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- [Announcer] Everybody, welcome Kurt Braunholer.
- Thank you, guys.
Oh man.
So, I'm a dad now.
No, don't even, don't, don't.
I mean, just the environmental impact
of having those children is...
It's horrible.
I'm a dad.
So, ma life finally caught up with ma looks.
Just been looking like a dad for 40 years
without kids.
Honestly, it was getting creepy.
You know?
People were like, "That dad seems too drunk."
Now it's like, "Hey, that dad is too drunk."
My daughter calls me Papa.
- [Audience] Aw.
- Yeah.
Because we, as a society, ruined daddy.
Nobody's ever said, "Choke me, Papa."
Maybe Barbra Streisand.
So, now my daughter has to refer to me
like we live in a French fishing village in the '20s.
Like, "Will we eat today, Papa?"
"I don't rightly know, Daughter."
But it's been a little tough at home
because I live with an anti-vaxxer.
Yeah, my four-year-old.
And I thought it was just 'cause she didn't like needles,
you know?
But then I saw her drawing this picture,
and I was like, "What is this, honey?"
She's like, "Oh this?
This is just Bill Gates
trying to inject his microchip into me, Daddy."
And I was like, "All right, that's it.
We're taking a bath."
And she's like, "666 is the number of the beast.
The vaccine was created by a supercomputer in Belgium."
I'm like, "All right, no more YouTube."
But she's like, "Go get poked, you cop."
"No more 'Joe Rogan Experience' for you.
It was a mistake to subscribe you."
I have two children, and two is, oh man.
It's more than one, and it's so much more than one,
and I just don't know if I like who I am with two children.
Do you know what I mean?
Recently at the dinner table,
I screamed at my entire family,
"I don't care if everyone's crying.
I'm eating."
I don't want to be that man.
I legitimately whispered under my breath
to a one-year-old,
"Oh, you're such a fuckin' baby."
No, no.
And, man, when I had one kid, I was so cocky about it.
If someone was like,
"Hey, man, we're thinking about having a kid.
Should we?"
I'd be like, "Hey, is it hard?
Yeah.
But what that's worth doing isn't hard?"
And then if someone's like,
"Hey man, should we have a second kid?"
I'm like, "Don't talk to me.
I have 15 minutes to drink this vodka soda
before going to bed,
because every minute that he sleeps that I don't sleep,
he gets stronger than me."
I want to be a good dad.
You know? I want to be.
I be mean, most dads want to be good dads,
except for those pieces of shit, you know?
I want to be a good dad,
so I got a vasectomy right away.
I was like, no more me.
The vasectomy was weird.
I was hard the whole time,
and the doctor was like, "What's going on, man?"
And I was like, "Oh, I'm so sorry, Doc,
if I'm excited to relieve my wife
of the responsibility of birth control
for the rest of her life.
So, just grab onto this shaft
and neuter the patriarchy, bro."
And he's like, "You don't know how this works,
do you?"
I was like, "I do not."
No, but I do.
I want to be a good dad.
I don't necessarily have a great blueprint for a good dad.
My dad's, he's like a guy, you know?
Here, I'll tell you a story.
Recently, my brother called me, and he's like,
"Hey, I'm with Dad.
Dad wants to know, are you on a CarMax commercial?"
And I was like, "No, I'm not in a CarMax commercial."
And then I hear him go,
"No, he's not in a CarMax commercial,"
then in the background,
I hear my dad go, "Yes he is."
So, in case you haven't seen this CarMax commercial,
very funny comedian,
the similarities between us are that
we have glasses and are white,
and that is it.
And so what's nice is that my dad insisted my brother
give me a call just to let me know
he has no idea what I look or sound like,
which would be weird for most dads,
but my dad has eight children from many different women
'cause my dad loves to fuck, hates wearing a condom.
Which is a weird irresponsibility
that results in so much more responsibility.
So, my eldest sister is 60 years old
and my youngest two sisters are 19.
Twins right at the end.
Go fuck yourself, Dad.
♪ Twins at 62
♪ Bamp-bamp
♪ Twins at 62
I think that's a Rod Stewart song, actually.
So, that means that my dad has been a dad
every day for 60 years,
and he's never gotten any better at it?
That's amazing.
If you did anything every day for 60 years,
you would accidentally become a genius at doing that thing,
and my dad has never become better at being a dad?
That's amazing.
My dad is like a guy who played mini golf
every day for 60 years,
and then one day, someone was like,
"Oh, look, it's a golf ball."
And my dad was like, "That's a bowling ball."
