"It's not your fault..."

For an entire decade of my life I was a Robin Williams super-fan. From the ages of 8 to 18 I went to all his movies, saw any appearance he made on T.V shows and watched any episodes of "Mork & Mindy" I could get my hands on. I was, for lack of a better education, addicted to Robin Williams. There was something about his wild, frenetic energy and manic line after line delivery that made the younger me want to be exactly like him, and much to the dismay of my mother I could spout out quotes from "Aladdin" and "Mrs. Doubtfire" so easily and quickly that eventually I was banned from ever saying "Ooooooh, Helloooooo" in a high-pitched, faux British accent ever again.

My R-Dub obsession was so all consuming that I thought "Toys" was one of the best movies I had ever seen and spent several years defending that belief. That's right, "Toys," and no one should defend that movie. I don't even think Robin William's himself would defend "Toys," if only because it gave us L.L Cool J the actor and forever set in motion a string of events that would lead to a surge in rapper/actors like Ice T, Ice Cube, Tupac, Eminem, Ludacris, that guy from "Pimp my Ride" and Lyle Lovett cashing in on various minor and major film roles that through their involvement resulted in at least 1 decent franchise (i.e: "Friday" ) and several terrible franchise (i.e: anything else Ice Cube has been in).

You see, because black people be fixin houses like this... and white people be fixin' houses like this...

I can't honestly blame Robin William's for the boom in rapper/actors, but part of me wishes I could, because there's really nothing Robin William's has done that has made me dislike him the way I do now. Not even "Jack" or "Bicentennial Man" or "Man of The Year" pushed me over the edge. No, it wasn't until I started doing stand-up and started really watching Robin Williams do stand-up that I completely lost all respect for the guy.

My reasons for the about face are still unclear to me. It's not that he's a noted joke stealer , because everyone in stand-up comedy is stealing someone else's material whether they think they are or not, and at least R-Dub pays the comedian when he does it. It's not because whenever he's on stage I wish I could punch him in the face and tell him to "slow the f_ck down." It's because at some point in time he stopped making me laugh and started doing things like the "Meet Robin" ticket package for his stand-up gigs (yes, the prices are very, very high, about $435 last I checked) and naming his tour some trite piece of word-play like "The Weapons of Self-Destruction Tour." The Robin Williams I came to know and love would never have stooped so low... or would he?

B-b-but, pants don't go on your head, Robin... oh I see. Good one.

Before I lay into the man that used to be my idol I want to say that I still believe Robin Williams is one of the best actors of the past 25 years. No, he's not on par with someone like Daniel Day-Lewis or Phillip Seymour Hoffman, but he's a tremendous talent when he works with a director that can harness his energy and put it to good use. Hell, the man has an Oscar for "Good Will Hunting," and should have at least been nominated for his uber creepy, exceptionally well done role in "Insomnia," because he actually out acted none other than Sir Loudy McScreams a lot, Al Pacino. Have you seen "The Fisher King?" If not, I suggest you put it in your Netflix queue and watch the sh_t out of that, because that's how you make the most of Robin Williams' talent, and once again, he outshines a brilliant actor in Jeff Bridges. If it were up to me, R-Dub and Terry Gilliam would do nothing but make movies with each other for the rest of my life and I would die a happy man. Do you have any idea how awesome he would have been as Sancho Panza in "Don Quixote?" No, you don't, because it never got made. But I digress...

I'm not sure but I think 1982's "An Evening With Robin Williams" was the first taste of R-Dub's brand of stand-up comedy that I ever sampled. I saw it at least 10 years after it was released to video when I was a running around acting like the Genie from "Aladdin" half the time (yep, I memorized every single song that Mr. Williams sang in that wonderful movie), so watching him do stand-up was more a retrospective initiation than an actual orientation into the manic genius of Mr. Williams and his style of comedy. As a 10 year old boy with a vivid imagination and an unquenchable hunger for comedy of all kinds, Robin Williams sated my appetite adequately enough for me to mimic his rainbow suspender wearing, Jew-fro having, cocaine snorting ass (minus the suspenders, Jew-fro and cocaine). So, the next day at school I got in trouble for swearing and making a joke about cocaine during recess. Did this deter me from loving Robin Williams? Nope, it made me love him even more, because my 10 year old brain thought it was awesome. Just. Plain. Awesome.

