As for the Old Master...

By Jeffrey Ressner

While the new comedians play the smaller clubs and hone their acts, the man they all want to be is, well, pretty much doing exactly the same thing. Except people are lining up for six hours for the privilege of watching him do it. Jerry Seinfeld has been on a month-long global tour, working out kinks in his stand-up routine in preparation for a five-night, 10-show Broadway run that will include a performance to be aired live on HBO Sunday, Aug. 9. "Welcome to the Seiny workshop," he cracked to a sold-out house at an old haunt of his, the 250-seat Comedy & Magic Club in Hermosa Beach, Calif., last week. After several years of the lush life of a sitcom phenomenon, is Seinfeld still funny in front of a microphone? That's the question he wants answered. The fans, however, seem less interested in having a transcendent comedy experience than in simply getting close to their cathode-ray idol.

Fighting off a cold, the stuffed-up Seinfeld took swigs from a water bottle and periodically checked his talking points on a sheet of wrinkled yellow paper, jumping from topic to topic with a disjointed rhythm that diminished his chances of building up a rolling momentum. The first fusillade of jokes--how "woos" and "yips" have replaced laughter at shows--was classic Seinfeld: gently humorous observations. Then comedy leapfrog. A few comments about death segued into a bit on how the closest equivalent we have to royalty in America is the people who get to ride in electric carts at the airport. By the time the nearly hour-long set ended abruptly with an orgasm gag, he had covered such disparate subjects as answering machines, the irrational fear of rain, annoying hairs in the shower and of course dating ("a job interview that lasts all night ...").

Seinfeld scored best with riffs on the perils of staying up late (night guy vs. morning guy) and extreme sports ("What's the point of helmets in skydiving?"). Even the master himself occasionally flubbed, however, as with a moldy one-liner asking, What's so great about Australia's shark-infested Great Barrier Reef? Predictably--but sadly--the loudest roars came when Seinfeld agreed to impersonate characters from his show, including Costanza, Kramer and Newman. A crowd pleaser, but not exactly groundbreaking stuff.

Still, you've got to give the man credit for returning to his roots. Comedian David Spade, who was coincidentally shooting a film called Lost and Found only a block away at the same time as Seinfeld's gig, remarked, "It's nice that someone still cares about stand-up and doesn't just see it as a stepping-stone." The audience cared too. "It wasn't really awesome," said a young woman who waited outside for six hours in brutal heat to get into the show. "But it was more like, now I can say I saw him." Woo.

--By Jeffrey Ressner