{"id":924,"date":"2026-06-28T11:14:37","date_gmt":"2026-06-28T11:14:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/?p=924"},"modified":"2026-06-28T11:14:37","modified_gmt":"2026-06-28T11:14:37","slug":"thank-god-for-mel-brooks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/?p=924","title":{"rendered":"Thank God for Mel Brooks"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

If you want to understand<\/span> Mel Brooks, and I mean really understand him, a good place to start is with Nikolai Gogol\u2019s unfinished masterpiece Dead Souls<\/em>. This is the 1842 novel that Brooks, at his most sentimental, has returned to again and again and again. If you know even a little bit about Gogol and a little bit about Brooks\u2014each is a brilliant, obsessive, absurdist maximalist in his own way\u2014this connection will make immediate sense.<\/p>\n

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People sometimes call Gogol the father of Russian realism, yet in Dead Souls<\/em>, especially, he explores the human condition with the unmistakable verve of a comedian\u2014seizing on preposterousnesses hiding in plain sight, piling absurdities atop one another until the tension cannot hold, generally dazzling (and, yes, sometimes confounding) the reader with his originality and playfulness.<\/p>\n

Brooks came to Gogol in the early 1950s on the recommendation of a mentor, the TV writer Mel Tolkin, while they were both working on the sketch-comedy sensation Your Show of Shows<\/em>. As Brooks remembers it, in a story he\u2019s told repeatedly, Tolkin urged him toward Dead Souls<\/em>, saying, \u201cEven though you\u2019re an animal from Brooklyn, I think you have the beginnings of a mind.\u201d (Incidentally, Gogol ends the novel mid-sentence in just the way that Brooks once, in search of a punch line that never came to him, broke off in the middle of a riotously funny monologue and walked out, not just of the room, but of the party he was attending.)<\/p>\n

Tolkin happens to be the mentor who said of Brooks: \u201cHalf of Mel\u2019s creativity comes out of fear and anger. He doesn\u2019t perform, he screams.\u201d This was an era in which a still-unknown Brooks would show up late to the writer\u2019s room\u2014a habit that drove his colleagues nuts\u2014and then get the biggest laughs out of them anyway. He was outrageously funny, and had unbelievable range. One minute he\u2019d be doing an impression of a rabbi, and the next he was writhing around on the floor pretending to be a harpooned whale (a Melville reference, naturally). The playwright Neil Simon, also a writer on the show, called Brooks \u201cthe most uniquely funny man I\u2019ve ever met.\u201d<\/p>\n

So Brooks, ever on a quest to prove himself, liked that Tolkin saw him as an intellectual\u2014or at least a could-be intellectual. And it turned out that Brooks liked Gogol, too. Over the years he certainly liked telling<\/em> people how much he liked Gogol, who comes up in interview after interview. When Mel Brooks decides that he likes something, or that he wants something, he really cannot be stopped.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been thinking about Brooks lately because he turns 100 today, a fact that should mostly be understood as indelible proof of a beneficent universe\u2014evidence of how ungodly lucky we all are to have shared, for even one day let alone many decades, the same atmosphere as one of the true greats of our species. Mel Brooks gave us, among other comedic gifts, The Producers<\/em>; Blazing Saddles;<\/em> Young Frankenstein; Silent Movie<\/em>; High Anxiety<\/em>; Spaceballs<\/em>; History of the World, Part I<\/em>; and Robin Hood: Men in Tights<\/em>. You could have been born at any point in time, but here you are, alive when ice cream, antibiotics, and indoor plumbing have all been invented, and Mel Brooks is turning 100. If that isn\u2019t extraordinarily good luck, I don\u2019t know what is.<\/p>\n

To be funny at all is something of a miracle. No form of writing is more difficult. No genre of art requires more daring. And no one can fake it (though many try). Mel Brooks\u2019s contributions to American comedy are a miracle a few times over, in that he is quite possibly the funniest man who ever lived and yet you can still easily see how it could have gone the other way.<\/p>\n

Brooks was born on a hot summer day in 1926, in Brooklyn, the youngest of four boys\u2014Irving, Lenny, Bernie, and Mel\u2014raised during the Great Depression by a single mother. (His father died suddenly when he was still a toddler.) Brooks, who was born Melvin Kaminsky, remembers his childhood as phenomenally happy, endless days of egg creams at the neighborhood soda fountain and stickball games in the street, an apartment filled with home-cooked meals and the sound of his mother singing along to Irving Berlin, special trips to Coney Island for root beer and hot dogs, and\u2014once his mother returned enough milk bottles to afford it\u201410-cent double features at the movie house on Friday nights, where he ate salami sandwiches packed from home. \u201cI loved my childhood in Brooklyn,\u201d Brooks recalled in his memoir, All About Me!: My Remarkable Life in Show Business<\/em>. He often thinks of it as the happiest period of his life. Brooks also relished his role as a class clown, terrorizing his teachers and leaving his friends gasping with laughter.<\/p>\n

