Rodney Winfield

It started with Josh getting drunk, seeing a commercial for Def Comedy Jam VHS tapes, and doing what any good man should, and laying down his credit card and ordering em all. Then I came over one night with the intention of "just to watch the one Bernie Mac routine with his face painted on his pants" and I wound up leaving with three of the tapes, which I still have. But it really started much earlier, in middle school and high school at ungodly hours of the night when HBO would rerun episodes in loop and you were sleeping over at a friends house and watching as many episodes hoping they would play one more.

It's hard to call a classic routine classic, when looking back, every third routine was a classic and is imprinted in our collective memory, (And by our collective memory I mean the memories of Andy Josh and I, and the Andy, Josh, and I's all over various North Shore's of their respective cities) but this one, man, this one is a stone-cold classic. I used to have this tape in my room junior year of college, and everyone, any of my friends, my roommates friends, people my roommates were studying with, I'd force them into my room to watch this routine. When we had parties, oy, all I could do all night is usher people in and out so they could see the clip.

Anyway, sadly, I just read on the Internet, Rodney Winfield passed away in February at 76. I hope his death will bring him more recognition and will unearth more material to show the world his genius.