Person's like, "No, that's not a bowling ball,"
and my dad's like, "Yes it is."
That is the equivalent of
not recognizing your own son on a goddamn commercial.
Memorize our faces, Father.
It is the literal least you could do.
So, eldest sister, 60,
youngest two sisters are 19,
which means I have multiple nieces and nephews
that are way older than my youngest two sisters.
So, last time we all got together,
it was about 17 years ago,
'cause we don't do it too often
'cause it's too weird for everybody.
It's just like a bunch of employees from regional offices
getting together for a barbecue.
My eldest nephew, at the time he was 18,
hanging out with my youngest two sisters,
at the time were two.
One of them shit their pants.
He wanted to tell my dad,
so he said, "Grandpa, I believe Emily has pooped her pants."
Luckily, I was there to correct him, and I said,
"Mm, mm, mm, mm, mm, mm.
You believe Aunt Emily has pooped her pants,"
and my dad was like, "That's not funny.
Don't do that."
And I was like, "I wish you knew
how very funny that is, Papa.
Perhaps it would give you a perspective
on your whimsical life so far."
So, my parents got divorced when I was two.
I grew up in Jersey.
What up, Jersey?
I'm required by law to say that.
And my dad lived in Michigan,
so-
I don't like your state.
So...
It's fine.
It's a fine state.
I have personal resentment towards the state itself, okay?
But my dad decided that when I was five years old,
he just decreed like a drunk king,
"The boy is old enough to fly on the aeroplane by himself."
And so I started flying by myself at age five,
and in case you've never done that,
here's how it goes.
Your mom drops you off at the airport and then drives away.
And then a flight attendant who is psyched to,
in addition to doing her weird job
that's midway between being a cocktail waitress
and a first responder now also
has to babysit a five-year-old.
And the very first thing they do is they give you a sticker.
Says, "Unaccompanied minor,"
just to make sure everybody
at the airport knows you're there for the taking.
Just a little silver platter for pedophiles.
Like, "This one's alone, boys.
This is Kurt. He's five.
He loves He-Man and sharks and keeping secrets."
And I was like, "There's no way they still do that.
That was just something they did in the '80s."
No, they still do.
I was recently in Montreal Airport.
I saw a little girl.
She must have been 10 years old.
She had the unaccompanied minor sticker on,
but then she was also wearing a T-shirt,
and I am assuming that her parents do not speak English,
because the T-shirt just said, "White wine all the time,"
which combined with the unaccompanied minor sticker,
not a good look for the parents.
And for some reason,
every flight I ever took had
a three-hour layover in Dayton, Ohio, and I hated it.
I hated it so much as a kid until I turned 12,
and I learned the secrets of Dayton, Ohio.
In order to understand the secret of Dayton, Ohio,
you need to know three true things
about myself, Kurt Braunholer.
Fact Number One:
I started smoking cigarettes at age 10.
What up, Jersey?
10,
Fact Number Two:
I discovered pornography at age 12
when I found all of my uncle's "Playboys"
and cut just the breasts out of every photograph
and taped them to my wall,
hidden underneath a poster that was
a photograph of myself at age five
that said, "Wanted dead or alive."
And I would charge children in the neighborhood a quarter
to stare at this sea of disembodied breasts...
realizing early on that breasts without women
are very upsetting.
It's just a pile of sunny-side-up eggs.
And Fact Number Three: I hate the saxophone, okay?
That has nothing to do with this story.
Just a little something about me.
So, when I turned 12,
I learned the secret of Dayton, Ohio, which was this.
I would get off the plane in Dayton,
shake my flight attendant guard,
and then I would head off into the airport,
'cause you could do this 'cause it was the '80s.
I would buy cigarettes and pornography
and sit in the Dayton airport for three hours,
smoking Marlboro Reds and flipping through a "Hustler"
like some sort of 12-year-old divorced dad,
which is very ironic,
'cause that's who put me
in this position in the first place.
♪ The cat's in the cradle and the silver spoon ♪
♪ Little boy blue and the man in the moon ♪
But I want to be a good dad.
I don't want my daughter
to have her own Dayton, Ohio, you know?
And I think part of being a good dad
is also being a good man,
but I fail every once in a while.
I'll tell you the story.
There's a gas station near my house.
Has a little handwritten sign on one of the pumps.
It says, "Please replace Nozzle Two pump
before driving away with it.
Thanks."
And years ago, I took a photograph of this
and I posted it to Instagram,
and me and a bunch of strangers made fun of
all these human trash piles were just driving away
with the pump still in their goddamn car.
And so when I drove away
with the pump in my car about a year ago,
I was bashful.
