I Remember Me by Reiner Carl

Author:Reiner, Carl [Reiner, Carl]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9781477264553
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Published: 2012-11-20T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Albert Brooks Channeled Harry Houdini

I purchased and read Albert Brooks’s first novel, 2030, The Real Story of What Happens to America and agree with the critics who lauded it. I, among millions of others, know of Albert Brooks’s many extraordinary talents, but thanks to my son, Rob, who was Albert’s friend and teenaged schoolmate, I was privileged to be present when he exhibited a talent we had no idea he possessed.

Since then, I have seen Albert Brooks perform on many television shows, including Johnny Carson’s. Many years ago, on the week I filled in for Johnny as the show’s host, Albert was booked as one of my guests. He arrived that night dressed as a white-faced, Marcel Marceau-type street mime, but instead of doing what mimes do, walking against the wind or attempting to escape from a glass box, this white-faced clown proceeded to behave like a nightclub comic and rattled off a string of mildly funny one-liners. The studio audience did not quite get what he was doing, but the band did. We all laughed hard and long enough for the audience to figure out what Albert was doing and joined the party.

When he was just sixteen, the talent he displayed in our living room and the reaction he provoked was of such a nature that I not only remember it to this day but say without equivocation that in my life, there are but a handful of times that I ever laughed as hard. I say that knowing you are aware I have spent many an hour with the other hilariously funny Brooks—the great Mel.

To set the scene: in our living room full of friends, Robbie announced that his buddy, Albert, was going to demonstrate his art as a Harry Houdini-like escape artist.

Albert then requested that I take my handkerchief and fold it so it formed a triangle and then fold it twice more and use it to tie his wrists together. I did so and placed the folded hanky over his wrists, but before I could start making a knot, Albert said, “That’s perfect! Now that my wrists are securely tied, would you stuff a Kleenex into each one of my nostrils!”

With the hanky draped loosely over his wrists, I placed tissues in Albert’s nostrils. Immediately his breathing became labored, and through his tightly clenched teeth, he mumbled almost incoherently, “You see I can’t breathe, and my wrists are securely tied. I am going behind the drapes and free myself in five seconds.”

It sounded like: “Ysee, cnna bre—n m’rits r’scooly ty. ‘m gona git hine de drays n freem fsecns.”

And with that, Albert ducked behind the drapes, and for a good five minutes, not seconds, he moaned and gasped for air, all the while thrashing about violently behind the drapes. The more he moaned and sounded like a man suffocating, the more Estelle and all of our guests roared. I started to lose it when I heard him begging between the gasps and groans that people not help him.

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