Jerry: A Look Back

 I have written a bit about the way things used to be here. It's not like the olden days. We didn't have electric cars when I was growing up. Nowadays, you can be walking across the parking lot at Target and be frightened half out of your wits by someone creeping along behind you in their EV SUV. For that matter, we didn't have SUVs when I was a kid either. We had station wagons. Or pickup trucks. We didn't even have Target when I was a kid. Just the blue light special at K-Mart. 

But get this: Things were not better then. For instance, I much prefer shopping at Target than K-Mart, and I am relieved and happy that I never have to parallel park a Dodge Polara ever again. In this way, it was not a simpler time. My ability to drive a stick shift or tune in four different channels through a complex series of adjustments to a set of rabbit ear antennae did not figure into me being accepted at the college or my choice, nor did it help me get a job doing anything. Anywhere. 

The fact that I can remember such things only means that I have the capacity for memory. 

Which brings me to yet another in an apparent ongoing series: What's The Deal With Jerry Seinfeld? Jerry recently turned seventy, and apparently he's entered the phase of life in which his version of nostalgia turns into "you kids get offa my lawn." Last week on Bari Weiss's podcast, the "comedian" waxed on about the lack of "real men" these days. He went on to list macho heroes from his past likeJohn F. Kennedy, Muhammad Ali, Sean Connery and Howard Cosell as his Mount Rushmore of manliness. He rambled on, suggesting, "I miss a dominant masculinity. Yeah, I get the [toxic masculinity] but still, I like a real man." Like Howard Cosell. 

Like George Costanza? Like his namesake on his eponymous sitcom who spent nine seasons whining about puffy shirts and smelly cars? And parking spaces? It would seem that time and plenty of money have provided a cushion to Jerry's reality and his look into the past. 

At the end of the interview, he talked a little about how critics are responding negatively to his directorial debut, a comedy about the invention of the Pop Tart. "It doesn't matter what you think of me. Why would I think that I'm going to make something that everyone will like? What sense does that make? You gotta be insane to think that."

Does anybody remember when Jerry was funny?