scandal of President William Jefferson Clinton’s having had sex in the Oval Office in the White House with women not his wife, all blowjobs. “Nothing but blowjobs, if you want to call that sex,” said Berman. Trump said he couldn’t get over how bad-looking the women were. But then Berman went out onto the floor of the casino itself, and, in his own words there in Northampton, talked about “watching all the people with the gambling sickness putting their savings into Trump’s pockets, with the help of slot machines, cards, dice, and roulette wheels.”
The next thing he knew, Gil Berman had dived onto a craps table. He flopped over on his back and cackled like a chicken, “ Guh-guh-guck-guck ,” and so on, and kicked chips and drinks everywhere.
Another quote was about his going ape-shit in Atlantic City: “Enough of America wasn’t enough for me anymore. Enough had finally become too much even for me, and I committed myself to Caldwell, the famous laughing academy in Salem, Wisconsin—one hell of a town, may I say, where they made me trade old pills for new ones, which I have thrown away.” He was so drug-free now that he wasn’t even taking the antidepressants Hazelden had prescribed for him. His description of the antidepressants? “Absolutely harmless unless discontinued.” This line, incidentally, was swiped, as Berman would have gladly confessed, if challenged, from a fable about a bear with a drinking problem by the old-time, ink-on-paper American humorist James Thurber, long dead.
Berman was dressed onstage exactly as he had been when he, as he put it, “tried out for the Olympics on a craps table at the Taj Mahal.” The suit and basketball shoes were already his trademarks in 1978, twenty-two years earlier, when he had dropped out of Columbia University to become a professional comedian. He had first dressed that way, and sported a buzz cut, as an amateur on open-mike nights at “Cutty Sark,” an allegedly mob-owned comedy club only eight blocks down Broadway from his dorm at Columbia. He explained to his roommate at the time, Barry Dresdener, that he didn’t “want to look like a baggy-pants comedian or a Bob Hope, or a Beatnik or a Hippie or a Yuppie.
I want to be a clown for our generation, a clown such as has never been seen before.”
The bitter and retired comedian Gary Ash, who was once half of the radio and early-TV team of “Bing and Ash,” caught a performance of this twenty-year-old redheaded college kid in basketball shoes at Cutty Sark in 1978. Ash was eighty-eight and in a wheelchair, with a nurse in attendance. He lived and raged in a retirement home one block west of Cutty Sark. Ash had asked to be taken there that night in order to confirm this self-serving opinion: “Comedians used to have brains. They don’t anymore. Nothing but sex and toilet jokes.”
Some surprise at Cutty Sark! Gary Ash found himself thunderstruck by this redheaded college kid in basketball shoes.
He didn’t look happy when he accosted Berman, who was sitting at a table, wholly drained, waiting to watch the amateur acts that would follow his. Berman hadn’t a clue as to who Ash was. He had never seen Ash and his partner, Jonathan “Bing” Spiegel, or heard them ramble on and on as pseudo-imbeciles about hypocrisies or idiocies in the news that day. Their sign-offs: “This is Ash, the Dorical of Elphi,” and, “This is Bingo reminding you: ‘It’s no disgrace to be poor, but it might as well be.’” Bing Spiegel had been dead for sixteen years when Gary Ash caught Berman’s act at Cutty Sark. “They had been man and wife, except for sex and a marriage license.” So said Spiegel’s obituary in the New York Times .
To hear Gil Berman tell it: “I was minding my own business when a nurse wheeled this absolutely furious old man in a wheelchair up to me. I didn’t know who he was. The manager of the club had to tell me afterward. And this old geezer snorted and
sneered, and then he
The next thing he knew, Gil Berman had dived onto a craps table. He flopped over on his back and cackled like a chicken, “ Guh-guh-guck-guck ,” and so on, and kicked chips and drinks everywhere.
Another quote was about his going ape-shit in Atlantic City: “Enough of America wasn’t enough for me anymore. Enough had finally become too much even for me, and I committed myself to Caldwell, the famous laughing academy in Salem, Wisconsin—one hell of a town, may I say, where they made me trade old pills for new ones, which I have thrown away.” He was so drug-free now that he wasn’t even taking the antidepressants Hazelden had prescribed for him. His description of the antidepressants? “Absolutely harmless unless discontinued.” This line, incidentally, was swiped, as Berman would have gladly confessed, if challenged, from a fable about a bear with a drinking problem by the old-time, ink-on-paper American humorist James Thurber, long dead.
Berman was dressed onstage exactly as he had been when he, as he put it, “tried out for the Olympics on a craps table at the Taj Mahal.” The suit and basketball shoes were already his trademarks in 1978, twenty-two years earlier, when he had dropped out of Columbia University to become a professional comedian. He had first dressed that way, and sported a buzz cut, as an amateur on open-mike nights at “Cutty Sark,” an allegedly mob-owned comedy club only eight blocks down Broadway from his dorm at Columbia. He explained to his roommate at the time, Barry Dresdener, that he didn’t “want to look like a baggy-pants comedian or a Bob Hope, or a Beatnik or a Hippie or a Yuppie.
I want to be a clown for our generation, a clown such as has never been seen before.”
The bitter and retired comedian Gary Ash, who was once half of the radio and early-TV team of “Bing and Ash,” caught a performance of this twenty-year-old redheaded college kid in basketball shoes at Cutty Sark in 1978. Ash was eighty-eight and in a wheelchair, with a nurse in attendance. He lived and raged in a retirement home one block west of Cutty Sark. Ash had asked to be taken there that night in order to confirm this self-serving opinion: “Comedians used to have brains. They don’t anymore. Nothing but sex and toilet jokes.”
Some surprise at Cutty Sark! Gary Ash found himself thunderstruck by this redheaded college kid in basketball shoes.
He didn’t look happy when he accosted Berman, who was sitting at a table, wholly drained, waiting to watch the amateur acts that would follow his. Berman hadn’t a clue as to who Ash was. He had never seen Ash and his partner, Jonathan “Bing” Spiegel, or heard them ramble on and on as pseudo-imbeciles about hypocrisies or idiocies in the news that day. Their sign-offs: “This is Ash, the Dorical of Elphi,” and, “This is Bingo reminding you: ‘It’s no disgrace to be poor, but it might as well be.’” Bing Spiegel had been dead for sixteen years when Gary Ash caught Berman’s act at Cutty Sark. “They had been man and wife, except for sex and a marriage license.” So said Spiegel’s obituary in the New York Times .
To hear Gil Berman tell it: “I was minding my own business when a nurse wheeled this absolutely furious old man in a wheelchair up to me. I didn’t know who he was. The manager of the club had to tell me afterward. And this old geezer snorted and
sneered, and then he
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