Seinfeld Minor Characters

Editor's Note: We'll be back this afternoon (I hope) with an all-star blog. In the meantime, instead of an aside, you get a full Seinfeld minor character blog:

There are, best I can tell, a couple of things you can do to express that you are a BIG fan of someone. Well, there are more than a couple of things you could do – you could, I suppose, stalk that celebrity, or you could dress like them, or you could get plastic surgery so you looked like them or you could hang photographs of them all over your house, but I’m really referring here to people who are not insane.

(As an aside: I do not get the idea behind those gigantic Fathead stickers of sports celebrities that people put on their walls. Hey, I love sports more than most, but what’s the deal with that? Maybe if you’re a kid it would be cool to have a humongous David Wright on your wall over your bed. But really these things seem marketed – and priced – for adults, and while I’m no interior decorator, I do have to question the general tastes of a person that wants a gigantic Martin Brodeur stopping pucks on his wall at home).

Anyway, the two ways of expressing super fanhood are:

1. Go obscure. If you are a big fan of someone/something, you cannot just like their mainstream work. You have to go into their little known, minor work. Say you are a big fan of, I don’t know, the Police. Someone asks you to name your favorite Police song. What do you say?

A. “Oh man, I love so many Police songs, but probably “Every Little Thing She Does is Magic” is my favorite. I love “Message in a Bottle” too. And “Roxanne.” And so many. They were just so great.”
B. “I could never reduce my love of the Police to one song.”
C. “You wouldn’t know it – it was only available on an import.”
D. “Probably “Truth Hits Everybody” off the Outlando D’Amour record, I just love the way Stewart Copeland plays on that song, you know, it was really big in Australia, and that’s when the Police were real, man, before they hit it big, before they sold out, you know?”

The correct answer is: (E) “Probably ‘Truth Hits Everybody,’ but only on the bootleg from Milwaukee in 1980. They really played it well in Des Moines too in ’83 – I think that was the day Andy Summers broke up with his girlfriend, and he was so on.”

2. Insist that you discovered the act – you were on to them years before anyone else.

So, I can tell you now that I discovered Jerry Seinfeld – I was on to him years before anyone else. It’s true. Back in college – years before “Seinfeld” hit the airwaves – my friend Joe Habina and I would always acknowledge each other by saying, “It’s that guy! That’s same guy!” That comes from an early Seinfeld bit about his dog, and how his dog would always be so happy and surprised to see him. He would walk out of the room for one minute, come back, and the dog would have that stunned look, “Hey! It’s that guy! That same guy!” Well, it’s funnier in person.

Anyway, as a big Jerry Seinfeld fan, I was so excited to see his show when it hit the air, and at first I can distinctly remember feeling disappointed. First of all, those early shows weren’t very good. Seinfeld was one horrendous actor at first. I mean, he never became Olivier, but in those early shows he was so stiff and confused and he couldn’t stop laughing – he acted like someone PRETENDING to be a bad actor.

Of course the show found its speed, in large part because the four main characters were so good, but also because they had so many great minor characters. So for your beginning of the week bonus, here are the 10 best Seinfeld minor characters.

10. Susan Ross. George’s fiancée who died after licking poisonous wedding invitation envelopes. That was a very twisted turn for the show, wasn’t it? I mean I realize they had to get her off the show, but was that really necessary? Susan (Heidi Swedberg) wasn’t actually that good a character, but I thought she was cute. Apparently not everyone thought so. Once we were in a Mexican restaurant, and our waitress was a dead ringer for Susan – I mean, at first we thought it really was her. So I said something to her about it. Big mistake. She was SO offended. She really thought it was a huge insult.

This brings me to a much larger point that probably deserves its own blog: Women and men have very different views about what constitutes a beautiful woman. I won’t get into it now, but I will say that when People Magazine named Drew Barrymore their most beautiful woman this year (over Scarlett Johansson? Natalie Portman? Halle Barry? The Jessicas? Beyonce?), my first and only thought was: “Well, I guess women did the voting.”

9. George Steinbrenner. I thought the Steinbrenner character got old after a little while, but the first couple of episodes of Steinbrenner were absolutely hilarious. And, of course, there was the classic exchange when George was alerting Mr. and Mrs. Costanza that George was dead.

Steinbrenner: He'd been logging some pretty heavy hours, first one in the morning, last one to leave at night. That kid was a human dynamo.
Mrs. Costanza: Are you sure you're talking about George?
Steinbrenner: You are Mr. and Mrs. Costanza?
Mr. Costanza: What the hell did you trade Jay Buhner for? He had 30 home runs and over 100 RBIs last year. He's got a rocket for an arm. You don't know what the hell you're doing!
Steinbrenner: Well, Buhner was a good prospect, no question about it. But my baseball people loved Ken Phelps' bat. They kept saying "Ken Phelps, Ken Phelps."

