Sunday breakfast at a café on the Upper West Side. After a couple minutes of small talk about the silliness of drinking water out of a wineglass and the tendency of waiters to interrupt when you're in the middle of telling a story…

SCOTT RAAB: Is celebrity a burden to you?

JERRY SEINFELD: No.

SR: It's not?

JS: C'mon. Are you kidding me now? You live in America. What's the hierarchy of power in America? What's the gold card?

SR: Can you live a normal life? Can you be a dad? Can you go to the movies?

JS: Every single thing, yes. Everything is in how you are going to handle it. As a lifelong nightclub comic, I'm ready to handle whatever I have to handle. Celebrity is no different from any other energy. It's a force for good or evil. It's no different from money. It's power.

SR: Very wise.

JS: Wise is what you want to be. Smart is easy compared to wise.

SR [to waiter]: I'm going to have the corned-beef hash.

JS: I'm going to have the oatmeal. With honey, please. [To Raab] The burden of celebrity? You got the wrong guy. Anybody that so-called bothers you you're making them happy. What the hell else am I here to do? If I could make someone feel better? There are people that are ill-mannered. But I like to help people with their manners. "You know, you're a total stranger. You can't just yell at me. I don't know you." The first time you get stopped by a cop for speeding—and in your side-view mirror you see this guy coming up to the car and he's got this look on his face like I'm going to take this guy to town—and as soon as he sees your face he bursts into a big smile, you don't complain about celebrity anymore.

Wise is what you want to be. Smart is easy compared to wise.

SR: What happened in the Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee episode with Chris Rock? The episode ended right when you guys got pulled over.

JS: What do you think happened? We got an escort.

SR: When I interviewed Chris, I asked, "So, when do you know that you've made it?" And he mentioned you calling him and saying, "A bunch of us are having coffee. Come on back with me." He said that's when he knew.

JS: Really? That's awfully nice.

SR: It was simply a phone call from a …

JS: From a made guy?

SR: Was there a point you felt was a peak?

JS: I was working as a waiter. And I was going to clubs at night. And an emcee job opened up. To be an emcee three nights a week at a club would net me $85 a week. When I handed that red apron back to the guy at Brew Burger on Third and 47th and I said, "I'm done with this, I'm a comedian …" Obviously many wonderful things have happened, but that's my golden moment.

SR: Who do you have on the new season of Comedians in Cars?

JS: Jon Stewart, Robert Klein, Aziz Ansari, Sarah Jessica Parker, George Wallace. And I've done three of the five. Have two more to go. And it's gone very well. The whole thing is leading me around now. It was really just an experiment. But I love the potential that a technology like the Internet gives a guy like me. I thought, What if I just put something out and didn't say anything about it? People would probably start moving it around for me. It's very self-promoting. Unlike traditional network or movies, where you got to hustle your butt off to get people to notice something, I said, This thing, it'll do it itself. The one thing we are deprived of now is "Have you seen this?" or "Do you know?"

SR: Everyone knows everything.

JS: And they want to know. "Did you hear who died?" Of course I know who died. Everybody knows who died. This is what a good idea does. Here's how a good idea works. Same thing happened with the series. You make it. Then it's like you're in a rodeo and you can't get your hand out from under the rope, and now this thing is still going and it's dragging you around in the dirt.

SR: How many nights do you work?

JS: Usually two nights a week, three weekends a month. That's my basic routine. And that keeps me going. Keeps me sharp.

SR: I'm afraid to do stand-up.

JS: You should be.

SR: It's scary.

JS: It is. But it's interesting as a business, too. How did it become a business? I mean, they figured out, probably in the '20s or the teens, if you tell a certain number of jokes at a certain rate that get a certain-sized laugh, people will sit there and go, "That was a good show."

SR: It's like an algorithm.

JS: There's definitely an algorithm. I saw a fascinating thing by David Byrne. He says, Do you think that musicians actually think in terms of songs that last three minutes? He says, We don't. That's an application of the mind to a creative challenge. It's a restriction. And because that business model works. The same thing with stand-up and jokes and laughs. I was onstage last night at the Borgata, in front of 3,000 people for an hour and 20 minutes. I enjoy the math of it. That number of people. That amount of time. They're paying this much money. If you make them laugh this amount, everybody's cool.

SR: How was it?

You're giving them a big thing. And it's worth feeling a bead of sweat rolling down your spine. To me, it's still worth it. I would kill myself. As long as that's what you care about, you'll always be fine.

JS: It was great, but not easy. I felt sweat rolling down my back for about a half hour. Droplets just going all the way down. There are nights when it's easy, and there are nights when it's not easy and you got to make it look easy. And you've got to work hard.

SR: It's always got to look easy.

JS: Number one, it's got to look easy.

