N.Y. Finds It Can Laugh Again

Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani told the first joke Monday night, after the Carnegie Hall audience stood and cheered for him.

“One of the reasons I’m here is that things will go back to normal,” the mayor said. “This is not normal--some of you should be booing me.”

Then he said, “I’m here to give you permission to laugh. And if you don’t--I’ll have you arrested.”

Giuliani kicked off a night in which comedians did what the rock stars, movie stars and opera stars had done: hold a spirit-building fund-raiser. So on Monday night, this city’s comedians took the stage, led by Jerry Seinfeld, and practiced the delicate art of wartime joke-telling before an audience that paid up to $2,500 per ticket.

For more than three hours, comics performed on a simple stage before a nearly sold-out house that included former President Clinton and real estate developer Donald Trump.

Some offered routines that avoided topics of the moment. Veteran Alan King mostly told jokes about being old, while George Wallace talked about being a black man sunbathing in Florida.

Bill Cosby sat in a chair and shared some of his vintage routines, from the little demons that spoke to him as a boy and convinced him to do things that would get him a beating, to the ordeal of being in a dentist chair.

In contrast, former “Saturday Night Live” regular Colin Quinn’s entire routine was topical, some of it written off the weekend’s news.

At one point, Quinn noted that Giuliani couldn’t stay for the show after his opening remarks.

“Good!” Quinn exclaimed. “He’s a target.” The audience laughed.

Chris Rock also stuck with current events, belittling the advice that people should try to return to their pre-attack lives, such as flying again. “I’m not gonna fly unless I grow wings,” Rock said. “Or unless they build a highway wide enough so they can roll the plane all the way to L.A.”

Rock disparaged the notion that the World Trade Center towers should be rebuilt.

“I’m not working there,” he said. “They better build it down this time . . . the World Trade Tunnel.”

Seinfeld concluded the evening with a nonpolitical routine about married life and raising a child--his classic takes on the absurdities of everyday life.

Seinfeld saved his only comment about the recent events for the conclusion of his act, with a risque joke that showed his anger at the terrorists.

At an earlier news conference to explain the genesis of “Stand-Up for New York,” Seinfeld said the idea came to him after he and his wife visited a local firehouse, bringing homemade cookies. He wondered whether there was “something else” he could do. He mentioned the idea to Cosby when they ran into each other at an airport, Seinfeld said, and “he stuck his hand out and said, ‘I’m there.’ ”

With ticket prices ranging from $100 to $2,500--for front-row seats--Seinfeld hoped the show in the historic 2,800-seat hall would to raise nearly $3 million for the city’s Twin Towers Fund and the New York Police and Fire Widows’ and Children’s Benefit Fund.

Though Cosby often advertises his Philadelphia roots, Seinfeld said he made a point of otherwise recruiting local comedians because “I wanted to do a New York thing.”

While all Americans were hurt by the suicide hijackings, “It’s a double thing when you live in New York,” Seinfeld said. “It’s like that feeling of being robbed or rubbing into a criminal element. Your world rubs up against a darker, more sinister world.

“[But] if this had to happen to anybody, I think we could probably handle it better than anybody. There’s something about New York that is really built to deal.”

“Saturday Night Live’s” Will Ferrell, who served as emcee, and Quinn were among the first to sign on.

The irreverent Rock later volunteered his services, but only after trying out new material--including routines playing off the events of Sept. 11--at local comedy clubs.

“I need an act first,” he quipped before the show, after testing out how an audience reacted to his commentary.