Comedian Jerry Seinfeld's Commencement Address at Duke University - "Don't Lose Your Humor"

"Don't lose your humor. Forget everything else." These were comedian Jerry Seinfeld's closing words of advice to the graduating class of Duke University this week when he delivered the commencement address to a packed stadium."

It's not often that we get an invitation to attend a college graduation that features a commencement address by a world famous comedian, so we're glad that Duke University posted it on YouTube.

In his presentation, Seinfeld gives the students his three real keys to life.

Enjoy!

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Comedy Classics: Jerry Seinfeld as a Frustrated High School History Teacher on Saturday Night Live

In a Saturday Night Live sketch in 1992, Jerry Seinfeld played a high school history teacher who struggles to get his students to recall basic facts about European history. The teacher eventually gives up, realizing that his students are even ignorant about the existence of Nazis.

In the sketch, Seinfeld is joined by fellow comedians Chris Farley, Adam Sandler, Chris Rock, and David Spade.

Enjoy!

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Comedy Showcase: Molly Shannon Falls for Basketball Player Jerry Seinfeld on Saturday Night Live

Way back in 1999 when Jerry Seinfeld hosted Saturday Night Live, he gave a rare performance as someone other than himself. He played Lenny Schwartzman, a star basketball player for Yeshiva Academy in the Interfaith Basketball League.

Mary Katherine Gallagher, played by Molly Shannon, has a crush on Lenny and is the only Catholic girl who asks him to go out for a knish.

Enjoy!

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Jerry Seinfeld Tells How to Write a Joke

One of Jerry Seinfeld's popular stand-up comedy jokes is about the invention and marketing of the Pop Tart by the Kellogg company. It took him two years to complete writing the joke.

In an interview posted by The New York Times, Jerry revealed the process that resulted in creation of the joke, and discussed the long time involved from the conception of the joke through multiple rewrites in longhand on a yellow pad.

It's a fascinating insight into the effort involved in crafting a joke that will produce laughs. If you haven't heard the joke, we're posting a clip of its delivery below the interview video.

Enjoy!

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A Joke to Start the Week: Jerry Seinfeld Retells 3 Gentile Jokes to Norm Macdonald

Jewish Humor Central readers may remember the three Gentile jokes delivered by Rabbi Bob Alper that we featured on May 15, 2017. 

Well, they popped up again in a YouTube video with Jerry Seinfeld doing the delivery of one of the jokes and explaining it to Canadian stand-up comedian, writer, and actor Norm Macdonald. The video included the set of three jokes as we showed them on Jewish Humor Central.

Macdonald was a cast member for five seasons on Saturday Night Live, which included anchoring Weekend Update for three years.

So what makes them Gentile jokes, as differentiated from Jewish jokes? If you've been telling and hearing Jewish jokes for as long as we have, the answer is obvious. But just in case you don't get it immediately, we'll point out that these jokes by themselves are not funny. In fact, they're not even jokes. They're just simple narratives. What makes them funny is imagining how different they would be if the protagonists were Members of the Tribe.

The Jewish version of each would be filled with angst. The mother would not accept her son's excuse without pushback.  The shopper for a new sportcoat would have plenty to say about the price quoted by the salesman. And he new business owner would regale his friend with tales of woe.

Enjoy!

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Jerry Seinfeld and Jimmy Fallon in Best Comedian Stand-Up Battle

Last November on an episode of The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, comedian Jerry Seinfeld and  host Fallon engaged in a stand-up comedy battle, each one taking a turn at telling a short Seinfeld stand-up routine to see which of the two was the better Seinfeld.

The joke topics included ''Wait Up", "Star Wars", "Pizza Hut", "Rubber Dividers", and "Birthday Clown."

Enjoy!

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Jerry Seinfeld Reflects on His Career and His Love for Standup Comedy

Jerry Seinfeld is obsessed with cars, and was inspired to produce an Internet series featuring comedians in cars talking about comedy. But finding a platform for his "Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee" was a hard sell. 

In this interview he talks with correspondent Anthony Mason about the nuts and bolts of comedy, and about the series which has proven to be a mega-hit. The interview was originally broadcast on CBS Sunday Morning on May 31, 2015.

