By Brooks Rice

Jerry Seinfeld gave two shows at the Louisville Palace on the night of September 6 as part of his national stand-up tour. Both shows were sold out. As everyone knows, Seinfeld was a star of a television series named after him, and loosely based on his life as a comic in New York, that ran for 9 years (1990-1998). The sitcom was largely based on his comedy routine that focused on everyday observations with his unique brand of Jewish New York humor. One of Seinfeld’s cohorts and fellow comedian, Larry David, inspiration for the “George Constanza” character, wrote the bulk of the series with him. Other characters included oddball neighbor Kramer and ex-girlfriend Elaine Benes. The show is currently a hit on the syndication market.

After one of the most successful television programs of all-time and a bestselling book (Seinlanguage), Seinfeld ended his program to return to his initial profession: stand-up comedy. He “retired” his old material, as featured in his HBO special and CD “I’m Telling You For The Last Time”.

Seinfeld has embarked on a nation-wide tour that includes completely new material. Since we last saw him on television, he got married, had a child and moved back to New York from Los Angeles. These latest changes were a large part of his new material. He addressed weddings as being “boring parties with old people”. He spoke of the harshness newly married couples leave upon their weddings guests as they leave for their honeymoon, “See you. We’re going to the Bahamas to have sex. Have fun with our relatives.” He also seemed overjoyed to return to his native New York from the synthetic persona of Los Angeles, namely by blasting most women in southern California for having fake breasts.

After getting past the stand-up clichŽ of relationships, Seinfeld moved to his trademark observational humor. He spoke of breakfast cereal, one of his favorite subjects (“Is Life cereal really deserving of the name ÔLife’?”). He talked of the latest trends in modern culture. Of tattoos, he said, “It worries me that in society today people have become so bored in life that they resort to drawing on themselves”. He made fun of the addiction the country seems to have for coffee: “People will stop at a coffee shop to get coffee while on the way to Starbuck’s to get coffee”. He also joked about SUV’s, reality television and VH1’s series Behind The Music.

For his encore, Seinfeld, as usual, took questions from the audience. He denied rumors of returning to television. He said there are no plans to release his series to DVD (“It’s doing well in syndication. We want you to watch the commercials”). And he finished with one of his ill-tempered “Hello, Newman”s, reminiscent of his greeting for the annoying and obese Newman character from his television program.

The audience seemed to enjoy Seinfeld, laughing at every single joke, something many comics have a hard time achieving. Then again, Jerry Seinfeld did kind of get a head start through his prior success. Despite his “gone Hollywood”, he still seems to have attained his tenacity for intelligent humor.