SR: Stand-up is unique among the performance arts. There's no instrument.

JS: No story. No set. No music.

SR: And 3,000 people going, "Whaddya got?"

JS: I see these guys in Cirque du Soleil, these two bald-headed guys. And they balance their heads. One guy balances on the other guy. And it gets a polite round of applause. I'm like, How hard is that? Why is that guy not the most famous guy? It's so much harder than what I do. And my friend said, "Because he's not getting air to expel out of your body."

SR: Magic.

JS: You're giving them a big thing. And it's worth feeling a bead of sweat rolling down your spine. To me, it's still worth it. I would kill myself. As long as that's what you care about, you'll always be fine. As long as it's always about I'm merely up here for them, not for me.

SR: Did you ever come close to quitting stand-up?

JS: No. Leno had a funny line during the taping of Comedians in Cars. He said some kid came up to him and said, "I don't know whether to be a comedian or a writer." He says, "Well, you're a writer." Michael Richards has a similar story. Somebody came up and said, "I've been thinking about doing some acting." He says, "You'll never make it if you're thinking about it."

SR: You really have a great head of hair.

JS: Really? Hair? That's what you want to talk about?

SR: Yes, I would like to talk about hair.

JS: The only positive sign for masculinity in the second half of the 20th century and early 21st is that men seem to be finally not giving a shit and just will buzz it. They just let it go. After decades of comb-overs and sweep acrosses and coloring and … it's the last dying ember of masculinity. And you're seeing it across all socioeconomics. Guys are going, I don't give a shit. Losing your hair. It's turning gray. I don't give a shit. That's what being a man is. That's man at his best.

SR: Are you enjoying fatherhood?

JS: Oh, yes. Enormously. It's been wonderful.

SR: It is a wonderful thing.

JS: It bothers me that we even talk like that, to be honest. I don't think my father ever said to any of his friends, "Are you enjoying fatherhood?"

SR: It was not a well-phrased question.

JS: There's something sick about the fact that we even talk about it. And "How does your kid like his school?" Those are the two questions that bother me a lot. [Looks over to another table.] A new dad right here. Very pretty wife. Very nicely done. See, I would just go to that guy and say, "Nicely done."

SR: I don't think our fathers ever pondered reinventing themselves like men do now.

JS: What was lost, Scott? Tell me what was lost.

SR: I'm not sure.

JS: What did we lose that they had? As men. We're in Esquire, right? This is Esquire.

SR: I think they had a firm sense of purpose and duty beyond themselves.

JS: That's a lot.

SR: That's huge. It's almost everything.

JS: But is it because they had to?

SR: Yeah, I think part of it is.

JS: I think they had to.

The peak of being a fan is a hotdog and a beer and a seat at the game. There's nothing above that. Nothing above it.

SR: Those guys didn't really feel they had any choices. They had to think strictly in terms of what's going to put food on the table.

JS: I was talking to Chris Rock the other day about taking the Letterman job. I was trying to convince him to take it. He says, "Absolutely no possible way." Both of us are out when you hear "makeup everyday." You hear that and I'm out. But I said to him, "What would your father do? Would your father turn down a job like that?" I go, "What kind of father are you? What kind of man are you?" He has other ways to make money, so it's not really a fair question. But that was funny to me. To think of his father getting an opportunity like that and going, "You know what? I don't think so. Sounds inconvenient."

[Looking over Raab's shoulder] This is kind of a funny table here, what you have behind us, this Asian fivesome. You have a husband and wife with a new baby. And they're across the table from, judging by the amount of eye makeup that woman has on, two friends of theirs who are dating. The vise is turning on that guy's head click by click. Turn around. Look at this scene. This is a funny scene. Two couples.

SR: They got the one baby.

JS: Yeah. And she's looking across the table thinking, I'm this close. All I got to do is get this guy to act right. My friend Mario Joyner has a funny line. It's not something he does in his act, but he's a brilliantly funny guy about life. The wedding gown, the celebration, the aggrandizement of the woman in this amazing outfit at the wedding—she's telling the world "I got one of these motherfuckers to act right."

SR: It's true.

JS [looking at his watch]: Oh, God. I'm going to the Met game with my boys today. It's a one o'clock start.

SR: You ever think about just buying the Mets?

JS: Never even for a second. It would be an endless series of headaches morning till night. The peak of being a fan is a hotdog and a beer and a seat at the game. There's nothing above that. Nothing above it.

SR: I'm just going to stand because that's the kind of guy I am.

JS: I'm not a woman.

SR: I told my mother I was doing an interview today. "Who with?" she asked. I said, "Jerry Seinfeld." And she said, "We are so proud of you. We are very proud of you."

JS: Thank you. That's very nice. The burden of celebrity. C'mon.

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