Private Life
This is my third night here, I haven't been here in about
eight months now, was the last time I was here, and since I was
here last, a lot of significant things have occured in my private
life, that I thought we could go over tonight and evaluate.
I moved, let me start right at the very beginning, I formerly
lived in Manhattan, uptown east in a brownstone building, but
I was constantly getting mugged and assaulted and...sadistically
beaten about the face and neck. So I moved into a doormanned apartment
house on Park Avenue, that's rich and secure and expensive and
great, and I lived there for two weeks, and my doorman attacked
me.
I don't know what else has happened...Oh I know, I became a corporation
since I was here the last time. Last year I had difficulty with
my income tax. I tried to take my analyst off as a business deduction,
y'know. The government said it was entertainment, y'know, we compromised
finally and made it a religious contribution. I formed a corporation
this year, and I'm the president, my mother is vice president,
my father is secretary and my grandmother is treasurer, my uncle
is on the board of directors, and they got together the first
week, and they tried to squeeze me out. I formed a power block
with my uncle and we sent my grandmother to jail.
I went to NYU myself, I was a philo-major there, too. I took all
the abstract philosophy courses in college, like truth and beauty,
advanced truth and beauty, intermediate truth, introduction to
God, Death 101. I was thrown out of NYU my freshman year, I cheated
on my metaphysics final in college, I looked within the soul of
the boy sitting next to me. They threw me out, and my mother,
who is a really sensitive woman, when I got thrown out of college,
she locked herself in the bathroom and took an overdose of Mahjong
tiles.
I was in analysis, you should know that about me, I was in group
analysis when I was younger, 'cause I couldn't afford private...I
was captain of the latent paranoid softball team. We used to play
all the neurotics on sunday morning. Nailbiters against the bedwetters,
and if you've never seen neurotics play softball, it's really
funny. I used to steal second base, and feel guilty and go back.
Also, I have a cousin, that my parents loved more than me, that
really destroyed me. Ah, I have a boy cousin that went through
four years of college and became a mutual fund salesman, and he
married a very thin girl from the neighbourhood, who had her nose
lifted by a golf pro, y'know...(bok) Hit it and just...hooked
up over her head, and they moved to the suburbs and they have
all kinds of status symbols, they have their own home and stationwagon
and fire insurance and life insurance and mutual funds and his
wife has orgasmic insurance or something. If her husband fails
to satisfy her sexually, Mutual of Omaha has to pay her every
month.
I don't know what else to tell you about myself, I was a writer
and an actor, I was a television writer and, ah, I wasn't an actor,
I was in acting class. We did a play in acting class by Paddy
Chayefsky called "Gideon", and I played the part of
God, in "Gideon". It was typecasting. It was method
acting, so two weeks beforehand, I started to live the part offstage,
y'know. I really came on God, there, I was really fabulous, I
put on a blue suit, I took taxi cabs all over New York. I tipped
big, 'cause he would have. I got into a fight with a guy, and
I forgave him. It's true. Some guy hit my fender and I said unto
him...I said, "Be fruitful and multiply", but not in
those words.
Brooklyn
Ahm, and listen, I've been up here for a while and I don't
know how many out there noticed, but I do not have what you call
a 'stock theatrical sun tan', I'm redheaded, and fairskinned and
when I go to the beach, I don't tan, I stroke. I never used to
go to the beach, 'cause I come from Brooklyn, we only had Coney
Island, which was an awful beach, though there was rumours during
the war, that enemy submarines, German subs came into the bathing
area at Coney Island, and they were destroyed by the pollution.
And the only time I bathed was with Mrs. Allen, I guess, my wife,
the dread Mrs. Allen. Honeymooning, I was fabulous, you would
have adored me. I was on waterskis, stripped to the waist, skiing
fast across the top of the surf, my hair back, I oiled my muscle.
