Jerry Seinfeld's stand-up on Late Show: "What's the deal with cell phones?"

Ah yes, Jerry Seinfeld. One of the gold-plated names of the comedy world. Thanks to his incredible wealth and success, he's got carte blanche to do whatever he wants — make a movie centered around bee puns? Did it. Take over for Regis Philbin? Done. Produce a terrible reality game show? Way ahead of you. 

That same wealth has also made him something of a bitter old crank. After broadcasting his hatred for Lady Gaga after she used his box seats at a Mets game, he's starting to sound more and more out of touch. This was especially evident in the recent set he did on The Late Show.

Jerry opened his set with a long diatribe about phones, referring to our society's obsession with "that hard rectangle" and the warm feeling you get from being able to scroll over and pass judgment on people "like a gay French king." This all segues into a couple jokes about caller ID and star-69 that I can only imagine were written fifteen years ago, got lost, and turned up last week. Finally, this legend, this benchmark of comedians closes with jokes about erectile-dysfunction commercials — a bit that would have sounded dated in 1998.

And that's the problem. It seems that all comedians eventually get to a point where they don't have to really try being funny anymore. Once you're paid well enough, your presence alone garners you a modicum of laughter. Jokes that would get an unknown booed offstage magically turn into passable material. Now, I wouldn't go as far as to call his jokes terrible, but they're certainly tired. Even though he hung up most of his material back in 2002 to start over, the new stuff can't help but sound incredibly similar.