Creator / Richard Jeni

"My mother never saw the irony of calling me a son of a bitch."

Richard Jeni (born Richard John Colangelo, April 14, 1957 — March 10, 2007) was an American stand-up comedian. He had three HBO specials (Platypus Man, A Good Catholic Boy, and A Big Steaming Pile of Me), two Showtime specials (Boy from New York City and Crazy from the Heat), a short-lived Platypus Man sitcom on UPN, and more appearances on The Tonight Show than any other comedian other than its hosts. He appeared in The Mask as Charlie Schumaker.

He died on March 10, 2007 from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

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Tropes

• Ambulance Chaser: The late-night TV lawyer with the big stack of legal books behind his head, Bernard Shapiro of the law firm of Dewey, Beatum, and Runn.
• Audience Participation Song: He got the audience to hum the National Geographic theme throughout Platypus Man.
• Boring Religious Service: He frequently made comedy routines about being bored at the Catholic services when he was a child, including the joke that Mass was actually short for "massive head trauma" from all the times his mother smacked him while trying to get him to behave or sit still while he goofed off during the sermon. In one bit, Richard concludes with leaving only to find God standing outside, as God Himself was so bored by the service, He ran out of patience and had to get away from it.
  God: I couldn't take one more minute of that stuff. I didn't know what eternity was until I walked into that joint!
• Bread, Eggs, Breaded Eggs: In Good Catholic Boy, Richard says that men like movies with aliens, big explosions, breasts, and aliens with big exploding breasts.
• Brooklyn Rage: He suggested that the way to avoid a Boring Religious Service was to have a guy from his old neighborhood in Brooklyn give the sermon because "we'd all be out of there in five minutes" due to the guy giving a very foul-mouthed, very abridged version of the Bible.
• Brutal Honesty:
  • He believed that somebody from his old neighborhood ought to have a late-night weight loss commercial with this angle: The Joey Falco Diet Plan, "Stop Eatin', You Fat Bastard!" The entire diet would consist of covering your mouth with Scotch tape so you can't eat.
    Call now and I'll throw in my other tape: "Stop Smokin', You Stupid Bastard!"
  • In A Big Steaming Pile of Me, Richard goes on a date with his girlfriend, only for the waitress at the restaurant to have big boobs, causing his girlfriend to get mad at him and complain that he's not "acting like a man" when he refuses to look. Richard promptly gives the girlfriend a honest but harsh "The Reason You Suck" Speech about how it's completely unfair for her to be mad at him, because the waitress having big boobs isn't his fault.
    I didn't order them! They came with the meal!
• Call-Back: Called back the hair-in-a-can spray at the end of the Bernard Shapiro bit.
• Dope Slap: "Mass," according to him, is short for "massive head trauma" because his mom would hit him every five minutes for trying to amuse himself in church.
• Fartillery: One set recounts the night he discovered that women can also fart in bed. He describes his girlfriend's ass-blast as though it were some kind of horrific natural disaster.
• The Glasses Come Off: He wanted to wear glasses just so he could do this at dramatic moments, and noted that you can't pull it off if you wear contact lenses instead.
• Hypocrisy Nod: He found both left-wing and right-wing people to be hypocrites of various kinds, then decided he'd come a centrist "so [he] can bitch no matter who wins."
• Idiot Plot: He had a whole routine regarding him watching Jaws: The Revenge and finding it insultingly stupid ('You know what the title should have been? Here's a Fish, You're a Moron.'). invoked
• I'm a Humanitarian: Extrapolating from improbable mishaps an airplane captain mentions during the pre-flight check:
  "In the unlikely event you survive impact and need to eat your fellow passengers for sustenance, may I suggest the fat guy in 17-J with a nice Chardonnay?"
• Infomercial:
  • Being a stand-up comic, he watched a lot of them and made fun of them in his sets.
  • Mocking the concept of hair-in-a-can:
