How are we doing, everybody? Thank you all… so much for being here. You guys, it is so great to be back in the Twin Cities. And when I say that… When I say that, I mean it is great to be back in Minneapolis because I have never been to St. Paul. Hear it’s lovely. Hear it’s lovely. Wanna go. But I do think it’s very important… I know with twins, you have to pay attention to both of them equally, or else one of ’em gets a complex. I will say, in real life, I think of you have twins, it would be the wrong move to give ’em such different names. “And this is Minneapolis, which is the Dakota word for ‘water’ and the Greek word for ‘city.’ And this is Paul.”
I also want to start by saying I know it might be a little weird to see me in this environment. Most of you are probably used to seeing me wearing a suit, sitting behind a desk. Very odd. See me doing stand-up in casual clothes. It can be very jarring to see someone… out of context, like when a kid sees a mall Santa getting into his Ford Festiva. I mean, it might be weird to even be seeing my legs right now. It’s like that time Kermit rode a bike. It was fun, but you were like, “Are those weight-bearing legs?”
So, hopefully, you’ll learn a few things about me tonight you don’t know. Uh, one thing people think they know about me that is wrong is, uh, I am not Jewish. Um, all Jewish people assume I am Jewish… because of my name and my face and everything about me. My father’s father was Jewish. My mother could not be less Jewish. For example, the other day, she said, “As long as my kids are happy, I’m happy.” So…
My wife is Jewish. And her parents were so excited when they first met me. They were so happy that their daughter had met a nice Jewish boy, and then I had to break the news to them that Seth Meyers was not, in fact, Jewish. And that is very unfair to them, because to be named Seth Meyers and not be Jewish is false advertising. But I will say, over the course of the five years I dated my wife before we got married, I think, to my in-laws, I became, to them, Jewish enough. And I believe that’s the only religion that that happens in. Which is why it’s so great that it’s the only religion that ends with -ish. I really believe… I really believe that on our wedding night, people were going up to my mother-in-law and saying, “Is Seth Jewish?” And she was saying, “He’s Jew-ish.”
You may have noticed that I said, “In the five years my wife and I dated before we got married,” the only mistake… the only mistake I made with my wife is that I made her wait five years before I married her. That is too long for a woman of her caliber. I made a mistake. I also appreciate right now that if you’re watching this with a woman you have dated for five or more years, I have ruined your night. Right now, you are staring at me, but you can tell… that she is staring at you. It gets awkward. The longer you go, the more awkward it gets. We were together for four years. We were trying to figure out what to do for my wife’s birthday. We decided to go to Europe. She said, “Where do you think we should go?” I said, “Why don’t we go to Prague? We’ve never been to Prague. I heard it’s amazing. Let’s go to Prague.” She said, “We could do that. Or we could go to Paris. I know we’ve been to Paris before, but we have such a nice time in Paris.” I said, “Hey, it’s your birthday. If you want to go to Paris, let’s go to Paris.” We go to Paris, and the first night in Paris, my wife is more miserable than I’ve ever seen her. And finally, I said, “Why are you so upset?” And she said, “Every one of my friends said, ‘If he’s bringing you to Paris for your birthday, he is going to propose.'” Oh! To which I said, “Did you fucking tell them about Prague?! Did you tell them my opening offer was Prague? A place where, famously, no one gets engaged.” No one has ever said, “Look what happened in the Czech Republic.” But shame on me. You cannot bring a woman who is expecting an engagement ring to Paris. It is too romantic a place for that. At one point, we were crossing a bridge going over the River Seine, and my passport fell out of my pocket. And I looked down, and I realized it would be easier to kick it into the river… and replace it at the embassy… than it would be to take a knee in Paris without an engagement ring. Like, “Oh! We live here! We live here now. We live here.”
But I finally wised up, and after five years, I proposed, and my wife planned the most amazing wedding. She was very sweet, because she tried to involve me in the planning of the wedding by asking me questions, but I kept getting the questions wrong. For example, she said, “Hey, for the wedding invitations, I was thinking, since we’re getting married near a lighthouse, it might be cool to get a lighthouse embossed on the back of the wedding envelopes. What do you think? It’s a little bit more expensive, but I think it’d be really nice.” And I said, “I have to be honest, I don’t think people look at things like the back of wedding envelopes. And if it’s more expensive, it’s probably not worth it.” And then, I could tell from her expression that what had happened was… is she had phrased a statement in the form of a question. And the punctuation was purely ornamental.
