Watch or listen to the stand-up comedy special 'Jerry Before Seinfeld' (2017) by Jerry Seinfeld on Comedy Buff. Transcript available. Tracks include: Jerry Seinfeld | Clothes - Jerry Before Seinfeld.

Jerry Seinfeld

Jerry Before Seinfeld

What's wrong with the Mets? Well, it's baseball. And nobody cares. Here's the thing about sports you've got to understand, sir. This whole concept of the team, your team, my team, that's our team. The Mets, that's our team. Really? Is it our team? Who are these guys? Where are they from? They're not from around here. They're just paid to wear those clothes. The uniform is the only constant in the sport.
The guys are moving around, different teams. Teams are moving from different towns. We're really just rooting for our clothes to defeat the clothes from the team in the other city. That's what sports is. We are rooting for laundry and nothing else. I always find it weird how upset we get when a guy leaves your team and then he plays against your team. Different shirt! I hate this guy! I can't believe he's wearing that shirt!
Meantime, everyone you see every day is wearing a different shirt. You don't get upset with them for some reason. I don't know. But I'm excited for the clothes that you're wearing tonight. Your clothes got out. That's a big night for them, too. Clothes are waiting all the time. They're waiting in the store, closet, hamper, drawer. Everything you're not wearing now is home, hoping to get picked tomorrow.
Laundry day is another exciting day. The washing machine is kind of a nightclub for clothes. It's dark. Bubbles are happening. They're all dancing. They seem to kind of dance in there, don't they? The shirt grabs the underwear. Come on, babe. Let's go. You come by. You open up the lid. They all freeze. Could you close the door, please? Kind of a private club. There's a dress code. No one's allowed to be on anything.
Now, things progressing along in Little Jerry's comedy adventure. I got to a point where I could afford a maid. The first time, you remember these little furs. I remember the first time I could afford a maid. I felt so guilty. The whole time I was just following around the apartment. I don't know why I left that there. I'm sorry. Obviously, I could have picked it up. I should have. But I just didn't.
And I don't know why. I have no excuse. I apologize for that. This is why I could never be a maid. Because that's the attitude I would walk in the house. Oh, I suppose you couldn't do this. No, no, no. Let me clean up your filth. While you just sit there like a subway rat with a trust fund. You make me sick. Socks hate their lives. We know that. They're on the stinky feet, the boring drawers. They wait for the laundry.
That's their one chance to escape. And they all know it. How many times have you done it? Wash. Go to the dryer. Count up your socks. One of them got out. Escape. Took off. Never takes his partner. To hell with you. Tired of everyone thinking we're the same. The dryer door swings open. The sock is always waiting up against the side wall. You're feeling around. I know he's in there, that little son of a bitch.
I know he's trying to get away. Sometimes they grab onto a sweater. It gives him a little head start. And off they go down the street. Dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun. What can he do? How is he going to survive out there? On a golf club? Puppet show? Amputee? What are the options? Sometimes you'll see a dirty sock on the street. Just one. Just dirty, twisted, exhausted. He only made it a couple of blocks.
What about his partner left behind? What are his options? Hey, I want to know. I'm going to get thrown out because of him. How is that fair? The whole drawer knew he was going to pull a stunt like this someday. That's why he was always inside out and rolling down at the top. He wasn't one of us to begin with. I'm going to get thrown out. He wasn't one of us to begin with. I'm going to get thrown out.
I'm going to get thrown out. I'm going to get thrown out. I'm going to get thrown out. So, when you're doing stand-up comedy, you absolutely have to connect with the audience. Not every other form of art is like that. A lot of movies I see, it doesn't seem like they care if we can even follow the plot. I'm the kind of guy, I have a lot of trouble with these movies like Jason Bourne, Mission Impossible.
I'm the guy you always see in the parking lot after the movie, talking with his friends, going, "Oh, you mean that was the same guy from the beginning?" Oh, that's why after he stole the money, he had the fake nose and the beard and then he didn't. Oh! Did you enjoy the movie? Yes, I'm enjoying it here in the parking lot, but in there, I didn't know what the hell was going on. Nobody will explain anything to you in a movie theater once you get confused.
"What is happening now?" "Shh. Just pay attention." "Why did they kill that guy?" "I thought he was with them." "They had to." "I like that guy. That was the..." "That's the only guy that I liked." "Would you just watch the movie?" "I am watching the movie." "I don't understand anything." "You know as much as I do." "I know nothing." "Is this a space movie? Is it a Western?" "I am lost in this movie."
"I hate this movie." "And I hate you too." "Why can't they have subtitles for the plot?" "Closed caption for the movie Impaired." "These are the movies I would go to." "Little thing pops up. Don't worry about this guy. He's only in this one scene." "Here's the name of the movie you can't remember that you have seen this person in before." Anyway, the story that I wanted to tell you was if you ever wanted to know how I did whatever I've done, it really all started here at the conference room.
This was the place where I created all of the material that I did for you tonight. And it's what got me from, you know, open mic, Monday night audition night, living at home with my parents in my little room to five years later being on "The Tonight Show" on NBC, sitting next to Johnny Carson. This was the stuff that got me there. Lot of jobs I wouldn't want because I don't like the attitude of the people that have them.
