Gilbert The Great

Every Carlin bit: Everything you were taught was bullshit. Plus, your dad doesn’t have a monopoly on the distant dad prick market. I’ll take your dad’s collapsed shoulders and torso while going in for a hug over an Irish kiss from Dad despite winning top toast at Toastmasters International before blowing his paycheck on Bushmills 20-year Irish Whiskey at the bar soon after.

“Toasting is for fat, drunk, Irish losers and bloated, blowhard Kennedy’s on speedboats off the coast Hyannis Port cruising for late night date chow rendezvous with Great Whites.”

These days, I can’t tell whether I like to hear any standup comedy besides my own material after performing more sheets of Comedy Gold on my Pause Daddy Podcast for free. I try. Robert Klein, I’m an annoying Jew who should be teaching American History at Hunter College for a living. Paula Poundstone is fine, if you want to hear her badger an audience for 5 hours about what they do for a living besides long for Fashion Police on Entertainment Television in her presence before Kelly Osbourne teamed up with Trans Chucky and ruined the show’s legacy forever.

Now, watching Gilbert Gotfried make an audience cringe and laugh whole heartedly at the same time never disappoints like the period out from having to bang your wife on her birthday again. A personal favorite bit by Gilbert the Great was telling a crowd at the Montreal Comedy Festival about learning how John Phillips from the Mama’s and Papa’s used to climb up to his daughter’s bunk bed and nail her for years. Then, Gilbert The Great says, “I can’t even get my daughter to hold my hand while crossing the street. All I want her to know is that her Barbie Dreamhouse didn’t pay for itself.” Now this a shining example of uprooting somber and how comedy possesses the power to make flawless light from unfathomable abhorrence in this world by using his slight case of personal dejection in the service of getting a laugh for the greater good. Just like me adding, “So that’s why in the song California Dreaming when dad gets on his knees and pretends to pray, he’s just screaming, holy fucking Christ, I can’t bang my Lolita blues away on a Winter’s Day.” United we laugh. Gilbert The Great proved it every day. Thank you, Gilbert The Great, very, very much.

Michael Kornbluth