Is This Anything?

by Jerry Seinfeld

Invite people. Get them all seated. Roll out a serving table. Then lift up a sterling silver cover on Cocoa Peanut Logs Parmigiana.

And for some reason it always has to say right next to it, “Serving suggestion.” Like, “We’re not insisting on a bowl. Just a suggestion… Put it in your hat if you want… Milk? Just another idea… Putting it out there.

This is a cereal that… it’s not like cookies, it is cookies. This is your breakfast, a bowl of chocolate chip cookies. Ice cream for lunch, cake for dinner, bacon and cigarettes in between.

When you buy socks they always come on a tiny hanger. Does anybody have a tiny sock closet to hang them up? Tiny doors. Go through them to pick out what you’re wearing that day. (fingers going through) “Argyle… crew… tube sock… over the calf…”

But the life of The Sock is not good. We know that. The stinky feet. The boring drawers. They want out. Laundry day is their only chance to escape. And they know it. How many times do you do your laundry? Go to the dryer. Count up the socks. One of them got out. Escaped. Where did he go? Took off on his own. Never takes his partner.

“This is my chance. I’m tired of everyone thinking we’re the same.” The dryer door swings open. The sock hides himself up against the side wall… (arm feeling around inside) “I know he’s in there…” Sometimes he grabs on to a sweater. Give him a little head start. And then he takes off down the street… (chase scene music) “Da dada… Dada dada…” How could one sock even survive in the world? In what circumstance? On a golf club? Puppet show? Amputee? There’s just not that many options. Sometimes you’ll see one sock just lying there in the street…

Dirty… twisted… exhausted. He only made it a couple of blocks…

I saw a sign in a beauty parlor, “Vivian is back.” From where? Lunch? Prison? It could be anywhere. I didn’t even know she left. They never had a sign, “Vivian’s on a chain gang in Alabama.” Can’t this woman have a private life? Everyone’s got to know where she is? “Vivian’s getting an egg salad on the corner.” “Vivian’s making license plates in Coxsacki.”

“Alright, everyone. Ready… and… Stamp and press and hold and up… And… BACK to the pad. And press, and stamp Rock it on the pad, rock it on the pad. and hold and up And… BACK to the pad. And… breathe… Higgins, you’re not breathing. Alright, alright, shake it off, everyone, shake it off. That was very good stamping.”

“Hey, before we leave, let’s pick up one of those pianos! What are they, like, A MILLION DOLLARS…? Let’s get it now so we don’t have to make two trips.”

Certainly nothing strikes fear into the heart of the criminal psyche like the sight of a small dish towel. Especially if it’s got the little fringe on the end. That really terrifies them. They run to their secret caves and tremble.

“It’s a couple of sweaters, that’s all. One of them happens to be square with antenna coming out of it. It’s a Zenith sweater.”

Because “Vague” is kind of a vague thing to say… I would just write “Unclear,” send it back to the teacher. She’d return it to me, “Ambiguous.” We’re still corresponding to this day…

I think my favorite is, “Left turn okay.” That one’s got a little personal touch to it. “Left turn… okay.”

Which is certainly the kind of positive image we want for our political party. I think it says, “We are ready to do whatever we have to do.”

“Well, here it is. You can’t have any. Thanks for watching. Goodbye.”

If professional wrestling did not exist, could you come up with this idea? Could you envision the popularity of huge men in tiny bathing suits pretending to fight? Could you sell it to a promoter?

They must get these guys from the same place the Harlem Globetrotters get their refs. There must be this whole school where they teach you to just kind of run around and not notice anything.

Professional football. To me the hardest part of being a professional football player is on the one hand you’re a millionaire. On the other, they blow a whistle and you have to run around after a football. To me, the whole idea of being a millionaire is, somebody throws a football at me. Maybe I catch it. Maybe I don’t. I would think you get someone to hand you the football at that point. “Here you go, sir, that’s another touchdown for you. Would you like a fresh squeezed orange juice before the next play?”

“It’s some kind of meat and you should eat it… around noon.”

And why do we have the guy all dressed up in a suit? Is he sleeping, is he going to an important meeting? Is he going to nap in a meeting? We need to decide where we think these people are going.

There’s not a lot of people sitting home in the dark going, “I can’t hold out much longer. If someone doesn’t call pretty soon…”

“All right. Five o’clock. Time to hit the bars and pick up some hookers. Hold it a second, look at this picture. I’ve got a wife and three kids. Oh my god, I better get home.”

It’s a jewelry case for candy. This gives you some idea what they think it’s worth. “I’d like to see something in a Milk Dud, if I could.” He puts it on the fold-out black velvet display panel. “Honey, what do you think? That’s a 2-carat Dud.”