Being funny came naturally to him, obviously, but it was also about self-preservation: \u201cMost of the kids in my class were taller than me. I needed a weapon to protect myself. That weapon turned out to be comedy,\u201d Brooks wrote. He took up drumming, quickly learning that playing well, like telling a good joke, requires an exquisite sense of timing. (\u201cI constantly still think in terms of rhythm,\u201d he wrote.) Sidenote: Here\u2019s a fun fact about how Melvin Kaminsky became Mel Brooks: He\u2019d intended to change Kaminsky to his mother\u2019s maiden name, Brookman, but all the letters in Brookman <\/em>couldn\u2019t fit on the drums. So Brooks <\/em>it was.<\/p>\n

When Brooks was 14 years old, he got a job at a Borscht Belt hotel as a busboy manning the sour-cream station. After hours, he would race between hotels to catch the acts of various comedians doing stand-up on the Catskills circuit. Eventually, he got onstage himself, and began to do impressions. One, of James Madison, mainly consisted of him pretending to be the fourth president quarreling over the mundane with his wife, Dolley: \u201cI\u2019d do stuff like, \u2018Dolley! Hurry! Set out the fruit salad! Franklin and Jefferson will be here any minute!\u2019\u201d He also started his act with a song that simultaneously is a relic of the Borscht Belt and holds up pretty well as an encapsulation of the fuel that has kept Brooks going all these years:<\/p>\n

\n
\n

Here I am, I\u2019m Melvin Brooks. <\/em><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve come to stop the show. <\/em><\/p>\n

Just a ham who\u2019s minus looks, <\/em><\/p>\n

But in your hearts I\u2019ll grow! <\/em><\/p>\n

I\u2019ll tell ya gags, sing ya songs<\/em><\/p>\n

Happy little snappy tunes that roll along <\/em><\/p>\n

Out of my mind, won\u2019t you be kind and<\/em><\/p>\n

Please love \u2026 Melvin Brooks!<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

Brooks was still practically a baby when he joined the Army Reserves and he shipped off to France during World War II. He got lucky, many times over\u2014not least of all because he wasn\u2019t deployed until the war was very nearly over\u2014but the experience was still surreal, often terrifying. (Although, never one to miss the opportunity for a joke, he told Judd Apatow in a 2023 interview for this magazine that \u201cin the end, fighting in World War II was better than facing a tough Jewish audience\u201d in the Catskills.)<\/p>\n

During combat, Brooks couldn\u2019t quite believe what was happening around him\u2014for one thing, he felt like he was suddenly living inside of a newsreel, and for the other he couldn\u2019t comprehend why humanity would stoop so terribly low. In one close call, he found himself in an encounter with some Germans blasting off cannons from their Flugabwehrkanone<\/em>. \u201cWe were in a command car,\u201d he recalled in an interview in 1998, \u201cand the road blew up around us, and I said, \u2018Why do they hate us? We don\u2019t even know them. Why are they so angry?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

As the late critic Kenneth Tynan put it in his spectacular Brooks profile for The New Yorker<\/em> in 1978, \u201cto be Jewish, Brooklyn-born, fatherless, impoverished, and below average stature\u2014no more classic recipe could be imagined for an American comedian. Or, one might suppose, for an American suicide.\u201d I\u2019d add to that: To fight in World War II, to confront the worst of humanity, and to survive\u2014that is difficult enough. But to take those experiences and explode them into comic rapture? To see what Hitler wrought and then dream up The Producers<\/em>? To confront death and choose humor? To adore the literary greats but reject any modicum of pretension? This is the miracle of Mel Brooks.<\/p>\n

Brooks once said that he went into show business \u201cto make a noise, to pronounce myself<\/em>.\u201d He didn\u2019t just want to make noise but to make the \u201cloudest noise to the most people.\u201d And \u201cif I can\u2019t do that,\u201d he concluded, \u201cI\u2019m not going to make a quiet, exquisite noise for a cabal of cognoscenti.\u201d But I always liked best how Gene Wilder\u2014Brooks\u2019s captivating leading funny man\u2014put it. In the actor\u2019s mind\u2019s eye, Brooks was always \u201cstanding bare-chested on top of a mountain, shouting \u2018Look at me!\u2019 and \u2018Don\u2019t let me die!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

