George Wallace has been making audiences laugh for decades, much of that as a Las Vegas headliner.  With his new residency, WALLACE @ WESTGATE, the man who’s “been thinking,” sure has an awful lot to say.  Recently, ShulmanSays sat-down with Wallace, inside the Westgate Cabaret, where audiences are treated to his insightful and sometimes frustrated observations, for up to five nights each week (when he’s not touring).  Here’s what transpired.

Continued from Part 3…

ShulmanSays:  How do you unwind?

George Wallace:  Oh, man. I love to bullshit. Sit around. We're really getting into it now! I love to just sit around and have fun and enjoy people.

SS:  What's better than that?

GW:  Mmhmm. And I love to travel. I love to get me a good first class seat. I don't talk enough on the planes though. You know?

SS:  Are you kidding? I sat next to you on a plane, once. We were coming from L.A. to here, I think.

GW:  I didn't talk to you.

SS:  Yes, you did. Well, actually I talked to you, and you answered.

GW:  So that guy was you?

SS:  You were wearing a black leather jacket with an eight-ball on the back, maybe?

GW:  You're an old dude, if you remember that eight-ball jacket! Those were so popular back in the day. That was a jacket by a designer named Jeff Hamilton.  I was the first one to start wearing his leather jackets on TV, and everybody went crazy; which made them very popular.  And he used to give them to me.  Every TV show, I’d wear a different sharp leather jacket, by Jeff Hamilton.  That's probably why you remember it.

SS:  That, and the fact that you made me laugh so hard, I almost peed in my pants.

GW:  I was good looking, back then, wasn’t I?

SS:  Was?  Please…

GW:  You can go straight to Hell!

SS:  Was good looking?  You’re still good looking!

GW:  Well, thank you.  And don’t go to Hell.

SS:  I’ll change my plans…  Is it true that sometimes you just go to the airport and find a flight and get on a plane?

GW:  I did that. Yeah. I do that all the time. I started like 40 years ago, with that big department store in London, Harrod's. They used to have a world-famous sale, and every year, they'd announce it on TV, "World-famous Harrod's sale." And I go, "What the fuck everybody talking about?"  It was a Thursday morning – and I never will forget thinking “I'm going to go check this out!”

By 4:00 o'clock, I was on the flight to London.  Then couldn't find shit. I don't like London, first of all. I don't like the old buildings. I don't like the old ways. And I've been there almost 20 times. I played the O2 Centre, and everything. But I went to that Harrod's sale, and from that day on, I’ve traveled. Since I was a kid, I just loved traveling, and meeting difficult people.

SS:  I recall you saying something about Shanghai being three times bigger than New York and three times more modern.

GW:  That’s because Shanghai is three times bigger and more modern than New York.  I’ve been there, too.  And then there’s that Megyn Kelly; the one who said Santa Claus was white?*  Well that pissed me off, because Santa Claus is whatever you need him to be.  Do you think he’s white, in Jamaica?  I don’t think so.

SS:  Nope.  Not in Jamaica, Queens, either.  It’s like that Christmas episode of Welcome Back, Kotter, where the door swings open, and Freddy “Boom Boom” Washington strolls-in, wearing a Calypso shirt and a straw hat, singing “I don’t care what de white man say: Santa Claus was a black man” (or something like that)?

GW:  Yeah! See? There you go. Fact of the matter is, if you really want to think about it, Santa Claus is Chinese, you know?

SS:  Of course, he is!  How else could he make all those toys?

GW:  You got it.  Read the bottom of those toys!

SS:  Hashtag Made-in-Taiwan.

Concluded in Part 5…

George Wallace | WALLACE @ WESTGATE
Westgate Cabaret | Westgate Las Vegas
Click HERE for info and tickets

Get into it!
#NewMrVegas

[Editor’s Notes: *Two weeks to-the-day after this interview, NBC announced the cancellation of Megyn Kelly Today, due to comments Megyn Kelly’d made three days earlier, defending the use of blackface on Halloween.]