Have you ever made fun of yourself from the past
with a bunch of strangers?
'Cause I have.
And the thing is, I didn't even know I did it.
I had no idea.
I hopped in the car,
blasted my meditation app, and just took off,
ripped it right out of the pump.
Had no idea.
And then immediately pulled an illegal four-lane U-turn,
and all of the oncoming traffic was like .
And I was like, "Oh, fuck you, you fuckin' church Nancys.
It's a U-turn."
So, I gave 'em all the middle finger,
meanwhile spewing gasoline across the street,
and then I made a right, and I got on a big highway,
started going very fast, and mind you,
I just have a tail dragging behind me, like...
And then this big white pickup truck pulls up next to me
and he's honking at me.
And I was like, "What?
It's a U-turn."
And he's like, "Roll your window down."
And I was like, "What?"
And he's like, "You drove away with the pump in your car."
And I was like, "Oh, you drove away with the pump in your,
oh no."
So, I did.
And then I was very, very, very embarrassed,
and I'm on the highway.
I didn't know what to do,
so then I just pulled over to the side of the road,
and then he pulled over, too.
And then I got out of my car,
and then he got out of his car, too.
I was deeply embarrassed.
You know, it's essentially I shit my pants,
and then he followed me into the bathroom like,
"Hey, man, did you shit your pants?
Hey, how much shit is in your pants?
Hey, why do you think you shit your pants earlier?"
And I was just like, "What do you want?"
And he's like, "Do you need help?"
And I realize I had a choice to make here.
I could act the way men have acted for centuries.
I could act like a wounded animal
and lash out at this man to protect myself.
Or I could be a better man.
I could admit my vulnerabilities and say,
"Yes, I screwed up, and I do need help,"
and so that man said, "Hey, can I help you?"
And I said to him, "No!"
And then he got mad and got his car and drove away.
And then I was left alone with my shame.
And I walked over to the back of my car.
I pulled out the gas pump, and I was like,
"Oh, there's definitely still a lot of gas in here.
I can't put it in my car.
Fumes and stuff.
I'm picking up my daughter.
What would be very useful right now is a pickup truck,
but I just told that guy to go fuck himself."
So then I just left my car on the side of the road
and then walked with it in my arms
all the way back along the highway, down the exit ramp,
back to the gas station,
where both managers were waiting for me outside.
And I just kind of laid it at their feet
like a big dead snake,
and I was like, "Well, what do we do now?"
Turns out it cost $350,
which is honestly a lot less than I expected.
I mean, you don't get to keep it,
but also, they're designed to just pop right off.
So, the thing is just do it.
It doesn't matter.
Just do it.
Also, if you turn it into a comedy bit,
it kind of pays for itself.
And when you have a kid,
you just stay inside for a very long time,
and I think we're all very familiar with how that feels.
And recently, it was like the first time I had been out
since my son had been born,
the first time I was in society.
I was in an airport,
and I knew it was going to be weird
reintegrating into society,
but I didn't know in what ways it would be.
And this kind of surprised me.
I was in a public bathroom, huge airport bathroom,
and the urinals were where the stool was,
and I was across the room around here,
and it was at this point that I realized,
"Oh no, I've taken my penis out too soon."
I was like, "Oh no,"
and all the men around me were like, "Too soon,"
and I was like, "I know,"
and they're like, "Put it back,"
and I'm like, "There's no time."
I did home behavior outside.
At home, you see the toilet,
you're like, "I'm ready to go to the bathroom."
So, I just stay home mostly.
I just stay home.
My daughter, after she was born,
there was just nothing in her room.
It just kind of seemed like
we had a house guest for a little while,
and so I was always trying to look for things
that I could make her room look like a little girl's room.
And, guys, comedy has treated me pretty well, you know?
I mean, I'm not a rich man
by any stretch of the imagination,
but I can definitely go to a small town
and afford any number of
vintage dog photographs they have, you know?
And so I was in Burlington, Vermont, drunk,
'cause what else are you going to do in Burlington?
Just watch white people be happy?
Guys, if you've never been to Burlington, fun town.
Founded in 1990 when a Phish concert
collided with a zip-line convention...
It's just a little town of like-minded Teva sandals
in the middle of a forest
with a massive methamphetamine problem.
Definitely go in the fall
when they harvest the blueberry marshmallow vape.
It's delicious.
So, I was there, two in the morning,
drunk in a snowstorm,
and I saw a piece of art in a window
that stopped me dead in my tracks.