This is why Brooks\u2019s work\u2014his writing, his directing, and of course his own performances\u2014is defined by a sense of total abandon. No joke can go far enough. No spectacle can be too big. Wild ambition is coupled with an insistence on living in the moment. And it\u2019s the same quality that first captured the attention of Anne Bancroft, who was far more famous than Brooks when they first met in the early 1960s. (Brooks was, at the time, married with three children, but would soon divorce his first wife.) That evening, Bancroft had been asked to sing for the NBC variety show Kraft Music Hall<\/em>, and Brooks approached her after her performance at the Ziegfeld Theatre, saying\u2014as Bancroft always remembered it\u2014\u201cI\u2019m Mel Brooks. Hiya, A.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cJust like that,\u201d she recalled, according to Douglass Daniel\u2019s biography of her, Anne Bancroft: A Life<\/em>. \u201cHe talks that way. I liked him.\u201d Fast-forward to 1964 and they were married\u2014at City Hall in New York. For their wedding-night meal, Bancroft cooked spaghetti for them at home. Yet as endearingly low-key as the couple could seem, nothing ever felt ordinary about their romance. Bancroft often described Brooks as literally \u201cincandescent,\u201d so charismatic that he practically glowed. They would stay together for 41 years, until her death in 2005. \u201cShe had good taste in everything\u2014except husbands,\u201d Brooks once said with typical self-effacement. When someone once asked him why he never remarried, he was far more earnest: \u201cOnce you are married to Anne Bancroft, others don\u2019t seem to be appealing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brooks often comes across as ebullient\u2014but don\u2019t mistake ebullience for being carefree. His closest friends have always described him as intensely competitive. And as he became famous, he developed a reputation for being fiercely private, understandably so. Even his enthusiasm for Gogol came from a place of insecurity. Brooks sometimes tells the story of how, when he very first saw his name as a writer on the credits of Your Show of Shows<\/em>, he felt like a fraud. \u201cI got scared,\u201d he told Tynan, \u201cand I figured I\u2019d better find out what these bastards do.\u201d Brooks tromped to the library and checked out armfuls of classics\u2014Gogol, but also Conrad, Dostoyevsky, and Tolstoy. (On Tolstoy, Brooks once said, \u201cIt\u2019s like he stuck a pen in his heart and it didn\u2019t even go through his mind on its way to the page.\u201d) And his conclusion was, \u201cMy God, I\u2019m not a writer, I\u2019m a talker.\u201d<\/p>\n

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In other instances, when people have remarked on his literary leanings, Brooks has demurred. Sure, he kept a giant portrait of Tolstoy hanging above his desk at his Hollywood studio. And, yes, he named Gene Wilder\u2019s character in The Producers<\/em>\u2014Leo Bloom\u2014after James Joyce\u2019s protagonist in Ulysses<\/em>. But Brooks will still insist that the best of cinema is every bit as good, and maybe even better than, the best of literature. \u201cLa Grande Illusion<\/em> is as good as Anna Karenina<\/em>, and Les Enfants du Paradis<\/em> is in the same class as La Chartreuse de Parme<\/em>,\u201d he told The New Yorker<\/em> in 1978. \u201cI\u2019m a populist. I want color, I want visual images, I want the sound of the human voice.\u201d As much as Brooks loves novels and novelists\u2014Joseph Heller was a dear friend, as was Mario Puzo\u2014he loves other comedians more.<\/p>\n

Growing up, he was obsessed with the Three Stooges and the Marx Brothers. They \u201cshowed me that comedy is a juxtaposition of textures,\u201d he said in Apatow\u2019s extraordinary recent documentary about Brooks, Mel Brooks: The 99 Year Old Man! <\/em>The Ritz Brothers were \u201clike gods\u201d to Brooks. And he had a special affection for Harry Ritz, who had \u201ca physical insanity and freedom that no other performer ever had.\u201d That level of daring\u2014and the enormous laughs it could generate\u2014was the high that Brooks has chased ever since. Carl Reiner was famously his best friend (in addition to being the straight man to Brooks\u2019s 2,000-Year-Old Man, one of his most enduring characters). More than 60 years after the public first heard the bit, it remains as hilarious and contemporary-feeling as it did from day one. Consider this classic exchange, featuring Reiner as the reporter interviewing the 2,000-year-old man about the ancient world:<\/p>\n

\n
\n

Reiner: And what language did you speak at that age?<\/p>\n

Brooks: They spoke, uh, Rock. Basic Rock.<\/p>\n

Reiner: Basic Rock. That was before Hebrew.<\/p>\n

Brooks: Yeah, it was. It was 200 years before Hebrew was the Rock language or Rock talk.<\/p>\n

Reiner: Can you give us an example of that?<\/p>\n

Brooks: Yes. \u201cHey you, don\u2019t throw that rock at me!\u201d \u201cHey you, what are you doing with the rock over there?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

Before Reiner died in 2020, at 98 years old, he would sometimes reminisce about the early years, when he and Brooks would test out new ideas at parties. Reiner would come up with a character for Brooks, but wouldn\u2019t give him any hint ahead of time of what it would be. \u201cI always tried for something that would force him to go into panic,\u201d Reiner recalled in one interview, \u201cbecause a brilliant mind in panic is a wonderful thing to see.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brooks and Wilder were extremely close as well\u2014basically brothers, although Wilder saw Brooks as more of a father figure. \u201cHe taught me never to be afraid of offending,\u201d Wilder once recalled. \u201cIt\u2019s when you worry about offending people that you get in trouble.\u201d Brooks also taught Wilder how to take something funny, push it all the way to the point of absurdity, then keep going. Think, for example, of Wilder\u2019s manic portrayal of Bloom in one of the early scenes in The Producers<\/em>: \u201cI\u2019m hysterical. I\u2019m having hysterics, I\u2019m hysterical. I can\u2019t stop when I get like this! I can\u2019t stop, I\u2019m hysterical!\u201d Zero Mostel, as Max Bialystock, then splashes a glass of water at Bloom to snap him out of it. Without missing a beat, Wilder: \u201cI\u2019m wet! I\u2019m wet! I\u2019m hysterical and I\u2019m wet.\u201d Max slaps him. Wilder again: \u201cI\u2019m in pain! And I\u2019m wet! And I\u2019m still hysterical!\u201d<\/p>\n

Wilder, who died in 2016, used to keep a photo of him with Brooks in his office. It was inscribed To my son Gene, with love, Daddy Mel<\/span>. In his autobiography, Wilder put it this way: \u201cIf I hadn\u2019t met Mel Brooks, I would probably be a patient in some neuropsychiatric hospital today.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brooks talks about their work together in similarly existential terms. Brooks didn\u2019t make Blazing Saddles<\/em>, for instance, because he was trying to be funny. It\u2019s just that humor is the lens through which Brooks processes everything. \u201cI think that I can say anything serious via comedy,\u201d Brooks tells Apatow in The 99 Year Old Man!<\/em> And of course he\u2019s right.<\/p>\n

With Blazing Saddles<\/em>, Brooks looked at the way Westerns had always been told, saw it as \u201csimply a lie,\u201d and decided he wanted to expose that lie in the most ridiculous\u2014and funniest\u2014way possible. Brooks, ever one for grandeur, once compared his approach in Blazing Saddles<\/em> to Picasso\u2019s Les Demoiselles d\u2019Avignon<\/em>, among the earliest works by the painter that are considered truly revolutionary. And as with Blazing Saddles, <\/em>not everyone was ready for the revolution. It\u2019s fashionable among comics to say that Blazing Saddles <\/em>could never be made today, that it is too audacious a parody, and flies far too close to the sun on matters of race in America. (Even Brooks has said a version of this, telling the BBC in 2017 that political correctness and tribalism was leading society toward \u201cthe death of comedy.\u201d) But Dave Chappelle\u2014one of the few who can rival Brooks in sheer comedic talent\u2014has persuasively made the point that it isn\u2019t that Blazing Saddles <\/em>couldn\u2019t be made today, but rather that Mel Brooks has always been the only person on Earth who could pull it off, and he just so happens to have already done so.)<\/p>\n

Brooks once said he realized with Blazing Saddles <\/em>that \u201cit was time to take two eyes, the way Picasso had done it, and put them on one side of the nose.\u201d He wanted to go all the way, and he did: \u201cI just got everything out of me\u2014all my furor, my frenzy, my insanity, my love of life and hatred of death.\u201d<\/p>\n

Think of it: Not fear, but hatred of death<\/em>. I always loved that. To be afraid is one thing. Fear makes people lash out, it makes them take fewer risks, it makes everything smaller. But to hate death? That is an act of defiance. Fear of death is passive; hatred of death is active. Wilder once said that Brooks wanted to set off \u201catom bombs of laughter.\u201d Others have described Brooks as setting off Roman candles with his jokes. But to the man himself, comedy is\u2014like life\u2014first and foremost about hatred of death. Comedy \u201chas the most to say about the human condition because if you laugh you can get by,\u201d he wrote in his memoir. \u201cLaughter is a protest scream against death, against the long goodbye.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brooks has occasionally confessed, with some degree of self-awareness, that there\u2019s something \u201cdisgustingly egotistical\u201d about him. Not necessarily in his look-at-me-look-at-me desire to be loved\u2014a quality that others have pointed out in him\u2014but more in the fact that \u201cI never truly felt inferior,\u201d he once said in a magazine interview. \u201cI never developed small defenses. I never ran scared. Even in comedy, you don\u2019t want your hero to be a coward. You want him to go forth and give combat.\u201d Pair that confidence and ambition with a dash of self-deprecation and mischief\u2014for example: the \u201cIt\u2019s good to be the king\u201d wink of History of the World, Part I\u2014<\/em>and that\u2019s the Mel Brooks sweet spot.<\/p>\n

Ever wonder who gave the greatest Oscars acceptance speech ever? Surprise, surprise\u2014it was Brooks, after winning the Academy Award for Best Writing for The Producers<\/em> in 1969. \u201cI\u2019ll just say what\u2019s in my heart,\u201d he said with charming sincerity after bounding onstage. A beat. \u201cBa-bump ba-bump ba-bump ba-bump.\u201d<\/p>\n

For 100 years\u2014100 years!\u2014Mel Brooks\u2019s heart has been going ba-bump, ba-bump, ba-bump<\/em>. He knows it won\u2019t be forever. That\u2019s why, for decades, he has warned us that we shouldn\u2019t \u201cfuture <\/em>ourselves\u201d so much. \u201cWe should now<\/em> ourselves more,\u201d he said in one interview. \u201cNow<\/em> is good. Now<\/em> is wonderful.\u201d Mel Brooks is not afraid of death; he hates it. And he has spent the past century not just in love with life, but totally and ceaselessly infatuated with it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI once had this thought that was so corny, but I loved it,\u201d Brooks told Playboy <\/em>in one of the most irresistible of his interviews. \u201c<\/em>It was that infinitesimal bits of coral, by the act of dying upon each other, create something that eventually rises out of the sea\u2014and there it is, it\u2019s an island and you can stand on it, live on it! And all because they died upon each other. Writing is simply one thought after another dying upon the one before. Where would I be today if it wasn\u2019t for Nikolai Gogol? You wouldn\u2019t be laughing at Young Frankenstein<\/em>. Because he showed me how crazy you could get, how brave you could be. Son of a bitch bastard! I love him! I love Buicks! I love Dubrovnik! I love Cookie Lavagetto! I love Factor\u2019s Deli at Pico and Beverly Drive! I love Michael Hertzberg\u2019s baby boy! I love rave reviews! I love my wife! I love not wearing suits! I love New York in June!\u201d I love this list. And I love Mel Brooks. How could you not? Happy birthday to one of the greatest ever to do it. Long live the king.<\/p>\n

\u200b\u200bWhen you buy a book using a link on this page, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting <\/em>The Atlantic.<\/em><\/small><\/p>\n

Read more What Trump\u2019s Efforts to Change D.C. Reveal<\/a><\/p>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Happy 100th birthday to the funniest man who ever lived.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":923,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-924","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture"],"yoast_head":"\nThank God for Mel Brooks - Commercial Relocation Pros<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/?p=924\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Thank God for Mel Brooks - Commercial Relocation Pros\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Happy 100th birthday to the funniest man who ever lived.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/?p=924\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Commercial Relocation Pros\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-06-28T11:14:37+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"18 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/?p=924#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/?p=924\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"admin\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/3a3374a445f1b5d4852b1d7c15b9fe3a\"},\"headline\":\"Thank God for Mel Brooks\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-06-28T11:14:37+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/?p=924\"},\"wordCount\":3584,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/?p=924#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/06\\\/bd6c010d5f16821d19293ce76f47ac3d.avif\",\"articleSection\":[\"Culture\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/?p=924#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/?p=924\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/?p=924\",\"name\":\"Thank God for Mel Brooks - 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