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BILL HICKS AT RODNEY DANGERFIELD NEW YORK COMEDY CLUB [TRANSCRIPT]

Bill Hicks performing at Rodney Dangerfield's New York comedy club.
Bill Hicks

[audience applauding and cheering]

[Rodney Dangerfield] All right. Settle down. All right, folks. All right, here’s a guy from Houston, Texas, okay. And he’s really far out. In fact, he’s so far ahead of his time, his parents haven’t met yet.

[audience laughing]

Here he is, Bill Hicks. Bill, hey baby, here we are.

[audience cheering]

Thank you. How ’bout it. Yeah! Yeah! All right! Thank you very much. I’m from Houston, Texas, thank you. Simply means as a performer, I perform in places you people only see on rawhide. I actually go to these hillbilly, po-dunk hell holes, such as Oklahoma, thank you very much. A veritable entertainment mecca, the only state Arkansas can make fun of.

[audience laughing]

When you’ve got Arkansas raggin’ your ass, you’re pretty low down on the food chain, I think.

[audience laughing]

Here’s a quick impression of Oklahoma, those of y’all that have never been.

[Whistling noises] [howling]

That was inside the club I was working.

[audience laughing]

People in Oklahoma, they think the Marlboro Man is a pussy.

[audience laughing]

Played a town there called Enid, Oklahoma. That town that’s so small, you know in hotel rooms, you gotta push nine to get an outside line? I push nine and got the Elmer Dinkley residence.

[audience laughing]

Hello! Who’s this? Elmer Dinkley, you just called my house. Your phone number is nine?

[audience laughing loudly]

Yep, my cousin’s is 23, I had to write that one down. [laughs]

[audience laughter]

Wrote it on my forehead, I keep callin’ 32.

[audience laughing]

They’re nice people, they’re just from Oklahoma.

[audience laughing softly]

Had a guy come up to me after the show, coulda been that same guy, Elmer, I think, came up very excited, he goes, “Hey man, you crack me up.”

[audience laughing]

“I’s laughin’ somethin’ fierce.”

[audience laughing]

“I’d like ya to meet my wife and sister.” And there was one girl standin’ there.

[audience laughing and clapping]

I was on Hollywood Boulevard at a movie theater place that played nothing but horror movies. Frightening, the people that went to those things, man, scarier than the goddamn movies. You could hear stuff in that audience like, “I remember when I cut off a head.”

[audience laughing and clapping]

“Am I in your way?”

[laughs] [audience laughing and clapping]

Thank you very much, thank you. So, I smoke, how many smokers we got here? Smokers?

[soft clapping and whistling]

Yeah, yeah. How many non-smokers? Non-smokers?

[loud clapping and cheering]

Woo! Woo! Woo! Bunch of whinin’ maggots, you people are.

[audience laughing]

Nonsmokers don’t know the meaning of life until you start coughing up brown chunks of lung on your pillow in the morning.

[audience laughing]

You start coughing up smurfs, life takes on a whole new fucking meaning.

[audience laughter]

There is good news for smokers, I’m sure y’all have noticed, Surgeon General’s warnings are different on the sides of each pack, that’s pretty cool. Mine say, “Surgeon General’s warning: Cigarette smoking may cause fetal injury or premature birth.” Hey, fuck it.

[audience laughing]

Just don’t get the ones that say “lung cancer,” ya know.

[audience laughing]

It is your body, you should shop around, I think. I can live with low birth weight, ya know.

[audience laughing]

That’s nice of cigarette companies to come out with different types of diseases, you find the one you can live with, continue to smoke.

[audience laughing softly]

Like, “what are you smokin’,” Tom? “Uh, throat polyps.”

[audience laughing]

Eh, I’m gonna stick with my yellow fingernails, buddy, thank you. I can live with yellow fingernails.

[audience laughing]

I know guys do take break ups hard. I was reading about Vincent Van Gogh, you know what he did, cut off his ear. Sent it to the girl that left him.

[laughs] Yeah, that makes a dozen roses look like a booger, doesn’t it?

[audience laughing]

Damn, Vince, ya sure she’s the one?

[audience laughing]

Vince, think about it! Vince is goin’, “what? Was that Suzy, did she call back, what?”

[audience laughing]

Can’t talk to Vince no more, man. But, I decided over this break up, man, why get bitter about all women ’cause of one? So, I looked on the bright side, I think it helped my career she left me, fine. I’m definitely a driven man now. I’m driven by a fantasy, that one day, this girl who I love more than anyone in the world, and I gave my heart to, and she said she loved me, then left. One day this girl’s gonna be livin’ in a trailer park somewhere in Oklahoma.

[audience laughing]

She’s gonna have nine naked little kids with rickets that bring home dead animals from the side of the road for them to eat.

[audience laughing and clapping]

She’s gonna live with an ex-welder, 600 pounds, fur all over his back, drinks warm beers, and farts and belches, and beats the kids, watches The Dukes of Hazards every day, has to have it explained to him.

[audience laughing and clapping]

One night he’s gonna be making love to her and his heart’s gonna explode, and she’s gonna be trapped under 600 pounds of flacid, fish-belly, cellulite, [audience laughing] shifting like the tides of the ocean, as blood, and phlegm, and bile, and a chaw of tobacco pours of his mouth and nose and into her face.

[audience laughing]

Yeah, that’s it.

[audience cheering and whistling]

[audience clapping]

Just before she drowns in that chunky puddle of afterbirth, she turns to the television, “and I’m gonna be on this show.” [chuckles]

[audience cheering and clapping]

So don’t get bitter. Thank you very much, thank you.

[audience clapping and whistling]

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