The Racist Outburst

(Originally posted on Mixi and MySpace on Friday, December 08th, 2006)

The sitcom Seinfeld is one of my favourite TV shows of all time, so when I heard that Michael Richards, who plays Jerry Seinfeld's wacky neighbour Kramer, had become headline news because of a racist outburst I was both surprised and intrigued.

It appears that Richards was performing at a stand-up comedy club in LA and got fed up with some members of the audience ignoring his act, finally venting his annoyance at their behaviour with a torrent of racial abuse. (a full account of the incident can be found here).

Due to the offensive nature of his outburst, a lot of news sources weren't able to show or explain just how harsh his tirade was so (as usual) I had to check out YouTube to find the full uncensored version of the incident; I was also able to find Richards' apology on The Tonight Show and the victims of his racial abuse being interview on NBC.

Watching the three videos together gives a fairly complete account of what happened. Check them out at your own risk though - not only will Richards' outburst offend some people, it may also change the way you view the Kramer character on Seinfeld and spoil your enjoyment of the show in future.

The Outburst


The Apology


The Victims


There's also a great alternative account of the situation, that's been created by editing Seinfeld clips together with footage of the outburst and the apology:


Funnily enough, however, there's no mention of Michael Richards' racist outburst on the official Seinfeld website yet, and I doubt there'll be any new TV shows or stand-up performances to add to his career notes anytime soon either...

'Nothing'

(Originally posted on Mixi and MySpace on Thursday, October 19th, 2006)

There's an episode of Seinfeld called 'The Airport' where Jerry is talking to a model on an airplane about the ice cream sundaes they're eating. He's talking about the even distribution of the ice cream and caramel in the sundaes and, impressed with his observation, she tells him 'I've never met a man who knows so much about nothing.'

To me, this is the ultimate compliment as I share the same love of observing the everyday minutia of life as Jerry Seinfeld (although minus most of his insightful humor, of course). I also love finding out interesting facts about topics I don't know about, or even better, topics I thought I knew about but in fact didn't.

In my future blog posts then, you can probably expect numerous snippets of trivia, as well as my observations and interpretations of the world around me. And, since I'm currently living in Japan, needless to say there'll be plenty of discussion about all things Japanese.

Enjoy...