On Seinfeld On Life

I read an article about eight years ago, actually - I ate the article. I flavored it and tasted it and swallowed and digested it. The journalist Rick Lyman spent a day sitting and walking around with Jerry Seinfeld. I found the piece fascinating. It was soon after his show ended and Seinfeld chucked all his old material and spent his days mining for and refining new bits.

In my mind, I remembered a line he said as follows: "People always say that life's too short, but live as though life's too long." I just searched the article and realize now that I tweaked the idea into my own words. The actual quote from the September 15, 2002 article entitled "Going Hunting In Seinfeld Country, Just For Laughs" appears below: You can find the article here, which I recommend only if you're a student of comedy - you may need to be a Times member (free) to access it.

''Can you believe the number of people who don't have to be at work?'' Mr. Seinfeld says. ''What are all these people doing? Actually, this is a great intersection, 67th and Columbus. You've got ABC over there, a Starbucks over here, a Reebok over there. It's a perfect confluence of wasted time.''

On which corner did he think the most time was wasted?

''Oh, right here,'' he says. ''These places are temples of wasted life. I do this bit in my act that people say life is too short when it's actually too long. These places prove it. This exists solely to drain off excess time.''

He begins to scribble more furiously. (Times link)