But instead of giving up on me, she just made the questions easier. She was really holding onto this idea that I would help her plan the wedding. So she would say things like, “Hey, what do you think we should do for food at our wedding? Do you think we should have it professionally catered, or… do you think we should have a trash can full of Wendy’s in the middle of the dance floor?” And I’d think about it, and I’d say, “I think we should have it professionally catered.” And she’d say, “Look who’s planning a wedding! My little wedding planner right over there!”
So, she plans, uh, this amazing, uh, wedding. And then, uh, at the rehearsal dinner, night before the wedding, uh, my wife got food poisoning. Oh! That is the accurate reaction to that piece of news. We’re at the rehearsal dinner, it’s a wonderful night, but my wife does not look well, and I say, “What’s wrong?” And she said, “I think I have food poisoning.” And so, then, I did something, uh, called mansplaining. And… Uh, if you don’t know what that is, uh, ladies… It is when… a man with no shared experience to what you’re going through tells you what’s actually happening. And so, I said to my wife, “You do not have food poisoning. What you have is something called the wedding jitters. You’re gonna go back to your parents’ house, I’m gonna go to the hotel. In the morning, I’m gonna call, you’re gonna feel great, and we’re gonna have this amazing wedding that you have planned.” And so, we did that, and the next morning I called her, and I said, “How are you feeling?” And she said, “I’m at the emergency room because I have fucking food poisoning.”
So, I’m driving to the hospital the morning of my wedding, and I’m thinking to myself, “Oh, my God. I hope she doesn’t die for two reasons. One… I love her more than anything in the world. I cannot imagine living another day without her.” Two, I couldn’t help but think, if your wife dies of any kind of poisoning… morning of the wedding… you’re gonna be a suspect. And even once they clear you, that’s a real shadow for the rest of your dating life. “Were you ever married?” “Almost. Died, morning of. Poisoned. Anyway… Can I make you another drink?”
There’s one thing I feel terrible about, which is this. I felt so bad for my wife, and the whole time I was thinking, I’m so angry that it’s her and not me. That’s really not fair. A bride should feel great on her wedding day, but there was one thing that made me… a little happy… that it was her, which is this. About… a month before our wedding, my wife said to me, “Hey, I think, at our wedding, we should do a choreographed first dance.” The only person I know who’s a worse dancer than I am is my wife. But because “Envelope-gate” had just happened… instead of saying, “I think that’s a terrible idea.” I said to her, “I think that’s a great idea. And I think that not one of the over 100 professional comedians at our wedding… will talk shit about us behind our back… during our terrible-ass dance.”
And we went and we saw a woman, a choreographer, and this was her specialty, was to teach people who did not know how to dance how to do a first dance at a wedding. And we went in, and it was the most… She was the most vibrant person I’ve ever met, and she looked at us and said, “I know you think you can’t do this, but I promise you, you can do this. If you put the same commitment to this as you’re about to give to each other, this will be the most amazing thing. And when you do this dance, your family, your friends, all of them will say, ‘You are a perfect couple.'” And we bought in. Guys, we bought in. And we said, “You know what, lady? You won us over. Let’s do it.” And after a full hour of dancing with this woman, her soul had died. I’ve never seen a person look more hopeless. She looked the way an emergency room doctor would look if you just ran in with a bunch of bones and said, “Help my grandpa! Stay with us!”
My wife’s not here, but this is one of the moves of the wedding dance that I remember. See if you can imagine this. If I did that better than anyone on Earth, it would be the worst thing I ever did. So, as we’re leaving the ER, after my wife has been pumped full of fluids, and my wife is a superhero who’s rallied and was about to actually have a great wedding, she turns to me in the car and says, “I think I don’t feel well enough to do the dance.” And I will tell you that Daniel Day-Lewis himself would’ve tipped his cap at the delivery I gave. When I looked at her with the hands on the wheel, and I said, “That is so unfair.”
Now we’re married, we have two kids, a three-year-old and a one-year-old. And it’s great having two kids. It’s a lot, but also, you’re a little bit more relaxed, because the more kids you have, the more resilient you realize children are. Uh, now, we don’t panic every time we hear a “thunk.” For those of you who don’t have kids, a thunk is the sound of a toddler’s head hitting the ground. And when you first hear it, when you only have one kid, you panic every time you hear it. But then, you grow to learn that a toddler’s head is so close to the ground that… it can’t reach terminal velocity. The thunk is either followed by the sound of your kid just getting up and going, doing whatever he was doing pre-thunk. Or they start to cry, more often than not, because they’ve scared themselves.
