THE FLOCKY

Shakespeare told us there is a destiny that shapes our ends. Kim Kardashian sought out a different aesthetician, and Gloria Grahame was obsessed, for some reason, about her upper lip. She went under the knife several times to have it altered.

A joke from the dawn of liposuction was that the doctors saved the material they extracted from one patient to inject into another wanting augmentation; one might think he were kissing Ursula Andress’s lips, but one was actually kissing Dom DeLuise’s ass.

Gloria married the stepson of her husband Nick Ray. Greer Garson married the young actor playing her son in Mrs. Miniver. Celebrity confuses people. When many are clamoring for our opinions, we forget that we have nothing to say. We speak and, as we are celebrities, believe that our speeches from the podium are other than platitudes or nonsense. Politicians are narcissists, they are doing it on purpose to control, but we showfolk come by our self-absorption in two stages. First, knowing or thinking ourselves beautiful or funny, we elbow our way or are dragged into the limelight. Then, as the nice fans are smiling at our blather, we conclude we’re smart.

Our work as writers consists largely in delivering platitudes or nonsense to the Industry. In publicity we will not abandon that proven formula.

Brad Pitt announced that he is quitting show business. But what is that announcement but a bid for notoriety, the sequel being the inevitable announcement of his decision to return?

Causes and Good Works are nothing but publicity. The excellent person does good anonymously—Jewish wisdom is that the highest tzedakah (righteousness, often mistranslated as “charity”) is for neither the benefactor nor the recipient to know the other’s identity.

I was in a bar in London years ago at “Oscar Time.” That lovefest was on the telly. One of the drinkers said, “Why are they strutting about like that for a statue, don’t we pay them enough…?” In the ’80s, I commuted regularly to London to see my girl. She was starring at the National Theatre and cutting her records for Polygram. I spent my time in her apartment either waiting for her return or trying to make her late for work.

We were friendly with the Pythons (Monty). Their film company office, Prominent Features, was just down the block. They graciously offered me a room to work in. One January I came down with pneumonia. Becca went to rehearsal, and I dragged myself down the block every day to the Pythons’ office and went to sleep on the office floor.

I’m a near-plank owner of Second City (founded in 1959; I worked there as a busboy in 1964). All its imitators are to me as chaff, whatever chaff is. But there was a simultaneous flowering of magnificence at Oxbridge, Dudley Moore, Peter Cook, Jonathan Miller, and Alan Bennett, improvising College Humor. (Michael O’Donoghue, of the Lampoon and Saturday Night Live, said, “ ‘Sophomoric’ is asshole for ‘funny.’ ”) Pete and Dud broke new Wind. Followed immediately by The Pythons. W. C. Fields said of Bert Williams that he was the funniest man he’d ever seen. And the saddest. He would have said the same of John Cleese.

Pythons to one side, as the Brits say, what of Fawlty Towers? Twelve sitcom episodes about a mismanaged inn. They were written by John and Connie Booth. They are unforgettable. John told me he’d expanded the idea into a company training folks for the Hospitality Industry. This, to me, was genius.

Where is the sane writer who didn’t scheme to turn his essays into a book, his diary entries into a memoir—in short, to use every part of the Pig?

Ricky Jay always kvetched that he could figure out no way to make money while he slept. He was available for Private Gatherings, at an insufficiently large fee. Booked by his manager, Winston Simone.

Winston, Ricky, Bex, and I went to some TV show Rix and I were doing. Milton Berle, our 1950s Uncle Miltie, was on ahead of us. He came offstage and introductions were exchanged. “Winston Simone?” he said. “Any relation to Simone Simone, only woman who ever gave me the clap…?”

Milton was famous for his outsize genitalia. Two men at the Friars Club made bets on the length. Uncle Miltie was asleep on a massage table, covered by a towel. The men went in and explained their errand. The fellow who’d bet high said, “Milton, just take out enough to win.”

There are, of course, inevitable versions of this story. I’ve heard it told about Forrest Tucker and, more recently, about a magnificently endowed actor playing Christ. There he was, expiring, stark naked, on the Cross, and filming was brought to a standstill by the Centurion’s line “Truly He is the Son of God.”

It was a randy business.

But nothing can be amusing that is prefaced “This may not be politically correct, but…”

The Friars Club Roasts were notorious for their obscenity. (Someone said, of discussion of some fading star, “I wouldn’t fuck her with Bea Arthur’s dick.”) By way of segue, these Clubs offered the camaraderie that made the poor illusion of “humanitarian” communion-with-the-audience unnecessary.

The best segue of all, Alan King’s. First joke finishes, he adjusts his tie, says, “No, but I gotta say…” and begins next joke.

I thought Cleese’s double-dipping both legitimate and charming (trans: moneymaking).^I So I rummaged through my work and came up with an idea. All salespeople, it seems, know my play Glengarry Glen Ross. How’s about, I thought, if I sent my imaginary critters out on the street to bring me back some money in “Salesmanship Seminars”?

But I was spared, I tell you, by what Mercy of the Fates I ken not, but aren’t they like that? One spins, one weaves, and one cuts the thread. The Wise, that is, legitimately chastened, man must look back not only grateful for his blessings but, more, awed by the shames he was, incomprehensibly, spared.

I did not sell my brand for a mess of pottage, but it was not for lack of effort.

God, we are told, always answers our prayers, but sometimes the answer is no. God bless ’im.

Was I arrogant in my fifty years in Show Biz? You bet.

But only toward my inferiors.

These were not the actors, the crew, or the audience.

A wiser man might have Gone Further if he had learned not humility but diplomacy. I am not a wiser man. But I am a lucky one.

Ancients, religious and savage, interdicted the utterance of the name of God. Modern agnostics unwittingly do the same, substituting “Nature,” “The Universe,” or even “the way things are.” But a Higher Power spared me not from all but, to date, from various unbearable acts of Hubris, awarding me a Flocky.

What is a Flocky?

Mrs. Greenberg and Mrs. Schwartz meet at the Mahjong Club. Mrs. Schwartz has a small cast on her wrist. She explains it is a Flocky.

Mrs. Goldberg asks what that means.

Mrs. Schwartz: I was coming downstairs and tripped. I fell all the way down. The doctor examined me and said I’d only sprained my wrist. He said, “You got a flocky.”

1. I. Was Cleese not more worthy than I? Yes. He not only was funny, but he looked smashing in a dress, while my attempts at Drag are a grand endorsement for cisgenderism.