It was really... holding on with one hand, waterskiing, very great,
my wife was in the boat ahead of me, rowing frantically. I got
a very bad burn, really, I was thinking, when I was a kid, I was
ashamed of having red hair, 'cause I lived in a tough section,
I lived in a sub-basement walk-down, ah, under street level, janitor-style,
ah, the janitor, that had the apartment during the depression,
had some stocks, the market crashed, and he was wiped out, he
tried to kill himself by jumping out the window and UP unto street
level.
I was the sensitive kid, poet. There were tough kids in my class,
there was a kid in my class named Floyd. Floyd used to sit in
the dumb row in school, y'know. Vegetable mentality, y'know. I
made friends with him years later when we got older, I removed
a thorn from his paw. Once, I was on my way for my violin lesson
when I was a kid, and I'm walking past the pool room, and Floyd
and all of his friends are out, y'know, they're swiping hubcaps,
in Brooklyn, from moving cars, which is really...amazing. And
I walk past him, and he yells out to me, "Hey, Red!".
I was a cocky kid. Put down my violin. I go up to him. I said
"My name is not Red. If you want me, call me by my regular
name, It's Master Heywood Allen". I spent that winter in
a wheelchair. A team of doctors laboured to remove a violin. Lucky
it wasn't a cello.
The Army
I'm not a fighter. I, ah, I have bad reflexes, and I can't
fight. I was once run over by a car with a flat tire, being pushed
by two guys. And I was not in the army, in case you were wondering.
I was in the canine corps. Strange story, when I was young, I
wanted a dog, and we had no money, we were very... my father at
that time was a caddie at a miniature golf course in Brooklyn,
y'know. I couldn't get a dog, 'cause it was too much, and they
finally opened up in my neighbourhood, in Flatbush, a damaged
pet shop. They sold damaged pets at discount, y'know, you could
get a bent pussycat if you wanted, a straight camel, y'know. I
got a dog that stuttered. When the cats would give him a hard
time, he would go "B-b-b-b-bow wow", y'know. He'd turn
all red, y'know. We wanted to send him into the army, but the
papers got crossed up, and they got me instead of him. I was in
the canine corps for two weeks. Me and eleven dogs was the outfit.
Taught me how to heel. Sergent was a little mexican hairless,
y'know. I was not in the regular army. I was classified '4P' by
the draftboard, we went to war, I'm a hostage.
Pets
When I was little boy, I wanted a dog desperately, and we
had no money. I was a tiny kid, and my parents couldn't get me
a dog, 'cause we just didn't have the money, so they got me, instead
of a dog - they told me it was a dog - they got me an ant. And
I didn't know any better, y'know, I thought it was a dog, I was
a dumb kid. Called it 'Spot'. I trained it, y'know. Coming home
late one night, Sheldon Finklestein tried to bully me. Spot was
with me. And I said "Kill!", and Sheldon stepped on
my dog.
My Grandfather
Wanted to flash this watch, I flash it all the time. It's
my antique pocket watch, and it makes me look British, and I need
that for my analysis. It is a georgeous gold pocket watch, however,
and I'm proud of it. My grandfather, on his deathbed, sold me
this watch. My grandfather was a very insignificant man. At his
funeral, his hearse followed the other cars. It was a nice funeral,
you would have liked it, it was a catered funeral. It was held
in a big hall with accordion players, and the buffet table was
a replica of the deceased in potato salad.
My Marriage
I wanted to discuss my marriage, 'cause that's important.
My marriage, or as it was known, "The Oxbow Incident".
I had a rough marriage. Well, my wife was an immature woman and,
ah, That's all I can say, she...See if this is not immature to
you: I would be home in the bathrroom, taking a bath, and my wife
would walk right in, whenever she felt like, and sink my boats.
It was partially my fault that we got divorced, I had a lousy
attitude toward her. The first year of marriage I had a bad att...basically
a bad attitude toward her, I guess. I tended to place my wife
underneath a pedestal all the time.
We used to argue and fight, we finally decided, we either take
a vacation on Bermuda or get a divorce, one of the two things,
and we discussed it very maturely, and we decided on the divorce,
'cause we felt we had a limited amount of money to spend, y'know.