The other day, I was upstairs and my wife was downstairs with one of our boys, and I heard the thunk, followed by a cry. And I realized, that provided me with an opportunity to go downstairs and behave the way I want my wife to behave when the thunk is my fault. ‘Cause this was clearly on her watch that the thunk happened. So, I came downstairs and she was comforting our son. And I said to her, “He’s fine. He’s just scared. Don’t blame yourself.” And my wife looked at me and said, “He was actually going down that step I always warn him about. And I thought if I just let him fall, maybe he’ll learn his lesson.” And all I could think was the fucking look she would’ve given me.
We’ve got two now, we’re a little more loose with it. You know, we’ve realized now we don’t like hanging out with friends that just have one toddler, they’re too stressed out. We also don’t like hanging out with friends that also have two. There’s just too much going on. We like hanging out with people who have three or more kids. Because people with three or more kids are so Zen and checked out. They are so checked out. There could not be a sound loud enough from the other room… that will make them put down their CBD-infused Pinot Grigio. You can hear… just a grandfather clock come crashing down, and they’re like, “Watch it in there, guys. They’re kids. They’re fine. They’re kids.” Somebody runs in, is like, “A raccoon bit me!” They’re like, “Did you bite ’em back? They’re kids. They gotta learn. They’re kids.”
I’m fascinated by the youngest of three kids. They’re so much more interesting than the other kids. They’re so resourceful and self-reliant because they’ve received so much less attention in their lives. They’ve figured out everything on their own. You know, when you have one two-year-old, they’re crying for you to make a smoothie. When your third is two years old, they make the smoothie. They just walk into the kitchen, drag in a stool, get up on top of it, start throwing bananas into a blender. And it’s not even your blender. It’s a blender they bought from a job they have on the side. And the parents know that they get things done, and so, the parents take advantage of them and treat ’em like a tiny monkey butler. “Tyler, we’re out of beers!” And he just comes in with… Coronas on a tray and limes in the tops. And they’re verbally advanced, so much more verbally advanced than their siblings were at that age, and at the end of the night, they say, “Well, if that’s everything, I’m gonna put myself down. I can feel myself getting a little cranky and I certainly don’t want any of you to have to see that. If you need anything else, my older sister, Becky, is here to help you. Good night.”
We are, um… We’re thinking about a third. We are thinking about a third. Our biggest hesitation is that when you have a child, you have to give birth to a child, and we… We’ve had very dramatic birth stories… so far in the old Meyers family. Our first boy was almost born in the backseat of an Uber. My wife started having contractions, they started moving so quickly. We called our doctor to explain what was happening. He said, “You have to come right now.” We got into the Uber. And on the way to hospital, my wife was in so much pain that she was on all fours in the backseat of the Uber with her head out the window… screaming, “I do not like this.” Being very economical with her word choice. Also, in any other city in America, if someone’s yelling, “I do not like this,” out the window of a car, it is an abduction taking place. In New York City, nobody blinks an eye. See, we weren’t on highways. We were, like, stopped at stop lights. And my wife was screaming, “I do not like this,” and old women were, like, crossing the crosswalk, saying, “It’s New York City. Nobody likes it.” And we got to the hospital, my wife gave birth 15 minutes after we got to the hospital, 15 minutes after we got there. And I had not decided where I was gonna watch from. I had not decided vantage point, and then, things were moving so fast that I just watched it all, and I’m so glad I did. It truly was one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen in my life. It truly was stunningly beautiful to watch my son being born. I have since seen a still photo of it. Horror show. But good when it was, like, moving.
So, anyways… we almost have our first kid in an Uber. And despite that, our second baby was born in the lobby of our apartment building. And guys, I know you’re judging me right now. Like, “How could you have your baby born in the lobby of your apartment building after what happened last time?” But we were on our toes based on what had happened last time. Once again, the contractions started. We didn’t wait a second, we didn’t call the doctor. We went downstairs into our lobby and we started walking out to the car. And all of a sudden, at the door, my wife stopped and turned to me and said, “The baby is here.” Subtle. Nuanced. From the people who brought you, “I do not like this”… “The baby is here.”