Deodorant soap has always been kind of a mystery to me. If you’re covering your entire body, hands and face with deodorant, don’t we have a larger problem? If you smell this bad, maybe just call in sick?

But the Men’s Room is a nauseating, disgusting place. And every man in there is a sickening, revolting human slime. You don’t want to see, relate, or interact in any way with any human in that room.

On the package I noticed it said, “Facial Quality.” I didn’t care for the insinuation. What’s my face got to do with it? When I buy facial tissue I don’t look for “rectal quality.”

“Do you take this man in sickness?” The rest of the time go out, have a ball, do whatever you want. But the second I have a temperature, you better be there.

I’d like to have a family someday. Although it’s hard to imagine being the head of the household when my life at this point consists mostly of wandering around my apartment, kicking underwear up in the air and trying to catch it.

You need to create a new person, someone that doesn’t know anything about you. You need a relationship with a person who’s impressed that you know where the spoons are.

Dogs stay stupid. They never catch on to anything.

“You’re back again!! (sings) It’s that guy… That guy is back… With the ball and the food… It’s that guy… —How did you know which house I was in?”

On May 6, 1981, I walked out, a bit stiffly, onto The Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson. Six minutes later, as the audience continued applauding, I started back toward the curtain. Over the applause, Johnny asked me to come back and “take a bow.”

“I’m having the peanuts now. Yeah, that’s what we’re doing back here. I thought I would keep YOU posted. On what I’M doing. I’m not going to have them all now. I’m going to have a few. I don’t want to finish it because it’s such a BIG BAG.”

The other day on a plane I thought, “I wonder if there’s keys to the plane? Do they need keys to start the plane?” Maybe that’s what those delays on the ground are sometimes. When you’re just sitting there at the gate. Maybe the pilot’s up there in the cockpit going, “Oh, I don’t believe this… dammit… I did it again.” They tell you it’s something mechanical, because they don’t want to come on the P.A. system, “Ladies and gentlemen, we’re going to be delayed here on the ground for a little while. I, uh… oh god, this is so embarrassing… I, I left the keys to the plane in my apartment. They’re in this big blue ashtray by the front door. I’m really sorry. I’ll run back and get them.”

I also love the sign, “As a courtesy to the next passenger, please wipe off the counter with your towel.” Well, let me earn my wings every day. Sorry I forgot to bring my toilet-bowl brush with me. When did this Brotherhood of Passengers get started? “Did they lose your luggage? Here, take mine. We’re all passengers together. By the way, was that bathroom clean enough for you? I couldn’t find the Comet or I would’ve had that crapper gleaming.”

“Any drugs?” Is he catching people like this? “Any drugs?” “Bingo, you got me. Slap the cuffs on. I don’t know how you did it. I was not expecting that question.”

You can measure distance by time. “How far away is that place?” “About 20 minutes.” But it doesn’t work the other way. “When do you get off work?” “Around 3 miles.”

The other day I saw a car with a Hawaii license plate. Then I went, “Wait a minute, how did that get here?” I went down to the beach, there were tracks coming out of the water.

I like whatever the weather. Because that is the weather for the day that it is. Here’s your choice: You’re dead. Or it’s today.

They want them to “wait up.” Because when you’re little, your life is up, the future is up, everything you want is up. “Wait up. Hold up. Shut up. Mom, I’ll clean up. Just let me stay UP.” For parents everything is down. “Calm down. Slow down.

Come down here. Sit down. Put that down. You are GROUNDED.” So, I get the Superman Halloween costume.

When you’re thinking about talking to a girl for the very first time in your life, you want as much corrective apparatus on your head as you can possibly get.

Every bug you see is on his way somewhere else. Bugs never seem to stop and go, “Well, here I am.”

Maybe comets did kill the dinosaurs. Maybe they tripped and fell. What’s the difference? We’ll never know.

You get the stamp. Bring it home. Put it in a drawer. Come back a year later, “Hey… still got it. That stamp is COLLECTED.”

I guess if you ever get bored of the stamps, you can turn them over, you’ve got a glue collection.

Nothing is fun for the whole family. There’s no massage parlors with ice cream and free jewelry. No racetrack sells fur coats and Silly Putty.

I like documentaries. But not every ancient culture is fascinating. I think in some cases, extinction may have been their luckiest break. Like when they tell you about some ancient people that lived right on the rim of an active volcano. How much can we learn from people that stood around during an eruption going, “Boy, it is hot today. Did the weatherman say ‘lava’? I heard ‘chance of molten’ by the weekend.”

“Oh, you know Bob? Ohh, okay… I’ll make sure you get the real medicine. Everybody else I’m giving Tic Tacs.”