To Peter T.

Thanks, and unfortunately I can find humor (sometimes extremely dark, as was the case in #2 scenario I described) in almost any situation no matter how bizarre or macabre.

My agent always said ''Knock 'em dead'' or " Did you kill'' as is a generally accepted way to determine a comedian's or band's positive audience reaction. I did call the agent on the following Monday to tell him we did in fact ''kill'' and related the whole story to him. He thought it was very ''professional'' of me to keep playing the piano music till the ambulance arrived. Typical agent.

Another bizarre thing that happened to me recently (a couple of months ago) -whichis not music related, well maybe sort of if we count on a Cantor as music), was attending the funeral of an old, grea uncle, 90+ years old and someone I barely knew.

This was a Jewish funeral, and my younger brother (who shares the same demented ''Seinfeld-ish'' sense of humor as me) were sitting in the third row in the chapel - fortunatey at the aisle seats. The family is in the front row, just crying and sobbing and really making a grieving spectacle of themselves filling the entire chapel with their unconsolable outpuring of grief, as if this was a sudden death, and the guy was cut down in the prime of life - almost akin to a stereo-typical Italian funeral.

I'm witnessing this, and in the same brain I'm thinking ''Come on. Gimme a break. The man was 93, in a fragile, delicate state of health for several years, and confined to a wheel chair. You had no inkling? You didn't see this coming? You didn't mentally prepare for this eventuality?''

I know this must seem very crass and insensitive thinking but it's the way my mind works I guess as a defense mechanism in stressful situations...In any event, my brother and I were of identical minds, but were civil and keeping it together, that is until the Cantor ascended the pulpit and began to sing. This Cantor was older than the deceased, hunched over, and singing Hebrew chanting prayers in the highest breathy, falsetto voice I'd ever heard out a male homo-sapian...At this point my brother and I lost it, so much so, that we practically bit thru our tongues, and our cheeks were beet red and to any other observers near or behind us, the shaking of our bodies might have appear as mild convultions.

No we never laughed out loud, thanks to biting our tongues,but we were breathing pretty hard and coughing, and the louder the Cantor sang, the more the family in the front row wailed, and the more impossible it became for us to control ourselves. It was like Shakespeare, or the Ringling Brothers meet Kevorkian. You absolutely had to be there. (Course the two of us were the only ones who saw it this way.)

We lasted five minutes, and then abruptly got up and went outside the funeral parlor to my car, where we each lit and cigarette and exploded in uncontrollable laughter for 15 minutes, doing our best imitations of the Cantor, that left us exhausted.

Strangely enough, no one noticed us at the funeral including my parents and aunts and uncles who were there...and when we got to the cemetary, we wisely hung back in the rear so that we were able to at least let go a bit, without disturbing anyone. (Loved that Cantor!!!) Man I gotta avoid funerals.