Enjoy!

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Comedy Showcase: Jerry Seinfeld on Donut Holes, Buffets, and TV Dinners

In January 2016 Jerry Seinfeld dropped in on The Late Night Show with Steven Colbert for a comedy set on America's weight problem.

In the 7-minute set, he expounds on the logic of selling donut holes vs. donut plugs, and the marketing strategy behind restaurant buffets and TV dinners.

Enjoy!

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Comedy Showcase: Jerry Seinfeld on Men, Women, and Flowers

The Comic Strip, renamed Comic Strip Live, is the oldest stand-up comedy showcase club in New York City and the world, located at 1568 Second Avenue. Lots of stand-up comics got their start there and many alumni still return to perform their sets.

Comedian Jerry Seinfeld made an appearance at The Comic Strip with a short routine about men, women, and flowers. With Valentine's Day approaching next week, many men will be buying flowers for their wives and girlfriends. Here is Jerry's funny commentary about the relationship between men, women, and flowers.

Enjoy!

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Jerry Seinfeld Gives Standup Performance at Magen David Adom Event

Last week Jerry Seinfeld gave a standup comedy performance at a gala event in Los Angeles. It was held at the Beverly Hilton for American Friends of Magen David Adom, honoring Sheldon and Dr. Miriam Adelson.

In his half-hour routine, Seinfeld covered a wide range of topics including annoyances with new technology, use of smart phones, marriage, child raising, and funny aspects of his personal life.

Enjoy!

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Comedy Showcase: Jerry Seinfeld on Donut Holes, Buffets, and TV Dinners

Comedian Jerry Seinfeld dropped in to the Stephen Colbert show earlier this year to show that he hasn't lost his touch with standup comedy. 

After years of being associated with his Seinfeld TV sitcom series, he picked up the microphone and carried on for seven minutes on food and weight related topics, with funny observations on the state of the nation's girth, donut holes, buffets, and TV dinners.

Enjoy!

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Jerry Seinfeld in Tel Aviv: "It Is What It Is"

Since it's likely that you missed Jerry Seinfeld's show in Tel Aviv in December, as we did even though we were spending the month in Israel, we're posting some excerpts from his performance.

This video clip has Jerry carrying on about empty phrases that have become popular, such as "It is what it is," and "Business is business."

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(A tip of the kippah to Yifat Cohen for posting this video on YouTube.)

Jerry Seinfeld Gets Personal in His Israel Show

We got so many positive reactions to the video clip of Jerry Seinfeld's standup comedy in Tel Aviv last week that we're posting another part of his sold-out show. And there's more to come.

In this segment, Jerry talks about his personal life, age, and marriage. As Allison Kaplan Sommer wrote in Haaretz,

Seinfeld didn’t address the security situation, though the comedian who opened for him, Mark Schiff said in his set that he had been asked if he was nervous about travelling to Israel and said “I’ve been married for 25 years. Nothing scares me.”

Like Schiff, Seinfeld, who said he felt “warmly received” in Israel, spent a great deal of his act on men, women, and married life, a universal source of humor, which Seinfeld compared to underwear. An ideal marriage, he said “offers a little bit of support and a little bit of freedom.” 

Enjoy!

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(A tip of the kippah to Yifat Cohen for posting this video on YouTube.)

Jerry Seinfeld Brings His Standup Comedy to Tel Aviv

Comedian Jerry Seinfeld brought his stand-up routine to Israel for the first time, as part of his world tour. Last weekend he performed four shows in Tel Aviv. 

As David Brinn wrote in The Jerusalem Post,

The 61-year-old multi-millionaire entertainer, whose nine-season sitcom became a cultural touchstone unmatched in TV history, went back to his roots on Saturday night in Tel Aviv and proved that he was master of his domain – the field of stand-up comedy.

Dressed in a stylish suit that showed off only a little more bulk than in his TV heyday, Seinfeld soldiered on through some hoarseness with a slick, well-rehearsed set that had the appreciative audience frequently breaking into applause.

An hilarious opening focused on the audience’s decision to attend the show and all the details it entailed, offered in Seinfeld’s trademark earnest outrage, which is more staccato and manic that the TV monologues of old.

