Comic Gold Blog

The Knicks just beat the Spurs 104-82. Big game. Big, big game. No, it wasn’t the
championship game or anything like that, and I’m not even a Knicks fan. It was the Martin
Luther King Day game! That’s how the NBA celebrates Martin Luther King Day. Doesn’t
anyone at the NBA understand irony? What, couldn’t they get the T-shirts for the dance
contest and watermelon seed spit-off printed in time?

Wouldn’t the greater honor for Dr. King by the NBA, a league rightly or wrongly associated with
black men, be not playing a game today? Instead of choosing to fight the NBA over marijuana
testing, maybe the players union should have come up with an appropriate way to honor the man
who made it possible for all of its players to eat in the same restaurants, stay in the same hotels,
and date the same white women.

I’m not trying to preach. One reason I admire Dr. King was his respect and tolerance for Jews, so
I have my own selfish reasons for my views. His tolerance was breath taking. Dr. King spoke of
a universal love for all mankind. I consider myself to be a tolerant person, but I get angry when
the guy next to me on the bus breathes too loudly from his nose. Seriously, though, that is really
annoying. It’s easy to claim to be tolerant. My college fraternity’s motto was “unity through
divergence,” but one day I realized—-we had no black members. I guess our idea of divergence
was white men of different heights. Actually, we did have a couple of black guys, but only one at
a time of course.

I know some of my friends think I see bigotry everywhere. But that’s just because I see bigotry
where it exists. A few years ago while I was working at a men’s store, my friend and co-worker
Vince, who is black, and I took the train home together. To set the scene, Vince dresses like a
banker and I dress like a banker’s son on “take your child to work day.” I was drinking a cold
beer out of a brown paper bag while Vince was just holding a bottle of wine for his date that
night. You should have seen the look on the people’s faces. They saw Vince, despite the pin
stripes, as a threat, and possibly a drunken one. Me, well, they figured I was just relaxing. I just
started to work again part time at that men’s store and one thing I pride myself on is that I offer
the same disinterested service to customers of all races.

Vince bought a car last year and when I told him to be careful on the Jersey Turnpike where
racial profiling was perfected, he said that he knew the drill. If he were pulled over, he would
keep his hands on the wheel at 10 and 2 until the officer walked up to his window. I’m not the
deepest thinker in the world, but as he was telling me this, I just couldn’t help thinking, “but this
is America.” So in Vince’s honor, I have a number of other tips for our black friends when
dealing with law enforcement. When walking near the police, always walk with your hands held
high above your head, like you’re carrying something expensive through deep water or better yet
while wearing those big, puffy, #1 fan, foam hands on both hands. If you want, you can keep
repeating, “aye bwana” but that might be a little bit much. If stopped by the police in Harlem,
reach for your wallet as though you were doing the old dance the robot. Mechanically remove
your wallet by moving only one joint in the body at a time. Most importantly, always move
slowly. Better to look lazy but be safe.

Fortunately, most police officers are fair and honest and unfortunately, not all of the leaders of
the black community deserve the reverence I hold for Dr. King. He never alluded to Jews as interlopers and diamond merchants as Al Sharpton has, and he clearly wasn’t as divisive as Jesse
Jackson is. Sometimes I’m surprised that Al Sharpton doesn’t have his own line of merchandise
benefiting his causes. “If you can’t be an anti-Semitic black leader, now you can at least drink
like one. Try the crisp, non-alcoholic (A Salaam Alechem, my brother) taste of Reverend Al’s
Nubian Cola.” I heard Jesse mention coal miners a couple of weeks ago and I figured, despite the
good he usually does, that he only cared about the coal miners because they get black lung.
Dr. King was murdered before he could organize his latest project. A march on Washington to
highlight the plight of poor people. Not poor black people. Poor all people. Nowadays, there are
streets in most big cities named for Dr. King and they always lead to the same place. We’ll have
a better America, and the dream will have come true, when Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard is
the road to the airport and not the bus station.

Happy New Year. This is either my first column of 2001 or my last column of 2000. The same dorks
who are debating if the Millenium actually starts this year or started last year can have a little fun
with this new puzzle.

This edition of A Dog’s Lunch is a little late because I actually worked on New Year’s Eve. New Year’s
Eve, big money night for comics, and I’m usually home with Dick Clark wondering how his performers
are able to fake such enthusiasm. Sour grapes. Last New Year’s Eve, the first New Year’s eve of the
millenium—and now you know where I come down on this important issue—I actually worked on my
taxes. Talk about a dork. Just a little head start on my Schedule C itemizing.

This was an odd New Year’s Eve for another reason. Not only did I have a good gig; I slept with a hot
woman who looks remarkably like a friend’s wife. Now I know I have an Oedipal Complex, but I don’t
know what you call this? She wasn’t even my look. I’m big on the curvy Mediterranean types but this girl
was an Indiana Hoosier through and through. I’m starting off the New Year with a new ability to
compromise. It wasn’t one of my resolutions, but I like the results so far. The butterfly tattoo didn’t hurt
either.
New Year’s Eve makes me think. Not just that it’s another year passed without my becoming the toast of
the Cannes Film Festival or even the dubious Male Comedian Of The Year. I think my spinal surgery
gives me a flyer on my mediocre year 2000. I guess the thoughts are more important, with an eye toward
gain and loss, or last year, with an eye toward profit and loss. It’s odd though. New Year’s Eve also makes
me think about other times when I’ve thought. Why do I make thinking sound like a memorable event?
Every New Year’s, I think of the time when I wrote a poem when I was at the University of Delaware.
Thank g-d nobody saw it. Ah the dangers of being 19 and having a broken heart and a good vocabulary.
Another time, I once started to write a poem called, get this, THERE’S SOMETHING IN MY EYE, MY
DARLING, AND I THINK IT’S YOU. Please. Would that my fingers break if I ever sit down again to
write something so cheesy. You can’t write dick jokes 364 days a year and try to be Robert Frost on the
other day.
I’m into the arts and I’m pro-gay, so a couple of months ago I did go to a poetry slam in the Village. I was
curious about the poetry and I figured there’d be a lot of downtown, dark haired women there. Nope, just
me, a buddy who also wanted to meet women, and fifty poetry lovers who hated our shorthaired guts. On
the plus side, we were the only ones spending money at the bar. You can disagree, but I firmly believe
that beer is much healthier for you than coffee.

I never knew I was such a tough critic of poetry. I got asked to judge the Slam, and I didn’t mind doing it
when I thought it was going to be blind judging. Instead, I had to write down my score and hold it up to
the scorn of the judgmentally non-judgmental crowd.

If you have to piss off a group of people, poets are a good group. What’s the worst they’re going to do?
Come up with a mean rhyme about you. “Dave is a comedian whose material belongs in a bucket. He
couldn’t write a poem that didn’t end with Nantucket.” I finally broke down and gave someone a seven
and heard somebody murmur, “that’s a pretty good score for Dave.”

If she only knew. At least THERE’S SOMETHING IN MY EYE, MY DARLING, AND I THINK IT’S
YOU is known only to me, and it’s safely locked away for another year.