Berkeley Grad, '70, Meets Comedy Icons

(Note: This serendipitous event was early in March, 2008, pre-blog. So I add it here now.)

Sometimes you get a second chance. And tonight I was lucky. I got a chance to see two of my political comedy heroes together. Dick Gregory, 75, and Mort Sahl, now 80 years old (and 2 weeks after a stroke had left him blind in one eye), performed a long "Hungry i" type set in my home town. Last summer, Mort Sahl was booked into the same little theater and I dithered around and missed the show. After I saw the marquee advertizing tonight's show--and even though the man on the phone said they were sold out--I trekked down to the box office in the hope of a spare ticket. There was one--and I got my second chance.

In these times of political darkness (just before the dawn, one hopes) seeing these two old men, near the end of their lives, on stage, living links to the late 1950s, the Kennedy years, the Civil Rights Movement, The Great Society, The Viet Nam War--and earlier Presidential races (Gregory was a candidate more than once)--had the audience, at first, in almost a trance of disbelief. Can these two men still be here? Can they still be sharp? Can they still care what's happened to America and the world in the last decade or so? Yes; yes; and yes.

Dick Gregory, who began tonight by handing out fruit to the audience--reminding me of the serious fasts he endured earlier in his life--mused over and over at "the changes, the changes. . ." Sahl wondered who would save America, while lamenting that none of the current presidential candidates had anything even resembling a sense of humor. They sat together on stage at the end of the evening, these old men, embodying much of the last 50 years of progressive political commentary, comedy, and dissent.

Under the freshly-opened plum blossoms on the sidewalk trees, I walked home, still laughing and still with tears in my eyes. Sometimes you do get a second chance.