1AON G HU4 - FINE CHINESE DINING Invites You To 'A wonderful adventure in fine dining" — Danny Raskin show, they could skip the canned talk. "I'm not going to give you specific questions. I'll just give you topics: Lakers, marriage, kids. Interrupt me any time you want, even if it's not the end of my story. I will find my way out." Carson said it wouldn't work. But "sometime later he needed me to fill in [in a guest spot] at the last moment. I said I'd fill in but do it my way," Steinberg recalls. "[Johnny] was funny in my segment, funnier than I was, because he didn't have to look at his notes and could respond any way he wanted to. "When I started to do Sit Down, I wanted to get back to all that spon- taneity. I don't know anything at all [about the guests]. I'm the anti-James Lipton." (Detroit native Lipton is the very well prepared host of Inside the Actors Studio on Bravo.) "Given that I'm the Zelig of the com- edy world, I know everyone," Steinberg adds. "But I don't know where they're from or anything like that, and [the spontaneity] is what seems to be working with the audience." Guests this season will include Jon Stewart, Garry Shandling, Ray Romano and Robin Williams (post- rehab). If the advanced tapes sent to critics are any indication, Steinberg is clearly right. Spontaneity works. Not bad for a rabbi's son from Winnipeg. Steinberg's father was a Romanian-born rabbi and grocer; his mother, a rebbetzin. "Growing up Jewish in Canada is very different from growing up Jewish in the States," Steinberg says. "Here, you're obsessed with the melting pot. There is no melting pot in Canada. Ethnicity is encouraged, and you can be what you are much more comfort- ably than you can in the States." The comic spent his formative years attending Talmud Torah in Winnipeg and then a yeshivah in Chicago. When he was 18, the B'nai Akiva Zionist organization sent him to Israel to study at the Hebrew University. He came back and attended the University of Chicago. By that time it was clear he wasn't going to follow in his father's footsteps. "I realized that the guys I was with [at yeshivah] were incredibly brilliant scholarly types; I wasn't as good at the Talmud as they were." While in Chicago, he attended a per- formance of the Second City comedy troupe. "I said, `Oh my God, I can do this:' He and a buddy auditioned, were accepted and the rest, as they say, is comedy history. Even though this was the early '60s, Steinberg was urged to change his name. He was told "it would look like Frankie Valli was playing a date with his accountant." But Steinberg refused. In fact, he says, "I got laughs by being militantly Jewish." He'd say, for example, "My father never lived to ful- fill his dream — a Yiddish-speaking Canada:' As for his experiences with the Nixon dirty tricks squad, says Steinberg, "I wear that as a badge of honor. Remember, this was before Saturday Night Live, and a lot of people weren't doing political humor. I was out there, and I talked about Nixon selling his tapes just like the K- tel commercials [that sold song com- pilations during the period]. I had no idea [the Nixon people] were watching. "I was doing a series of college con- certs. Every time I'd talk about Nixon or Watergate, I'd start to get heckled. A writer friend of mine who was with me said it was the same guy in every concert everywhere we'd go. "Once I was at the Plaza [in New York] when a guy came to the door and claimed he was from the FBI. He said they'd received a threat through the switchboard that someone said he'd shoot me if I did my Nixon mate- rial." Meanwhile, Sit Down Comedy has whetted Steinberg's appetite for a return to performing. "I didn't real- ize how much I missed being in front of an audience,' he says. "If the book creates any momentum, I might just consider it. But you gotta remember that by 10 at night I like to be in my jammies. So it would be better if I could work in the afternoon." Featuring Gourmet Oriental Cuisine Excellent Lunch and Dinner Selections 7 Days a Week 11 a.m.- Midnight Complete Menu Carryout • Gift Certificates Available • We Cater To Private Parties 27925 Orchard Lake Road, north of 12 Mile • Farmington Hills 248.489.2280 1209770 I& KING OF EGGWHITES N N F r 1 ilrealcfast Special Buy One Item, Get I 2nd Item of Equal or Lesser I Value FREE all day M-F no weekends or holidays I L lam-11 am71 eggs, hash browns,tj E I toast: wit • 70 add meat of your choice: no weekends or holidays $3.95 I TWO With Coupon • Exp. 04/01/07 Wi th Coupon • Exp. 04/01/07 J LOCATIONS! L 28637 Northwestern Hwy Promenade Plaza • Southfield West Bloomfield Hours: M-Sa 7am-lOpm or later! 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