1986. Robin Williams' A Night at the Met. My dad had taped it off HBO, and it did not take long for me to have every word committed to memory, every expression, every gesture and gesticulation down pat. A Night at the Met was iconic to my childhood. There was Eddie Murphy back then, too. You couldn't grow up in the 1980s and not know Delirious. But Eddie Murphy was an 'other', came across, to me at least, like an emissary from another world. Maybe because he was black, I don't know...maybe my enthusiasm was quelled by a buddy who quickly commandeered that album, got really good at throwing down impromptu performances of 'Ralph and Ed' or 'Elvis Lemonade' at the drop of a hat, making it his shtick and leaving me only the malnourished hope of impersonating the impersonator. The sloppy thirds of comedy. No thanks.
Or maybe it was the difference in the humor itself. Eddie Murphy was funny, but leaned in a different direction, toward the puerile. Robin Williams was smart, at times trenchant, and yet never at the expense of being funny. A Night at the Met was the first comedy routine I could wrap my head around, first one where I felt confident that I got all the jokes, knew what he was talking about, and more to the point, a little bit how he talked about it. I had a sense that Williams' worried about stuff and used humor to mask it, and I could relate to that. It was my passport to the much-talked about larger world most people first step into around the age of 13 or 14. There would be others in the comedy realm, each seemingly assigned to just the right time in my life to be appreciated fully - Sam Kinison, George Carlin, Chris Rock, more recently Louis CK, and over time Williams obviously revealed himself to be a performer of extraordinary range and talent, that is, much more than just a comedian - but for years after, I would quote the material from ...Met - my timing and delivery still (clumsily) honed from countless nights performing right alongside Robin in the living room while my parents were at work or out shopping - to garner favor with friends, to impress girls. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it backfired. One time when I was nineteen I thought I was killing it with a girl at a party until I made the mistake of doing an impression of Stallone doing Hamlet - 'To be, or what...?'
The smile actually drained from her face a little, as she muttered, 'Thank you, Robin...'
Embarrassing, but she was totally right. Thank you, Robin. I am shocked, and also very heartbroken.
