Seinfeld Reference: The Complete Encyclopedia (30 page)

Two years later, Kramer admitted to having a gambling disease, so he placed a $100 bet on Jerry's behalf.  The wager would pay 10:1, if the Knicks beat the Pacers by more than 35 points.  Kramer attended the game, sat next to Spike Lee, and had a dispute with Pacer shooting guard Reggie Miller.  When Kramer ran onto the court and threw a hot dog at Miller, all three were ejected and spent the evening at a strip club.  The Knicks won 110-73, so Jerry won the bet.

Other wagers: Kramer made a bet involving the fat content of an alleged nonfat yogurt, and agreed to consume only nonfat frozen yogurt for an entire week.  In another wager amongst friends, Kramer bet $100 that he could last the longest without masturbating, but a voyeuristic escapade involving a neighborhood nudist cost him the contest.

Criminal History

Kramer was arrested for pandering when he was mistakenly identified as a pimp.  He was wearing a technicolor dreamcoat and hat, using a squire walking stick, driving a pink Cadillac, and wrestling with a prostitute who was turning tricks in the vehicle.  Kramer's arrest identification number was NYPD 3317810404.  Kramer does not have a federal criminal record, though he defied federal law by misusing a United States Postal Service vehicle to haul bottles to Michigan for a deposit refund.

Kramer has three criminal convictions.  After illegally raiding a commercial lobster trap, he was reported to local authorities for lobster poaching and fined $1,000, which was repaid through community service by picking up roadside garbage with the Suffolk County Prison inmates.  The second conviction was dognapping.  Kramer, Elaine and Newman snatched a vociferous mutt and traveled to upstate New York to release it in the wild.  The final blemish on his permanent record was a conviction for criminal indifference for failing to lend assistance to a carjacking victim.

At one point, Kramer ran afoul with the Postmaster General.  Kramer became perturbed when the Pottery Barn continuously sent mail-order catalogues, and seethed when he began receiving more catalogues and magazines from Omaha Steaks,
Newsweek
, and Mac Warehouse.  He decided to fill his apartment mailbox with bricks but then it was redirected to Jerry's apartment.  When Kramer visited the post office to cancel his mail, they refused, and he was subsequently kidnapped and lectured by the United States Postmaster General.

Volunteer/Charity

Kramer participated in a PBS pledge drive on WNET channel 13 by answering the telephone to accept donations.  He was hoping to receive a percentage of each pledge, but settled for a foam beer can holder and tote bag.  Kramer also participated in the AIDS walk but refused to wear a ribbon; his defiance infuriated fellow participants who physically accosted him.  In addition, Kramer offered leftover food to homeless people, and in one instance it resulted in an argument over the return of Kramer's Tupperware.

By accident, Kramer is invited as guest of honor at the AMCA (Able Mentally Challenged Adults) benefit, and sits at the head table with Mel Torme.  While sharing a cab with Arnold Deensfrei, head of the AMCA, Kramer is mistaken as a mentally challenged adult.  At the time, he was wearing specially-designed athletic shoes to increase his vertical leap, and his mouth was numb from recent dental surgery.  He walks awkward, drools, and speaks incomprehensible gibberish.

Brandt-Leland Investments becomes an unexpected recipient of Kramer's benevolence.  While attempting to fix the copy machine, Kramer is coaxed into accompanying coworkers to a company meeting.  He becomes a 9-to-5 businessman and finally receives structure in his life.  However, after reviewing Kramer's work, he is fired (even though he was never actually hired).

Using the experience of watching every Miss America contest since the age of six, Kramer becomes a personal consultant to Miss Rhode Island in her quest for the crown.  The talent portion involves a magic act with trained doves, and her speech discusses the cessation of world hunger.  When Jerry accidentally kills the doves, the defeat is solidified with her tone-deaf crooning.

Another volunteer project was renovating the 1922 Alex Theater and procuring its official designation as a city landmark.  The grand opening showed
Spartacus
with 12 extra minutes of footage, in full, wide-screen cinemascope.  The 1:00 p.m. show offered a lecture by Jeffrey Haarwood, the assistant wardrobe man of
Spartacus
, on fascinating insights into the production.  Haarwood worked at the Institute for the Preservation of Motion Picture Costumes and Wardrobes (IPMPCW).  Another Alex Theater production was
The Private Life Of Henry VIII
at $7 per ticket.