A vacation in Bermuda is over in two weeks, but a divorce is something
that you'd always have. And I saw myself free again, living in
the Village, y'know, in a batchelor apartment with a wood burning
fireplace and a shaggy rug, y'know, and on the walls one of those
great Picassos by Van Gogh, and just great swinging...Airline
hostesses running amok in the apartment, y'know. And I got very
excited, and I ran into my wife, she was in the next room at the
time, listening to Conelrad on the radio, y'know. I laid it right
on the line with her, I came right to the point, I said "Quasimodo,
I want a divorce".
And she said "Great, get the divorce", but it turns
out, in New York state, they have a strange law that says you
can't get a divorce unless you can prove adultery, and it's weird,
because the ten commandments say "Thou shalt not commit adultery",
but New York state says you have to. Well, finally, what happened
was, my wife comitted adultery for me. She's always been more
mechanically inclined than I have.
Bullet In My Breast Pocket
Years ago, my mother gave me a bullet...a bullet, and I put
it in my breast pocket. Two years after that, I was walking down
the street, when a berserk evangelist heaved a Gideon bible out
a hotel room window, hitting me in the chest. Bible would have
gone through my heart if it wasn't for the bullet.
----
N.Y.U.
I used to go to New York University a long time ago, which
is in Greenwich Village, that's where I started, and I was, ah,
in love in my freshman year, but I did not marry the first girl
that I fell in love with, because there was a tremendous religious
conflict, at the time. She was an atheist, and I was an agnostic,
y'know. We didn't know which religion not to bring the children
up in. And I bummed around for a long time, and I met my wife,
and we got married against my parents' wishes, we were married
in Long Island, in New York, we were married by a reformed rabbi
in Long Island, a very reformed rabbi, a nazi.
It was a very nice affair, y'know, really good, and right after
the wedding, my wife started turning weird. She went to Hunter
College, and she got into the philosophy department at Hunter,
and she started dressing with black clothes and no make-up, and
leotards, y'know, and she pierced her ears one day with a conducters
punch, y'know. And she used to involve me in deep philosophical
arguments, and then prove I didn't exist, y'know...infuriating.
And I had to let her go, was what happened, and I had to tell
my parents about it. And my parents are what you used to call
'old world'. My parents come from Brooklyn, which is the heart
of the old world. They're very stable down-to-earth people, who,
ah, don't approve of divorce. Their, their...their values in life
are God and carpeting.
I came home on a sunday, this was a long time ago, my father's
watching television sunday night, he's watching Ed Sullivan Show,
on television, he's watching the Indiana Home for the Criminally
Insane Glee Club on the Ed Sullivan Show. And my mother is in
the corner, knitting a chicken, y'know. And I'd said that I would
have to get a divorce, my mother put down her knitting, and she
got up, and she went over to the furnace, and she opened the door,
and she got in. Took it rather badly, I felt.
A Love Story
Gonna tell a love story now, 'cause you have background material
on me. Ah, this occurred before I was married, a long time ago,
out in Manhattan, I was in Manhattan. I was at City Center, this
was ages ago, I was watching a ballet at City Center, and I'm
not a ballet fan at all, but they were doing the dying swan, and
there was a rumour, that some bookmakers had drifted into town
from upstate New York, and that they had fixed the ballet. Apparently
there was a lot of money bet on the swan to live. And I look at
the box, and I see a girl, and my weak spot is women, ah, so I
always think someday they're gonna make me a birthday party, and
wheel out a tremendous birthday cake, and a giant, naked woman
is gonna leap out of the cake and hurt me and leap back in the
cake.
So I pick up this girl, I was very glib, and she was a brilliant
girl, she was a Bennington girl, studying at Bennington to be
a woman male nurse at a four-year program, working on a term paper
on the increasing incidents of heterosexuality amongst homosexuals.
The girl was a swinger, however, I must....The girl was brought
up in Darien, Conneticut, and when she was younger, she had a
little brother about six years old, eight years...his parents
sent the kid to military school. And while he was there, he stole
jam or something, and they caught him, and they wanted to do things
right, 'cause it was military school, so they held a court martial
there. They found the kid guilty. They shot him. They returned
to his parents half the tuition.
