Seinfeld: The Keys

Pictures courtesy of the ever-brilliant http://seinfeld.wikia.com/wiki/WikiSein

Of all the very many brilliant TV comedies we've had over the years, Seinfeld remains my absolute favourite. It is, to me, the funniest thing that's ever been shown on the ol' boob tube. The history of my favourite comedy shows begins - in terms of things we could realistically discuss - with M*A*S*H and Taxi, proceeds to The Flintstones (I had VHS cassette collections of home-taped M*A*S*H and Flintstones that took up an entire wall in our old living room), hits Seinfeld and much later Futurama and Curb Your Enthusiasm. But when I sit down to watch re-runs of all these, it's always Seinfeld that produces the most belly laughs. Genuine, uncontrollable, loud-and-proud laughs. 

So it was last night with two absolute classics from series 3: The Limo, wherein Jerry and George are mistaken for white supremacists (Cut back to the limo, George is reading, quietly horrified, from O'Brien's speech. George: ...and the Jews steal our money through their Zionist-occupied government and use the black man to bring drugs into our oppressed white minority communities. Jerry: You're not going to open with that, are you?); and The Keys, wherein Jerry tires of Kramer's abuse of being Jerry's official spare-key holder and demands them back, thus triggering a chain of woes as George, Kramer, Elaine and Jerry all squabble over who has who's spares.

I'd like to now present, courtesy of that online treasure trove, seinfeldscripts.com, my favourite scene from The Keys.  A little set-up for you: Kramer, quietly disgruntled about having his key-holder privileges revoked, gets his spares back from Jerry and then meets with George at their favourite haunt, Monk's Café, to give George his spares. Of course, for Kramer it's not just a simple matter of who has who's keys...

The coffee shop. Kramer plunks his giant keyring on the table in front of George.

GEORGE: Gee, Kramer, I uh... I don't know what to say.

KRAMER: Say yes! Yes, George. Yes!

GEORGE: Should I give you my keys, is that the transaction,trading keys...? Because Elaine has my keys.

KRAMER: Well, you can get 'em back.

GEORGE: I suppose I could.

KRAMER: Because you see, George, having the keys to Jerry's apartment? That kept me in a fantasy world. Every time I went over to his house, it was like I was on vacation. Better food, better view, better TV. And cleaner? Oh - much cleaner. That became my reality. I ignored the squalor in my own life because I'm looking at life, you see, through Jerry's eyes. I was living in twilight, George. Living in the shadows. Living in the darkness...like you.

GEORGE: Me?

KRAMER: Oh, yeah. I can barely see you, George.

GEORGE: Alright, stop it Kramer, you're freakin' me out.

          <The waitress comes over>

WAITRESS: Hi, are you ready to order? 

<George tries to order,
but Kramer waves her away>

KRAMER: (moves over and sits next to George):
         Do you ever yearn?

GEORGE: Yearn? Do I yearn?

KRAMER: I yearn.

GEORGE: You yearn.

KRAMER: Oh, yes. Yes, I yearn. Often, I...I sit...and yearn. Have you yearned?

GEORGE: Well, not recently. I craved. I crave  

        all the time, constant craving...but I
        haven't yearned.

KRAMER: (in disgust): Look at you.

GEORGE: Aw, Kramer, don't start...

KRAMER: (moving back to the other side of the
         booth) You're wasting your life.

GEORGE: I am not! What you call wasting, I call living! I'm living my life!

KRAMER: OK, like what? No, tell me! Do you

        have a job? 

GEORGE: No.

KRAMER: You got money?

GEORGE: No.

KRAMER: Do you have a woman?

GEORGE: No.

KRAMER: Do you have any prospects?

GEORGE: No.

KRAMER: You got anything on the horizon?

GEORGE: Uh...no.

KRAMER: Do you have any action at all?

GEORGE: No.

KRAMER: Do you have any conceivable reason for
        even getting up in the morning?

GEORGE: I like to get the Daily News...

KRAMER: George, it's time for us to grow up -
        and be men. Not little boys.

GEORGE: Why?

KRAMER: I'm goin' to California. You know,
        I got the bug.

GEORGE: Yeah, I think I got a touch of        
        something, too.

KRAMER: No, the acting bug. Ever since I was
        in that Woody Allen movie.

GEORGE: "These pretzels are making me
        thirsty"? That was one line!
        You got fired!

KRAMER: I know, I know, but man! I never felt
        so alive! Now, are you coming with me?

