The L.A. Times has a report on last Saturday's memorial service for Richard Jeni. I almost attended this but I'm on a deadline and had to choose between this one or the Sunday memorial for Ron Carey.
At the Carey memorial, a couple of folks were talking about the Jeni memorial, complaining that at least one speaker treated the event like an Open Mike audition of his stand-up act. That is (sadly) a not-uncommon occurrence at show biz memorial services. There always seems to be at least one person at the lectern who forgets about the deceased and talks at length about themselves. As you might expect, it's never the Biggies who do this. It's the folks for whom it's a rare treat to be in front of an audience…especially an audience that contains someone who might give them a big career break. You wish someone would tell them that no one has ever been "discovered" at a funeral.
Someone else was saying the true tragedy of Richard Jeni is that death-by-depression is always curable. I don't think that's so, even with properly administered medication. I'm thinking now of a couple of acquaintances who took their own lives…but those lives were in such disrepair that being depressed was perfectly understandable and maybe even not the least of their problems. The sad, stunning thing about Jeni is that apparently his life wasn't in bad shape. One reader of this site wrote me to suggest that Jeni had cause for gloom; that he wasn't as successful as a Leno or Letterman or Seinfeld and that most of his upcoming bookings were at grindhouse comedy clubs in hick towns. I don't think that's a true picture…and even it was, the man had still attained a stature that most comedians would envy. Based on the success of his recent cable specials, he certainly had offers and opportunities for even better things.
Still, you never know quite what others want out of their lives. I certainly know people who've set impossible goals for themselves, almost to the extent of ensuring their own inability to reach them. Was Jeni that kind of guy? I have no idea and the folks who knew him well don't seem to, either. I suspect that's why a lot of them went to that memorial service…to see if they could get a clue or two towards solving that riddle.