The greatest gift I’ve ever been given was by my friend Maggie (Michal), who asked Gilbert Gottfried to record a Cameo video after I’d gotten into a bad car accident (Armenian on Armenian crime).
It was exactly what I needed, and I treasure it to this day.
The day after she ordered the Cameo, my dear friend saw Gilbert in Studio City (he was a known pedestrian and cheapskate) and almost accidentally ran him over near the crosswalk.
It would’ve made for one hell of a story arc, and I’d laugh over it visiting my friend in jail after her white sedan leveled a diminutive but loud American icon.
Thankfully Gilbert lived, and produced volumes more episodes of his podcast, a love letter to the golden era of Hollywood, so we have one hell of an archive of the little bastard.
Which is damn near what Shecky Greene called Gilbert after a notorious, legendary Friar’s Club joke that caused Shecky, a near-ancient Borscht belt comic and purveyor of similarly blue humor, to throw down his napkin and storm out of the room.
Like a true professional, Gilbert refused to repeat the joke, adding to the aura of what exactly he could’ve said that made even a comic blanche.
It was a celebrity feud for the books, Jew on Jew crime, Crawford and Davis style, culminating in a particularly heated podcast episode between ”the little Jew” and the formerly-relevant one.
Shecky problably thinks he got the last laugh by living, if he can still even remember who Gilbert is.
By all accounts, Gilbert was one hell of a guy. It seems like he would be one of those people who would hang around forever, like the welcome version of a stale fart.
Then again, comics always seem that way.
