S8E21 - The Muffin Tops - Another solid episode from top to bottom. The Real Kramer bus tour, George pretends to be a tourist and gets traded to Tyson Chicken, Jerry shaves his chest and Elaine suggests the "Top of the Muffin" idea to Mr Lippman.
"It's beautiful! She makes all the plans. I'm not from around here, so it's OK if I'm stupid, and I'm not from around here so there's no messy breakups!"
Peterman's book title "No Placket Required" is a riff on Phil Collins' album “No Jacket Required.” A placket is “an opening or slit in a garment, covering fastenings or giving access to a pocket, or the flap of fabric under such an opening.”
Peterman's book is published and Elaine let's Kramer know they used his stories for it. Kramer goes to the book signing and sits next to him to sign books. He takes a book from one of the people in line and she says "who are you?" to which he replies "I'm the real Peterman!" After being thrown out, he starts The Real Kramer bus tour. This is of course based on the real Kenny Kramer's life story, who actually did sell the right to use his name to NBC for only $1000, back when the show was a pilot. After the show became a hit, he did start a ragtag bus tour called "The Kramer Reality Tour." The website can be found here: http://www.kennykramer.com/home.html however it shut down during Covid and has not resumed. Up until that point, it had been running for about 25 years straight. My parents actually went on the Kenny bus tour back in the mid 00's, and they loved it. They said he was hilarious, friendly and quite a character, however instead of a 3 Musketeers they said they were given a Snickers to eat with a knife and fork.
Kenny did ask to play Kramer in the Pilot for Seinfeld. He was denied by LD and Jerry, because they didn't have any say in it. However, Kenny did speak highly of Michael Richards character and performance, and said "I would never have thought to go sliding through doors and all the shtick that Michael does. He was brilliant. If I had gotten to play Kramer, the show would have gone straight down the crapper.” Here's the 3 of them back in the day:
Kenny did make 1 appearance on the show, he was one of the fans at the Rangers/Devils game in The Face Painter:
On a related note, apparently Jerry did go to High School with a George Costanza. A teacher did call him "Can't Stand Ya" and he had some other similarities to the character. That George Costanza did sue NBC for 100 million, but he lost the case as it was declared a frivolous lawsuit. He was ordered to pay $2500 in legal fees over it, and Jerry was quoted in response as saying "The universe would be out of kilter if someone named Costanza won anything.”