Goin' Ape - second lp, 1980
live at The East Side Comedy Club on Long Island
in those days, my font was Cooper Black
In high school and college, I used to jump around and climb all over like an ape. In Fort Lauderdale in 1967 I got my picture in The Miami Herald after I went up a palm tree like a monkey in front of five thousand crazy college kids on the corner of A1A & Las Olas Boulevard, across the street from the still-infamous Elbow Room.
Jackie up a tree
Spring Break 1967, Ft. Lauderdale
In the Fall of 1980, I went to Lillian's Costume Shop in Mineola on Long Island...coincidentally the town where I was born...to barter. I asked them to loan me a gorilla suit for a day in return for a plug on the back cover of my soon-to-be-released second comedy lp, "Goin' Ape." They said sure.
The next day, before they could change their minds, my pal Bob Burford grabbed his camera, we picked up the gorilla costume, put it in a paper bag, and headed to The Bronx Zoo.
We paid our way in, I went behind a building, changed my clothes a la Clark Kent, and we strolled around as Burf took pictures of his trusty gorilla for about twenty minutes until a zoo worker who couldn't believe what he was seeing unceremoniously threw us out.
on a rock at The Bronx Zoo
promoting my first lp. "What Did You Expect?"
Before we were tossed, we had a lot of laughs. People loved gorilla man. I chatted up everybody, lots of people took pictures, good fun.
hitting on the babes
It was a beautiful October day and there were lots of school kids walking in groups with their teachers. I was hiding behind trees and when the kids got close I'd jump out in front of them.
When you're a kid at the zoo, what's going on in the back of your mind is, "I hope none of these wild animals gets loose." And as these kids were thinking that, a gorilla jumped out.
with an older kid, who wasn't freaked out
Somewhere there are grown-ups who were those kids, still trying to convince people that one day in grammar school they were walking along a path at the Bronx Zoo when a man in a gorilla suit jumped out and scared the hell out of them.
our first date
This picture of the gorilla paying to get in was actually taken on the way out. I grabbed a girl who was just arriving for work and asked her to stand at the ticket booth with me. Look close...you can see the confusion in her eyes.
in the power seat
Relaxing at the very first JokeLand...the attic of my mother's house.
The picture above on the left was taken when I was with Rodney Dangerfield in Ft. Lauderdale in 1980...Rodney's on the far right.
pumping up the laughs
This very hairy man edited the jokes from the live recordings at The East Side Comedy Club...
...which was owned by my good pal, who's one of my best friends to this day, Richie Minervini.
the classic yellow 922-WINE sticker
Of course, the live shows and the lp were promoted on "Use Your Finger," my dirty joke line, which is still up and running.
Each lp back cover listed a Side A and a Side 1 ... and the labels on the actual lp's were labeled Side B and Side 2. Don't ask. Obviously, "A Safe Distance From Genius" has always been alive & kicking.
All three of my comedy lp's had somg titles on the back which had nothing whatsoever to do with the material on the albums.
Dirty song titles were a staple in my band "The Off Hour Rockers" and I saw no reason to let them go to waste after the band broke up.
stoned people read everything on an album jacket
In small yellow print on the very bottom of the back cover it reads, "stoned people read everything on an album jacket" ... you can't make it out, due to years of whatever, but trust me, it's there.
The album sold into the dozens.
