Boondall Entertainment Centre Brisbane
Iâm still quite the ingenue when it comes to reviewing and when it comes to Jerry Seinfeld Iâm a confirmed fan for life, so hereâs what I have to say bout his performance in the Brisbane Arena, Boondall on Wednesday July 9th:
It was the best thing Iâve ever seen.
Quite a complex review, isnât it? Well Iâm sorry if I donât have 300 paragraphs of yada yada for yâall, but Jerry was on from the moment he walked onstage, and I daresay he stayed good and on long after he walked off it. Hell, canât you just imagine him in a coffin one day, arms folded, looking around and going: âWhatâs the deal with the air flow in these things?â because he was born to do what he does and Iâve no doubt that heâll die doing it and linger on afterwards as a sarcastic presence in the air.
I consider myself to be quite the collector of comedians. Iâve been watching them on DVD and live for years and Iâm no stranger when it comes to the muffled-splat of jokes falling flat- the empathetic âYou can do itâ titters that come from the most easily-amused fans in expectant crowds after a comedian has swung and missed. (Often, itâs me) Iâve even seen this happen to Jerry a few times over the years (âMove the shoes, move the shoes, move the shoesâŠâ Yes please move the shoes to a segue and faster) and itâs something that you just expect to see at any comedy show. I still fast forward certain bits of Eddie Murphy Raw and Delerious because I have no idea what heâs talking about and donât care to look into it.
But not at Jerry Seinfeld nope, he shot one-liners and multi-faceted paragraphs out like heâd swallowed a fully-loaded wit clip and used every laugh as  the bolt that he slid back for the next. I was sitting between an elderly gentleman and a guy ten years younger than me and they laughed at everything as much as I did, and the laughs were so big that we ended up swaying back and forth and over one another in our squishy seats with no personal space bubble necerssary because we were all in this together.
He is just so good at this. The comedian that came out before him was amazing and I think a lot better than anyone expected. We were still laughing at his jokes when Jerry waltzed out but from the moment the veteran opened his mouth, you could see why we all paid the steep price to get that ticket and then be squished in together- Jerry Seinfeld is the best stand-up comedian in the world and I donât think heâll ever be surpassed. He could go on tour at 90, and there will be tens of thousand of people waiting to see him just as there are right now to hear what he has to say about adult diapers.
Sure I guess there were a few things that didnât resonate quite as well with the Aussie crowd as it would have with a bunch of Americans, but anyone who can call themselves a fan of Seinfeld would have shown up knowing to expect that because as far as generation X is concerned- he was our go-to educator for American culture for a very long time. We know that sometimes US comedians are going to talk about shit that we donât quite get, but the beautiful thing with Jerry is that once itâs out there, itâs everybodyâs joke now and thatâs exactly what happened the other night. The crowd showed up wanting to laugh and so they did- uproariously for an hour and ten minutes straight.
In fact if there was any issue with his act, it was the fact that he was too funny- too relevant and too damn slick. We all showed up with this excitement of finally seeing him again, of getting him to throw another scrap of amusement our way after waiting for so long, but once it was over and we were inching our way out (and I was wiping tears off from under my cheeks as I am right now) you could feel the reluctance to leave in the air. It was as long as any stand up act is, but devesatatingly short. There had been so many new wonderful jokes- but not nearly enough to hit the spot now that weâd remember what it was like to listen to him ramble on.
In fact, it sort of felt like having one cigarette after years of going cold turkey, and now Iâm craving something that I just cannot get enough of. When Seinfeld was wrapping up, it was easy to come to terms with it because by that point, heâd offered his commentary on basically every aspect of the modern world and new voices were popping up everywhere- voices that sounded fresher and more inventive and might just have something to say that he couldnât or didnât want to say.
But that was before the internet took over the world, before Netflix, before Instagram and before, well, everything that pertains to our daily lives now. Seinfeld was about a bunch of middle-aged singles living in a crazy city, but Jerryâs a married man and father now doing the adulting thing (like me) and Iâm desperate to know everything that he has to say on all of the above now that he has so much more material. I want him back on my screen, five times a week, saying the stuff that no one else has the balls to say or the intellect to articulate. I want to see whole episodes about political correctness, Trump, North Korea and text messaging. I want to know what he think about  putting kids through school, keeping a marriage interesting after an extended period of time, Tinder and equal rights for gays.
Jerry Seinfeld offered up a lot of insight into how his mind works nowadays, but his mind works so beautifully and quickly (and still without cussing) that I donât think thereâs ever going to be enough that he can say or do that will make people okay with the fact that he doesnât feel like doing it as much anymore, and so as he disappeared behind that curtain, I began to weep just like I did when Time Of Your Life rolled on the Seinfeld Chronicles.
Strange how a show about nothing can be everything.
The Time Of My Life âJerry Seinfeldâ Live Review Jerry Seinfeld Boondall Entertainment Centre Brisbane August 9th 2017 â
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I'm still quite the ingenue when it comes to reviewing and when it comes to Jerry Seinfeld I'm a confirmed fan for life, so here's what I have to say bout his performance in the Brisbane Arena, Boondall on Wednesday July 9th: