What’s up, San Antonio? Oh-ho-ho-ho! Oh, I’m so excited to be here! Thank you, guys, for coming out. I love San Antonio. I got here last night. And I asked this chick, “What do you guys do here for fun?” – And she’s like… – “I’ll tell you what to do.” “You’re gonna drink, you’re gonna get plastered, you’re gonna end the night with Five Guys.” I had no idea Five Guys was a burger place. I’m like, “Wow, you must be popular!” “I’ll start with one.” My idea of a threesome is me with a pint of Ben & Jerry’s. I don’t know what we’re doing.
It’s so good to be here. I’ve been traveling non-stop for over a year. And I’ve seen all of the country, and wow! I was recently in North Carolina and I went into this bar, and I asked the bartender for an Old Fashioned. So he took away my voting rights. I was like, “Whoa, that’s…” “Whoa! Whoa!” I’m kidding. I’m Latina. I don’t vote. We don’t vote! We don’t vote! Not unless it’s American Idol or The Voice, right? We don’t do it! We don’t do it. I’m kidding. I love to vote. I do it, like, five, six times in an election. I love it that much. Am I the only one that just got tired of the election? The election we’ve had… 24 hours a day, seven days a week. I’m done.
And you know what pissed me off? When I started hearing people say, “We need to go back to the good old days. We need to go back to the good old days.” You ever notice it’s only white people saying that shit? Brown people, when was our good old days, right? Hmm. If it was really the good old days, why don’t you ever see black people doing Civil War re-enactments, right? You never see that! Never see that conversation. “Hey, Lamar, what are you doing this weekend?” “I’m gonna go to my neighbor’s house, I’m gonna cook and clean for free.” “You know, like the good old days.” I’m Latina.
When was our good old days? When JLo became Selena? That’s what we get? That’s what we get? Okay! That’s what we get. Selena. For those of you that don’t know Selena… Selena is the closest thing Latinos have to a superhero. She is a Mexican-American singer. She died over 20 years ago and we still talk about what she could’ve done. “Oh, if Selena was still here… Oh-ho-ho! Oh-ho-ho-ho!” “Ooh! Trump would build a wall, she would knock it down with her voice!” ♪ Um-biddy-biddy-bum-bum ♪ Down! Down! Down! Down! Down! Oof.
We shouldn’t laugh, guys. Trump’s gonna build a wall. He is! Shut up! He is! He’s gonna build a wall. All the way to California. You know what’s after California? The ocean. Fuck it. We’ll swim. I don’t care. Build a wall! Does he know if he builds a wall, all he’s doing is making us amazing athletes? We gotta run, we gotta climb, we gotta swim. He’s making, like, an immigrant triathlon. First place is freedom! He’s gonna build a wall. Doesn’t he know we use tunnels now? Build that wall as high as you want, stupid. We’re underground! We should help them. We should do a BYOB party – bring your own brick, and we just build it, like… Stupid! Did you guys see that dude? Did you guys see the tunnel Chapo had when he got arrested? That shit looked like a Disneyland ride! There was lights, a guy selling tickets, a two-hour wait. There was a Starbucks. “I’ll have the Chapo-ccino, I guess.”
Isn’t it weird to think we have a candidate… that has to tan that’s trying to deport everybody that doesn’t have to tan? That’s fucked up! When you think about it, tanning is such a double standard because white people can go and be dark for a week. I can’t go anywhere and lighten. That’s bullshit. I like hearing white girls talk to their friends. “- Hey, girl, you wanna go tan? – Let’s go be ethnic for a week.” “Don’t worry, we’re still white.” “Hi, I’m Becky. I have cornrows. Fuck it.” I love it! It’s a double standard. White people have tanning booths. There’s no bleaching booth for me to go to! I would love that! Go in, like, “Hey, I need to be two shades whiter this week. I’ve got a job interview.” Oh, shit. Oh, shit. Oh! Ooh! Ooh. I’m sorry. I dropped something. The truth, right?
So weird… What a weird time we live in politically, you know? I live in LA. In California, weed is legal. – Yeah! – Isn’t it weird? No, don’t. Think about it. How fucked up is that? We started legalizing weed before immigrants. How fucked up is that? We started legalizing weed before immigrants. When I was a kid, I was told weed was a drug. “Don’t do it. It’ll ruin your life.” “Don’t do it. It’ll ruin your life.” Now they’re like, “Ah, we were messing with you. Go ahead. Get high. Go!” “Ah! Go!” “Lupita, watch the kids. I’m gonna go smoke. Bye!” Lupita’s like, “Can I get a green card?” “Hell, no! You can get a pot card, though, right? Huh?” “Can I get papers?” “Rolling papers? Hell, yeah, you can, Lupita! Ooh-ah! Ooh-ah!” San Antonio, I’m home. I’m from Texas. I’m from South Texas. Ooh! Oh! I love it! I come from a small town. We had a really big, bad gang problem. The problem was, we only had one gang. How do you only have one gang? Who are you fighting with? No-one. The gang started tagging walls in our town, “TCB number one, bitches!” No-one would argue with them. So the next day it would be like, “Uh-huh, that’s right.” After a month, they just had a wall of positive affirmations on the wall. People would say, “Is that your church?” “No, that’s our gang.” “They’re confident. We’re proud of them. They’re gonna be big.” If you guys don’t know what it’s like to grow up with a gang, let me put it in perspective for you. It’s kind of like when there’s a Walmart and a Target near each other. And you gotta pick which one you’re with. It’s all about territories and colors, you know. Walmart’s blue. Target’s red. If you’re Walmart, I don’t wanna see a red pullover in my neighborhood, bitch, or I will slash you, like I slash prices up in this bitch! I don’t even care! Walmart for life. I’m kidding. I’m Target. I’m gonna tattoo a bullseye. I grew up poor. It’s weird, when you’re a kid, you don’t know that you’re poor, because you always think that everyone lives like you. When I was in fourth grade, I realized I was poor because I was a really big fan of New Kids On The Block. I loved them, right? I couldn’t afford to see them in concert, right? So I had this fantasy when I was a kid, you know, that I was gonna meet them and they were gonna fall in love with me, right? No joke, you guys. This was the fantasy. Fourth grade. I was gonna be the maid on their tour bus. And I was gonna clean things so good… that they were gonna fall in love with me! In my head, I thought they were gonna get on the tour bus and be like, “Oh, my God. Who made that bed right there?” You know what I mean? “Oh, my God.” “This tour bus is so clean. Who made that bed right there? Who made that bed right there? Who made that bed right there?” You know? Like, yes. Yes. And then I would say, “I made that bed.” And they would be like, “We love you now.” And I’m like… That was it. I was in fourth grade. Then 20 years later, I thought about that story, I looked back and I was thinking, “Why the fuck was I a maid in my own fantasy?” Like, even in my fantasy, I can’t give Latinos better jobs? And then I started thinking about it, and you know why? It’s because a lot of the women I knew, that’s what they did for a living. They cooked at restaurants. They cleaned houses. They came here and had those jobs to get a better life so that their kids didn’t have to do those jobs. And when I understood that, I realized that as a woman, I wanted to break that glass ceiling, you know? Yeah. But as a Mexican, I wanna clean that shit, too. You know what I mean? Where’s the Fabuloso? The purple one! Bitch, like there’s any other kind! I finally got to see the New Kids when I was 33. They reunited, right? My boyfriend at the time went to the concert with me because he wanted to see me lose it. He’s like, “Hey, are you gonna be okay?” I’m like, “Dude, I’m 33. I got this, bro.” “I love you! I love you!” Oh, my… And then within minutes, I started realizing, “Oh, my God… This is a stadium full of 30 to 40-year-old women watching these grown-ass men… talking about dating chicks in high school.” I was like, “Oh, my God. They didn’t update the songs at all!” Because now I’m an adult, right? I remember, when I was a kid, I used to love the song “You Got The Right Stuff” . And I’d love it because the lyric was like, “First kiss was a sweet kiss, second kiss had a twist.” And I’m like, “Oh, my God. They’re Frenching.” Right? But I’m 33 at that point, so I’m like, “Third and the fourth kiss, we’re doing it.” “Those tickets were expensive, my friend got a babysitter, you gotta give me more.” “You gotta hang tough and give me more.” They really should update those songs, though. I mean… “You Got The Right Stuff”. I’m in my 30s. The song should speak to me, you know? ♪ You got good credit ♪ ♪ Baby ♪ ♪ Your FICO score turns me on ♪ Yeah! You know, it’s weird, in your 30s, you’re not old, but you realize in your 30s, every year you start realizing there’s one thing every year you can’t really do any more, you know? I live in Los Angeles. I’m at that age where the only way I can get into a nightclub is by telling the door guy that I’m looking for my underage daughter. But then I have to pretend to look for the bitch the entire night. “Where’s Stephanie? I don’t know where Stephanie’s at. Is she down here?” “She’s not down here.” Oh. I am Catholic. I’m what I call a barely Catholic. Like, I’m barely… My parents, my family… I’m Catholic because my family is, but I don’t know a lot. I know the basics. When people find out I’m Catholic, they love asking me questions. I’m like, “Oh, God. Let it be an easy one.” “Who’s the guy on the cross?” “Jesus! Yes! Yes!” “Yes! Yes! Yes!” Sometimes they get harder. “Why do you use holy water at church?” “Oh, God. It’s because we hate vampires.” You ever notice Latinos are the only ones that name their kids “Jesus”? “This is my son Jesus Rodriguez. He works at Papa John’s.” “Oh!” “Jesus has come a long way!” You never meet a white guy named Jesus. “Hi, I’m Jesus Rosenberg. I work at Goldman Sachs.” It’s insane. You guys ever notice that you always find out what you think of your friends when you can’t remember their names? Because then you have to describe them to people. And you never say nice shit about that person. It’s always, “What’s that guy’s name? The fat one. Loser. Lives with his mom. Hector! Hector! Yes!” “Yes! Hector! Hector! Yes!” “Tell him hi.” “I don’t think you like Hector, dude.” It’s insane. I’m a first generation American, you know? It’s hard to be first generation because you have to learn how to be American and teach your parents how to be American, too. Like, for me in Texas, I’m a big sports fan. I love sports. I’m from Texas. I love football. Now… Here’s the thing. People don’t understand, when you’re a sports fan, when you have a team, that’s your team. Those are your boys. Whether they suck or they’re good, those are your boys, you know? People are passionate about sports. I’m from Texas. I like football. I love the Cowboys, right? Not everyone clapped. See, five minutes ago, you all loved me, but now… I get it! You know how hard it is to be a fan of a team that sucks? It’s like you’re dating that guy that can’t get his shit together. Every season, they make promises they can’t keep. “No, baby, come back. This year, I promise you a ring.” “Oh, great!” It never works! My friends tell me all the time, they say the same thing, “Switch teams, you gotta switch teams.” That’s my team! I can’t do that. That’s my team. It’s like having a kid that’s flunking math. You’re like, “I’ll cheer for the neighbor’s kid. He’s smart.” You can’t do that! You can’t. You show up wearing a jersey, “Neighbor’s kid, 82.” What pisses me off about watching sports is the press conferences after the game. Do we have to interview them when they lose? Everybody wants to find out, “Why did you lose? Why did you lose?” “Well, shit, the other team scored more. That’s how it works.” What a terrible time to get interviewed about stuff! Can you imagine if that happened to you? For shitty parts of your life, you have to give a press conference? You get fired from a job, “Why did you get fired? Why did you get fired?” “Well, shit, I steal office supplies, so I…” “We’ll get them next time.” I’m first generation. It’s hard, man. Because, again, you have to teach your parents how to be American. It’s tough because you’re learning it, too, you know? You guys, my mom… had never seen Girl Scouts before in her life. Never. The first time she saw Girl Scouts… she thought they were Border Patrol agents… ..in training. She thought Border Patrol had a kid unit. And every time she saw the cookies, she would hide from them. I’d say, “Mom, they’re not trying to deport you. They’re selling cookies.” “Ah, that’s what you think! Oh-ho-ho!” “That’s how they get you! God, you’re stupid!” “That’s how they get you. You get hungry, you buy Thin Mints. And then I’m back in Mexico. No cookies in this house! No cookies!” What people don’t understand, though, is that when you grow up with immigrant parents, you have to rely on them to do their version of American holidays. So they gotta go with what they know, you know? Like, my mom was from Mexico. People don’t understand, Mexico is south of us. But life is totally different there. They don’t get that. My mom, she didn’t grow up with Santa Claus. There was no Santa Claus in her village. There was the three wise men. Now, we celebrate December 25th, like everybody else. But we celebrate January 6th, too. That’s our big day. And I have a theory that we do January 6th because all that shit’s on clearance by that time. That’s what we do. So one year, my single mom tried to do her version of Santa Claus, right? I wake up, there’s a gift-wrapped box with a card that says, “Santa Claus.” I look at my mom. She’s like, “I am Santa Claus.” “What?” “I am Santa Claus. Merry Christmas.” “No, no, no, I did not bust my butt so this white guy takes credit for my shit. I am Santa Claus. Me. Ho, ho, ho!” “Ho, ho, ho!” “And I say it in Spanish with a J. Ho, ho, ho! I am Santa Claus.” She was a cute woman. My mom, not kidding, she would buy photo frames, picture frames, and she would keep the pictures that came with the frames. And she would hang them up on the wall. And she would call them her white family. And every time we would get in trouble, she would use them as an example. “Cristela, you’re flunking math. Why can’t you be like your cousin Peggy?” “She’s graduating college. Why can’t you?” People don’t understand, when you grow up between two cultures of any kind, it’s hard because you start realizing that certain things you do that are considered, you know, like, American are ridiculous to the other side of your family. I had to ask my mom for permission to go on spring break to go swim with the dolphins, right? “Mom, can I go swim with the dolphins?” “What’s that?” “How much is that?” “$200.” “Do you get to eat the fucking thing after?” “Oh-ho-ho!” “No, go, and then when your brothers are hungry, we’ll show them a picture of you riding the dolphin.” “Oh, my God. She’s exercising with her food. Okay!” “I’m gonna go bike-riding with tamales. I’ll be right back.” I tried asking her for an allowance once. She said, “No, you get one. I allow you to live here for free, stupid.” “I allowance the lights, I allowance the food, all the allow!” My mom was like a die-hard Catholic woman. Like, she was super Catholic. She loved God but she hated people. In my neighborhood, we were always visited every weekend by the Jehovah’s Witnesses, right? Every weekend. My mom couldn’t stand it because she’s like, “I’m team Catholic. Why are they trying to convert me?” And every day, they would come in. One day, they knocked. “Da-da-da.” “Excuse me, ma’am. Have you found God?” She’s like, “No, but if you find him, tell him we’re fucking starving in here. Bye.” We ended up getting a dog and that dog used to bark at everyone. Everyone, right? My mom loved it because the Jehovah’s Witnesses stopped coming. And one day, the dog died, and they caught on, and they came back and started knocking, and my mom wasn’t ready for it. She’s like, “No! Woof!” “Perro woof!” Perro woof? How the hell does the dog have an accent? Perro woof? That’s so crazy. Isn’t it crazy to think how fast the year goes by? Every year, you get older, I feel like I can’t believe we’re already at this point. Like, you know? Every year goes by quicker and quicker. It’s insane, you know? And I feel bad because at this point, I told myself that I was gonna get my shit together this year. This was gonna be the year, you guys! I’ve been trying to get in shape. Ooh! You guys, I went to the gym today. Oh-ho-ho! Man, I’m going inside tomorrow, but… I had to find it first, dude! It’s right next to my McDonald’s. I had no idea. It’s hard. You ever realize how hard it is to get in shape? Because everything costs money. It’s expensive to get in shape. Everything costs money. Workout clothes are expensive. You guys, I went to a store called Lululemon. Now I know why they lose weight. They can’t afford to buy food after they buy that shit! It’s insane! If you don’t know what Lululemon is, it’s a store that sells workout clothes for people who don’t need to work out. They’re thin. I went into the store, right? Guess what I found out. I’m too fat to fit into their workout clothes. I’m too fat to work out? I have to lose 20 pounds before I can start working out. I didn’t wanna leave empty-handed, so I looked for anything that fit. I’m like, “Where the hell are your headbands? You don’t have headbands? Wristbands?” “You don’t sell key chains? They don’t sell key chains here!” Finally, I found a sports bra that kind of fit, right? Kind of fit. Like, if I light a candle and pray… I can put it on. You know when you try clothes on that fit, but you don’t know how you’re gonna get them off? “I need scissors.” Like that, right? I looked at the price. 80 bucks. 80 bucks! I was like, “80 bucks? For 10 bucks, I can go to Home Depot and hire a day laborer to hold them up when I go jog.” “Ándale, Pepe.” It’s expensive! I keep trying to work out, but I don’t think I wanna work out. I always say the same thing. “I am gonna start on Monday.” And then Monday comes, I eat a doughnut, and I’m like, “Damn it!” “Now I gotta wait till next Monday!” I can’t start on Tuesday! It’s insane. I recently bought the Zumba DVDs. Now, there’s a Zumba DVD set that comes with maracas. It’s like the little weights, right? So you can keep the beat along with them. The other day, you guys, I popped it in. Oh, I wish you had been there, man. Oh! I was killing it, you guys. I was, like, sweating. I was like, “Oh, my God. That must have been 20 minutes.” Four minutes. Four minutes. Four. Four. Four. Four. Cuatro. I got tired, right? I go into the kitchen to get a glass of water. There’s a bag of popcorn right next to it. I’m like, “Oh, my God. That looks so good.” So I pop the bag of popcorn and go back into the living room with my popcorn and my water, and the DVD’s playing. I’m like, “Oh, my God, I’m working out!” So what do I do? I sit down and I watch the DVD like it’s a movie! Like… “I love Zumba.” And you can’t just work out, either. You gotta eat healthy food. You know? Healthy food is expensive. And that’s bullshit because poor people can’t afford it. I hate that. I can’t stand that. People don’t realize, when you grow up poor, you don’t learn how to eat right, because it’s not about eating right, it’s about eating. People don’t get that. When I was a kid, I was raised on McDonald’s because that shit was cheap. I mean… single mom, McDonald’s. Dude, the McRib came back more times than my dad, you know what I mean? I say that in every city in case he’s out there. Back when I was growing up, you could feed a family of four for, like, 20 bucks. Family of four, 20 bucks. But if you wanna make a salad at home, boom, $1,000. I went to Whole Foods. My God, that store should have layaway. What the fuck are we doing at Whole Foods? I walked in. They’re like, “Can I help you?” I’m like, “No, I’m just here to visit my tomatoes, thank you.” “I think I’m gonna get them out next week. I’m really excited.” “I’m buying eggplant. They’re checking my credit.” I started walking around the store. They were having a sale. Ooh! Ooh! A sale at Whole Foods. Six bucks for a pint of strawberries. Because they’re organic. Six bucks. I was like, “Ho-ho-ho-ho! That’s a lot of money. I’m sorry. For that much, you’d better show me a photo of white people picking the fruit. What the fuck is that?” Forget Jose and Maria, man. I want Becky and Brian out in the field picking that. Healthy food is so expensive. And how do they justify it? How do they justify it? Now they tell you the life story of every animal you’re about to eat at the store. You walk down the aisle, it’s like Ancestry.com for cows. Every animal has its story. “Oh, this milk is hormone-free. This beef is grass-fed. This chicken is cage-free.” “Fuck, these animals had a better childhood than I did!” “I grew up in the hood, I had bars on my window, but this chicken was cage-free. Okay!” Oh! There I am in the bedroom. “How is it outside, chicken?” “I wish I could be a cage-free kid, but…” “gangs.” This chicken is expensive because I’m paying for the hobbies it had when it was alive? This chicken’s $20 a pound because it played the cello and it liked to surf. That’s an awesome chicken! Why are we eating it? If I had to eat something that had an awesome life and didn’t do shit, screw the chicken, I’d eat a Kardashian. Oh, my God! Have you seen their butts? They could feed villages for months. That’s what people don’t realize and it bugs me, that when you grow up poor, life is different. People don’t get it. When you grow up without money, life is different. You have to learn how to live without certain luxuries in life, you know? Luxuries. Like air-conditioning. Or food allergies. I didn’t even know those were a thing until, like, five years ago, man. It’s insane. Isn’t it weird that the more money you make, the less food you’re allowed to eat? When you’re poor, you eat whatever you can because you never know when that next meal is coming. We don’t have the luxury to be allergic to shit! That’s a conversation you’ll never hear in the hood, you know? “Yo, man, they killed Mario.” “What, drive-by?” “No, peanuts.” Drive-by honey-roasted. And don’t misunderstand me. I grew up poor, but I grew up happy. You know? Like, you don’t need money to be happy. It fucking helps, but… you don’t need it. It’s like I said before, when you’re a kid, you don’t know you’re poor. Because everybody you live around is pretty much on the same level. You don’t get it. I grew up in the 80s. In my neighborhood, everyone was poor. Back then, the only way you could tell someone had cash, you’d walk into their living room and they would have a set of encyclopedias. “I knew Juan was doing good.” “I didn’t know he