In watching "An Evening With Robin Williams" as an older gentleman it still stands as a great hour of stand-up comedy with everything you would expect from R-Dub. For a while the only way the world was able to watch Mr. Williams perform his stand-up routines was to wait for "Comic Relief" on HBO or a similarly themed show of some kind or re-runs of "An Evening With..." on Comedy Central. It was in that "Comic Relief" atmosphere that Mr. Williams was honestly and truly head and shoulders above the other participating comics. I remember watching the 80's holy trinity of stand-up comedians (Whoopi Goldberg, Billy Crystal and Robin Williams) one night back in the day and thinking to myself "this Billy Crystal and this Whoopi Goldberg kind of suck," and I was no more than 10 years old.

"Will, between you and me, Whoopi is a hack."

Then came the 90's, and the only time we got to see Robin Williams be Robin Williams was when he went on "The Tonight Show" or "Late Night with David Letterman" or made a mad-cap, off the wall comedy like "Hamlet" and just let it all hang out, and this, coincidentally, is when I started to realize the man I grew up worshipping was kind of unhinged and possibly insane. For minutes at a time during these interviews it seemed as if R-Dub had no brain to mouth filter like you and I probably do, so the audience would be treated to a 5 minutes laugh riot, rambling monologue about the intricacies of flatulence.

Perhaps the fault is mine. As I aged my tastes changed and I didn't find "Father's Day" as funny as I did the year before and even "Mrs. Doubtfire" seemed a little too... how do I put this... wacky for my tastes. I was into things like "Seinfeld" and "The Simpsons" and other high brow, artsy comedy fare that would lead me down the path to the comedic stylings of "Monty Python," Richard Pryor, George Carlin and eventually Lenny Bruce, Patton Oswalt, Brian Posehn, David Cross, "Arrested Development" and a bunch of other more adult oriented comedy that played to my ever increasing snobby side. This got so bad that when people brought up Robin Williams I would snort loudly and chortle out some crude remark about how he "just isn't funny," and eventually I would get mean about it and say "listen, if you like Robin Williams you'll love 'According to Jim," or 'Two and a Half Men.' " Let's face it, nobody loves "According to Jim," and the fact that "Two and a Half Men" is still the most watched comedy on American television means way, way too many Americans think Charlie Sheen and Jon Cryer making unintelligent boner jokes is funny and that's just blatantly untrue.

This makes you laugh, America? THIS! Have you even heard of "The Office," America? Have you!?

So, Mr. Williams I want to ask you a direct question: Why, after all those years away from mass consumption stand-up comedy, did you decide to do "Robin Williams: Live on Broadway?" I had heard for months that you would be performing on Broadway in New York and even considered flying down just to see your show until I heard that it would be on HBO at some point. I waited patiently and thoughtfully, hoping that you would regain the form you had when you made "An Evening With Robin Williams" and beofre then when were so f_cking funny Richard Pryor himself thought to put you in his T.V show, but did you deliver? No. No you didn't. I think it was after you used one of your 400 water bottles to simulate male orgasm that I switched off the television and started to softly cry to myself while I wondered what the hell I wasted my childhood idolizing. I needed answers and I needed them sooner than later, so I went to the only person who could answer a question of this depth and meaning: My Father.

Now, I haven't mentioned my father around this blog at all, so I should start by letting you know he doesn't laugh easily, but Robin Williams always seemed to get him going. One night 18 months ago I asked the old man what he thought of R-Dub and he summed it up beautifully, "I think he's great, don't you, you used to love everything he did." I then told my father, "Well, over the past few years I've started to, kind of, hate the guy." At this my father looked me dead in the eye and said "Well, that's because you're an ass." He couldn't have been more right.

Jimmy Carter and my father are giving me the same look right now.