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The professional (continued)


Q: If you’d been able to continue to physically hide your MS, do you think you would’ve chosen to?

A: No. In fact, quite to the contrary. I think if I had disclosed my MS earlier, the studio would’ve been obligated to accommodate me, and I probably would’ve continued working in Hollywood. But in Hollywood, you’re not allowed to be sick or old. In Newton, both things are encouraged.

Q: Do you think people have different expectations of you as a comedian now that audiences know that you have MS?

A: Yeah, I think some people are slightly uncomfortable with the whole idea. I mean, disability in general makes people uncomfortable.

Q: Do you worry that they won’t want to laugh at your expense?

A: I think it might take them some getting used to the idea, that it’s my legs that have changed, not my mind.

Q: Is that how you explain it to people?

A: No one ever asked. I mean, it’s not totally true; MS manifests itself differently in every person that has it. It’s a weird disease. There are two components: there’s the disease itself, and how you feel about having the disease. Some days I don’t mind it that much. Other days, it seems like a dirty trick. We have two daughters; one of them is 13. For me, the hardest part is having a young daughter who doesn’t have a very healthy father. Although I am a lot of fun.

Q: On the days when your MS feels like a dirty trick, do you ever feel like, I don’t want to be funny anymore; I have too much on my plate?

A: No, in fact, quite the opposite: I feel like I want to be funny. Comedy is kind of my salvation in a certain way. I’m writing this book, and I write about the experience of living with MS, but I write about it from a comedic point of view, a lot of it. It’s kind of like life: not always funny.

Q: Do you think anything is off-limits in comedy?

A: I used to think that child pornography was off-limits, but then I said to myself, you know what? Child pornography is probably the most horrific thing in the world, but I think that they should be prosecuted as if they were adults.

Q: Who do you think is the funniest comedian working right now?

A: Ali G cracks me up. But my comedy hero is a guy you never heard of, because he died of a heart attack at age thirtysomething, or fortysomething. It was a guy named Ronnie Shakes. And I’ll tell you one of his jokes: he said, "I’ve been seeing the same therapist for 12 years, and yesterday he said something that brought tears to my eyes: ‘No hablo inglés.’ " I did this story for GQ once, and the theme of the story was "I wish I had written that." I asked people like Seinfeld and Paul Reiser, my contemporaries, what’s the one joke they wish they had written, and many of them quoted Ronnie Shakes. He wrote many great jokes. He said, "I just blew 5000 bucks on a reincarnation seminar. I figured, what the hell — you only live once." It’s kind of the Rita Rudner school of comedy. She’s a real wordsmith.

The people who make me laugh the hardest are Dom Irrera. Bill Braudis cracks me up. He’s a really funny guy. Tom Snyder cracks me up. He’s someone who didn’t realize he was a funny guy, and surrounded himself with funny people, not knowing that he was one of them.

Q: He gets it now, though, right?

A: I think he’s starting to understand it. He’s on a boat right now. Delivering a boat from Puerto Rico to some other tropical island. He’s a sailor. You know the type?

Q: Yeah. I don’t understand them, but I know the type.

A: Me neither. I think it’s a death wish, going on a boat. I’m an all-around indoor athlete.

Q: What sports?

A: I was the 1964 ping-pong champ. New York State Table Tennis champion in 1964. It’s an Olympic sport now.

Q: How long have you lived in Newton?

A: We moved here in the mid ’80s.

Q: What’s funny about Newton?

A: Well, we moved to Newton Centre, but we would summer in the Highlands. That’s my best Newton joke. And also, in Newton, if somebody breaks into your home, you can be pretty sure they’re going to install a deck.

Q: What’s the longest you’ve ever gone without trying to be funny?

A: I think it’s in therapy. Every once in a while, I’ll go as long as maybe seven or eight minutes, and then I’ll make a joke, and my shrink will say, "Well, what is it we’re not talking about today?" She hears all my best stuff. Occasionally she will laugh, and that’s a huge victory, because she’s not supposed to. And then I see the next patient coming in and I say, "There’s no way this putz is going to follow me."

I spent the afternoon with my daughter Julia, who’s 22, and she said, "Is it possible you can go three minutes without making a joke?" And I said, "Go." But I didn’t. I can’t. I realized that that’s the thing about daughters: they don’t necessarily want to hear your jokes. They want something else. Your money.

Q: Can you go three minutes without giving her your money?

A: No. I can’t go three dollars without giving her money.

Q: What do you think of Last Comic Standing?

A: Not necessary. I think comedy is competitive enough. I don’t like comedy competitions; I never have.

Q: What do you think would most surprise people to know about you?

A: My philanthropic nature?

Q: Is that true?

A: No. I’m a really bad driver?

Q: Is that true?

A: Yes. In fact, if you see me on the highway, don’t wave.

Q: Do you talk on the phone and drive at the same time?

A: Yeah. And I have a rotisserie in the backseat. I’m barbecuing chicken.

Q: What are you working on now?

A: I’m trying to get on a TV show called Pimp My Ride.

Q: Aren’t we all.

A: Yeah. But I’m trying to get on with my electric scooter, which I use to get around. I want to have a really pimped-out scooter, a handicapped scooter. And I don’t know what that means, exactly. Big wheels?

I like watching the show Arrested Development. They offered me a role, but I wasn’t available. Oh, this is my biggest TV credit: I turned down a role as Tony Soprano’s urologist. I wasn’t available. And that’s the other thing about living in Newton: there’s life that isn’t show business, and you can forget about that if you live in LA or New York, even. We had a prior engagement.

Q: A dinner party?

A: Yeah. Actually, my wife was the keynote speaker. It was at a fundraiser. For the skinheads. Oh, like they’re not doing well enough.

Q: What do you think you’d be doing now if you hadn’t become a comedian?

A: The last job I had was tuning pianos, and I only did it once professionally, and it cost my father $4000. I spilled my drink in the piano. It was at Carnegie Recital Hall.

Q: How was that your first job?

A: Because my dad was going out with Arlo Guthrie’s mother. It’s so weird, my life. But if I wasn’t a comedian, I probably would be a cowboy. That’s what I always wanted to be when I was a kid. And comedy got in the way.

75 Laughs: An Evening with Jonathan Katz is at Jimmy Tingle’s Off Broadway, in Somerville, on January 28 and 29, at 7:30 p.m. Call (866) 811-4111, or visit www.jtoffbroadway.com. Tamara Wieder can be reached at twieder[a]phx.com

page 2 

Issue Date: January 28 - February 3, 2005
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