was doing encyclopedia good!” “Nita, he’s got the Q!” I feel like half of you don’t know what the fuck an encyclopedia is. Right? It’s the internet but in books. It’s where the word “Wikipedia” came from. Isn’t it weird to think that people don’t know what encyclopedias are? They don’t know the pain of having to do homework with that shit. Getting a book report… Having to go to the library, hoping the volume hasn’t been stolen yet. You show up, it’s gone. You’re like, “Oh, I’m gonna make up some shit about Japan! I don’t know!” Isn’t it weird that that’s where we are with technology? We used to have books everywhere. Books, books, books. Most of us didn’t read them but they were there. Now everything we’ve got is in our little phone, right there. Everything. Technology can be so amazing and it can be so terrible at times, you know? You know what pisses me off? It’s great for kids. It sucks for me. It pisses me off that kids will never know the pain of having to save up money to buy a whole record album or CD for one song. Do you remember when you had to do chores? You’d hear a song on a thing called the radio… or MTV, and you’re like, “I want that!” You’d have to save up, like, 20 bucks, hoping the whole thing was a hit. Because if you bought a CD that was a one-hit wonder, you’re like, “Fuck!” You never get over it! I spent 20 bucks on Whoomp There It Is. 20 bucks! I thought Tag Team was back again. They fucking never showed up! “Rico Suave.” I thought I was fucking guessing good on that one. But technology isn’t all great. I mean, some parts of technology suck. I’m gonna assume that everyone in this room, we have all been screwed over by autocorrect. At one point or another, right? We’re not stupid. Why does our phone wanna fuck up our friendships, dude? And it sucks when you text in another language. I text with my sister in Spanish, right? Okay, so the other day, I was texting my sister. I’m trying to call her a pendeja. For those of you that don’t know, pendeja is a term of endearment. Right? You know? Like, it means bitch, but it depends on how you say it, you know? You could be like, “Bitch!” or you could be like, “Bitch!” You know what I mean? I’m more like, “Hey, bitch!” You know? And I text her, I’m like, “Hey, pendeja.” She writes back, “Why did you call me a pencil?” “Fuck me!” “You’re, like, all stupid. You’re a number dos pencil. You don’t even…” Even worse… a couple of months ago, a friend of mine sent me a video of a puppy. I love puppy videos. Love them, right? I wrote back, “Tee hee hee, I love puppies.” Autocorrect changed “Tee hee hee” to “Hey Jew Jew.” She’s Jewish. And not only that, autocorrect capitalized every letter. Like I’m fucking yelling it at her. “Hey! Jew! Jew! I love za puppies!” It went from being cute to a hate crime in one second. I started thinking, “Oh, my God. What if that happens when I need help?” I send out a text like, “Help, I’m stuck in a ditch!” and she’s like, “Help, you stuck up bitch!” I have to take care of her. She’s one of my only girlfriends, you know? I don’t have a lot of girlfriends. I’m a tomboy. I grew up with guys. I grew up with brothers, you know? I’m not very girly. And I come from an old-school Mexican family. They expect you to always wear makeup and be dressed up, you know? My mom would be like, “Why aren’t you wearing makeup?” “Because I’m going to bed, dude! It’s, like, late!” “And how are you gonna find a man in your dreams?” As a tomboy, what I wear… Now, what I’m wearing, this is like my typical outfit. T-shirt, jeans, sneakers, I love it, right? Very comfortable. Dress like that every day of my life. And I’ve noticed I’m usually cool with it, but I’ve noticed that every now and then, people judge me on how I dress. And it sucks because they always guess wrong, normally. You know? And it’s annoying. And I’ll tell you, the places that it happens a lot at are the expensive stores… where people think that I can’t afford to shop there. You know what I mean? Look… I don’t wanna brag… but I’ve got money. Okay? Okay? I’ve got the kind of money, like, when I’m sick, I go to the doctor. In the United States. That’s rich. When I get sick, I’m like, “Grandma, keep your Vicks. We’re going to the doctor.” That’s how much money I’ve got. Rappers make it rain champagne, I make it rain penicillin. I’m like, “Right there. Everybody…” So I was at Bloomingdale’s, in the clearance section. I can afford clearance, not the regular-priced stuff, okay? I’m at Bloomingdale’s and I see a bag that I like and it doesn’t have a price. And I stand by it and people start walking and