate buttons on each side climate control systems. Gee, I wonder if it was a married person that thought of that?

We just came back from a nice family vacation. Or what I like to call, “Let’s pay a lot of money to go fight in a hotel.

Hey, you don’t think there’s any possible connection between all of us drinking these giant, insane coffees all day long and then suddenly finding you need a horse sedative to get your eyelids out of your skull, do you?

the other good thing about being out is you don’t have to be out for long. Just long enough to get the next feeling, which you’re all going to get. And that feeling is, “I’ve got to be getting back.”

People say life is too short. I think it’s way too long. I don’t know how you feel. To me, it is taking forever to get through this thing.

I don’t lie in restaurants anymore. “How is everything?” “I don’t like it here.”

I like infomercials. I like that there’s a time of night where your brain stops to function and the products start making sense. “I don’t think I have a knife that can cut through a shoe, I better get this number down.

As Georgie always reminds me, “Remember, it’s not Show Fun. It’s Show Business.”