Okay, I'm back…with another real great video link. One of the all-time great stand-up comedians, in my opinion, is Robert Klein. In fact, back when I was hanging around the Comedy Store and the Improv and places like that, you could see a lot of new comics trying to be George Carlin or Richard Pryor but it seemed to me, most of 'em wanted to be Klein. The early Jay Leno sure did.
And Klein inspired other comics in another way: In 1975, he did the first-ever HBO stand-up special. That was back when no one thought those new "cable channels" would never be anything more than an interesting, short-lived alternative to CBS, NBC and ABC. This is that special and while Klein's later ones were even better, this is a pretty solid hour of comedy. Back then, the ultimate goal of most of the new comedians was to get their own situation comedy. Some years later, it was to have a deal to do specials like this…