Friar's Club

This flu.....holy f'n cow!!!!. what is it ...10days??? i'm finally over it (mostly). meanwhile i forgot to mention how much fun i had at the Friars Club for the Drew Friedman book warming celebrating the release of More Old Jewish Comedians. First of all the club it self is a landmark. Beautiful old school design, not that 60's-70's-80's "old school" crap either, we're talkin OLD SCHOOL son, pre WWII era. Pre T.V. era. it was like a walk back in time. Gorgeous layout to the place, and eventhough i really i felt like "what the hell am i doing here??", i pretended like most of the other mooks like i belonged.

As i was standing around waiting for the festivities, noticing a few of the comedic celebs around. Jeffrey Ross, Gilbert Gottfried, and then BOOM....Jerry Stiller walks in. Yeah, but before he was on Seinfeld, and before he was Ben Stiller's dad, he was part of the comedic team Stiller and Meara, a character actor, and Jerry was a lower east side guy...who knew my old man. Years ago when i was a kid in the early 70's my dad took me to Paragon's sporting goods down near Union Square to buy a baseball glove. While waiting in line to pay, he bumped into Jerry and they chatted about old times. I knew Jerry was an actor, but didn't know more than that. they seemed to have a good time talking and i remembered it. Fast forward to the Friar's club. I introduced myself to Jerry and ask him if he remembered my dad, he did, and he had some warm and funny things to say about him. He was a very sweet old guy. Sharp minded and very nice. Later on he signed his portrait in the book.

It was a fun evening.