Meanwhile, I was running amok with his sister, his sister was
fabulous, she was a great, great, blonde, and she had tatooed
on the inner surface of her thigh, the words 'Bird lives', which,
unfortunately, I was never privileged to see in the relationship,
but had it been printed in Braille, I would have had a great thing
going with her. We used to go up to her apartment late at night,
and all her beatnik friends would be sitting crosslegged on each
other there, and they would be trying to make opium out of the
poppies given out by veterans on street corners. She used to plug
in her twelve and a half dollar hi-fi set, y'know, with the teakwood
needle, and put on the record albums on of Marcel Marceau, y'know,
just...
She crushed me, I...Every time I tell the story, I'm reminded...I
was what you would call, not a intellectual, up to her...she was...I
was thrown out of college, and when I was thrown out of college
I got a job on Madison Avenue in New york, a real dyed-in-the-wool
advertising agency on Madison Avenue, wanted a man to come in,
and they pay him ninetyfive dollars a week, and to sit in their
office, and to look jewish. They wanted to prove to the outside
world, that they would hire minority groups, y'know. So I was
the one they hired, y'know. I was the show jew at the agency.
I tried to look jewish desperately, y'know. I used to read my
memos from right to left all the time. They fired me finally,
'cause I took off too many jewish holidays.
The Police
I have never in my life had difficulty with the cops. I had
difficulty with the cops, that's not...no actually I didn't have
difficulty with the cops. I was once sitting home in my house,
and a lot of cars pulled up around the house. They shined in searchlights,
and I heard a voice over the loudspeaker say "We have your
house surrounded. This is the New York public library" They
wanted their books back, y'know, and the little librarian was
lobbing grenades over the house. I came out with my hands up,
y'know, kicking the book ahead of me. They took me down to the
main branch on Fifth Avenue in New York, and they took away my
glasses for a year.
And I was thinking, when I lived in my apartment in the brownstone
building in New York, we were constantly getting robbed all the
time. It was a very big feature of the neighbourhood, y'know.
Guys would break in and steal, and my apartment was robbed about
four times in two years, y'know, it really got to be a bad thing,
and I didn't know what to do about it, so finally I put on my
door, a little blue and white sticker that said "We gave".
Figure that would end it brilliantly, but it didn't, 'cause a
man in my building, Mr. Russo was held up late at night, two very
big guys got him with a bottle and a stick in the lobby, y'know,
and they wanted all his cash, and Russo like a jerk tried to sign
for it for tax purposes, whatever it is, y'know. They hit him
with tremendous shot across the frontal lobe, y'know, real smack
in the head, and he fell to the lobby in a fetal position, y'know.
He lay there until his lease ran out, y'know. He's never been
the same since the smack in the head, y'know. He smiles a lot
now. He laughs out of context occasionally. He's not as perceptive
as the average tree stump, y'know.
Everybody in the building panicked, they said that I'm small and
that I should go and build myself up, in case I get into trouble,
I could defend myself, so I went to Vic Tannings, this was a long
time ago, I went for three weeks, and I lifted and I bent and
I squatted. Nothing happend to me at all, y'know, nothing grew
or anything, and I figure it's ridiculous, why don't I forget
about it and give Vic Tanning the cash., and I ask him if he'll
walk me home nights.
However, there is a kid in my building, a little odd kid named
Leon, and Leon takes karate lessons. Leon is always walking with
his hand cocked at a right angle, like this, y'know, and everyone
said that I should learn Judo, 'cause I'd be an animal, but Judo
to me has always been a thing of the bigger your opponent is,
the bigger the beating he is gonna give you, y'know. And then
my good friends told me, in the back of Esquire magazine, you
can send away for a fountain pen that shoots teargas. It's a real
fountain pen, and it secretes a gaseous billow, y'know, really
great pen, seven and a half dollars. I send away. It comes in
the mail, two weeks later in a plain brown wrapper, y'know. I
unscrew it, I put in the teargas cartridges (pop), I clip it in
my breast pocket, y'know (click), I go out, a long time ago this
was, some friends of mine had a surprise autopsy, and I'm invited
for the evening, y'know.
