rubinville

I haven't written or even talked about this in about a year but for some reason it has been on my mind lately.

The Tom Hanks Thing.

Long story very short, Tom Hanks used a bunch of my jokes on the Tonight Show when he was promoting "Castaway" a couple years ago. It really brings up all these weird feelings for me to even think about it, but basically he did this bit, while sitting and talking to Leno (in the biz, its known as "panel"), about all these 80's toys, culminating in a bit about the Transformers.

If you ask most comics, bits are liften/stolen/raped all the time. However, when you see perhaps the most famous actor in the world doing your bit on the Tonight Show, versus an unknown hack doing your bit at 1:35 a.m. in a comedy club, there is a subtle difference.

My feelings about the whole thing were corraborated by a bunch of comics, who knew I was the only comic at the time doing such silly stuff as all those 80's toys. The story got a little blurb in Page Six of the New York Post, and Inside Edition came down to the Comedy Cellar to interview me about the story. I didn't know what the hell to do, and I really didn't want to be known as the comedian that attacked Tom Hanks, so I really let the whole thing drop.

After that is when I began my couple year adventure into telling no jokes while on stage. My new motto became "Just be funny". They could always steal my jokes, but they couldn't steal my funny.

I think I'm ready to talk about the whole fiasco on stage, and the aftermath of it, if I can figure out how to make it funny. Interesting, writing some jokes about why I can't really tell jokes. Lemme get on that.