said, ‘You have just scared the living piss out of me. Thanks a lot.’”
Berman didn’t know what to say. Finally, he said, “The haircut and the shoes?”
Ash blew up. “Fuck the haircut and shoes,” he said. “What scared me was a pretty face with bushy eyebrows and a voice like God on Doomsday.”
Berman’s voice, and he was a baritone who had taken voice lessons at Knightsbridge High, could be astonishingly rich and vibrant when he used it at full power. In his performance this night, he had used it, as he would for every subsequent performance in his comedic lifetime, sparingly, startling the audience by suddenly turning it on for a few lines, and then turning it off again. When Berman became famous or infamous, take your choice, a well-known caricaturist complained: “I thought Gil Berman would be easy: a pretty, demonic young thing with a skinhead haircut and bushy eyebrows, and a shirt and tie. But how the heck was I supposed to draw that pipe-organ voice he has, which is half of his persona?”
“Is it my voice that bothered you?” Berman asked the seething Ash.
Ash ignored the question. “Where did you get material like that?”
“I wrote it myself,” said Berman. “You thought it was funny?”
Ash blew up again. “Who ever told you a comedian is supposed to be funny?” he said. “The great ones are heartbreakers, and that’s what you did to me tonight. Who are you? What are you? Where did you park your flying saucer?”
Ash told the nurse to get him out of “this firetrap.” His farewell to the flummoxed Berman? “Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you. Please take that as a compliment.”
The material Berman had tried out that night, which would become a classic on Who’s Sorry Now? and in his cabaret repertoire, was about the appalling conditions in New York City public schools in the poorer neighborhoods. It began, “I know a lot of people think evolution shouldn’t be taught in public schools. I have good news for them. Fuck evolution. There are some schools in New York City that don’t even teach kids how to read and write. How do we do it? We pay the teachers less than garbagemen, make sure there’s no money for books or to unclog the toilets, or to fix the leaks in the roof, and make sure there are forty kids in every smelly schoolroom. Makes you wonder who won the Civil War.”
Berman hadn’t visited any of the awful schools. He read about them in the newspapers. And when a piece of a school building fell on a student and killed him or her, it would be on TV. That was all the research that he—or anybody else, including the mayor—had to do to find out how uninhabitable some of the public schools were.
Now he ceased to be a baritone Jeremiah and became a falsetto female teacher: “Children, please stop sneezing and coughing and weeping, because I am going to tell you a secret that many powerful people wish I wouldn’t tell you. It’s called ‘evolution.’ It is about how the policy of winners mating with winners, starting with germs, has given us the giraffe and the hippopotamus.” Berman here made a baritone aside: “Just because I
believe in evolution doesn’t mean I have to approve of it.” And then back he went to the falsetto life-sciences lecture, saying that a great scientist named Charles Darwin noticed how upper-class Englishpersons in his day always strove to marry winners instead of losers, and then realized that all animals must pair off that way. “Hey presto! Rattlesnakes and lightning bugs!”
And on and on. The police arrive and haul the whole class to the station house for questioning about teenage pregnancy and juvenile delinquency. The school’s roof and ceiling crash down on the dilapidated chairs and desks, but the children are safe and sound down at the cop shop, “eating free sandwiches made of salami and Wonder Bread.”
One of the few old men in the Northampton audience on the night of December 11 in the year 2000 called out to Berman
Berman didn’t know what to say. Finally, he said, “The haircut and the shoes?”
Ash blew up. “Fuck the haircut and shoes,” he said. “What scared me was a pretty face with bushy eyebrows and a voice like God on Doomsday.”
Berman’s voice, and he was a baritone who had taken voice lessons at Knightsbridge High, could be astonishingly rich and vibrant when he used it at full power. In his performance this night, he had used it, as he would for every subsequent performance in his comedic lifetime, sparingly, startling the audience by suddenly turning it on for a few lines, and then turning it off again. When Berman became famous or infamous, take your choice, a well-known caricaturist complained: “I thought Gil Berman would be easy: a pretty, demonic young thing with a skinhead haircut and bushy eyebrows, and a shirt and tie. But how the heck was I supposed to draw that pipe-organ voice he has, which is half of his persona?”
“Is it my voice that bothered you?” Berman asked the seething Ash.
Ash ignored the question. “Where did you get material like that?”
“I wrote it myself,” said Berman. “You thought it was funny?”
Ash blew up again. “Who ever told you a comedian is supposed to be funny?” he said. “The great ones are heartbreakers, and that’s what you did to me tonight. Who are you? What are you? Where did you park your flying saucer?”
Ash told the nurse to get him out of “this firetrap.” His farewell to the flummoxed Berman? “Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you. Please take that as a compliment.”
The material Berman had tried out that night, which would become a classic on Who’s Sorry Now? and in his cabaret repertoire, was about the appalling conditions in New York City public schools in the poorer neighborhoods. It began, “I know a lot of people think evolution shouldn’t be taught in public schools. I have good news for them. Fuck evolution. There are some schools in New York City that don’t even teach kids how to read and write. How do we do it? We pay the teachers less than garbagemen, make sure there’s no money for books or to unclog the toilets, or to fix the leaks in the roof, and make sure there are forty kids in every smelly schoolroom. Makes you wonder who won the Civil War.”
Berman hadn’t visited any of the awful schools. He read about them in the newspapers. And when a piece of a school building fell on a student and killed him or her, it would be on TV. That was all the research that he—or anybody else, including the mayor—had to do to find out how uninhabitable some of the public schools were.
Now he ceased to be a baritone Jeremiah and became a falsetto female teacher: “Children, please stop sneezing and coughing and weeping, because I am going to tell you a secret that many powerful people wish I wouldn’t tell you. It’s called ‘evolution.’ It is about how the policy of winners mating with winners, starting with germs, has given us the giraffe and the hippopotamus.” Berman here made a baritone aside: “Just because I
believe in evolution doesn’t mean I have to approve of it.” And then back he went to the falsetto life-sciences lecture, saying that a great scientist named Charles Darwin noticed how upper-class Englishpersons in his day always strove to marry winners instead of losers, and then realized that all animals must pair off that way. “Hey presto! Rattlesnakes and lightning bugs!”
And on and on. The police arrive and haul the whole class to the station house for questioning about teenage pregnancy and juvenile delinquency. The school’s roof and ceiling crash down on the dilapidated chairs and desks, but the children are safe and sound down at the cop shop, “eating free sandwiches made of salami and Wonder Bread.”
One of the few old men in the Northampton audience on the night of December 11 in the year 2000 called out to Berman
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