Kramer participates in the adopt-a-highway program and becomes responsible for mile 114, a one-mile stretch of the Arthur Burkhardt Expressway.  Paternal instincts emerge as he performed the cleaning and maintenance--parenting is about being there, not delegating authority to someone else.  Unfortunately, the zealousness causes traffic havoc when Kramer removes the lane reflectors and paints over a set of white lines to create a 2-lane comfort cruise.

Hobbies

As a hobby, Kramer makes figurines out of pasta.  He creates Jerry using fusilli pasta, Bette Midler using macaroni, and is working on one of George using ravioli.  According to Kramer, you must find the pasta that captures the individual--Jerry is fusilli because he is silly.

In Scrabble, Kramer suggested using the word "quone," which he defines as: when a patient gets difficult you quone him.  Kramer insists that a medical dictionary is necessary to verify the legitimacy of the term.

Kramer has a ventriloquist dummy, Mr. Marbles, which is not allowed in Jerry's apartment because it freaks him out.  Jerry envisions Mr. Marbles coming to life in the middle of the night and killing him.  Kramer never had a library card, and believes the library only contains cheapskates trying to save a quarter by reading the newspaper at public expense.

Kramer believes a nice greeting card can really lift a person's spirits, and is particularly impressed with Hallmark cards.

Figure 10 Jerry (Jerry Seinfeld) and Kramer (Michael Richards) in "The Junior Mint" episode.

Sports

Golfing is one of Kramer's greatest pleasures.  Although he plays on public courses, Kramer offers Cuban cigars to golf shop pros in exchange for free rounds of golf at the Westchester Country Club and Van Cortland Golf Course.  After experiencing the private courses, Kramer refuses to return to the crowded public courses because of the large brown patches, unraked sand traps, and inferior competition.

To improve his game and correct a left hook, Kramer receives golf lessons from Susan Ross' lesbian lover, Mona, who manages to take six strokes off his game.  In addition, Stan the Caddy nurtures Kramer's professional golfing career to groom him for the senior tour.  For practice, Kramer keeps 600 Titleist in the trunk of his car and travels to Rockaway to hit balls into the ocean.  His best shot was a hole-in-one, which landed directly into a whale's blow hole.

Kramer is an excellent first baseman for the Improv softball team.  In one memorable game, the team overcomes an eight-run deficit to win the game, so Kramer coaxes Richie Appel to dump a bucket of Gatorade on the 67-year-old coach/club owner, Marty Benson.  The old man catches a cold, develops pneumonia, and dies one month later.

Another monumental antic occurs while attending a $2,000 per week fantasy baseball camp in Florida with the old Yankees.  Kramer is pitching to Joe Pepitone who is crowding the plate.  When intimidation fails, Kramer intentionally hits Pepitone, who rushes the mound.  Both benches clear, a major brouhaha erupts, and Kramer pops Mickey Mantle in the mouth.

Kramer is a member of the New York Health Club and also frequents the YMCA.  While conversing in the sauna with a writer named Sal Bass, Kramer is convinced he met Salman Rushdie, who colorfully disguised his name using two fish, Salmon and Bass.

Besides using the health club tanning beds, Kramer frequenting uses the pool to swim 200 laps.  He becomes frustrated by the excessive congestion in the water, and searches for an alternative locale that contains miles of open lanes for swimming--the East River, which is the most heavily-trafficked, overly-contaminated waterway on the Eastern seaboard (though technically, Norfolk has more gross tonnage).  Kramer begins swimming laps between the Queensboro and Brooklyn bridges, but soon the East River is overcrowded with swimmers.  During the winter, Kramer still enjoys an occasional swim, so he joins the polar bear club to participate in mid-winter festivities.

