#lz

by Fake Handshake

For 100 years—100 years!—Mel Brooks’s heart has been going ba-bump, ba-bump, ba-bump. He knows it won’t be forever. That’s why, for decades, he has warned us that we shouldn’t “future ourselves” so much. “We should now ourselves more,” he said in one interview. “Now is good. Now is wonderful.” Mel Brooks is not afraid of death; he hates it. And he has spent the past century not just in love with life but totally and ceaselessly infatuated with it.

“I once had this thought that was so corny, but I loved it,” Brooks told Playboy in one of the most irresistible of his interviews. “It was that infinitesimal bits of coral, by the act of dying upon each other, create something that eventually rises out of the sea—and there it is, it’s an island and you can stand on it, live on it! And all because they died upon each other. Writing is simply one thought after another dying upon the one before. Where would I be today if it wasn’t for Nikolai Gogol? You wouldn’t be laughing at Young Frankenstein. Because he showed me how crazy you could get, how brave you could be. Son of a bitch bastard! I love him! I love Buicks! I love Dubrovnik! I love Cookie Lavagetto! I love Factor’s Deli at Pico and Beverly Drive! I love Michael Hertzberg’s baby boy! I love rave reviews! I love my wife! I love not wearing suits! I love New York in June!” I love this list. And I love Mel Brooks. How could you not? Happy birthday to one of the greatest ever to do it. Long live the king.