It’s A Game OF Tonnage" "Back in the ‘80s, Jerry Seinfeld’s friend was teaching a comedy course at The Improv in Los Angeles. The friend asked Seinfeld if he’d be willing to visit the class and speak to the students. Seinfeld agreed. “I went in and there were maybe 20 people in the class,” he recalled. “I went up on stage, and I said, ‘The fact that you’ve signed up for this class is already a very bad sign for what you’re trying to do. The fact that you think anyone can teach you or that there’s something you need to learn, you’ve gone off on a bad track because nobody really knows anything about any of this.’” Seinfeld suspected that the students were looking for a shortcut to becoming great comedians, hoping the class would give them the secrets to bypassing the pains of relentless repetition. “You know,” Seinfeld said, “no one’s really that great. You know who’s great? The people that just put a tremendous amount of hours into it. It’s a game of tonnage, you know? How many hours are you going to work? Per week? Per month? Per year?” If he could do it over, Seinfeld said, “what I really should have done is I should have had a giant flag behind me, and when I pulled a string, it would roll down, and on the flag, it would just say two words: Just work.”