It was a photograph of a dog in an old-timey saloon
playing the piano with
a little handkerchief around his neck
like he was some little bandito
that just happened to ride into
what I'm assuming is an all-dog Wild West town,
probably on the back of a larger version of himself,
then saw the bar, hopped off the dog,
kicked open the doors, hopped in,
had a shot of fire water, saw the piano,
hopped up to tickle the old ivories,
and the only newspaper dog in town
was there at the perfect moment to snap a perfect photo.
It's a goddamn piece of art.
And I was like, "My daughter needs this."
Went to bed, woke up the next morning, found the store.
What the store is, turns out,
it's a place where you can get dressed up
in old-timey Wild West gear.
You can get your picture taken in an old-timey saloon,
which makes no sense for Burlington, Vermont.
That's not in the Wild West, guys.
It would make more sense if you could
just dressed up as Bernie Sanders
and eat some Ben & Jerry's, but whatever.
That guy had a dream.
He made a weird store, all right?
So, I go in, and I say,
"I love this photograph, this dog playing the piano,"
and the guy there is like, "I took that photo,"
and I'm like, "You're an artist,"
and he's like, "Do you want to know something about that?"
And I'm like, "I do."
He said that dog wasn't actually playing the piano.
It's worth so much more to me now
that he thought I was just walking by and saw the photo,
and was like, "He has photographic proof
of dogs playing the piano?
I gotta show this to the scientists, man."
So, I was like, "That's amazing.
I would love to buy it for my daughter."
He gets very serious.
He's like, "Oh, this photo's not for sale.
This was a client.
I took this photograph of a client's dog.
Also, it's an heirloom frame from my wife's family.
I could never part with it."
Then in my head, I was like,
"Oh no, if I don't get this for my daughter,
I'm a bad dad, aren't I?"
And then I was like,
"Maybe I should offer him more than I think it's worth."
But the thing is, I don't know what things are worth,
and I was like, "Should I offer him $100?
Is this worth a third of a gas pump?
I don't know."
And so then I panicked, and I was just like,
"I'll give you a hundred bucks,"
and he just went, "Are you kidding me?"
And I realized I had far overvalued
the piano-playing-dog photo market in Burlington, Vermont,
and he immediately sold it to me, heirloom frame and all,
and I realized that at that time,
I had become the bad guy in every '80s movie ever,
just walking into a small town with my douche bag LA money,
like, "Oh, is it not for sale, old man?
Well, now it is."
And I'm telling this story to you because I want,
if you're ever in Burlington, Vermont,
I want you to find that store.
I want you to go in there.
I want you to offer that man a hundred dollars
for any dog-playing-piano photographs he might have,
'cause what I want to do is I want to artificially
inflate the market for dog-playing-piano photography
in the small economy that is Burlington, Vermont
till it's no longer known
for hippies and hacky sacks,
but mostly anthropomorphic dog photography,
'cause we can do that because that's how capitalism works.
And I've been thinking.
I've been thinking a lot about capitalism recently.
I think we all have,
now that these jack-offs have been
going to space on their lunch break or whatever,
and I was like, "What is the definition of capitalism?"
We always talk about it, so I looked it up online.
The definition is if every individual
acts in their own rational self-interest,
that will bring about the most good
for the most amount of people.
And I was like, "Oh, the flaw is in the definition."
Human beings aren't rational.
Fucking Smash Mouth is still popular, guys.
We don't make rational choices.
We make emotional choices.
That's why billionaires exist.
Billionaires are not rational.
They make no rational sense.
They have more money they could
ever spend in their entire life,
and also, now in America,
three people have more money
than the bottom half of Americans.
That's three people have more money
than 162 million individuals.
That seems insane to me.
But also, I don't know,
maybe capitalism is the best system.
I don't know.
I'm not a systems guy, you know?
But I do know that in this country,
we have a show called "Hoarders"
where if an old lady has 25,000 magazines,
we're like, "Kick her door down."
We're like, "You can't have these magazines."
She's like, "No, let have my magazines."
They're like, "No, you can't have these magazines.
We're going to burn your house down."
Anyway, I'm pitching "Hoarders II"
where we just murder billionaires.
It is weird to be raising children in America right now
'cause America's, you know, we're not nailing it right now.
There was a thing I read recently
that there was a woman in Decatur, Georgia,
she heard some buzzing.
You're going to love this one, then.
She had 120,000 bees living in her ceiling.
This is true.
You can Google it later.
Just put in 120,000 and it'll auto correct bees.
And I don't know about you guys, Denver,
but I feel like if I see five bees...
I'm like, "There's a lot of bees here.
We should do something about our bee problem."
