Sobriety Doesn’t Dull Robin Williams During ‘A Night at the Met’
‘100 Funniest Comedy Albums’ Book Excerpt
A Night at the Met was Robin Williams’ third official album and came as his career transitioned to film work. Recorded live at New York’s Metropolitan Opera House, Live at the Met won the 1988 Grammy Award for Best Comedy Performance.
Williams rockets through a variety of topics. The comedian, newly sober, talks about being drunk and says, “I realized when I became a reformed alcoholic: Hey, I’m the same asshole, I just have fewer dents in my car!”
Williams defines ballet as “Men wearing pants so tight you can tell what religion they are.” He also discusses in rapid-fire fashion relationships, sex, gun control, drugs, and the police.
The Colombian Dancing Dust. We’re talking about cocaine. What a wonderful drug. Anything that makes you paranoid and impotent, give me more of that.
Isn’t it nice that you can do a drug that makes you talk to people and talk about silly things that you’d never even say in daylight. What a great drug.
And there’s a wonderful thing called freebasing. It’s not free, it costs you your house, it should be called homebasing.
Here are some little telltale signs if you have a cocaine problem. First of all, you come home to your house, you have no furniture, and your cat’s going “I’m outta here, prick.” Warning.
You gotta be careful, baby, because they can nail you anytime, anywhere. You get stopped in LA, LA police are more intense. Basically, they’ve had 15 cups of coffee, 15 doughnuts. “Stop or I’ll shoot!”
You get stopped in West Hollywood, “Stop! Those shoes don’t go with those pants. Fashion police! Fashion police! Move it!”
But of course, the best police in all the world, you know what I’m talkin’ about, below that little Manson-Nixon line, you get down there, boy, you got yourself some good old boys. The ones that wear the mirrored sunglasses with the mirror on the inside.
You get stopped down there, they pull you over and go “BMW. Are you Jewish?”
You think, Oh God, I’m gonna get nailed now. They usually come up to you and go “We got a dog over here smells drugs.” Bullshit. They got a dog so old it hasn’t even smelled his own asshole in 15 years.
In the book Seriously Funny: The Rebel Comedians of the 1950s and 1960s, Williams described the life of stand-up comedians.
“It’s a brutal field, man. They burn out. It takes its toll. Plus, the lifestyle — partying, drinking, drugs. If you’re on the road, it’s even more brutal. You gotta come back down to mellow your ass out, and then performing takes you back up.
“They flame out because it comes and goes. Suddenly, they’re hot, and then somebody else is hot. Sometimes, they get very bitter. Sometimes, they just give up. Sometimes they have a revival thing, and they come back again. Sometimes, they snap. The pressure kicks in. You become obsessed, and then you lose that focus that you need.”
Williams, 63, took his own life in 2014.
Frank Mastropolo is the author of 100 Funniest Comedy Albums, part of the Greatest Performances series. For more on our latest projects, visit Edgar Street Books.
