There’s a comedian named Al Lubel. He talked about enjoying the sound of his own name. So he repeated it:
“Al Lubel. Al Lubel. Al Lubel. Al Lubel. Al Lubel.”
He’d do this for minutes. Then he demonstrated a sense for the right time to say: “Isn’t it funny that the more I say it, the more you wonder ‘who is this guy?’.”
I think that’s one of the funniest things I ever heard, partly because when he broke to say “Isn’t it funny that the more I say it”, I was thinking “what the fuck, how long will he keep this up”.
With that, it struck me that someone somewhere is thinking exactly, as he said: “Who is this guy?”.
I heard that for the first time in a documentary about Al Lubel, Mentally Al. One of its points is that Al Lubel is such a character that he deserves his own documentary, even though so many people don’t know who he is.
Al Lubel is a great comedian who isn’t interested in being a famous comedian, and not everybody gets him.
I recommend the documentary, and Al Lubel’s act, highly. I’ll see him someday, even if I have to go to the east coast.
I just watched Thank You Very Much, a new documentary about Andy Kaufman.
Kaufman was a great performer who was most famous. Because he was so well-known, he brought on a lot of scorn, because not everyone gets him.
Kaufman’s entire life — he died very young of lung cancer — was a performance. The amazing thing about the guy was honesty about what he was doing, like the evil leaders about whom it’s said “when they tell you how they’re going to fuck colored people and poor people, believe them”.
Kaufman was the same kind of honest. One of the memorable incidents in Kaufman’s career was the night he broke character during a sketch on “Fridays”, then started a fight with cast and crew.
The documentary told me a critical aspect of that night: In Kaufman’s hosting monologue, he tripped on his ability to do whatever he wanted on this live television show. The brilliant thing is that when he blew up that sketch with Michael Richards and Melanie Chartoff, we can’t be certain if he did that just because he knew he could, or if he did it because he truly thought the sketch was too dumb to continue.
In iterviews with two of Kaufman’s friends, they said they discussed — at length and in detail — Kaufman faking his own death. Kaufman asked his friends how long he’d have to keep out of sight, or when he could come back from the dead. They agreed that if Kaufman were to fake his death, then he should never come back.
One friend said: If Andy Kaufman were alive, he’d be faking his death.
And he’s dead, so you can circle that in your head forever: Is Andy Kaufman really dead, or did he fake it?
I think that’s the best bit he ever did. Andy Kaufman wanted to be a performer that people remembered, whether they loved him or hated him. His wife on “Taxi”, Carol Kane, physically poked his corpse, because she was uncertain. I’ll always wonder; in my case, he was successful.
My chess teacher was the most important chess teacher who ever lived. He figured out the simplest path for a chessplayer to become expert, while short-timers had fun with the most scope for imagination.
Richard Shorman’s teachings should be explained and exemplified, and that’s what I have left to do.
He used to say he was still searching for a student who’d carry on his work. He told me that I’d be the logical choice, if I weren’t falling apart. Then five years ago, my health took such a turn for the better.