Bruce Springsteen and Jerry Seinfeld Carried out at Stand Up For Heroes

On Nov. 11, the Bob Woodruff Basis and The New York Comedy Pageant held its 18th annual Stand Up For Heroes (SUFH) profit at Lincoln Heart’s David Geffen Corridor in Manhattan, and, as typical, a few of music’s and comedy’s greatest stars — Bruce Springsteen, Norah Jones, Questlove, Jerry Seinfeld, Jon Stewart, Jim Gaffigan and Mark Normand — helped elevate greater than $29 million for navy veterans and their households.

That determine consists of the staggering $25 million donation the Craigslist founder Craig Newmark’s philanthropic group donated to the Woodruff Basis, the place he’s on the board of administrators.

The profit — which occurred on Veterans Day for the primary time in its historical past — kicked off with Questlove DJ’ng for the receptive crowd. Listed below are among the highlights of the present. (Some jokes are paraphrased for simplicity’s sake; others will not be verbatim as a result of recording was not permitted.)

1. Bruce Springsteen

Final issues first. The Boss, who has lengthy supported veterans and has carried out at 17 of the 18 SUFH advantages, closed the present with an electrifying acoustic efficiency of 4 songs: “The Energy of Prayer,” from his 2020 Letter to You album, “Land of Hope and Desires,” “Dancing within the Darkish,” and “Lengthy Stroll Dwelling,” which he launched as “a small prayer for our nation.” Given the profit’s comedic theme, Springsteen all the time brings jokes along with his guitar — some ribald, some corny — and he instructed them between songs.

His first concerned a husband studying that his spouse is pregnant. Taking the physician apart, he says his partner couldn’t be pregnant as a result of he’s spiritual about working towards protected intercourse and all the time wears a condom. “Let me let you know a narrative,” the physician says. To paraphrase Springsteen, A hunter goes out to bag a lion however brings his umbrella as a substitute of his rifle. When he encounters the massive cat, he raises his umbrella, yells “bang!” and the lion falls useless. “Doc, that’s not possible. Another man will need to have shot him.” Rimshot, please! One other: “Bakery burns down,” Springsteen mentioned. “Enterprise is toast.” The gang didn’t choose Springsteen on his comedy and gave him a standing ovation. As they left the theater, some may very well be heard utilizing phrases like, “exhilarating” and “highly effective” to explain his efficiency.

2. Norah Jones

Jones carried out early within the present and proved to be the quiet storm of the night. She left the speaking to others, selecting as a substitute to talk by means of the soulful set she performed on a Steinway grand piano that was wheeled onstage. Her first three songs, “Don’t Know Why,” the hit single from her 2002 debut Billboard 200 chart-topping album; “Little Damaged Hearts,” the title monitor of her 2012 launch; and “Come Away With Me,” additionally from her first album, may have been interpreted as refined commentary on the outcomes of the presidential election. “Don’t Know Why” incorporates the verse: After I noticed the daybreak, I needed that I may fly away. As an alternative of kneeling within the sand, catching tear-drops in my hand.” “Little Damaged Hearts,” consists of the lyrics, “Solely the fallen must rise. What if lightning strikes them twice? Will they offer up on their lives. And eventually divide?” And although “Come Away With Me,” is basically a love tune, it does comprise the road, “Come away the place they will’t tempt us with their lies.”

The final tune of Jones set was a tribute to the patriotism of the vets gathered on the profit — “American Anthem,” from the soundtrack of Ken Burns’ World Warfare II documentary, The Warfare. “Let me know in my coronary heart, when my days are by means of,” Jones sang. “America, America, I gave my greatest to you.”

3. Jon Stewart

Stewart’s help of navy veterans goes a lot deeper than the laughs he reliably provokes at Stand Up for Heroes, the place he has appeared 15 occasions, and the applause and cheering he obtained whereas he was onstage mirrored that. “Thanks for the Pact Act!” Iraq struggle veteran Amanda Hooper shouted from the viewers throughout Stewart’s set, a nod to the 20 years The Each day Present anchor spent preventing for the 2022 passage of the regulation that gives help to veterans who had been uncovered to dangerous chemical substances corresponding to Agent Orange throughout the Vietnam Warfare and toxins from burn pits that had been used to destroy navy waste in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The chemical substances may cause myriad diseases, together with most cancers and respiratory illnesses, and previous to the passing of the Pact Act, The Division of Veteran Affairs denied about 75% of veterans’ burn pit claims. Now a senior outreach coordinator at MACV, a corporation devoted to ending veteran homelessness, Hooper instructed Billboard that she is lastly capable of obtain take care of a extreme respiratory sickness she contracted due to burn pits in Iraq.

