Joel Surnow Should Drop Dead

Irv Bleatman here.

I would have had this to you sooner, but the singing telegram from my old friend Jerry Troutman, he couldn't make through the snow to the Greater Sandusky Retirement Palace until late last night. Not that any of the old farts around here would have let me interrupt their reruns of Lawrence Welk on the common area TV to actually watch The Half Hour News Hour, mind you,,,

My life shouldn't happen to two dogs.

Not that I could have actually done anything anyway. Even if I knew how to work the computers and the wireless and the whatever, how many rest homes do you know that are wired for the internet? Most of the folks around here can barely remember how to use the telephone, let me tell you. Fortunately, one of my cousins has a kid with all the wireless internet and the whatever and he agreed to come over and type this up and send it to my good friend Jerry Troutman.

Anyway, like I was saying, my life shouldn't happen to two dogs, and one of the biggest reasons for that is that no talent shmuck Joel Surnow. Here's why:

For those of you that don't remember the Catskills in the '60s and '70s, Murray Surnow, God rest his soul, who happened to be Joel Surnow's father, he and I had one of the finest opening acts you'd ever want to see. Goldblatt and Goyim was as big, in the Catskills and certain parts of Brooklyn and Philadelphia, as Henny Youngman ever was. We used to kill 'em. Anyone who was anyone working the Borscht Belt wanted Goldblatt and Goyim opening for them.

We were on easy street.

But then, then, one day in 1979 Murray comes to me and says, "Irv, the act, it's getting stale. We need a some new material. We need to update the act." So I look at him and say, "Update the act? For what? Everyone loves the act. What, you need your head examined?" And he says, "My boy Joel, the one with the college degree, he says the country is going Republican. He says we need to start doing Conservative Humor."

So I look at my good friend Murray and I say, "Murray, we tell jokes to make widows with blue hair laugh. We use Yiddish punchlines. And now you think we need to make Republicans laugh?" Murray just says, "Joel's worked up an act for us, I think we should use it. It could make us headliners!" So I give Murray a look and says, "Murray, don't be a shmuck. The only Republicans that see our act are those that made a wrong turn off the freeway…"

Finally, after we argue and argue, Murray says we use the new material or he's breaking up the act. So I say, "OK we'll use the new material." I say this thinking, we use the stuff one or two shows at the most, then he'll come to his senses and we'll be back doing what we've always done. Boy, was I a schlemiel. When I read Joel's material, I damn near plotzed myself.

It was ten pages of knock-knock jokes.

I try again to talk sense into Murray, but he'll have none of it. We're doing the Conservative Humor knock-knock jokes or else. So anyway, we go on at Kutcher's Hotel, warming up for Jackie Mason, and do the new material. It bombs. First time in my career, I get booed off the stage. But does this bother Murray? Of course not. He's got Joel telling him the audience will 'catch up'. "They aren't used to Conservative Humor," he says. So we go out the next night.

Same thing. Only now the audience throwing food at us. And booing. I came this close to getting clocked by a cheese blintz, I'm telling you.

After the third night, our agent Sig Katzman, he calls us into his office. "Do you know who I've spent the last hour with on the phone? Old man Kutcher. He wants to know if the two of you have lost your minds." Murray then explains the whole Republican and Conservative Humor thing to him. "Murray," he says, "You have lost your mind. Either you go back to the old material or you're history." So what does Murray do? He starts arguing with the man, asking for time to allow the audience to catch up. "Catch up?" Sig says, "What do I look like? A United Way agency?"

Well, before I could clamp my hand across Murray's mouth, he tells Sig that if he can't use the kid's material, Goldblatt and Goyim are walking. Sig thought about it for a second and said, "Don't let the door hit you on the ass."

And that's how I ended up playing Crackers the Clown on a UHF channel in Sandusky, Ohio for twenty years. Murray, God rest his soul, I could forgive for that. But not that little shmuck, Joel. May he rot in Hell. And my all his crappy shows be playing there when he arrives.