no-one stops, right? They just walk, walk, walk. Finally, a woman walks by. I’m like, “Da-da-da-da! Hey… how much is this bag?” She’s like, “Oh.” “It’s $800. Hmm.” “Okay.” “I’m gonna buy that bag.” She’s like, “Oh, are you? Hmm.” “I’m just gonna take the bag and hold it up front until you’re ready to check out.” Bitch! So we’re at the cash register, right? And she’s typing, typing, whatever. It’s taking forever, like she doesn’t think I’m gonna buy the bag, like halfway through I’m gonna be like, “JK, I’m poor! Bye!” Typing, typing. Here’s a thing you gotta know about me. My mom taught me to never complain. We don’t complain. If I get the wrong food at a restaurant, I eat the wrong food. I don’t complain, right? But this woman’s being so terrible, like, obviously terrible, right? “Nah-nah-nah-nah-nah-nah.” I’m like, “Look, I’m sorry. I’ve gotta stop you. You are being awful. You’re being rude and I’m gonna teach you a lesson. Now, I don’t even want this bag.” “I’m buying this bag because I’ve got the money to buy this bag. And not only that. This bag is for me, and I want you to gift-wrap it.” “That bag is for me, but I wanna surprise myself: ‘What did I get me?’ I want you to surprise… Gift-wrap it. Gift-wrap it.” And I stood there. I’m like, “More ribbon.” I pay, she gives me the card, blah, blah, blah. I’m like, “I’m doing this to teach you a lesson. I don’t know what it is about me, but for some reason, you think that I can’t afford to shop here. I don’t know what you expect me to wear to this store, like, what, a fucking wedding gown?” “Need I remind you that I’m shopping at Bloomingdale’s, and you’re fucking working at Bloomingdale’s, okay?” “Now give me my fucking bag. Thank you.” I left. I was walking off. You guys, that is the closest… That was like the movie Selena. Like, “We don’t want that dress.” You know what I mean? Like Pretty Woman: “Big mistake.” Like, that’s where I was. I left. I was like… I was waiting to get outside and just lose it, you know, like… I walked out of that store with pride. I walked out of that store with dignity. And I got into my car and I was like, “Yes!” And I drove to the closest Bloomingdale’s to return that fucking bag. Because I couldn’t afford it, but I taught that bitch a lesson, and that’s all that matters! That’s a lot of money! I don’t have that kind of money! Oh, my… But I’ve got 12 bucks for the gift-wrap, oh, yeah! Oh! 800 bucks! You know when you ask… When you ask for the price of something and it’s too expensive, but you gotta pretend it doesn’t mess with you? “Oh, 800 bucks!” “Only?” “I’ll take five of them.” But on the inside, you’re like… “That’s two tomatoes at Whole Foods!” Man, I buckled it in like it was a baby. “Nobody touch it! I’m returning it!” I am a tomboy. There are things I like that are kind of girly, like my music. I love love songs. And one of my favorite love songs has been ruined by a commercial. It’s the abused puppy commercial from Sarah McLachlan. Do those commercials have to be 30 hours long? And they’re always in the middle of the funniest thing you’re watching. You guys, those commercials have ruined that Sarah McLachlan song for me. A couple of months ago, I was taking a shower, I had my iPod on shuffle, loving life. Killing it. Listening to, like, Ace Of Base, “TheSign” like, nailing it, right? ♪ I saw the sign ♪ Hell, yeah! End of song, boom, shuffle. ♪ In the arms ♪ ♪ Of the angel ♪ Why? It became the most depressing shower I’ve ever had! I was washing myself with my own tears! ♪ Fly away ♪ ♪ From here ♪ Why? The fucking puppy! San Antonio, I just wanna say thank you so much for coming tonight. It means a lot. It’s a very special night for me. I’m glad you guys came out. Most of you might remember, I had a show on TV called Cristela. Thank you. I… – I loved that show and… – Bring it back! I wish I could. I can’t bring it back. But thank you. That’s my dad. “Mija, what did you say about the McRib?” I loved that show. That show… That show was really about a part of my life where I’d moved in with my sister, I helped take care of her kids and my mom, and it was very important for me to do that show. You might notice, in my stand-up, I talk a lot about my mom. And for me… if you saw the show, she was this very crotchety old woman. She hated everyone, you know? But, like, if she made fun of you, that meant she loved you. You know what I mean? And for me, my mom was always the star of my show. I talk a lot about my mom because I feel like when we talk about immigrants… we never really give them a heart or a soul. And I wanted people to know the story