GEORGE: Uh, no, I'm not.

KRAMER: Alright, suit yourself. But let's keep
        this between us - we're key brothers
        now.

<Gets up to leave.>

GEORGE: You're not really gonna go to
        California, are you?

KRAMER: (points to his head): Up here, I'm
         already gone.

 <Kramer exits>

It's a masterclass in comic timing by Jason Alexander and Michael Richards, as well as in good writing (script credit for the episode goes to Larry Charles). Kramer's badgering of George and George's subsequent crumbling during their rapid-fire exchange on the same side of the booth; Jason Alexander making the hoary old 'bug' gag work with the blithe pathos that is George's stock in trade; the comfortable familiarity of the characters with each other (it's entirely Kramer to have a spiritual revelation about something as mundane as holding a friend's spare keys, then trying to 'save' a friend, as well as this being a fun way of explaining his insane neighbouring behaviour throughout the entire show); Jason's throw-away of the 'Stop it, you're freaking me out' line, accompanied by a bit of nervous glasses-cleaning; the punching of 'crave' and 'yearn' (classic Seinfeld humour); George's petulant reaction to the idea of growing up; the moment of mutual recognition at Jerry's impeccable cleanliness... it's all sooo, sooo good.

Of course, you can watch the whole scene on YouTube - the clip I found is only 240p and ran a little out of synch when I checked it just now (although that's most likely my problem). Do yourself a favour and check it out right now!

Wizards Can Do Anything (Eventually)

The whole book is illustrated beautifully throughout, by the talented Dariusz Twardoch

                                 

So, funny thing. Someone sent me a link to this little beauty today. In a nutshell, it was my first book editing assignment, which after seeing the English translation, became full-on ghost-writing.

It's a fantastic children's story, written by a really nice guy called Dariusz Chwiejczak. We worked on this together back in Q4 of 2007. Every Sunday we would have epic telephone conferences about the text; my changes, his ideas and so on. He was very engaged in the process and it was truly a great collaboration that bore an English fruit which I think may even have had a slightly different taste to the original.

That original version was a self-published run of hardbacks in Polish. He then commissioned an English translation, which is what I worked from. I still have my hardback copy somewhere. Unfortunately though, the timing wasn't quite right back then for an  electronic edition, and after a while it sort of disappeared from sight. Until now (I assume).

I have extremely fond memories of that project, unlike about 90% of all the work I've had since then which has had no greater effect than slowly eroding my will to live. Seeing 'Wizards...' up there on Amazon filled me with an alien feeling I haven't known in an absolute age: Pride.

Hey, you gotta get a little duma now and then, right?

FIRST POST! /golfclap

If you've read one post on this blog, you'll have read them all. Sit back and watch an endless array of Agnieszka Radwańska pictures blur before your eyes. Or maybe just two or three, depending how motivated I get with this thing. Probably just two then. So, sit back and watch two pictures of Agnieszka Radwańska and a few aimless thoughts about being drunk, working, playing computer games and ogling WTA stars. Sometimes all at once.

Fun things that happened today: Did loads of work (a tourism mobile app, an iOS game and a boring financial thing); watched two episodes of The Big Bang Theory (yes, I am that hip - Bazinga!); added another couple of thousand population to my Sim City Social city over on Farcebook; started this blog, and added the words 'WTA', 'Agnieszka', 'Radwańska' and 'blog' to Chrome's appalling EN dick-tionary (warning: dick jokes might be a thing with this blog, I'm not sure yet. Maybe just a passing phase I'm going through).

Fun things that happened this week: Hacked my Wii, allowing for infinite varieties of Mario to be played with the kids; rooted my phone, allowing for infinite near-identical apps to be crushed into its tiny memory at once; updated Guild Wars 2 with the Lost Shores shit without any of the slowness or problems other people seem to have had, and saw a brilliant shark movie on PULS that I hadn't seen before. Sharks - particularly Carcharadon carcharias - give me the horrrrrnnn, yes they do.

Fun things that happened this month: Screwed up yet another wonderful relationship with a dear friend; drank loads of really good unpasteurised beer (less gas, more taste); watched some brilliant tennis at the WTA Championships in Istanbul, and... ehhh... probably some other things too, but fuck it, that's good enough a cross-section of my activity to give you some idea of who I am, and whether or not you wanna stick around.

Well, that's enough fun for one post, especially a First Post (omg lol etc). See you anon.