I'm coming home by myself, two o'clock in the morning, and it's
pitch black and I'm all alone, and standing in my lobby is...a
neanderthal man, with the eyebrow ridges, y'know, and the hairy
knuckles like this, y'know. He had just learned to walk erect
that morning, I think. Came right to my house in search of the
secret of fire, y'know. A tree-swinger in the lobby at two o'clock
in the morning. A mouth breather looking at me, like (breathes
heavily), y'know. I took my watch out and I dangled it in front
of him, y'know, 'cause they're mullified by shiny objects sometimes.
He ate it. I tried to impress him and I backed off and I pulled
out my teargas pen, and I pressed the trigger, and some ink trickled
down my shirt. I made a mental note to call Esquire and tell them
'cause, I'm standing in the lobby, two o'clock in the morning,
y'know, with a product of a broken home, y'know. I had a fountain
pen in my hand, I tried writing on him with it, y'know. He came
for me, and he started to tapdance on my windpipe, so very quickly,
I lapsed into the old Navajo Indian trick of screaming and begging.
I get into an amazing amount of, ah, physical encounters for someone
my size. About thirteen weeks ago, I had my shoes shined against
my will. Tremendous shoeshine boy, said to me "I'm shining
your shoes". "Yes you are" I said. He did give
me an execellent shine though, I might add, but they were suede
shoes.
Down South
I was down south once, and I was invited to a costume party,
and I rarely go to them, I went to one when I was younger. I went
in my underwear shorts, and I have varicose veins. I went as a
roadmap. And I figure, what the hell, it's Halloween, I'll go
as a ghost. I take a sheet off the bed and I throw it over my
head, and I go to the party. And you have to get the picture,
I'm walking down the street in a deep southern town, I have a
white sheet over my head. And a car pulls up and three guys with
white sheets say "Get in". So I figure there's guys
going to the party, as ghosts, and I get into the car, and I see
were not going to the party, and I tell them. They say "Well,
we have to go pick up the Grand Dragon". All of a sudden
it hits me, down south, white sheets, the Grand Dragon, I put
two and two together. I figure there's a guy going to the party
dressed as a dragon.
All of a sudden a big guy enters the car, and I'm sitting there
between four clansmen, four big-armed men, and the door's locked,
and I'm petrified, I'm trying to pass desperately, y'know, I'm
saying "Y'all" and "Grits", y'know, I must
have said "grits" fifty times, y'know. They ask me a
question, and I say "Oh, grits, grits". And next to
me is the leader of the cla... you can tell he is the leader,
'cause he's the one wearing contour sheets, y'know. And they drive
me to an empty field, and I gave myself away, 'cause they asked
for donations, and everybody there gave cash. When it came to
me, I said "I pledge fifty dollars". They knew immediately.
They took my hood off and threw a rope around my neck, and they
decided to hang me.
And suddenly my whole life passed before my eyes. I saw myself
as a kid again, in Kansas, going to school, swimming at the swimming
hole, and fishing, frying up a mess-o-catfish, going down to the
general store, getting a piece of gingham for Emmy-Lou. And I
realise it's not my life. They're gonna hang me in two minutes,
the wrong life is passing before my eyes. And I spoke to them,
and I was really eloquent, I said "Fellas, this country can't
survive, unless we love one another regardless of race, creed
or colour". And they were so moved by my words, not only
did they cut me down and let me go, but that night, I sold them
two thousand dollars worth of Israel Bonds.
Summing Up
In summing up, I wish I had some kind of affirmative message
to leave you with, I don't. Would you take two negative messages?
My mother used to say to me when I was younger, "If a strange
man comes up to you, and offers you candy, and wants you to get
into the back of his car with him...go".
Good night.
Żródło: http://www.ibras.dk/comedy/allen.htm
