Newman, Post-"Seinfeld"

The 'Pent has a scoop. We scored an interview with the man known to many millions of television viewers as, simply, Newman.

Newman rode to fame in the 1990's while living in the same building as Jerry Seinfeld and Cosmo Kramer on Manhattan's Upper West Side and working as a postman. But the man himself has always been a bit of a mystery, with no first name, no past, no family. We sat down with him and listened to his story.

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Hank Szabo, Apt404 Staff: Hello, New-mannnn.

Newman: Hello Hank.

Hank Szabo: First off, is Newman your real name?

Newman: Of course not. All people who've worked in show business change their names. My story is no different in that respect. I was born Hershel Newmanskawitz in the year 1950, right here in Manhattan at Bellevue Hospital. My parents were named Vladimir and Emma Newmanskawitz, and lived their whole lives in New York.

HS: Tell me about them.

N: Certainly. They were dedicated Communist Party members, even after that sort of thing went out of style following the war. They were so devoted that they once put on a stirring stage rendition of all three volumes of "Das Kapital" in a little theatre in The Village during the late 1940s. The play took 14 hours to perform, lasting from 4 in the afternoon until 6 the next morning. It must have been beautiful. Audience members were required to both perform in the play and assist with concession sales, as well as applaud appropriately, though not too passionately. The actors were real troopers, I'm told. Of course they were heavily medicated. The Times review, though, was brutal ("Too Jewish") and the play quickly closed.

HS: How sad for your family. What were you like as a child?

N: I was a checkers prodigy, actually. It is a fast based, action oriented game I loved dearly, as opposed to the mind numbing, boring mathematical calculations required in chess. I just wanted to compete, not think. I studied every book on checkers strategy available at The New York Public Library. Classics such as "Jump Jump Jump" and "Checkers: Winning Through Attitude" were influential. At the time I had quite the rivalry with Bobby Fischer, that chess snob, as we were about the same age, came from the same neighborhood. He thought he was so cool with the khakis and cardigans. And the crazed look in his eyes. I showed him. To further my image as a checkers genius I bathed only once a month and wore Chuck Taylors to all my matches. But there's really no money to be made in checkers, so I decided enter the world's most lucrative profession: writing.

HS: I'm told you had a few books published.

N: Yes, that's correct. I wrote a book that sold a few copies, called "Writing Books For Dummies For Dummies." I think the series continued on in another form, but I'm the one who originated it. Also, I authored something called "Lentil Soup for the Soul", but it didn't sell. Once again The New York Times was unkind: "Too Jewish." The writing business is and was a tough racquet, though, and I decided to get into something with more stability. That's how I found my way to the employ of the United States Postal Service in the early 1980s. It is an honorable profession, with many kind and wonderful people found in its ranks. Once you get past the serial killers.

HS: Here's where the story gets, for me, interesting.

N: Absolutely. Being the go getter that I was, I realized that empty mail trucks could, on the weekends, be used to transport cans and bottles to the great state of Michigan, where they could be redeemed at 10 cents per, realizing hundreds of dollars for truckload. The Holy Grail of bottle redemption, Michigan is. I soon recruited postal employees throughout New York and New Jersey to move merchandise, paying them, really, peanuts for their efforts. I made a mint.

HS: Go on.

N: The problem was turning my cash refund money into accessible bank deposits. To launder the money, I worked closely with the people at the Manhattan branch of The Bank of Kashmir. Good people, kinda preachy, though. Anyway I made a lot of money during the 90s with this scam.

HS: And in the late 1990s you started a hedge fund, right?

N: It's New York in 1998. Who didn't have a hedge fund? But not just a hedge fund. THE hedge fund. I was, admittedly, a huge crook. People like to compare what I did to Bernie Madoff's so called "pyramid scheme." But folks forget that lots of his friends made huge amounts of money, not just Madoff. My deal was different: what I like to call an "Isoceles Triangle Scheme", because I was the only side of the triangle making money. Everyone else got equally fucked. My two biggest accounts were The Postal Employees Union of New York and the United States Tennis Association. What a couple of gifts those two accounts were. I stole millions! Millions! You think Post Office employees know anything about money? Ha! And there's a reason there are no decent American tennis players anymore: I stole all the tennis money.

HS: How do you live with yourself?

N: It's not easy. Ha!

HS: So what are you doing now?

N: Well, I hear the Mets are for sale. I've got enough to make a bid for part ownership. I've even thought of a slogan: "Newman's Mets: It Can't Be Worse Than Under Wilpon." If my old nemesis George Costanza can assist the Yankees to a World Series victory, then there's no reason I can't win one with the Metropolitans. Or at least get out of the Division Series.

HS: We believe in you. And that's all the time we have. Thanks for joining us Hershel.

N: Toodle-do!