And so, once again, I go to my old standby of mansplaining… which, if you ladies forgot… is when a man uses no shared experience, and says to his wife, “The baby is not here. You only think the baby is here. We have more than enough time to make it to the hospital. Take it from me, a man who has also had a baby out of his vagina.” And my wife looks back at me and says, “The baby is here.” And I looked down, and the only way to describe what I saw… It looked like my wife was trying to smuggle a baby in a pair of sweatpants. It was like, “Oh! That can only be one thing!” It was like a velour boa constrictor ate a baby. And so, then my wife doubles back. And I would describe her gait as the way you would walk if you had a wet grocery bag full of oranges. Like, “Okay, where… Would love to find a place to put this down. If there was anywhere to put this down.” And we basically had two choices of where to go at that point. We could either get back on the elevator or go to the lobby. Terrible options… if what you want is a hospital. Neither of those are even close to a hospital. That would be like if you said to someone, “Hey, do you have an iPhone charger I can borrow?” And they said, “No, but I have a grapefruit and a sombrero.” You would say, “Just fucking say no.” So, my wife chooses lobby, and my wife goes down and she lies on her back in the lobby. And I cannot stress to you how quickly she gave birth to our son. I was on the phone with 911, and this was the extent of my conversation with 911. “We’re about to have a baby. We’re having a baby. We had a baby.” And let me tell you, it is very strange to be on a 911 call that ends with the operator saying, “Congratulations!” Almost never happens. Almost unheard of.
You might be saying to yourself, “Seth, you just told us that you watched the birth of your first child from a vantage point, wherein you might actually have learned something that would be helpful in the birth of your second child. Hopefully, you’re about to tell us how helpful you were.” Sadly, I am not. I stood with my back against the wall, mouth agape, as my wife Lion King-ed her own baby. She played… She played two roles. She was Simba’s mom and that weird old monkey.
You know, I think we all think of ourselves as the heroes in our own story. You see your entire life from your perspective. And yet, there’s never in my life been a moment where I’ve felt more like the sidekick to someone else than when I stood there and watched my wife deliver our child, which made the next moment one of the more harrowing moments of my life. Because in every day of the past nine months, my wife had said to me, “Make sure you have the doctor’s phone number in your phone.” So, imagine how I felt… having watched my wife do what she just did, to have her look at me and say, “Call the doctor,” and I had to look back at her and say, “Do you have his number?” I had 911!
The other thing that was crazy is, within 15 minutes of my son being born, there were, uh, five firemen and seven police officers in our lobby. And, uh, that was weird for me, because, uh, I think, as a dad, you’re hopeful that until your kids are seven, eight, nine years old, you will be the coolest man they ever meet. And yet, I feel, a full 15 minutes into my son’s life, he was looking around being like, “Man, I really hope my dad is one of these 12 kick-ass dudes. Not that scared guy in the corner. Looking in a phone for a number he knows isn’t there. Is he Googling, ‘Baby doctor New York?'” They were… They were so professional. If any of them recognized me, none of them said a word until the last minute, because as we were loading my wife into the ambulance, the last fireman was walking by, and as he passed me, he whispered in my ear, “Guess you got your monologue for tonight.” I was like, “I do. Thank you. Thank you. I do.”
You may be wondering, I don’t blame you for wondering, you may be asking, “Is it possible to love a lobby baby as much as a hospital baby?” It is. Over time, it is. In fact, the only relationship that changed based on the fact that we had a baby in a lobby is our relationship with the two doormen who were on duty that night. And it changed in very different ways. Ramone is now like family. Ramone feels like he was there for a magical moment. He feels closer to us than anyone else in the building. Every time he sees our son, his face lights up. Kevin cannot make eye contact with my wife. Kevin is definitely giving off a “I’ve-seen-your-wife’s-vagina” vibe.
The other crazy thing about being a dad is you just aren’t a dad, and then you are. It changes immediately. And I feel like, for a mother, you know, your body is telling you that a change is coming. You feel like a mother before the moment actually happens. But you are just not a dad, and then you are a dad. And that became very clear to me after our first son was born. About two hours after, we were in the hospital, and he’s asleep and my wife’s asleep, and a nurse brings me some paperwork to fill out. And the first question was, “Mother’s name?” And I put my wife’s name. And then, it said, “Mother’s phone number.” And I put my wife’s phone number. And then, it said, “Father’s name.” And I put my wife’s father’s name. And then, it said, “Father’s phone number.” And I thought, “Who the fuck knows their father-in-law’s phone number?” And then, I realized, “Oh, I’m the father!”
