Travel Blog

A friend gave us tickets to hear Kevin Nealon at the Miami Book Fair last night so at around 4:45 yesterday afternoon we took our seats in the auditorium of Building 1 of Miami Dade College. The program, which was scheduled to start at 5, began at 5:30, with no explanation about the delay. And it didn’t really begin then, as it was preceded by a talk from the president of the college, followed by one by the city commissioner, followed by one by Mitchell Kaplan, who concluded by introducing Dave Barry, who introduced the two speakers. Nealon was in conversation with Alan Zweibel, one of the original writers on Saturday Night Live.

So I was not in a great mood when the two men took the stage, but they quickly won me over. Nealon, at one point, noted the wrath he unleashes when somebody crosses him. “I send a text,” he said sternly. “In all caps.”

Zweibel would turn to a page of Nealon’s new book of caricatures and Nealon would tell of his memories of that person: Carrie Fisher, David Letterman (“he has really bushy eyebrows”), Buzz Aldrin. He met Aldrin on a beach in Mexico and asked him if, while walking on the moon, he ever worried about getting stuck there, that maybe when they got back to the module it wouldn’t start. Aldrin looked at him like he was crazy. “Sometimes,” he explained, “my car doesn’t start.”

There was a lot of talk, naturally, about Saturday Night Live. Nealon said that he rarely cracked a smile during a set; the one exception was the Chippendale’s sketch with Chris Farley and Patrick Swayze when, as one of the judges, he couldn’t keep from laughing. He said that Farley’s idol was John Belushi, then added that they both died at 33.

Norm McDonald was remembered fondly – “he never went to high school or college, but he was book smart” – as was Gary Shandling.

Toward the end, people in the audience were invited to ask questions. One man walked up to the microphone with a sweater tied around his neck, and Zweibel noted that Shandling always wondered if guys who wear their sweaters tied around their necks wear their underwear tied around their balls. I wished the guy would have stolen from another comedian, whose name I don’t recall, and said, “I don’t, but I do wear my socks tied around my ankles.”

Asked how comedy has changed, Zweibel complained that wokeness has made it a little too “antiseptic,” noting that two of the characters he created, Roseanne Roseannadanna and Samurai Futaba, would not fly today. (I’m not sure why the Gilda Radnor character would be seen as politically incorrect.)

On the subject of comedians who were clearly on another level, Nealon cited Robin Williams, and said how, after seeing him perform, he wanted to give up comedy. Zweibel mentioned Larry David. “The man can take a morsel,” he said, “and make a Seder.”