Crossed off an item on my bucket list last month: I finally watched Andrew Dice Clay perform live!
And… he looked old.
Which he is, I suppose: The Diceman is pushing 70, yet still wearing his trademark leather gloves, shades, and Fonzie jacket. Didn’t even bother dyeing his gray hair (whatever’s left of it). He looked like a grandpa playing dress-up.
I don’t want to be unkind, but it’s a jarring visual.
He was funny, filthy, and lots of fun. Had the audience eating out of his (gloved) hands. My kids included: My boys discovered the Diceman on YouTube and have been fans ever since.
Which I totally get. Back in the 1980s, all my friends imitated Dice. We knew his Nursery Rhymes by heart. They were the perfect combination of stupid, silly, and profane to capture the imagination of thirteen-year-old boys.
During his heyday, Dice was the undisputed king of standup. He sold-out Madison Square Garden on back-to-back nights; he was a bona fide stadium act — a comedian who came and conquered like a rockstar.
But his heyday was short.
Audiences quickly tired of his act, and snooty critics never liked him anyway. When he was king of the world and selling out stadiums, the entertainment execs had to tolerate him: Dice was just too big to ignore.
But when his audience left him, so did the rest of the industry.
In some ways, Dice was the harbinger of Cancel Culture. He was “banned for life” from MTV and basically exiled from the entertainment industry.
I stopped being a fan when his album “The Day the Laughter Died” was released in 1990. It’s now considered a subversive, anti-comedy(?) cult classic: Clay and Rick Rubin filmed a concert where the Diceman performed… without any material or any fans.
He deliberately alienated the audience, turning his performance into the joke. Today, comics like Joe Rogan hail it as a modern masterpiece, but the punchline flew right over my adolescent head.
I just thought it sucked.
By this time, I had discovered other comedians, like George Carlin, Sam Kinison, Norm Macdonald, and Garry Shandling. Their material was better. So I moved on, leaving Dice behind, along with my parachute pants, Bugle Boy jeans, glittery socks, and the other relics of the '80s.
And that’s where Dice remained, abandoned and forlorn; a caricature frozen — and lost — in time.
Until last month.
In my memory, Dice was still a young man in his 30s, lean and fit, oozing with machismo, nonchalantly flipping society the bird. It was such a striking image, it’s difficult to shake. Obviously, I understand how math works, so I knew he had to have gotten older… but THAT MUCH OLDER?!
Like I said, it was a jarring visual.
Have you ever wandered into the bathroom in the middle of the night and gotten a quick glimpse of your reflection in the mirror — and your first thought is, “Eww, who the hell is that old dude?” Then you rub your eyes and stare again: “Oh no, that old dude is ME!”
You can almost feel the Reaper creeping up on you. That’s a jarring visual, too.
Sometimes you get that feeling when you’re scrolling through Facebook: A girl you dated when you were both in your 20s is now happily married with a lovely family. But every now and then, when she posts a family photo, she doesn’t look like the girl you remember from 25 years ago. Instead, she looks like her mom — and her college-aged daughter now looks like her. It’s trippy.
One of George Orwell’s lesser-known quotes is, “By the age of 50, everyone has the face he deserves.” Orwell was right: Time is a great equalizer. Superficial gifts — including physical beauty — are fleeting. They don’t last.
And neither do we.
Getting old is a privilege. Not everyone has the opportunity.
When Muhammad Ali lost his final fight to Trevor Berbick, he said something curious. Instead of his typical bravado, Ali spoke introspectively: “The people of the world will love me more now; see that I’m like them. We all lose sometimes. We all grow old. We all die.”
There’s poetry to our mortality — a beauty born of frailty. We’re indispensable instruments in an extraordinary symphony, being led by a Master Composer of infinite wisdom. Even when the notes are contradictory — like love and pain — somehow, the pieces still fit perfectly. In God’s masterplan, every instrument is absolutely essential.
Every instrument. Without exception.
Of all the species in the cosmos, we alone were made in His image. We’re His magnus opus — His Divine Masterpiece of form and function.
That’s both an honor and an obligation.
Because, eventually, all poems will end. Long or short; epics or limericks; Godly or demonic; like humans, all poems share the same fate. But when our final stanza draws to a close, what ultimately matters isn’t really the name of the poet or the snark of the critics. What matters is the poetry itself.
While we still have stanzas left, there’s still time to write something beautiful. And there’s still time to share it with someone who needs to hear it.
Keep an open mind, because inspiration can come from anywhere. At any moment!
Even in a story about Andrew Dice Clay.