I hope I can be as good of a father to my kids as my dad was to me and my brother. My dad was an incredible father. So supportive, our best friend, even to this day. And there are things that I want to emulate in the way that he raised us. One thing I’m really looking forward to is trying to be the kind of disciplinarian that my dad was, because he really seemed to enjoy it. He was never physical or threatening. He used a technique that I believe cognitive psychologists would refer to as “mindfuckery.” I remember there was this time there was a storm in our town that knocked down a tree in our backyard. And the town came and took the tree, but they left the stump. And my dad thought the stump was an eyesore, and it really drove him crazy that he had this ugly stump in his front lawn. And so, one day, we were driving to school and one of our neighbors had a landscaping crew there. And my dad stopped the car and he got out, and he went over to the foreman and said, “If I gave you 100 bucks, would you get rid of this stump using your bulldozer?” The guy said, “I can do that.” Dad took us to school, went to work. That night he got home, the stump was still there. Next day, stopped again. The guy said, “We got busy. We’ll get rid of the stump.” Again, school, work, came home, stump was still there. My dad was so mad that the stump was still there. It was all he talked about. It was the week we found out the incredibly high bar he had for the customer service he expected of under-the-table stump removal.
So, finally, after about a week, we’re driving to school, and my dad stops the car, and turns around to my brother and I, and says, “Everything’s gonna be fine.” Which is a terrifying thing to hear… if it never even occurred to you everything would not be fine. It sounds like a positive thing, but in context, it’s very negative. It’d be like if a surgeon, right before you went under, said to you, “I hope we meet again!” So, my dad said, “Everything’s gonna be fine.” And he gets out of the car, and he walks over. And in his business suit, he lies down in front of the bulldozer. Lies down on the ground in front of the bulldozer. And then, as you would do if you were a landscaping crew and you saw this happen, they all walked over. The foreman said, “What are you doing?” And my dad looked at him and said, “I’m so depressed about the stump in my lawn… that I don’t want to live anymore. Will you please run me over with your bulldozer?” And the foreman said, “Man, you’ve got to get up.” My dad said, “I can’t get up. I’m too sad… from, you know, the stump.” And so, they looked at my dad, and then they looked at my brother and I with our faces pressed against the window. And he said, “Man, I promise if you get up right now, and get in your car, I will turn this bulldozer around. The stump will be gone by lunch.” My dad said, “You promise?” He said, “I promise.” My dad got back in the car. We drove off. We watched the bulldozer turn around and go the other way. And it was a very quiet and awkward drive. And then, finally, after about ten minutes of silence, my brother said, “Why would you do that… with us in the car?” And my dad, with no hesitation, said, “Oh, it wouldn’t have worked without you in the car.”
I have great parents. And it’s fun to be a parent, because I think in a lot of ways, it makes you a better person in general because you just have more empathy and you care more about the future of the world. But in other ways, it makes you morally a worse person because now there are things you would never have done before that you would do for your kids. Like, for example, we have this plastic toy. It’s basically a plastic box with four holes in it, and it has four corresponding shapes that goes into those holes. There’s a square, there’s a circle, there’s a triangle, there’s a star… We lost the star. I don’t know where the star is, but we lost the star. And yet, every time we take the game out, my three-year-old says, “Where the star go?” And I say to him, “We lost the star.” And if you’ve ever met or talked to a three-year-old, you know that’s not the end of that conversation. No three-year-old ever says, “Ah, such is life. We shall not speak of it again.” So, I’m not sad that we lost the star ’cause he misses the star, I’m just so fucking irritated talking about it.
And the other day, we were over at one of his friend’s house for a play date, and I noticed they have the same toy. And they have the star. And I couldn’t believe the speed at which I had the thought… “Am I gonna steal the fucking star?” I’m like casing the place for a nanny cam. It’s like I was George Clooney in Ocean’s Eleven. Asking the dad weird questions, like, “Hey, when you lose stuff, do you just let it be lost or do you investigate?” In the end, I did not steal it, but not because it was the wrong thing to do. I didn’t steal it because I thought I wouldn’t get away with it. I think I could’ve gotten the plastic star out of the house. I think I could’ve done that part. But I think the next time I took it out, I couldn’t be sure that my son wouldn’t go, “That’s Tony’s star.” And the minute he does that, we can never see Tony again. ‘Cause my son will give me up. And three just seems like it’s too young to teach him, “Snitches get stitches.”
We don’t want to let our kids play video games, which means I have to stop playing video games. Which is sad because I love video games. I like it ’cause it’s the only place I’m good at sports. My brother said, “Oh, you should play Xbox Live, it’s really great.” And I said, “Why’s it great?” He said that you put on a headset and you can talk to the people you’re playing against. And I did it. And it wasn’t great because I found out by doing it that I’m way worse at video games than 12-year-olds. The way I found out they were 12 is the other day I was playing somebody and I lost two games in a row. I said, “One more game?” They said, “No, I have to go.” And I said, “What do you have to do?” And they said, “Social Studies homework.” And I said, “How old are you?” And they said, “Twelve, how old are you?” And I said, “I’m 36.” And I’m not. I’m 45, and let me tell you guys something. When you… When you lie about your age by nine years… and you’re still three times as old as the person you’re lying to… it’s a real take-stock-of-your-life moment. Like, pretty much the only upside there is, “Well, at least I’m not a pedophile.”