As anybody who watches The Each day Present is aware of, Stewart’s activism has not dulled his comedian chops. He instructed the group that after the election, somebody requested him if he was “anxious about anti-Semitism.” His reply: “I feel anti-Semitism might be simply superb,” which led him to inform the story of posting a remembrance of his beloved three-legged pitbull, who had died, on social media. Whereas many of the replies supplied condolences and tributes to their very own late pets, one response stood out: “Why did you alter your identify, Jew?”

Addressing his age, Stewart, who’s 61, instructed the group, “The opposite day, I wanted my studying glasses to jerk off,” and after the guttural laughing died down, he added: “I hear the rumble of recognition.” His last bit was an prolonged story about his son, Nate, a sophomore in school. Stewart recalled leaving his sleeping son at dwelling to go to a close-by VFW publish, the place he met a formidable veteran who had enlisted on the age of 18 and deployed thrice to Afghanistan. When Stewart returned dwelling, continued, he obtained a textual content from his son, who was nonetheless in his bed room. The message: “I’m up. Make me a bagel.”

4. Mark Normand

Normand was the rookie comic of the evening. It was his first time on the profit, however he clearly wasn’t anxious about whether or not he’d be invited again — which was an excellent factor for unrepentant comedy followers within the viewers. He opened his set by riffing on the election, and some gasps peppered the laughter when he imagined Robert F. Kennedy saying to Donald Trump, “Now that you simply’ve been shot, you are feeling like household.” Normand additionally mentioned he’d wish to have intercourse with a non-binary individual as a result of it may very well be interpreted as a threesome. If somebody requested, “Did you might have intercourse along with her?”, he may reply, “No. Them.”

And when all 4 comedians took to the stage to eat up a couple of minutes earlier than Springsteen’s set, Stewart gestured to Normand, who at 41 was the youngest of the group, “We’re a boy band, and we lastly discovered a younger singer.” “I used to do Diddy events,” Normand replied. “It’s good to be right here. I escaped.”

5. Jim Gaffigan and Jerry Seinfeld

Though they carried out individually, each Gaffigan and Seinfeld are Jedi masters of observational comedy, they usually had the group roaring. Gaffigan started his set with a bit on “working late” and touring. When he sees somebody working for his or her gate at an airport, he mentioned, “I feel to myself, I hope they don’t make it.” In any other case, he added, “How are they going to study?” He additionally famous that he takes loads of connecting flights, which frequently contain sitting in an airport “for 2 hours and counting all of the losers with neck pillows.”

Gaffigan then instructed a narrative about hustling alongside a New York Metropolis road — as a result of he was late — and seeing a crowd of individuals with their cell telephones raised. When he requested one of many beginner photographers what she was taking pictures, she replied, “The sundown!” Gaffigan mentioned the response left him eager to “kill” that individual understanding “that that photograph could be used to bore somebody.” “I gotta be sincere,” he mentioned. “I wish to kill lots of people.”

Seinfeld additionally took with reference to cell telephones. When some within the entrance row broke out their handhelds to snap photos of him, he inspired them to proceed as a result of “I select to take pleasure in your dumbness.” He added that he additionally doesn’t give a “rat’s ass” concerning the pictures on different individuals’s telephones. “We have to persist with our personal telephones, heads down,” he mentioned, and, probably referring to the election, “journey this catastrophe of the second into the bottom the place it belongs.”

Transferring to AI and its potential out-think people, he mentioned, “We had been good sufficient to create it; dumb sufficient to wish it; and silly sufficient to not know if we did the appropriate factor.” One of many greatest laughs he received got here from the only punchline: “Why was Frankenstein carrying a sport jacket?”

6. The Heroes

It was not possible to not be moved by the group of veterans who took the stage and, one after the other, described the challenges they confronted after getting back from their deployment in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the way they benefited from the applications funded by the Bob Woodruff Basis. Amongst those that spoke was Jerrod Reynolds, who turned homeless and a drug addict. He defined that the MACV group discovered him housing, which led him to beat his substance abuse. He has since joined VMAC, the place he works with Amanda Hooper.

The final to talk was Frank Williamson, the medic who saved Woodruff’s life when he was severely injured by an improvised explosive machine in 2006 whereas protecting the Iraq struggle for ABC Information. Williamson defined that treating tons of of troopers life-threatening accidents left him rudderless and despondent when he returned dwelling. He additionally turned to medicine and was rehabilitated by one of many basis funded applications. When Williamson completed, Woodruff emerged from the wings, and the 2 males embraced, brothers in arms.