Kramer enjoys several other sports and recreational activities, such as skiing, polo, billiards, basketball, racquetball, Canadian football (though he attended a New York Giants game and leapt over three rows of seats to catch a game-winning field goal), bowling (his ball has a magic grip that contributed to a 220 game), and poker.  Kramer also enjoys listening to the emergency band scanner.

Kramer is a talented photographer and has all the necessary equipment in his apartment.  He took seductive pictures of George, and a photograph of Elaine for personalized Christmas cards that inadvertently expose her nipple.  Nonetheless, she liked the photograph so much that she uses a nippleless version for her health club I.D. card.

Food & Beverage

Kramer signs a one-year contract with Now We're Cookin', a food delivery service, to receive faxes of various restaurant menus, and directs the communications to Elaine's telephone number.  Kramer loves all types of food, including desserts, but is quite health conscious.

When purchasing fresh fruit, Kramer only frequents Joe's market.  However, after insisting upon a refund for a bad peach, he is banned from the premises.  Kramer refuses to purchase supermarket fruit because the apples are mealy, oranges are dry, and papayas are an enigma.  He sends Jerry to the market to buy fresh fruit, but the scheme fails and Jerry is banned from the store.

Kramer's favorite fruit is the Oregon Mackinaw peach that is perfectly ripened for only two weeks each year.  According to Kramer, your taste buds come alive, it's like a circus in your mouth, and the peaches are likened to the Aurora Borealis--a miracle of nature that only exists for a brief period of time.

Kramer went without a decent sandwich for 13 years because the meat was always shoddy and misshaped, so he trades a sausage press for a SP-2000 meat slicer.  Despite a great love for food, Kramer admits that he lacks cooking skills.  He is unable to peel, chop, grate or mince, and has no sense of flavor.  Kramer is lost without Tupperware, and refuses to use plastic bags because they do not have the patented burp to lock in freshness.

According to Kramer, he has been drinking café lattes since the fifth grade and started the trend.  He also consumes Hennigan's scotch, and improvises a commercial to promote the product's non-alcoholic aroma: "Hennigan's no-smell, no-tell scotch."

Likes & Dislikes - Entertainment

Television.
Kramer watches "The Bold and the Beautiful," "Melrose Place," "Jeopardy!," "Gomer Pyle: U.S.M.C.," "20/20" and "Quincy."  He also has a videotape of the 1984 Olympiad, which includes Katya's silver medal performance.

Movies.
Kramer rents movies from Champagne Video, and prefers the recommendations of Gene--senseless, mainstream movies.  Kramer saw
Beaches
four times, and always wanted to see
Plan 9 From Outer Space
.  He thinks
Star Trek III: The Search for Spock
is the best
Star Trek
picture, and is mysteriously disturbed by the coma scene in
The Other Side of Darkness
.

Music/Theater.
Kramer likes Mel Torme and Sergio Mendez, but his favorite singer is Bette Midler.  When Bette is injured during a softball game and unable to perform in the musical
Rochelle, Rochelle
, he becomes her caretaker and even creates a macaroni Midler in her honor.

Reading.
Kramer reads
Wall Street Week
,
Fortune
magazine, and
Penthouse
Forum (the letters are real and offer good dinner party conversation material).  He owns the books
Astonishing Tales of the Sea
and
Astounding Bear Attacks
, and read the biography of Leonardo Da Vinci.

Appearance

Kramer is approximately 6'3" (6'6" including his hair), 190 pounds with a Raymond Massey-like physique.  He has dark brown eyes, like rich Columbian coffee, and frizzy, out-of-control hair.  In early episodes, Kramer had wavy, well-groomed hair and a scruffy, unshaven face.  As the series developed, his hair became more outlandish, despite using mousse and the skillful scissors of his regular barber (Gino).

When Kramer's commercial shaving cream fails to provide sufficient protection, he switches to butter, which offers a close, clean shave and natural emollients that keep his skin silky smooth.  The feeling is so euphoric, he decides to use butter on his whole body, and begins purchasing buckets of oleo from Monk's Café.  However, the pleasure of butter lost its appeal when Kramer falls asleep while sunbathing and bronzes into a delectable morsel (and the object of Newman’s appetite).