Speaking of pedophiles, and I’ll be brief… My least favorite thing about pedophiles… My second-least favorite thing about pedophiles… My least favorite thing is, you know, the whole… the whole deal. My second least favorite thing, every time they catch a pedophile, the same thing happens, they interview friends and neighbors of the pedophile. And they always say, “He’s the last person we ever suspected of something like this.” And I hate that so much because it implies everyone’s walking around with a list in their head in reverse order… of the likelihood that everyone they know is a pedophile. Just once I’d love to see someone on the local news being like, “What do you think of the local pedophile?” “Who’s the local pedophile?” “Your neighbor Dave.” And they’re like, “Oh, yeah! Yeah, of all our friends, we thought it might be Dave.”
Also, “pedophile” is too fancy a word. You know what I mean? It’s like a pervert who’s also a snob. It’s like, “Child molester? Please. I’m a pedophile.” It also reflects so badly on the other “-philes.” You know, like bibliophiles, cinephiles. Those are just people who like books and movies, you know? An audiophile likes music. He doesn’t fuck the record player. That is the best that joke has ever gone. The best that joke has ever gone. You were probably thinking, “I was right in the middle.” Nope. Best it’s ever gone. And for the special, no less, peaking at the right time. Thank you. Thank you, Minneapolis. I was bombing everywhere and people said, “Give it a chance in Minneapolis, they go… they go for the pedophile jokes there.”
Every now and then, I do a show at a college. And every now and then, it is a Catholic university. And… Uh… Ugh… Oh, man. You remember what we were just talking about, right? Every time I do a show at a Catholic university, the same thing happens right before I go on stage. Someone from the school will take me aside and say, “Hey, the only thing we’d ask is don’t make any jokes about the Catholic Church.” And I feel like I have the perfect response to that, which is I look at them, and I say, “Oh, what kind of jokes do people make about the Catholic Church?” And it’s so great, because when I do that, their eyes light up… with joy, because you can tell they’re thinking, “Oh, my God. Maybe he hasn’t heard!” And that… is faith.
Really, there’s a lot of conversations lately about people in scandals, and questions like, “When can that person come back into society?” “When can this person, post-scandal, come back?” And it makes me think, doesn’t it feel like the Catholic Church should’ve had to have taken at least one week off? Just after everything that’s happened, just one week you go to church, and there be a sign outside saying, “Hey, we’re closed for the day. We’re doing an all-staff meeting. We’re gonna go over the rules one more time.” I mean, there was one racist incident at Starbucks and they shutdown all the Starbucks. And solved racism. That’s why you don’t hear about it anymore, ’cause of Starbucks.
I’ve nothing against Catholics. The most wonderful people. Yet, the leadership, it’s crazy. If your favorite restaurant in the world, if you found out they had a rat problem, you would say, “Hey, I’m not coming back until you solve the rat problem.” If you waited a month, came back, and said, “Is everything taken care of?” If they said to you, “It’s more than taken care of. We found a thousand rats in the dining room, and we moved ’em to the kitchen.” I mean, when Netflix kicked Kevin Spacey off House of Cards, they didn’t move him to Stranger Things. And I mean, he would’ve… loved that.
So, I want to talk about, uh, politics, uh, for a second. But I also… Yeah. I also know there are people who, uh, don’t like jokes about politics. And because this is on Netflix, it presents us with a unique opportunity. Uh, we are gonna have an option for people watching at home to skip politics. There will be a box right down there. And they can just click that, and it will take them to the next moment of the show when it’s not about politics. So, let’s give them a second to find that. Because I appreciate that there are people who think there are too many jokes about Donald Trump. And they say, “When are the jokes about Donald Trump gonna stop?” And the only thing I’ll say is I feel like the jokes are the only good part about living through the Trump era. The only good part. I mean… living through the Trump era without any jokes would be like getting a prostate exam and not wanting the results. “Let me tell you what we’ve found.” “No, no! That’s not what I’m here for! I’m gonna be here tomorrow, get you back up in there, though.”
