Comedian Jeni dies in apparent suicide
I was walking by a dry cleaner at three a.m., and it said ‘Sorry, we’re closed.’ You don’t have to be sorry. It’s three a.m., and you’re a dry cleaner. It would be ridiculous for me to expect you to be open. I’m not gonna walk by at ten and say, ‘Hey, I walked by at three, you guys were closed. Someone owes me an apology. This jacket would be halfway done!’
Man, this came out of left field. My absolute, all-time favorite comedian, a mind that thought like I do (only much funnier)…and he’s gone. Just like that. Damn. Back in the days when I actually had HBO, I used to live for Richard Jeni’s stuff, because his thought process felt so much like it mirrored my own. I always thought that if I was ever actually funny, I’d be Richard Jeni, someone who could take the mundane and twist it into something amusing. Jeni was never bust-a-gut funny, but he always made me smile, and his view of the world around him never ceased to amaze and amuse me.
No one can or ever will, of course, know what demons may have bedeviled Jeni, or even what happened to end his life. What I do know is that I’ve been in places in my life where I thought I might want things to end. I never went through with anything…’cuz then you’d be reading someone else’s bleatings right about now. It’s just sad that his life and his brilliance had to end the way that it did.
Man, am I going to miss him….