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For a man who laughed at cancer, survived not only the death of an 11-year-old son, two failed marriages and a heart attack, it would have been either the cruelest or the funniest joke of all, coming as it did as 60-year-old Robert Schimmel desperately tried to find a liver that would save his life.
Given Schimmel’s bleeding-edge comedy, it’s not difficult to figure which he’d have chosen. Put it this way: If you didn’t like Lenny Bruce or Redd Foxx or Richard Pryor, you wouldn’t have liked Bob Schimmel. Then again, if you liked those guys, you’d have LOVED him.
Schimmel always made himself the butt of his own jokes, particularly when it came to talking about the frailties of the human body or the absurdity of the human condition.
“I’m happy to say I licked the big C,” Schimmel said once. “AND I beat cancer.”
And like any comedian brilliant enough to be considered a modern-day prophet, he railed at hypocrites, liars and the PC crew.
“I’m just very honest onstage, and I think that’s what throws people,” he told an interviewer for The Boston Phoenix in 1999. “You know, ‘He’s not really supposed to be talking about that.’ Well why?”
Parenthood was a frequent subject.
“I sat down with my daughter and I said, ‘Do you know how babies get here?’ And she said, ‘Well, the lady has an egg inside of her, and the man has sperm inside of him, and the sperm meets the egg, and that’s how the lady gets pregnant.’ And I said, ‘Do you know how the sperm meets the egg?’ She said, ‘Does the man pee on the woman?’ I said, ‘Sometimes, but that’s $35 extra’.”
Robert Shimmel, the man, was also something special. His final couple dozen Facebook posts make so-called reality programming look like “Romper Room.” Consider: ” i realize that not all of this is funny, or entertaining, but you’re getting the real me. my sense of humor. my fears. my insecurities. my real life. living in the moment. and this is the moment i’m in. and again, i appreciate all of your well wishes, advice, prayers. means the world to me.”
Schimmel’s funeral is scheduled for Wednesday afternoon in Scottsdale, Arizona, with a tribute to follow sometime afterward in Los Angeles.
But the huzzahs have already begun: Howard Stern dedicated his Sirius Radio show tonight to Schimmel’s memory. And the tweets and Facebook postings were flying fast and furious.
“Robert Schimmel. Son, Brother, Father, Grandfather, Comedian, Generous Man. I have always loved you, admired you, and was proud to be your biggest fan. I will never forget a single moment. RIP,” his brother, Jeff, posted on Facebook.
So like Bill Hicks, a man after his own internal organs, Schimmel will likely become bigger in death than in life.WATCH
: CLIFFVIEW PILOT’s TRIBUTE TO ROBERT SCHIMMELL:He was born in the Bronx, Jan. 16, 1950, to Holocaust survivors. The later family later moved to Rockland County, and Schimmel graduated from Spring Valley High School in 1967. By all accounts, was a practical joker and class clown.
He moved to Scottsdale in the mid-1970s, worked as a stereo salesman and then, on a dare from his sister, got onstage in L.A. and began doing standup.
Schimmel got a huge boost from Rodney Dangerfield, who caught his act and booked him at his club. He was part of a magical evening at Carnegie Hall some years back, in a fundraiser arranged by Denis Leary. The bill included two of Leary’s “Rescue Me” co-stars, Adam Ferrara and Lenny Clarke, as well as Mario Cantone and a young comic about to break big: Dane Cook.
Chances are several of those faces will turn up at one of the tributes.
“It’s my mission to try and give people fighting the disease the same gifts of laughter and a positive attitude I had,” Schimmel once said. “Hopefully, my career as a comic will give me the forum to touch these people.”
For more tributes, and a CLIFFVIEW PILOT slideshow video, see:
Robert Schimmel’s death not what you would’ve expected
In May, Bob tried his hand at a blog: “It’s not over till it’s over.” Cirrhosis was eating him alive, and it was his closest shot to actually performing. It lasted all of one entry before Bob began posting feverishly on Facebook…. Excerpts:
While I was on chemotherapy, a doctor once told me that if you have a sleeping person lying next to a deceased person, and you gave them both an electroencephalogram, the only difference between the two, would be that the sleeping person would have electrical activity in it’s brain, and the deceased wouldn’t. So, he said, “When the light bulb burns out, the electricity doesn’t die. It just goes back to where it came from.” And then it dawned on me: What the heck is this guy talking about?
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A chaplain told me: “Death is not the end.” I asked him if he could tell that to my uncle — because he was under the impression that he’s been dead since 1976. So much so, that he had a funeral, and has been buried since.
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A friend told me that Death [is] the beginning of a new adventure. Really? Can’t tell you how many times I’ve said. “Hey, I’m feeling adventurous. Think I’ll die. Get stuffed in a box like a pepperoni pizza. Thrown into a hole in the ground. Covered in dirt. And decompose. Anyone wanna come with?”
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Then you hear the “Quality versus Quantity” story. Which would you rather have? Live it up for a year and drop dead? Or have three shitty years, with pain and suffering and despair? Wow! I’m getting a boner just thinking about it.
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Ever hear, “At least he died doing what he loved the most.” What? Dying? Being scared shitless and wondering if the fat lady’s still singing….”
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God only gives you as much you can handle. Well, he might have gotten the wrong impression of me. Because I’m pretty overwhelmed.
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“Never say never.” Shit. I just said it twice.
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