I don’t have time for this...

I am very bussssssyyyyyyy.  I am seconds away from the final edit of my memoir, Not Yet. Which means I am several weeks away from recording it. Which means I am a few days from packing up Florida. Which means I am a few days away from moving back to the Berkshires. This means I don’t have time to tell you what I need to tell you, except I think it is so important that I must ignore me and inform you of a very important discovery.

The other evening, after days filled with work and moving, I was looking for a television evening of distraction.  I mentioned this to daughter Lori and her husband Chris, who casually referred me to an HBO special of a standup comedian I had never heard of before, Alex Edelman. Recently, HBO filmed his Broadway one-man show, Just For Us. I sat down to watch something that I thought would lull me to a sleep I desperately needed, only to discover in the next hour and 15 minutes every cell of my being was engaged with every cell of Alex Edelman’s being. Sleep was a lost cause.  

If I can convince you to tune into Mr. Edelman, I can relax and find some snooze hours. So please give him a try.   I’m very tired. 

Alex is a Jew. Few would give me an argument that today is not the best time to be a Jew. As a matter of fact, over the last five thousand years, there’s really never been a good time to be a Jew.  In the course of the show, he weaves a slow and exquisite, what I would call a shaggy dog story involving his visit to an all-white racist meeting in Queens, New York, as an uninvited persona non grata Jew.  Every race, religion, color, and human is included in his morality tale. Our zits and warts, along with our absurd humanity, are exposed.  And here’s the clincher: as ridiculous and ignorant and judgmental and as failed as we all are, he shares moments, flashes, possibilities, and hopes of transcendence.  I, for one, laughed a lot and, when it was over, thought a lot about my place in the spectrum of life. The best of the comedians returned the favor of giving life and humor to the human condition.  

Charlie Chaplin, Lenny Bruce, Robin Williams, Richard Pryor, Wanda Sykes… go ahead… make up your own list, but as you do… I beseech thee… please try Alex Edelman. I really need my sleep. Thank you.

Love, Sally-Jane