But you know, fuck me.
Maybe I'm some liberal coastal elite
motherfucker who notices bees, you know?
Well, let's say 10,000 bees.
Wow.
10,000 bees coming and going from your house,
doing what they do, eating leaves and shit.
I don't know much about bees' lives or what they eat.
That definitely seems like enough bees to be like, "Bees."
No?
What about 20,000 bees?
That's two times 10,000 bees,
which already seemed like a lot to me.
No?
30,000 bees.
I talked to a bee person.
30,000 bees is nine pounds of bees.
That's a healthy baby boy of bees.
Definitely seems like enough bees to be like,
"We have bees here."
No?
40,000 bees.
That is a golden doodle of bees.
Woof, woof.
There are bees here.
No, we're not noticing them yet?
50,000 bees, 50,000 bees.
That's Dodger Stadium of bees.
Each bee has its own seat.
Adorable, but a lot of bees.
Empirically a lot of bees.
What, 60,000?
What are you talking about?
60,000 bees and we haven't noticed them?
That's a Nissan Juke filled with bees.
They're packed in tight.
They're holding each other tip to tail, tip to tail.
They could drive the thing if they could figure it out,
but they can't 'cause they're bees.
Nary a peep from this woman at 60,000 bees.
It takes two Nissan Jukes filled with bees
before this woman is like, "There appear to be bees here."
And that's America, guys.
Let's reset.
So, if I didn't have a great blueprint
for being a dad from my dad,
my mom was the opposite.
My mom was an amazing mom, single parent.
First of all, give it up for single parents, man.
I don't know how you do it.
There's two of us,
and my wife and I in a constant
murder-suicide pact with each other,
just taking care of the children.
My mom was a pediatric nurse,
and so if she didn't have anybody
to watch me on the weekend.
She would just bring me to work with her.
It was a pediatric floor.
There was a lot of kids there that I would make friends with
and then they would eventually die over and over and over
and over and over again.
That was my life,
and all the other nurses were psyched
that Barbara's kid is here,
so they'd always give me jobs to do.
My main job was delivering blood to the lab,
which breaks my mind now.
Now in order to touch blood in a hospital,
you have to be in a space suit, you know?
I was just six years old,
and they just handed me a hot bag of blood,
and I was like, "I'm on an adventure."
I get to take the elevator.
That was very exciting.
And then I would just walk around the basement,
looking for the lab, and get lost eventually,
and then just knock on a door and hand someone the blood,
and they'd be like, "What is this?
Who are you?"
I'm like, "Sorry, can't talk to strangers," and run away.
Lot of misdiagnoses at that hospital.
And my mom was all about,
she was all about unconditional love.
That was her whole thing was unconditional love,
and she would always read me this book
called "The Giving Tree."
Yeah, it's a beautiful book.
I read it to my daughter now.
If you have never read it,
it's about a tree that gives everything for this little boy.
Reading it as a parent, it reads a little different.
Definitely reads like a piece of shit boy
who murders a tree and then sits on it
with his bony balls and ass after it's dead.
But it is.
It's a beautiful book.
It is.
I tear up when I read it.
And I wanted to talk about this in my special,
and I wanted to show it to you guys,
however, HarperCollins has refused me permission
to use the images of "The Giving Tree,"
but that's okay, guys,
because I've got "The Sharing Bush" here,
and when you read "The Giving Tree,"
you're just like you're touched.
You're like, "What gorgeous soul
wrote such a beautiful book?"
And then you flip it around.
There he is,
ol' Shel Silverstein himself.
Again, HarperCollins refused me the rights
to Shel Silverstein's image,
so this is noted serial killer and cannibal Ottis Toole.
However, Shel Silverstein's author photo
and this photo have a really similar vibe
with the only difference being Shel's photo
is a bit more sexual,
and it is this size.
It's the full back cover.
And you know when this was written,
Shel was to the publisher,
"Hey, I want to have an author's photo,"
and they're like, "Shel, it's a children's book,"
and he is like, "I insist."
They're like, "Okay, well, we can put an inch-by-inch photo
on the inside flap,"
and he is like, "No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
Full back cover."
I need you guys to Google this actual photo
because it is the cover of a book
that should be called "Shel Silverstein: Fuck Pirate."
And at this point in the joke,
I am pretty sure HarperCollins would've preferred
to give me the rights than to have
noted serial killer and cannibal Ottis Toole.
Be cool with your intellectual property, guys.
Mm, I really have never drank
an entire pint glass of water at a show.
This place is a fucking desert.
