I was in the De Witt Clinton Hight School marching band. One of the worst bands ever formed. When we played the national anthem, people from every country stood - except Americans.

[T]he Super Bowl, the quintessential American creation. A dizzying mélange of brilliant entrepreneurship in an atmosphere of intense competition. It is the perfect show for the most intensely competitive culture in this solar system.

I have a work-out regime; I am not a maniac. It sounds cliche, but stand-up comedy, doing a one-man show, helps keep me young, and yes, it is exhausting, but I don't collapse.

Comedy is still alive, and there are still funny people. Jews are still overrepresented in comedy and psychiatry and underrepresented in the priesthood. That immigrant Jewish humor is still with us.

I'd walk into the school, smell that institutional smell of the tomato soup, peanut butter, disinfectant, and boys room. Pass the lunchroom, see the familiar lunchroom lady with the white dress and net on her hair. At the end of 50 years of distinguished service the Board of Education gives her a bronze net - with her name on it. It stems from the Board of Education rule to keep her hair out of the food.

In the fifties I had dreams about touching a naked woman and she would turn to bronze or the dream about hot dogs chasing donuts through the Lincoln Tunnel.

And the only studies were - Rodney Dangerfield was my mentor and he was my Yale drama school for comedy.