Steinbrenner was voiced, you probably know, by Larry David.

8. Kenny Bania. “They have the best pea soup in the city, Jerry. The best.”

7. Tim Whatley. The dentist who converts to Judaism for the jokes.

Whatley: Jerry, It is our sense of humor that sustained us for 3,000 years.
Jerry: It’s 5,000.
Whatley: Five thousand, even better. (To assistant). OK, Chrissie, give me a shtickle of fluoride.

6. Frank Costanza: “I wasn’t born here, so I can’t be president. That’s why I don’t vote. If they don’t want me, I DON’T WANT THEM!”

5. Jackie Chiles. Johnnie Cochran type lawyer -- he’s the one minor character that, to me, could have had his own show – a funny version of “Judge Judy.” My favorite Jackie Chiles exchange happens when Kramer sues Sue Ellen Mischke, the Oh Henry Bar heiress, for walking streets in only her bra (“lewd, lascivious, salacious, outrageous!”) and causes Kramer to get into an accident.

Jackie: "So she's walking around with nothing but a bra on? You're driving along, get distracted, wreck and ruin your dream of being a golfer."
Kramer: So, do you think we have a case?”
Jackie: “I don’t know.”
Kramer: “She’s the heiress to the Oh Henry candy bar fortune.”
Jackie: “Really? I love Oh Henry bars. It has peanuts...nougat ... chocolate ... yes we definitely have a case!”

4. David Puddy. Elaine’s on-again, off-again boyfriend has lots of great moments, like the time he was wearing the jacket with an eight ball on the back. “Are you going to wear that all the time?” she asked him. He pointed to the eight ball and said, “All signs point to yes.”

But my favorite moment happened on the plane when Puddy sat on the plane and just stared at the seat in front of him. Elaine asked him if he was going to read or go to sleep, he said no. “Are you going to just stare at the seat in front of you?” she asked. “Yeah,” he said. And they broke up again.

3. Newman. Jerry’s nemesis. Quote: “Hear me, and hear me well. The day will come. Oh yes! Mark my words, Seinfeld. Your day of reckoning is coming, when an evil wind will blow through your little play world and wipe that smug smile off your face. And I'll be there, in all my glory, watching.”

2. Babu Bhatt. “You’re a bad man! Very, very bad man!”

1. Bookman. The best minor character in the history of television, Bookman was the library investigations officer who ran down Jerry for a book (Tropic of Capricorn) he had checked out many years ago and never returned. Bookman gives this soliloquy:

“Let me tell you something, funny boy. You know that little stamp that says New York Public Library? Well that may not mean anything to you but that means a lot to me, one whole hell of a lot. Sure, go ahead, laugh if you want to; I've seen your type before, flashy, makin' the scene, flaunting convention. Yeah, I know what you're thinking:
‘What's this guy making such a big stink about old library books?’ Well let me give you a hint, junior. Maybe we can live without libraries, people like you and me. Maybe. Sure, we're too old to change the world. But what about that kid, sitting down opening a book, right now, in a branch of the local library, and finding drawings of pee-pees and wee-wees in The Cat in the Hat and The Five Chinese Brothers. Doesn't he deserve better? Look, if you think this is about overdue fines and missing books, you better think again; this is about that kid's right to read a book without getting his mind warped. Or, maybe that turns you on, Seinfeld. Maybe that's how you get your kicks, you and your good-time buddies. Well I got a flash for you, joy-boy: Party time is over. You got seven days, Seinfeld. That is one week.”

TSOB recommendation: If you have not checked out the movie Hard Eight, (also called Sydney, for some reason), I cannot recommend it more highly. It isn’t that the movie itself is all that great – I like it, but the movie isn’t exactly “Goodfellas.”

In this case, the movie isn’t the point. It has several classic actors playing classic roles. It has actor John C. Reilly doing his, “I have no idea what I’m doing” act which is always entertaining. It has Gwyneth Paltrow back in her supreme days playing a desperate cocktail waitress and hooker. It has Samuel L. Jackson doing his, “I’m one crazy MF” routine. It has Phillip Seymour Hoffman playing a bit role as a loser – which he does supremely well. And it has Phillip Baker Hall doing his Bookman routine for an entire movie. I mean, seriously, any one of these five would make a movie worth seeing – you get all five in one movie? A must see.