Jerry Seinfeld never looked back once he first stepped onstage to try his hand at stand-up. Before then, Seinfeld, who returns to Las Vegas for the first time since 2019, was more likely to say something funny sotto voce to make a fellow high school student laugh out loud during class than play the clown. Once he felt the rush of telling a joke that works and getting unanimous approval from an audience, he was hooked. Comedy became his preoccupation, and then his occupation.
Seinfeld still lives for comedy, hits clubs regularly and hangs out with comedians. He’s passionate about automobiles and is a dedicated family man, but his respect and regard for his peers—comedians who made the effort and became successful—comes through in interviews and his work. His latest offstage effort, The Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee Book, is dedicated to the web series now housed on Netflix, in which from 2012 to 2019 Seinfeld did indeed match a collectible car with prominent performers in comedy.
It was his second hit series ostensibly about nothing but always supplying something memorable or insightful. When Seinfeld picked up Jimmy Fallon in an aqua-colored Corvette Stingray, the Tonight Show host brought up how he always gravitates to other comedians at parties. Seinfeld practices that habit and has elaborated on how comedians relate to each other, bonding over their similar states of mind that are always receptive to finding humor in everyday life occurrences as well as ideas that can be the genesis of new material.
The Jerry Seinfeld of today is no less the insightful observer of the human condition, with its Pop-Tarts and cereals and smart phones and oppression of left-handed people such as himself, but he seems more acerbic if his 2020 Netflix special 23 Hours to Kill is any indication. Seinfeld was in top form for the performance at New York’s Beacon Theatre. He’s a little more caustic than the Seinfeld-era Seinfeld without coming off as cantankerous.
Maybe that’s due to being married, which enabled him to add wife jokes to his repertoire. Maybe it’s a reaction to the current social climate that makes many of his peers more cautious about what they say onstage or online. Seinfeld was the first prominent comedian to criticize the chilling effect of post-millennium political correctness on comedy, although he has no fear of being booked on college campuses. Along with Chris Rock’s recent Selective Outrage, 23 Hours to Kill is a testament to the excellence that manifests when top talent takes a stand against forces that could limit their imaginations or make them think twice about telling a joke lest offence commence.
When Seinfeld isn’t onstage, he’s most comfortable behind a steering wheel. He frequently appears on the Spike’s Car Radio podcast alongside host and “The Soup Nazi” scriptwriter Spike Feresten. On a recent episode, Seinfeld, who has practiced Transcendental Meditation since 1972, described the kinetically soothing procedure for starting his 1969 Mercedes 220 diesel like it was a spiritual experience. Only stand-up takes him higher.
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