Ben Franklin lives!

An excerpt from comedian Josh Kornbluth's monologue on Ben Franklin, wherein he brings the Founding Father into the present.

By Josh Kornbluth

Nov. 29, 2004 | Morning. I say "morning" -- it was my kind of morning: 2, 2:30 p.m. I'm up with the crows. In fact, I was getting up even later than usual because I was going through one of my recurring periods of great lassitude, where I lose the vector. I have no direction in my life. I just want to stay in my little apartment, keep the shades drawn, take to my bed. I'll watch whatever professional bowling happens to be broadcast on my television set. That was my plan for the whole rest of my life.

But on this particular morning I had this unwanted burst of manic energy. It was enough to get me up out of bed and into the bathroom. And I was shaving and wiping away the steam, shaving and wiping away the steam, and then for one moment the steam parted and I saw myself -- and I had a realization:

My God, I look like Ben Franklin! I really do! Why did I never realize this before?

At which point, the phone rang.

"Hello," I said. "Oh, hi, Mom, what's up?"

"Oh, nothing much, dear," she said.

"Mom, I'm a tad preoccupied, OK? Because I think I just realized that I look like Ben Franklin."

"You look like Ben Franklin, dear? Well, OK. You know, when your grandfather was your age he was known around certain parts of Brooklyn as the Jewish Clark Gable. So why couldn't you be the Jewish Ben Franklin? Sure ... Oh, hold on a second, honey. Your Aunt Birdie's over. She has something she cannot wait to say to you. Hang on."

My Aunt Birdie got on the phone. My mom's name is Bunny, my aunt's name is Birdie. My Aunt Birdie got on the phone:

"Josh! I couldn't help but overhear what your mother was just saying. And you know something? It's true! You do look like Ben Franklin! Josh, do you have any idea what this means? This could finally be your ticket out of obscurity and into the big time. Josh, you could be the next Hal Holbrook!"

Which was ridiculous on its face. I mean, I'd seen Hal Holbrook's one-man im -- Well, I guess you can't really do a multiple-man impersonation of Mark Twain, but what I'm saying is: I'd seen his show "Mark Twain: Tonight!" And even if my Aunt Birdie hadn't dragged me to see it when I was a kid when it was on Broadway, in those days -- at least, in the Tri-State Area -- you could not avoid seeing Hal Holbrook's Mark Twain. It was everywhere. You'd go to a bar mitzvah, there was Mark Twain. You'd go to a funeral, people were "Baruch adenoi elohenu Huckleberry Finn..." Wherever you went, there was Mark Twain.

I didn't like it. It's not what I do. Aunt Birdie knows that.

And even if I wanted to do a show where I portrayed Ben Franklin, what do I even know about the guy? Besides, of course, you know, that he was quite handsome. But apart from that ... how can I plug in, if you will, to the man who I believe was known as The First American?

Well, OK, my maternal grandparents were among the first un-Americans, so that's a link. It's a weird link, but it's a link.

And I believe Franklin was some kind of great civic leader. And, you know, again, I try to do my part on a civic level. I vote. I go to the polling booth on Election Day; I do the hard work of democracy. I bring my clip-out from my local progressive weekly and I copy down their recommendations exactly; it can be very intense -- if you get off by even one line, you can get a very low score. And yet there still seems some distance between what I've achieved and what Ben must have accomplished on a civic level.

And yet, as I continued to stare at myself in the bathroom mirror, I couldn't shake this idea -- this idea of doing a Franklin show. Because, for one thing, my Aunt Birdie was into it. And when my Aunt Birdie's into something, you have to give it some credit. Because, OK, say what you will about my Aunt Birdie, but out of all of the communists in my family, Aunt Birdie is the one who by the end of the blacklist had become a millionaire. A communist millionaire during the blacklist! That takes drive. That takes flexibility. That takes a vector. You have to respect that.

I thought, well, perhaps as usual my Aunt Birdie is right. Perhaps the answer to all my problems is literally staring me right in the face.

Next page: Ben Franklin does New York!