Carl: Sir, sir, I read somewhere that you lived in Boston during the American Revolution. Did you know Paul Revere?
Mel: An anti-Semite bastard!
Carl: You didn’t like Paul Revere?
Mel: I hated Paul Revere.
Carl: No, no, no. He was a hero! How could you call him an anti-Semite?
Mel: He had fear that we were going to go in the neighborhood and move in. “They’re coming, they’re coming. The Yiddish are coming!” All night he was yelling!
Carl: Were you living in that neighborhood at that time?
Mel: I was there. I heard him yelling.
Carl: No, he was yelling, “The British are coming.”
Mel: Oy, my god.
Carl: You were wrong!
Mel: Ooh, I’m going to have to send his wife a note.
Carl: You’ve maligned the man for all these years!
Mel: I didn’t know. And I didn’t go to his funeral. Oh my god.
Carl: Two hundred years you have maligned the man…
Mel: I’m glad we spoke. I’d better ask you about some more of these people.
* * *
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Even though the Caesar show was over, and we each had our own projects, Carl and I always got back together from time to time to make another 2000 Year Old Man record. And we’d often hit pay dirt.
I remember on one of the records we got a terrific laugh with a bit about Shakespeare:
Carl: Did you know Shakespeare? He was reputed to be a great writer. He wrote thirty-seven of the greatest plays ever written.
Mel: Thirty-eight.
Carl: Thirty-eight? Only thirty-seven are listed.
Mel: One bombed!
Carl: Actually, it’s never been recorded. What was it?
Mel: Unfortunately, I had money in that play.
Carl: You invested in a Shakespearean play that was a failure?
Mel: He said would you put money in it. I read it up and I said to him, this is a beauty.
Carl: What was the name of it?
Mel: Queen Alexandra and Murray.
Carl: I never heard of it. Did it ever see the light of day?
Mel: It closed in Egypt!
That was one of the few times that Carl really broke up. Here are a couple of my other favorites:
Carl: I want to talk about the impact of the Ten Commandments.
Mel: There were more. But they weren’t important.
Carl: Can you tell me one?
Mel: Certainly, “thou shalt not squint.”
Carl: Do you remember the very first book you ever read?
Mel: The first book. You don’t forget the first book.
Carl: You remember what it was?
Mel: I was a child. It was a simple book in the ancient Hebrew. It was called Zaichem, Rochem, Bruchem.
Carl: And that translates into?
Mel: See Moses Run.
Carl: Do you remember the story?
Mel: It was a page-turner.
Carl: Of all the discoveries of all time, what would you consider the greatest? Would you say it was the wheel, the lever, fire?
Mel: Fire. Fire. Far and away, fire. Fire was the hottest thing going. Fire, you can’t beat fire.
Carl: Really?
Mel: Fire used to warm us and light up our caves so we wouldn’t walk into a wall, so we wouldn’t marry our brother Bernie.
Carl: That’s right.
Mel: That’s Satan’s hell, fire. And cooking, oh, you can’t beat fire.
Carl: When did they first learn to cook with fire?
Mel: It was an accident. There was an accident. A chicken.
Carl: What?
Mel: Chicken walked into the fire by mistake and over. And it was over. Burnt up.
Carl: What? That chicken?
Mel: Yes. We kept them around the cave as pets.
Carl: I see.
Mel: So we took it out to give it a funeral, you know, bury it, because it was our pet and we all went…hey, that smells good. So we ate them up and since then we’ve been eating chickens.
Carl: You know, I’ve heard this story, but I’ve heard that the animal that wandered into the fire accidentally was a pig.
Mel: Not in my cave.
Speaking of caves, there was another one that always got a big response.
Carl: How about an anthem?
Mel: We had a national anthem!
Carl: What was the anthem?
Mel: Well, you see it was very fragmented. Fragments.
Carl: Yes.
Mel: It wasn’t a nation, it was caves. Each cave…
Carl: Was a nation?
Mel: Each cave had a national anthem!
Carl: So do you remember the national anthem of your cave?
Mel: I certainly do. I’ll never forget. You don’t forget a national anthem in a minute.
Carl: Well, let me hear it, sir!
Mel: [singing] “Let ’em all go to hell except Cave Seventy-six!”
* * *
—
The 2000 Year Old Man also led me to one of my favorite stories to tell onstage. It goes a little something like this…