It’s also very strange for me, because, based on the kind of show I do, and because it’s a show about politics, people have been coming up to me so much over the last few years and saying, “Oh, my God. This Trump presidency must be so good for you. How good is this Trump presidency for you?” And I hate that, because I hate having people feel as though I’m benefiting from this. I’m feeling like… I feel as though I’m a gravedigger in the Middle Ages. And people are coming up to me, like, “Oh, my God. This plague must be so good for you. How good is this plague?” And I have to say, “Well, obviously, we’re very upset about the plague. But it has been very good for me. It’s been very good for business, really. We had to open a second location.”
It’s also strange because there are people who blame me for the Trump presidency, because in 2011, I told jokes about him at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, and many people say that’s the night that maybe he decided to run for president, because I told jokes about him and President Obama told jokes about him. And it turns out, he has very thin skin. Which is ironic, because it looks thick. Like the heel of a catcher’s mitt. A lot of people said it because I told jokes about him that night, Obama told jokes about him that night. That night he began plotting his revenge, began plotting this course to be president of this country. And a lot of people wrote articles about that night in the lead-up to the election. And a lot of those articles only talked about Obama’s jokes and left me out of it, and that hurt my feelings, because I also wanted credit for tricking him into running for president, because I was so sure that he was going to lose. And then he won, and the minute he won, I realized something. “This is Obama’s fault.”
You know who I feel really bad for in the Trump era is, uh, Canada. I feel bad for Canada because in the run-up to the election, so many people said, “If he wins, I’m gonna move to Canada.” And then he won, and nobody did. They must’ve been so excited on election night. Like, waiting at the border. Then a couple of weeks passed, nobody showed up, they called. They were like, “Hey, you guys coming or not, eh?” And we’re like, “Oh, what? Oh, yeah. Umm… no.” They’re like, “Why not? Did he not win?” “No. Yeah, no. He did. He did win.” “Oh, is he not as bad as you thought he was gonna be?” “N-No, he… he’s a little bit worse.” “So, what’s this all a-boot?” “Uh… “I g… Yeah, um… I guess we just don’t want to live in fucking Canada.”
A lot of conservative Christians voted for Donald Trump, and they voted for him for the reason that he would pick conservative judges. He would pass legislation that was kind to them, and they are certainly getting what they voted for. And I am not to deny anyone voting for what they want. The thing that frustrates me is when conservative Christians tell us that Donald Trump is a religious man. Donald Trump is not, in any way, shape, or form… …a religious man. Here’s a dead giveaway. Here’s a dead giveaway. Donald Trump does not go to church. Which makes sense, because he would hate church. Can you imagine Donald Trump sitting for an hour in a room where someone talks about the glory of someone who is not Donald Trump? “Is this whole hour about Jesus? Do you know he didn’t own a single hotel? True story. Night he was born, couldn’t get a hotel reservation.”
And the Bible warns against this exact thing. In the Bible, it says, “Beware of a wolf in sheep’s clothing.” Donald Trump isn’t even trying that hard. He is not a wolf in sheep’s clothing. He’s a wolf in a shitty wool sweater… Just walking into a flock, being like, “Baa, I’m a sheep. When are you guys going to bed? Baa, I’m also a sheep. I’m not gonna eat you. ‘Cause I’m a sheep. Baa!”
The other crazy thing about that White House Correspondents’ Dinner night is it was on a Saturday, and on Sunday, Barack Obama went on television and announced that SEAL Team Six had killed Osama bin Laden the very next day. And it was an amazing moment. I think it caused a lot… Yeah. It was a moment of great relief to many Americans, which is why I’m ashamed to this day at how I reacted to that piece of news. Because I… did what I thought was a very good job at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, and it went to my head. It went to my head and I started thinking, “When the news comes on Monday, all they’re gonna do is talk about how fucking funny I was on Saturday… as long as nothing major happens on Sunday… a notoriously slow news day.” I’m basically admitting to you that I was the one person in America, who upon hearing that SEAL Team Six had killed Osama bin Laden had this reaction… “Shit! Tonight! They waited ten years and they got him tonight! Fuck me!”
All right. That’s the end of politics. And, uh… we’re gonna have the people who left us join us again. But when they come back, I want them to hear me say something that will make them curious enough to go back… and watch it. So, I’ll just give it a beat here.
So, I guess my point is I misjudged him and I do think he’s a very good president. The whole thing, based on how I laid it out. You agree with me, too.
I’ve been, uh, living with my wife now for ten years. We’ve lived together for ten years, and let me tell you, my wife has made my life just immeasurably better. Living with her has made just my environment immeasurably better. Everything about living with my wife is so much better. With that said, and I’m ashamed to say it, there are times where I resent how much better she thinks she’s made it. Like the other day, I couldn’t find my belt and my wife found my belt, and as she brought it to me, she said, “Where would you be without me?” And I wanted to say, “Exactly here without the belt.” In fact, I would have the belt because I would know exactly where it was, in yesterday’s pants on the floor. But now… we’re not allowed to leave yesterday’s pants on the floor, so I need a National Treasure-style map to find my one lousy belt.