of my mom and know that she was a real person and she was like that, and that she went through a lot so that I could be here tonight. That’s why I do it. And, you know, for some people, my experience isn’t their Latino experience. And I get that, you know? I just wanted to show mine. I wanted to show my life, you know? The show wasn’t called Every Latino In The World. It was called Cristela. And for me, I wanted to show a mom like that because you ever notice that the moms on TV, they’re never like that? They’re always kind of the same. They’re always very happy. They never get mad. My mom used to get mad, you know? They never get mad. Think about it. Paper towel commercials. You guys… the kid will drop, like, a gallon of orange juice. Orange juice! That shit’s expensive! I don’t care if that’s Sunny Delight or Tampico. That shit is expensive. For those of you that don’t know Tampico… Tampico is an orange liquid. You can buy, like, 30 gallons of it for a dollar. And it glows in the dark. Like, why the fuck does it glow in the dark? I keep a gallon of it in the fridge in case there’s a power outage. I just take it out. I’m like, “Everybody follow the Tampico.” “Everybody.” It’s like a highlighter you can drink. Tampico. The mom and the kid clean it up, then they have a dance party. My mom wasn’t like that, you know? And, you know… You guys have been a great audience and I’m actually going to tell you a story that I don’t normally tell people, and after tonight, I will never tell this story again. But it’s a story of the kind of woman my mom was, in case you didn’t believe that she was really like that. This story is a very true story and it… It takes a lot out of me, but I wanna say it, because, again, I’m trying to let people know what kind of mom my mom was, what kind of person she was. When I was 21… I moved to Los Angeles by myself. I didn’t know anybody. And I lived in my car for a very long time. And my family didn’t know that because I was the baby, and I didn’t want them to worry. And at 21, my oldest brother calls me and tells me… that our mom is sick and I have to go home. Now, I’m 21 and… it’s a hard thing to hear. So I go home to visit my mom, and when I get there, my brother tells me, “You know, we didn’t wanna scare you. She’s pretty bad. We brought you here so that you could say bye to her.” Now, at 21, we all think we know everything. We all think we’re adults, we have our shit together. But trust me, when you get news like that, you realize that you’re nothing but a kid. Your 30s, 40s, any time you get that, you realize that you’re still a kid. When I heard that, I didn’t know what to do. Because I had that chance. Now, you gotta know, I come from an old-school Mexican family. We don’t tell each other how we feel. You know, like… we hide it. We make fun of each other. We don’t hug, we don’t kiss, we insult each other. “Hey, fatso, you’re fucking fat!” My family wasn’t like that. Like, that’s what we did. We didn’t hug and stuff. And I thought to myself… “If you’re like this first generation and you’re one of the few that’s doing the first of everything in your family, do something, do the first of something. Tell this woman what you think of them, what you think of this person. Tell her how you feel.” I thought, “Can I tell my mom how I really feel?” And I thought, “If not now, when?” I went inside to her room… and she looked different. Sometimes they don’t tell you that they’ll look different. And the moment I saw her… I cried. And I was like… “I love you. You’re the most important person in my life. Everything I do, I do to honor your journey. And if I could bargain with God… I would shorten my life so that you could have a longer one, and I would take care of you until you died and make sure that you had the happiest life ever.” And she started crying. Which surprised me. I didn’t know she could. And it was sad. At the same time, I thought, “How great is it that I got the chance to say that? How great is it that I had that last moment, that I got to tell her how I felt, how much I loved her… right before she died?” And then she didn’t die. She didn’t fucking die! Do you know how awkward the next day was? “Oh!” “You’re still here?” “Uh-huh!” That woman… lived for another year. And every day, she would make fun of me. And called me a pussy. For being so weak. Every day, “Cristela, I want a hamburger.” “You can’t have one. You’re sick.” “But you love me!” Thank you, guys, for coming, San Antonio! Thank you so much! You guys have been amazing! Thank you so much! Thank you, thank you! Thank you. Thank you.