He localized his bits a few times, mentioning the vast array at Israeli hotel breakfasts and how it brings out the worst elements in people.

Here's a video clip from his performance in which he talked about our dependence on cell phones and the wide technology gap between email and the U.S. Postal Service.

Enjoy!

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Comedy Flashback: Early Jerry Seinfeld Stand-Up on Why People Have Pets

Before Jerry Seinfeld scored big with his long-running TV series Seinfeld, he was a regular on the New York stand-up comedy circuit.

In this undated video clip of an early stand-up performance, Jerry explains his theory of why people have children, and then follows up with the reasons why people acquire dogs as pets.

Enjoy!

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A Classic Revisited: Billy Crystal, Jerry Seinfeld, and Jimmy Fallon as the "Who's On First" Team

We're all familiar with the original "Who's on First" skit made famous by Abbott and Costello. Last month we posted a remake of it featuring Buddy Hackett and Harvey Korman. 

We don't know how many other versions are floating around the Internet, but we were glad to find a version we hadn't seen before with Billy Crystal, Jerry Seinfeld, and Jimmy Fallon. 

In this version, the players with the names "Who," "What," and "I Don't Know" make personal appearances as their names are mentioned. The audience at Fallon's Late Night program was roaring with laughter and we hope you will, too.

Enjoy!

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A Comedy Classic: Jerry Seinfeld's First Tonight Show Appearance

Once upon a time, comedian Jerry Seinfeld was a little boy. Well, maybe not such a little boy, but 33 years ago at the age of 27, he made his debut on Johnny Carson's Tonight Show. 

With all the old-timer stand-up comedy flashbacks we've shared, Seinfeld, now 59, is still one of the youngest professional comedians out there. 

Carson introduces him as a young comedian from New York who has worked a lot of small clubs in New York and Los Angeles. Although he started out doing stand-up comedy, today he is best known for playing a semi-fictional version of himself in the sitcom Seinfeld, which he co-created and co-wrote with Larry David.

Here's Seinfeld's first appearance on late-night TV. Enjoy! 

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Seinfeld in Yiddish - "Jewish Singles Event"

Last year we posted two episodes of Seinfeld in Yiddish called The Bar Mitzvah and Dentist Jokes. Since we got a lot of requests for more, we're sharing another episode today.

As we wrote then, a YouTube uploader named A Mishel has done a big favor for Seinfeld fans who want to learn Yiddish. He or she collected excerpts from a few popular episodes of Jerry Seinfeld's long-running sitcom and posted them with the dialogue dubbed in Yiddish and with English subtitles.
 
We didn't want to have a problem with copyright violations, but the poster seems to have avoided these by stating that the clip is being used for education purposes and should fall under the fair use provisions of copyright law. If you listen carefully and read the translations, you are likely to pick up a fair amount of conversational Yiddish. 

In today's episode, Kramer is planning a Jewish Singles Night even though he is not Jewish. He invites Jerry and Elaine to join him there. Using three kitchens, Kramer does all the cooking and just about every Jewish food you heard of is served at the event. If you don't know Yiddish, there are English subtitles to follow the dialogue. If you do know Yiddish, read the subtitles anyway because some are hilarious. Lots of laughs from start to finish.

Enjoy! 

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Jerry Seinfeld and Don Rickles - Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee

Today we're going for a virtual ride in a 1958 Cadillac Eldorado Seville with Jerry Seinfeld and Don Rickles as they head for a breakfast shmooze in Factor's Famous Deli in Los Angeles.

This is another episode in a web series that Seinfeld is running on the internet, interviewing fellow comedians while riding in classic cars to various restaurants and coffee shops in Los Angeles.
 
Like his TV show, it's "a show about nothing," but we feel it's energizing to be in the presence of these geniuses of comedy. It's not a rip-roaring hilarious session, but it's fun to see these masters of the stage and screen enjoying themselves in a casual setting.

Enjoy!

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(A tip of the kippah and a copy of the Kindle version of our book, Jewish Humor on Your Desktop: Old Jokes and New Comedians to Steve Smedresman for bringing this video to our attention.)