So, about five years ago,
I moved back to New Jersey to take care of my mom
because she got sick,
and obviously when a parent gets cancer,
that's always sad unless it's a hilarious cancer,
and I checked and there are none,
and that's tough 'cause there's butt and ball cancer.
One of them should be hilarious, and they're not.
So, I moved back to Jersey,
and it's weird when your personal life is falling apart,
normal life just keeps on moving,
and I was back taking care of my mom,
and I got an audition in New York for a sitcom,
and I was like, "Oh, I guess I got to go do this audition."
So, I go up to the city and I prep the scene,
and the scene had kind of an emotional moment to it.
I was like, "Oh, this will be interesting to play."
And I get in the room with the casting person,
and I'm doing the scene, and as I'm doing it,
I'm like, "I'm feeling it."
I'm like, "Oh, I think I'm doing a pretty good job."
And then all of a sudden I feel
at the emotional moment in the scene
like a tear roll down my face,
and I'm like, "Am I fucking crying in an audition?
I'm nailing this."
I was like, "Am I Al Pacino and I didn't know it?"
And I finished the scene, and I wiped the tears away,
and I look at the casting person,
and the casting person just goes,
"Aw, so sad."
I swear to God,
it was like I auditioned for the cartoon version
of a 12-year-old bully, you know?
And I told my friend that story, and he's like,
"Oh, man, I gotta take you out.
You gotta get your mind off this."
And so he brought me out.
He was playing with one of my favorite bands,
Dinosaur Jr., and I love Dinosaur Jr. so much,
and so we got to go backstage
to the green room at this rock show,
and the green room of a rock show
is a very small, intimate party, you know?
And I'm very uncomfortable at small intimate parties.
I prefer the anonymity of a large party,
which is a paraphrase from "The Great Gatsby,"
so you know this is going to be a little bit pretentious,
but also I was very nervous 'cause
I wasn't supposed to be there.
I'm not on the show.
I'm just there.
And it's just filled with '90s rock legends.
I was just like,
"Well I have to explain to people why I'm here."
I didn't.
I didn't at all.
And Henry Rollins was there,
and I marched up to Henry Rollins,
and I was like, "Hi, Henry, I'm Kurt.
I'm a comedian."
He was like, "You're very intense,"
and I was just like, ,
and ran into Tony Hawk,
and Tony, and I was just like, "Bah, comedian,"
and like ran away.
And then Mike Watt was in this room,
and Mike Watt was in this band the Minutemen,
and I love the Minutemen, and I was just so nervous.
Yeah.
I was just so nervous to be in the same room with him
that I was like, "I can't, I can't, I gotta get outta here,"
and I went down to watch the show.
But when you're backstage at a rock show, it's open bar,
and I am very good slash very bad at open bars,
depending on your opinion of things.
So, I'll tell you a story to explain.
When I was eight years old,
we were out of the house for about nine hours,
and my cat knocked a five-pound
bag of powdered sugar onto the ground,
and then my 10-pound poodle Dougie Bowser, K9,
proceeded to eat all five pounds of powdered sugar.
And I can only imagine his day
where manna falls from the heavens.
He gets into it.
It goes down easy.
It's powdered sugar.
But after a pound and a half,
I'm sure he was like,
"Hoo, hoo, hoo, hoo, hoo.
I'm not feeling too good."
But something in his little doggy mind was like,
"But when is this gonna happen again?
Let's get back in there.
Let's finish all five pounds of powdered sugar."
He did.
He was sick for three days.
He shit and puked all the time.
That is exactly how I am at an open bar.
So, I'm putting a few back.
I'm watching the show, and for 10 minutes, it's perfect.
I'm watching Dinosaur Jr.
and I'm fully present and everything that's
going on with my life falls away.
I'm not thinking about the fact that my mom is sick.
I'm just here.
And then a phone goes up in front of my face, and I'm,
look, I'm an old man.
I hate phones at shows.
I don't mind a quick pic, but this guy was like,
"I'm just going to shoot 15 minutes of this,"
and it was just right in front of me,
and this is at a Dinosaur Jr. show
where everyone is over 40 with their arms crossed.
Like, this is the way Fugazi taught us to watch rock music.
And so it's very apparent that this guy
is just the only one with a phone,
and I'm like, "I should say something to this guy,"
and then I'm like, "My mom would say something to this guy,"
and I'm like, "Oh, great.
Now I have to go down that hole."
Then I'm about to say something to him, and he puts it down,
and I'm like, "Whew, crisis averted.
Thank goodness,"
and I go back to enjoying the show,
and then Mike Watt comes out on stage with Dinosaur Jr.,
and I'm like, "I don't know if this
has ever happened before.
