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_* I believe Take the Money and Run is also part of the Cooney oeuvre, but if I’m wrong, it would make a great title for his biography.

** This needs to be said: Bob once caught me staring at Roberta’s South Pacific picture.  “That’s right!” he said, clapping me on the back, “best legs on Broadway.”  He winked and continued down the hall, whistling.

*** This almost certainly marks the only time since the premiere of Funny Money that the role of Vicky has had to be cast four times ... before opening.  Interestingly, through all of this, neither of the husbands was recast.  What there is to be said about that depends on what you like to complain about.

**** The title to my autobiography.

***** This is why in stand-up, guitar acts are in fact cheating.  And they know it.  There is bedrock of comfort laid down by the 12-tone scale below which their audiences will never fall, a subterranean stream of awkwardness and pain which the guitar act will never have to navigate, a region of uncertainty, that inchoate ur-source of all man's fear, which their sets are designed to avoid 100 percent of the time.  This kind of dull consistency conforms exactly to the ideal business model of, among others, liquor retailers, which is why club owners and bookers love guitar acts.  Studies have shown a directly proportional relationship between sales of Freedom Rock and the popularity of guitar acts among bookers and owners.  If Ray Croc had decided to mass produce comedians instead of hamburgers, he'd have created the Guitar McAct.  The meal comes with a catch-phrase T-shirt and a self-produced CD.  Guitar acts suck by definition, and each of them knows in his heart, that in spite of having achieved the seemingly impossible feat of making comedy a stable and reliable career, he has renounced thrilling comedy, which must always risk failure, and transcendent comedy, which must pass through despair before triumphing over it.  I would rather walk a thousand rooms than be a rich and famous guitar act.  If only I could book a few ....

******    Which demonstrates that with dedication almost anything can be achieved, giving us an almost unlimited potential for achievement -- a potential which is usually misused:
          
           I can beat the final stage of Super Mario Bros with no special powers.        
           I can sniff out the smut district of any town within 30 minutes, on foot.
           I can recite every word of The Wall, Quadrophenia, and of course, drama fag that I am, Paradise by the Dashboard Light,                     Bohemian Rhapsody, and The Time Warp.



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