So why is it that I'm doing stand comedy at age 74?
Well, I'll tell you.
I don't have any grandchildren. I absolutely suck at golf so you're not going to find me taking on Scottie Scheffler on the links at the nearby Merion Country Club, and I can't afford a second home in Florida or even at the Jersey shore and, quite frankly, I can barely afford the one I got.
And I'm not at all handy (I'm Jewish, remember?) so don't look for me to be threading a clipper ship into a bottle -- or even a message into a bottle (rimshot) -- because the only thing I know about ships comes from watching "The Love Boat" in the seventies and the only bottle I'm interested in comes with beer as its major online content.
And ... umm ... I know you're not going to believe this, but Scarlet Johansson is not about to throw Colin Jost over for me.
So I've got me some spare time in my retirement.
Now I've written free lance humor since my early thirties and although I wasn't exactly great at it, my post "The Lighter Side of Leaden Containment Structures" did produce some significant merriment for its 2 or 3 readers.
Back in that day you sent a typed piece to a newsletter along with an SASE (self- addressed stamped envelope) which the newsletter's editor would seize upon to inscribe into it whether they were voting thumbs up or thumbs down on your piece and then return it to you. Frequently the editor in question would return such SASE to me with thumb firmly poised in the manner of Emperor Caligula following a gladiatorial interaction between yours truly and Shaquille O'Neal.
And then around 2009, as I was about 60 years old, I discovered all this had all changed. You could now write humor directly onto the internet and it was immediately and magically projected outward to the entire world and onto the huddled masses. No more SASE's and no more rejections from editors who fashioned themselves Roman emperors or even worse, high school cheerleaders.
I then created and produced this very blog into which I have written many humor pieces and eventually managed to sneak a fair number of them past editors who were either napping at their desks or grossly incompetent at their jobs and got myself published on a number of sites including McSweeney's, Slackjaw, and Points in Case.
So on the rebound at age 68 I joined a sketch comedy group called Hip Replacement. It's a fun troupe and, although it has undergone a number of personnel changes --- as all we supergroups are wont to do --- it continues to be fun and I'm still doing it and bringing it. But I am not a great thespian; my histrionic skills are more likely to leave 'em hissing than cheering.
So I decided to Stand Up and Be Counted.
I am by far the oldest of the folks signing up for open mics at the various clubs around town, but most of the young comics are very nice except for the ones who are constantly gathering around me saying: "Come on, Perry, we want to hear you say it: GET OFF MY LAWN!"
But am I funny?
I dunno.
If you ever see me out there one of these days, maybe you can tell me.
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