rip rodney

"Dangerfield was thoroughly hip; he "got" all the jokes, including the ones he didn't tell. He got all the jokes, he was all the jokes. Never did he break up at his own material, though. He was too worried about it. He slaved over it -- sometimes with co-writers -- into the wee hours, scribbling jokes on the lined pages of big notebooks.

His huge popularity may have been a reaction to all the pseudo-intellectual comics who stood before brick walls and talked about their neuroses. Dangerfield didn't talk about his neuroses; he talked about how little success he was having in bed. "I asked one girl if she was going to hate herself in the morning. She said, 'I hate myself now.' "

Or: "I remember one date I had, we ran into some guy she knew and she introduced us. She said, 'Steve, this is Rodney. Rodney, this is goodbye.' ""

Cheers to you, man. ; - )