I saw Jerry Seinfeld | laRegione.ch

We are publishing a contribution that appeared in Ticino7, attached to laRegione

I was supposed to be in Phoenix, Arizona, watching an NBA game between the Suns and Trailbalzers. I already had tickets, but I sold them for half price just to get something out of it, then paid double for another event an hour and a half away by car somewhere I didn’t plan to go: Tucson, rumored’ Tiusn’, because I’ll never understand English – especially that of the Americans – just as I won’t understand the Americans. To help me understand them, over the years a kind of local deity has thought of it, but in Europe it is a minor cult, unknown to most, a name almost like a secret sect, in which the followers recognize themselves, they feel they are the chosen ones. His name is Jerry Seinfeld.

Talking about him is like naming legends of American football or baseball in the Old Continent: Jerry Rice, Peyton Manning, Barry Bonds or Alex Rodriguez, all people who at most – fans of the genre aside – get a shrug. Like going to Montana or Iowa and starting to talk about Roberto Baggio: someone will understand, not everyone. Many will respond with an identical shrug. Seinfeld, however, does a sport that is widely practiced even in our latitudes: to make people laugh. He only had the misfortune of being translated badly and dubbed worse, when, at the end of the 1980s, the sit-com of the same name in which he starred appeared on Italian-language TV.

Il cast della serie: Michael Richards, Jason Alexander, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Jerry Seinfeld

© R.C.

Saguaro Park

Treated as a waste by those who handled schedules, Seinfeld is instead Orson Welles, Ennio Morricone, the Beatles, Pelé or Maradona: in short, after him nothing was the same again. Anyone who has seen and loved ‘Friends’ , ‘How I Met Your Mother’ , ‘The Big Bang Theory’ or any other comedy series that comes to mind, know that without Seinfeld they would not have existed.

That’s why I’m in a city surrounded by saguaros, which aren’t felines, but the most cactus cacti of all cacti, the green ones with those anthropomorphic arms that you visualize when you hear the word cactus, made immortal by Charles Schulz, the father of Peanuts, which put them in the background for Spike, Snoopy’s brother stationed in Needles, not too far from Tucson.

Saguaro Park is one of those eye-filling marvels in a piece of America where cities more or less always disappoint. Tucson instead has its own reason, a little Mexican in the colors, in the relaxed atmosphere. In short, a city that doesn’t take itself too seriously, perfect for a show in which the comedian has come to break in the jokes before going to the cities that matter: New York, Los Angeles, Boston.

© R.C.
Puffy Shirt

Repatriated

Seinfeld’s live show is at the theater Linda Ronstadt, the country-folk singer born of Tucson, yet still alive. I arrive very early, partly because I got the ticket from a site that didn’t seem reliable to me (and I wanted to be sure of entering), partly because I wanted to see who was going to see old Jerry: white people go there (I counted no more than 8 blacks in the whole room, half of them were there to work); almost all the boys have a baseball cap, those who don’t have it wear a cowboy hat almost as if it were mandatory to wear one or the other, a sort of dress code; there are many women, who also exhibit old crumpled t-shirts from the TV series that changed America (joking about everything, from masturbation to homosexuality, from religion to death), a bit like at concerts.

While waiting for the show, people stop in the hall of the theatre, which recalls that of the pomaded hotels of the 1980s. They’re all smiling, I’ve never seen a happier, more placid audience in my life: it’s like one of those old school reunions in the movies, where everyone has a good time, but nobody exaggerates. There’s also an in-house bar that has nine different beers, but everyone is strictly ordering cocktails. The atmosphere warms up when a couple arrives wearing the “Puffy Shirt”, a puffy shirt that is the protagonist of one of the cult episodes of the cult show. The two pose with the fans, they even manage to get offered a drink, they talk about the place where they had them custom made. I head towards the corridors that lead to the stalls, where drawings by elementary school children hang as best they can, which make it clear that in Tucson it is not possible to give oneself a tone all the way: and it’s better this way.

© R.C.
Just before the show

Dark in the hall

The loudspeakers start playing pieces by Frank Sinatra, because Seinfeld, with his 68 years (despite his youthful air) has become a classic, such as “Blue Moon” and “Pennies from Heaven”. When the lights go down, “New York, New York” plays, which is the city of Seinfeld, the place where his TV series was set, and also a place light years away from Tucson, almost on another planet.

Jerry enters with the applause already in his pocket, the credit of an entire career, and starts off a little slow, showing almost all his years, jokes about the stand-up paddle and jet ski fashion, makes some already heard jokes about golf and the family, hazards on cemeteries and reminds everyone that children “are here to replace us”. Then he starts talking about the fact that there are no Chinese restaurants in China and as proof he brings out that there is no “Chinese restaurant” written anywhere and, at the end of the meal, they don’t give you “lucky cookies”.

At one point a guy in a cowboy hat offers him a sip of whisky, Seinfeld refuses, saying it’s not appropriate to accept drinks from strangers. On a stool he has some sheets with jokes, every now and then he goes to look at them, chooses what to say: it’s not really a show, but a rehearsal with the audience, which goes wild when he asks to ask questions: the euphoria is such that they seem to have threw rivers of candy at a children’s party. He replies on his favorite program, the advertisement for Flexil putty (who among us, after all, hasn’t been fascinated by a teleshopping? For me, Chef Tony’s knives) and on other more or less sensible things. To those who ask him if there will sooner or later be a reunion of the complete Seinfeld cast, he comes out as elegant as his suit: “Yes, but only when all our careers have gone down the drain. We’re at a good point, but we’re not there.” we’re still there.”

(Sub)credits

The lights go out, “The way you look tonight” starts and I think back to the jokes, of which I will have understood yes and no eighty percent, without the help of subtitles. It didn’t matter that much, it mattered to be there, create a connection, pay tribute to one of the people who made me laugh the most in my life. Was it a bit sluggish? Yes. Were certain jokes predictable? Of course. But it was fun. A bit like going to see Totti at 40, Foreman at 50, the Rolling Stones at 70. It’s not the same as before, it can’t be. But you were there. I was there, and I can say, first to myself, “I saw Jerry Seinfeld.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzCxH0nbEJI