The notary public seems to be very thrilled with their power and position. You go to the bank, I need to get this notarized. Oh, the notary's not here. You got to wait. Only the notary can notarize. Has the skill, the technique, the background to take a stamper and go boom, boom. Sometimes I just want to take that stamp and rip it out of his hands. There, I have the power now. You see, he's just a man.
How do I teach people to do this? I have big notary classes where the teacher stands in front. Okay, everyone, now, ready, and press and stamp and hold and up and back to the pad. And press up, over and stamp, push down, up and back to the pad. Pressing, stamping, holding and up and back to the pad. Press and stamp and hold and up and back to the pad. If it was a musical notary public school, I imagined it like that.
Thank you. I don't like magicians. I've worked with many magicians in my many years in the nightclub business. I don't like their attitude. A little fool of themselves. A little arrogant. I come on. I fool you. You feel stupid. Show's over. You never explain. You never understand. That's the way they do it. Here's a quarter. Now it's gone. You're a jerk. Craziest act I've ever seen was this guy that could catch bullets in his teeth.
It was kind of a circus act, really. But it was real. I think it was real. I don't really even know. But this guy would come out. They'd shoot a gun at him. He'd go, how? How do you know you're good at this? Before you do it. They throw it. Throw it at you a couple of times first, really hard. Put it in the gun. Okay, Jim. This one's going to be coming a little bit faster now. We're going to pick up the pace quite a bit here.
It's definitely a house you don't want to break into if you're a crook. Shoot him in the bedroom. He comes walking out. Think you got the wrong house, pal. I do this all day. Okay. So, fire away. To me, the worst part of the whole thing is I saw this guy. I was amazed and I have no idea. I don't know the name. What's the name of the guy? I don't know. If he knew that, wouldn't he feel like, what the hell do I have to do to really impress people?
So I grew up in the '60s, and I see a lot of beautiful young people here tonight enjoying your life of infinite potential and opportunity. Because you're young and your life is still ahead of you, and it's all gonna happen. Let me tell you little punk something. You didn't even have a childhood. You had nothing! You had garbage compared to what we had in the '60s. And you know why? Your parents paid attention to you, okay?
They were interested in you. My parents, our parents, they didn't even know our names, okay? They were ignorant. They were negligent. They were checked out. We grew up like wild dogs in the '60s. There was no nutrition. Nothing of knowledge of nutrition, education, safety. Can you even imagine the world I am describing? No helmets, no seat belts, no restraints. Anything came to a stop, we just flew through the air.
I was either eating 100% sugar or airborne. That was my childhood. My parents, they did not know where my school was. They did not know what my grades were. They didn't know where I was. I was like a raccoon to my parents. You know there's one around, but no one's tracking the actual whereabouts. I'd roll out of bed. I would do a swan dive into Cocoa Puffs, Frosted Flakes, Lucky Charms, Fruit Loops, Sugar Pops.
I'm getting a little light-headed right now, actually, just thinking about it. It was so amazing, and it was great. We were getting away with murder. Life cereal. That was balls. That's a ballsy name, I always thought. Life. What are we going to call this? How about Odie's? Squareys? Oh no, this is much bigger than that. This is life, I tell you! It's life! What were the other names? How about Almighty God?
Why don't we call it that? Who wouldn't want to wake up in the morning to a nice big bowl of Almighty God? Or new Almighty God with raisins. And if you don't like it, you can go to hell. So the beauty of the time, okay? Parents, for some reason, had no idea or no interest that there's no food in any of this. And it was great until the Cookie Crisp people came along and blew the lid off of the whole record.
It's always somebody pushes a good thing just a little too far. Cookie Crisp. If you don't know what this is, this is a cereal. It's not like cookies. It is cookies. This is your breakfast. A bowl of chocolate chip cookies! This cereal should have been called to hell with everything! Ice cream for lunch, cake for dinner, bacon and cigarettes in between. That's the Cookie Crisp total health plan. I like the good humor man.
I'd wait for him. It was another huge thing of life as a guy was to hear that little jingle bell and the white truck and the little white suit. And we'd stand in line behind the truck and all the different ice creams that you could get was on the back of the truck placed right over the exhaust pipe. You had a Dixie cup, it was the equivalent of smoking a pack of Campbell's. Nobody cared. These were good times.
Nobody cared. These were good times. They were good times. They were good times. They were good times. They were good times. New York in the 70s, it was a crime city, it was a cop city, it was a newspaper city. I always like that whatever goes on in the world, it somehow exactly fits the number of pages that they're using in the paper that day. They never run out of room, they never have big blank spots where nothing happened.
They must be at the end of the day, get that paper out before something happens. That was another perfect fit today, that was fantastic. I like when the cops catch somebody and they hit him with the nightstick and they get him in the handcuffs and they use the choke hold on him, but when they put him in the back seat of the police car, they always put their hand on his head. You don't want to hit your head on that edge of the door.
That really stings, it's smart, you know, be careful. Why are these crooks and mass murderer, hijacker, psychopath people covering their faces when they'