Comedy these days is like poetry, because anyone can do it. Comedy also holds with another idea of poetry; with so many people claiming to be comedians, it is hard to pick anyone out to be the signature comedian or that group of performers to watch.

That is what makes someone legend. Everyone wants to watch that guy, and he sets himself apart from the rest of the group.

Bring in Don Rickles.

An actor and comedian who made it big in the 1960s while acting and making appearances on Johnny Carson and the original “Tonight Show,” he holds nothing back and goes after anyone in the room when he is doing his comedy act, even at the ripe age of 82.

One of his signature plays is picking out someone in the front row, asking him or her a question and just running with it from that point.

On one night he picked out a larger man in the front row and asked him, “How much ya weigh tiny?”

He has a tasteful way of poking fun at different groups of people, which is a lost art in today’s society.

The comedians of this decade are more about forcing the laughter than entertaining an audience.

Entertainers such as Dane Cook, Chris Rock and Katt Williams have these acts that are loud, pre-written and get people to the point where they either have to laugh or feel extremely uncomfortable for the entire act.

Don Rickles truly uses his environment to get people laughing.

He conveys a message that if you can’t laugh at yourself then you can’t laugh at anything.

Rickles even went after David Letterman on “The Tonight Show” when he said, “Personally, I liked you better when you were on the cover of Mad Magazine.”

That is why he goes after everyone in the audience and all groups of people because no one can be excluded in this comical aspect of life.

Comedians don’t do that anymore; play everyone as if they are fair game. They have a set act and do it over and over again.

Rickles uses his environment and works his act into the crowd because he understands that he is there to entertain and not spit out a script to a group of paying customers.

These people came to see comedy and not a memorized list of jokes.

Rickles said it best the December 2000 issue of Esquire, “You can’t study comedy; it’s within you. It’s a personality. My humor is an attitude.”

There are comedians like Jerry Seinfeld and Ellen Degeneres who hold onto this idea of a comedian that gets people laughing for the sake of something that is funny.

Regardless, they got their starts in the 1980s and don’t really perform like popular comedians of the past three or four years.

The question still remains: Why are comedians more about an uncomfortably intense performance rather than just entertaining an audience?

It could be because there are so many forms of comedy that are being used throughout the media.

For example, shows like “The Office” and “Flight of the Concords” have a dry and awkward kind of humor that finds a comical genius in the act of everyday events.

There are also shows and movies that find satire in everything, even politics.

Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart find a lighter side in the area of politics that is usually confusing and hard to follow.

Comedy is evolving into something bigger than a man on a stage; it is something that is touching people in all forms.

Comedians like Rickles probably won’t be seen again because of the fact that comics today have become defined by how original they can be and how universal their humor can be in today’s more and more diversified society.

As comedy continues to branch out in so many different directions, Rickles will stay true to his way of entertaining until he dies.

At the same time, even he understands his ideas have no intention on changing the way comedy is moving forward.

When Esquire was interviewing him in December of 2000, he said, “The old days were the old days. And they were great days. But now is now.

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