    "'It's amazing, it's unbelievable!' And you're in front of the TV going, 'It's... paint, if I'm not mistaken.'"
• Insane Troll Logic: He takes the idea of a syllogism (if the first two parts are true, the last part has to be true) and uses it to "prove" that Ray Charles is God, and that all women are actually aliens. The logic is that if men are going bald and they're from planet Earth, and women aren't losing any hair, then women have come from another planet. And when posing the hypothetical question of how women can talk about this without men knowing, it's because they meet in the Wondrous Ladies Room where men aren't allowed in.
• The Law Firm of Pun, Pun, and Wordplay: Bernard Shapiro works for Dewey, Beatum, and Runn, according to his infomercial.
• Long List: He rattled off a list of illnesses and maladies that one of a cheap TV lawyer's clients suffered: heart disease, malaria, pneumonia, omonia, ammonia, the rocking pneumonia, diarrhea, pyorrhea, gonorrhea, Rita Perlman, leprosy, pleurisy, jealousy, Athlete's foot fungus with the tough-actin' Tinactin, gangrene, pink eye, blue balls, penis envy, Moby-Dick, five o'clock shadow, noon whistles, morning sickness, yellow fever, red buttons, mad cow disease, PMS, TMJ, HBO, Nick-at-Nite, the Discovery Channel, and occasional lower back pain.
• Morton's Fork: In A Big Steaming Pile of Me, Richard says that if a woman you're romantically involved with asks you if you like the boobs on a waitress, there are 28 million possible answers to that question, and all of them are incorrect. If you say "no", you'll be accused of lying by your ladyfriend, and she'll get mad at you. If you say "yes", she'll think you want to cheat on her, and she'll get mad at you.
• Non Sequitur, *Thud*: "My wife and I were having an argument about dinner forks. She says they go on the left, I say they go on the right. So here's my question: do you think the Rams have a shot at the Super Bowl?"
• No Periods, Period: Averted with his "PMS and Red Wine" bit from A Big Steaming Pile of Me, where his girlfriend is on her period when they go on a date. Richard is told to "act like a man", so he does by giving her a "The Reason You Suck" Speech about how she's starting arguments for no reason and that the waitress at their restaurant having big boobs isn't his fault. His girlfriend naturally gets angry at this response, forcing Richard to give a groveling apology to get back in her good graces.
• Rambling Old Man Monologue: The viewer mail segment from the "Bill the Belching Gourmet" bit from Platypus Man consists of a single letter written in more or less this fashion. The letter writer starts by arguing about salad fork placement, has a sudden transition into asking if the Steelers will win the Super Bowl, then wonders what "I Can't Believe It's Not Butter!" is if it isn't butter.
• Sad Clown: Once opened up a show by telling the audience that comedy was a wall he uses to protect himself from the outside world.
• Take a Third Option: Played for laughs. In A Big Steaming Pile of Me, he called Republicans "a bunch of money-grubbing, greenhouse-gassing, seal-clubbing, oil-drilling, Bible-thumping, missile-firing, right-to-lifing, lethal-injecting hypocrites". He turned around and called Democrats "a bunch of bong-smoking, America-bashing, flag-burning, yoga-posing, incense-burning, dolphin-saving, salmon-eating hypocrites". So he figured that the solution is to be a centrist... who are "a bunch of flip-flopping, fence-sitting, half-in, half-out, half-assed, non-voting-so-they-can-bitch-no-matter-who-wins" hypocrites.
• Talk to the Fist: He explained the wonderful, theatrical ways in which New Yorkers lead up to a fist fight, with elaborate insults, accusations, and posture-striking. These cultural assumptions came back to bite him, though, the first time he picked a fight in the South: "this guy punched me in the face, I fell down, I was bleeding. That was a signal that the fighting had commenced."
• Wondrous Ladies Room: By his Insane Troll Logic, women have come from some other planet because men go bald and women don't. Following this "logic," the only place women can meet safely is the women's public restroom since no man can go two steps in there without being eviscerated.

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