Tony Clifton, FSJ’s lawyer

I’m too young to have figured out this allusion. John Gruber at daringfireball tipped me to this nugget. First, to quote FSJ:

The guy who talked to my lawyer on the phone last night got on a red-eye to the East Coast and I went to see him this morning in a suite at the Four Seasons, even though my lawyer, Tony Clifton, who lives in New York, could not attend and had told me not to agree to anything but just to listen and hear the guy out and report back to him.

Then to quote wikipedia:

Tony Clifton is a fictional character created and often played by comedian Andy Kaufman in the late 1970s. Kaufman saw Clifton as the antithesis of the sweet, gentle “Foreign Man” character he was best known for (which was later adapted into Latka, Kaufman’s character on Taxi). Clifton was a staggeringly untalented lounge singer with a nasal, deliberately annoying singing voice. Clifton epitomized the washed-up showbiz casualty, a “star” too lazy to even bother to remember the lyrics to his songs. Clifton would often attempt to improvise comical lyrics that were intentionally unfunny before giving up entirely without seeming to care. Clifton also tended to randomly insult patrons, passing off the abuse as the “comedy” portion of his act. Many people misunderstood Kaufman’s intent, focusing on the character’s foul language and prima donna antics while failing to appreciate the fact that Clifton was meant to be the comic antithesis of the typical lounge singer, a bland, genial entertainer designed to add a touch of class to a hotel and make guests feel welcome.

FSJ is good. Real good.

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