Jerry Seinfeld - caricature

I honestly didn’t know what to expect when Jerry Seinfeld took the stage at the UT Tyler Cowan Center last week.

There’s never a guarantee that the big-name act you’re going to see will be anything like the recordings or footage you’ve seen online or perhaps on a DVD, especially when they come to a place like Tyler. So even though I’ve been a huge fan of Seinfeld’s work since I first got hooked on his sitcom as a teenager and have long had large portions of his stand up committed to memory, the looming question was whether or not I’d get a show that lived up to my lofty expectations.

I was a fool for ever harboring a doubt.

In short, his lengthy set was everything I could have ever hoped for or wanted out of seeing the man perform a live set of stand-up comedy. There was, simply, no difference between the level of energy, involvement and physicality than you would find from the man when performing at any big-name venue. Again, I feel silly for ever thinking otherwise because the man is (and always has been) a consummate professional, but still.

My point is that the evening only further emphasized why I love the man’s comedy so much and why I became so attached to it in the first place. Conversational, yet razor sharp, Seinfeld may not have been the originator of observational humor but he is one of its masters.

The real trick to observational humor is to pull off a balance of pointing out the hilarity of mundane things while also managing to point out how silly the audience is for being able to identify. Go too far and you outright insult the audience (although, some comics have found success in doing this). Go too light and the joke doesn’t make much of an impact.

Seinfeld proved he does this better than almost anyone as he opened up his set with a bit that I’m sure hit home to more than a few audience members, taking aim at the fickle and indecisive nature of married couples and people living in a small(er) town like Tyler. “Should we go? We gotta go. Who’s gonna get the tickets? Should we go eat first? We gotta go eat, but we gotta eat early in case the service is bad we don’t wanna be late.”

Like I said, pointed (but not too pointed) and yet general enough to be universally funny, and delivered with the sort of confidence that only a seasoned pro like Seinfeld can do. His set consisted of new material (or if he did bring up older bits, it was stuff I had never heard before) yet there was no mistaking it as “his.” All the best comedians’ material is like this, I suppose (i.e. familiarity), but there’s a cadence and rhythm to Seinfeld’s delivery that makes it feel uniquely his. For instance, I once performed some of his material in a college talent show but I discovered in practicing that it just didn’t land unless I copied his delivery style.

And while I enjoyed every minute of his set, it’s been difficult remembering specific bits as his transition from topic to topic was so smooth and seamless. One of the real standouts, though, was his depiction of the way people will act as though it’s their last call before dying as their cell phone runs out of juice and our absurd attachment to phones in general.

His other standout was a remarkably apt diatribe about coffee and people’s obsession with it and addiction to it, the way a cup of coffee makes even pedestrians feel entitled and the, uh, rather forceful way coffee seems to hijack your internal organs’ functions. It was probably the most tasteful and clever bodily function joke I’ve ever heard.

Speaking of clean delivery, that might be one of the things that has perpetually impressed me most about Seinfeld’s act. It feels more and more rare to see a big-name comedian who can go a whole act without cursing up a storm or spending half their set making off-color or sexual jokes, and yet that commitment to being a fairly clean comedian has always been one of Seinfeld’s defining characteristics. Sure, he’ll make a sex joke here and there, but nothing really crass. He’ll toss out some profanity on occasion, but it’s certainly not prevalent and never anything more than you’d hear in a PG-13 movie, all of which was upheld at his Tyler performance.

I really couldn’t have asked for a better night than the one Seinfeld delivered. There is no one more responsible for shaping my sense of humor than him and finally having the opportunity to see him live was honestly something of a dream come true. This was one for the books, for me.