Drinking makes me laugh. Not my drinking, others. My drinking makes me glower.
I know, I know, horrible problems come up from excessive drinking, and many have to fight it their whole lives. I have spoken at more 12-step groups than anyone you’ve ever met (or anyone in the program), because people over the years see me perform “The Five Levels of Drinking,” or read it in my book, and ask me to do it. This May I’m doing the Midnight Mission benefit for the third or fourth time, because Ed Begley, a guy I just love, calls me every year, and I say sure. The room is filled with hundreds of show business people who’ve changed their lives and are on the wagon successfully, and the first thing I say on the show is always something about me being the only one in the room who’s going home later that night to pour a big, stiff drink.
I guess I mean comedy about drinking (when it’s good) when I say it makes me laugh. Drinking as a topic makes me laugh. I like writing about it, and performing about it.(The only sin to me in raising controversial topics in comedy is whether or not they’re funny.)
The reason I’m bringing all this up is that I heard Boris Yeltsin died today. As you know (or should) he ran Russian for a while (about eight years, actually, right?) after it stopped being the Soviet Union, or the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and became their current handle, The Commonwealth of Independent States.
Actually, that last one is a head shaker, because the definition of the word “commonwealth” is “a group of independent states”. So The Commonwealth of Independent States is, really, The Group of Independent States… of Independent States.
Another victory for politicians the world over. Wonder what their license plate slogan is.
So the thing about Boris Yeltsin is, with all the disclaimers mentioned above…
Wasn’t he always loaded? That’s the first thing I thought when I heard. I mean, I never knew the man, but wasn’t he always supposed to be, well, just gassed? I don’t mean a little lit up, I mean…
Oh, you know what I mean. Ossified. Gone. Three sheets to the wind. Walloped. Shattered. Reeling. Not a tea totaller.
Cultures are different, and that’s all fine, but pretty much everyone in the world knew that he was a juicer. The riders in his contract probably didn’t have anything about M & M’s. On the other hand, I’ll bet there was a line or two about brands of vodka.
And the thing I’m coming around to with all this is, he was 78. He died at 78.
I think that’s pretty good. To drink like that — and he wasn’t running marathons, either — and make it to 78 is pretty good. Great, really. In fact, unbelievable. Those are seventy-eight Gleason years.
That’s what I call them: Gleason years. Jackie Gleason, God bless him, died at 73, but, come on, he drank like Yeltsin, smoked five packs a day since he was eight, had every woman he ever met, and, as Bob Euker might have said, carried around juuussssttt a little extra weight. Not that old, 73, but, again, those were 73 Gleason years. In a way, that’s like dog years. He was probably really four hundred and ninety.
Was Yeltsin a good leader? Ah, who knows with any of these guys. The one they have now looks like he could strangle you with one hand while doing a crossword puzzle with the other. While getting a foot rub. While having a nurse take his blood pressure. “A hundred twenty over eighty again, President Putin, perfectly normal. I don’t know how you do it, sir. Calm as a cup of tea every time I see you. All righty, I’ll let you get back to strangling that guy. He’s flopping around like a fish.”
Sometimes I think all these guys should drink more, and dance across the stage before their speeches like Yeltsin.
Nostrovya.
LARRY MILLER Monday, 4/23
