Haha well then congrats to you too! I still chew enough nicotine gum to poison the water supply of a small midwestern city so we’re even. And thanks old friend.

annual follow up: Not that I know what I'm doing, but a little annual advice: if you think maybe you might have a drinking problem, you do. Nobody ever worries they're eating too many pop tarts. There's no month where you try out giving it up. Ask for help. Sober people will help

He said he’d rather just go straight up. I brought Kreskin up to a living room packed to partial capacity at a suburban grandpa’s birthday party and he CRUSHED for like 45 minutes doing card tricks and name dropping Carson and Howard Stern. A consummate showbusiness pro. RIP Kreskin.

We were standing next to the plastic folding table of two liter Pepsi bottles and bowls of Doritos. I replied “Crowd? It’s a living room. They’re all right there.” Unfazed, he looked around “is there a green room?” Baffled, I said he could probably chill in the room with all the coats on the bed.

Then, the house buzzed with anticipation because the celebrity guest had arrived- and in walked The Amazing Kreskin – who came over to me and asked “Are you the other guy?” I responded yes I was. He asked “How’s the crowd?”

I wasn’t told who the celebrity was . Surprisingly the car they sent dropped me off at a residential house in Staten Island. I did 15 underwhelming minutes into a karaoke microphone in an old man’s living room (with one interruption when a crying fight among the grandchildren had to be broken up).

Early in my career, 20 years ago I was asked to do standup at a birthday party for the septuagenarian father of an acquaintance. I was informed that I was opening for a “celebrity guest.”