This is historical moment."
And then that fuckin' phone goes up again.
And I was like, "Not on my watch."
And I reached out and I shoved the hand down,
and then everything went into slow motion.
And I was like, "Oh, that hand feels tinier than it should."
And then a woman turned.
It was a brand-new person who had never done it before.
That other guy had left,
and she looked at me with rage in her eyes
and she pointed at the stage where Mike Watt was,
and she said, "That's my husband up there."
And I just went like the camera of my life
just immediately reversed on me.
I was no longer some phone justice warrior
protecting my mom's honor.
I was a big drunk bully, shoving a proud wife's hand down,
and I was just like, "No!"
I just deflated completely inside myself
until I was just the tip of my own penis,
and that fell to the ground,
and then rolled out the door like a little green pea,
which I do believe is a book
by the fuck pirate Shel Silverstein.
And I just left, and I went into the bathroom,
and I locked myself in a stall,
and I started to have a full-on panic attack.
I felt so bad about this.
I start hyperventilating,
and I was like, "I have to fix this.
I have to fix this."
And now looking back on it, I know what was happening.
My mom was dying and I had all of these emotions
that I had never dealt with before coming up,
but now I was placing them on this poor woman
whose hand I shoved down momentarily,
and I couldn't do anything about the fact
that my mom was dying,
but I could fix this in my mind.
And so I was like, "I know what I'm going to do.
I'm going to make this right.
I'm going to make this right."
So, I run in and I place myself in this dark hallway
that I know she has to walk through
in order to get to the green room.
Guys, hot tip.
Don't wait for women you don't know in a dark hallway.
Not a good look.
She comes in, and I immediately start apologizing.
I'm like, "I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry.
You don't understand.
There was a guy before you,"
and she is so cool about it.
She is like, "Hey, no, I get it.
I hate phones at shows, too,"
and because she's being cool about it,
I just start bawl crying.
And I was like, but I'm still apologizing, like,
"Now I'm apologizing to you,"
and she's like, "What is going on?"
And then her husband comes off stage,
and her husband is not Mike Watt.
He's just some fuckin' saxophonist,
and you guys know how I feel about the fucking saxophone.
The saxophone is the limp dick of the woodwinds.
It even looks like you cut a limp dick off
and dipped it in brass.
That's what it looks like.
That's what it sounds like,
if you tried to blow through a limp dick
that's been cut off a body like .
And saxophones don't belong in rock and roll
unless it's Bruce Springsteen or Rocket from the Crypt,
and fuck saxophones.
So, now I'm still crying and apologizing,
but also saxophone?
And I pause for a moment and I see in their eyes
that they are terrified of me,
and I realize that all at once, and then out loud,
I just go, "Abort," and I turn around and I run away.
I run out of the venue,
and I run into Chinatown and New York City.
I run into a park, and I sit on a bench,
and I just start crying.
I've never in my entire life cried this hard for this long.
And I don't know if this has ever happened to you,
but it's one of those cries
where you're you crying for so long
that you use up all of the emotion,
but then you're still locked
into the physical act of crying,
and your mind starts to wander,
where you're just like .
"I wonder if it'll be nice out tomorrow,"
and then I got an idea for a joke,
and I was like, "That's a good bit."
I took a note of it in my phone,
and I poured myself into a cab, and I went home.
I woke up the next morning, and I was with my mom,
and my mom was like, "Hey, how'd it go last night?"
And I didn't want to tell her, like,
"Oh, well I shoved a proud wife's hand down
and embarrassed myself in front of all of my rock idols."
Instead, I was like, "What do I say?
Well, I wrote a joke last night,"
and she was like, "Tell it to me,"
and then I was like, "Okay,"
and then I was like, "Oh, unconscious,
please let this be good,"
'cause I didn't really remember it.
Took out my phone,
and this was the joke I read to my dying mother.
"When you're crying,
your glasses are tiny aquariums
that are terrible at their job."
And you have never seen a woman
fake-laugh harder than my mom fake-laughed at that joke.
And I realized what I wanted to happen in that moment.
What I wanted to happen is I wanted comedy,
this thing that I've dedicated my entire life to.
I wanted to gather up all that sadness
and transform it into this nugget of pure joy.
And instead, I got this nugget of mild chuckles,
which is so much worse, you know?
There's no way my mom liked that joke actually.
You can't. It's a bad joke.
It's overly cutey, kind of doesn't make sense.
It's all of my flaws as a standup, really, you know?
I essentially wrote the saxophone of a joke,
but she laughed.
You know, she laughed, because it's not about the joke.
It's about who's telling it to you,
and now that I have two kids, I get that.
We found out that my wife was pregnant
the day after my mom's funeral,
and so I've been trying to be a parent
without the parent that raised me.
I always try asking my dad,
but he's kind of hazy on
which of his 18 grandchildren I'm talking about,
but I'm trying, you know?
And recently my daughter came to me,
and she said, "Hey, Papa, do you want to hear my joke?"
And I said, "Yeah, I want to hear your joke, baby."
And she said, "Why is six afraid of seven?"
And I said, "Why?"
She said, "'Cause seven, eight, nine are going to eat 'em."
And at first, I was going to correct her, you know?
That's not how the joke goes.
Also, it's kind of weird to be stealing material so early.
but I realized it's a better joke that way,
that her joke is perfectly stupid.
And as a comedian, that's what I try and do all the time.
I try and make things perfectly stupid.
And my daughter just knocked it
out of the park on her first try,
and so I laughed.
I laughed so hard because I loved my daughter's dumb joke
the same way my mom loved my dumb joke,
'cause it's not about the joke.
It's about who's telling it to you.
And I want my daughter to live in a world full of silliness
and absurdity for as long as she possibly can,
and that is one thing that comedy can do.
It can make things perfectly stupid.
Aw, so sad.
Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen.
Good night.
♪ When I was kid
♪ My whole reality split
♪ I living a lie
♪ I was a killing machine
♪ I was a warlord when I closed my eyes ♪
♪ I had to talk to the teacher
♪ She talked to my mom
♪ We had a real loud talk
♪ I had to talk to the teacher
♪ She talked to my mom
♪ They made the visions stop
♪ When I was a kid
♪ I was a total dick to inanimate objects ♪
♪ The world beat the hell from me ♪
♪ I took it out on a tree
♪ Great Illustrated Classics
♪ I took it out on a fig tree
♪ Out on the lawn
♪ I took it out on the backyard ♪
♪ Backyard
♪ And behind Rite Aid
♪ I took it out on the crates
♪ And on the shopping carts
Some buddies of mine
who just happened to be data scientists,
their name are Mark Kanner and Manuel Mai,
they decided that they would write me an algorithm
that would write jokes for me.
Essentially, we give it a prompt,
and then in a millisecond, it generates 500 jokes,
and of those 500 jokes, one, it barely makes sense,
but it still kind of works.
And it's pretty exciting.
And so ladies and gentlemen,
would you like to meet
the first artificially intelligent comedian?
Joke-A-Tron.
♪ Here he comes
♪ Mr. Joke-A-Tron
So, the way we train Joke-A-Tron
was that we fed him hundreds of hours of standup,
including my standup,
and the way the algorithm works
is you give him a prompt,
and it will generate the jokes.
So, the first one we gave it,
simple, classic, observational comedy.
Said, "Have you ever noticed, dot, dot, dot?"
And so Joke-A-Tron, give me a, "Have you ever noticed?"
Have you ever noticed Jesus Christ comes up to here?
I don't know.
That seems like a new area for comedy.
I've never heard Jesus was a shorty before jokes.
Again, this was written by an algorithm, okay?
And then the next one, we just gave it the word farts,
'cause we're like, always funny, right?
Farts, country strong.
That could be a tagline for an entire hour.
The farts one were so good,
let's give us another farts one, Joke-A-Tron.
Farts don't feel its own crimes.
That's true.
Oh, hell, let's get another farts one.
Farts, a bathroom applause on a little milk.
He's a poet.
Good job.
You weird duct tape thing.
Do you have any dad material, Joke-A-Tron, you know?
'Cause we gotta fit it in this special.
Joke-A-Tron, give me some dad material.
Having kids is like, "Jim, madam,
sit down, shut up."
That's actually very true.
This is actually the truest thing I've ever seen.
Give me another one, Joke-A-Tron.
"Having kids is like David Beckham watching Darth Vader.
According to the Democratic Amendment,
I've done Sandy Hook massacre."
What's going on, Joke-A-Tron?
You throwing me under the bus here.
He's getting political.
All right, give me one more dad joke, Joke-A-Tron.
"Having kids is like watching the BBC
at Sean Penn's nuts."
A classic.
Ladies and gentlemen, give it up for Joke-A-Tron,
the first AI comedian.
Get outta here, Joke-A-Tron.
That's the way it leaves a room, just backwards.
So disturbing.
It's creepy.
Really creeps me out.
- [Speaker] Thank you very much.