My wife always knows where everything is because my wife has OCD. She’s one of those people who, if she walks into a room and anything is even a little bit off, if a Venetian blind is turned the wrong way, she cannot settle until she figures out what it is. And I think it’s really important to find ways to never be bored in a marriage. And so, what I like to do… If I get home first, what I like to do is I like to go into our closet and turn around one of the hangers. And then, when she gets home, I sit on the end of the bed, and I ask her how her day was. And then, I wait until she goes into her closet and she gets quiet, because her spidey sense is telling her that something’s wrong. And it’s in that silence that I think to myself, “As long as I can do this, I will never be bored in this marriage.”
I have a brother. My wife has a brother and a sister. And it’s been a real education what sisters are like, especially how sisters fight. The way my wife and her sister fight is it escalates so quickly, and then is immediately forgotten by both of them. And the only people left to pick up the pieces are those of us unlucky enough to have been there when it went down. This is a very normal argument, a normal fight between my wife and her sister. One of them will say, “Hey, when you borrowed my sweater, you stretched out the neck.” And the other one will say, “You were a slut in high school.” I’ll be like, “Whoa!” Where is the middle of that argument? The sister will leave and slam the door. You’ll think, “We’ll never see her again.” The next day, the buzzer in the apartment rings. “Who’s that?” “It’s my sister.” “What’s your sister doing here?” “She’s borrowing a sweater.” And I’m like, “What about the neck? Did you already forget about the neck?”
This is a true story about my wife and her sister. When they were five and nine, they were sharing a bowl of guacamole. And one of them, I won’t say which one, took the last bite of guacamole, and the other one said, “Did you take the last bite of guacamole? You are a bitch.” And then, the one who had taken the bite, very calmly looked at her sister dead-eyed, pulled the bowl back, opened her mouth, and let the bite of guacamole fall back into the bowl. And the only part… The only part of that story that isn’t true is that it happened last week. It happened last week and I was there.
My wife is a lawyer. My wife is a former prosecutor. Uh, I use “former” loosely because she falls back into it pretty quickly when we argue. In every one of our arguments, my wife is this incredibly well-prepared prosecutor and I am a public defense attorney who just found out I have the case. Like, she’s so ready for all of our arguments, and I’m running into the courthouse late, and I’ve got papers coming out of my briefcase and mustard on my tie, and I run up to the judge, and I say, “I need a continuance!” And the judge says, “Overruled!” because my wife is also the judge.
She’s one of those really, really good prosecutors that gets you to admit to your crime on the stand without you knowing it. Like, we’ll have an argument, and she’ll say, “Hey, did you forget to separate the recycling when you took out the trash today?” And I’ll say, “Absolutely not.” And she’ll say, “You’re so confident. How can you be so sure?” And I’ll say, “I didn’t take out the trash today.” And she’ll say, “No further questions, Your Honor.”
One of the things my wife loves about the law is each side gets to make their case. And we were talking about how that’s so different from my job, where I get to come out here and just give my side of the case. So, we decided it would be healthy and good if I also shared her perspective. So, would it be okay right now if I did stand-up as my wife about me? Is that good with everybody? Hey, everybody. Um, my name is Alexi Ashe Meyers. Thank you so much for letting me do this. I really appreciate it. Thank you. I do not… I do not do this professionally, because unlike my husband, I do not live my life in the desperate quest for the approval of strangers. It is true that I found my husband’s belt, but I do take issue with him saying he tried to find it, could not find it. I want to tell you how my husband looks for things. He looks one place, and if it’s not there, he loses his mind. This is my impression of my husband as Sherlock Holmes. “Watson, I believe the killer was the coachman.” “Well, it couldn’t have been the coachman, Holmes. The coachman was out of town.” “Then I don’t fucking know, man! I don’t fucking know, Watson!”
It’s true, I have OCD. My husband has no CD. And that, I mean there is no amount of clutter that can make him even the least bit upset. He is a glass-half-full kind of guy. And by that, I mean there is not one surface in our apartment that does not have a half-full glass of water on it. Because despite being a full-grown man, he can still not remember how much water he needs when he’s thirsty. Nor can he remember when he’s thirsty again that he has unfinished water right next to where he was sitting. So, however hard it is to live with my OCD, I assure you it’s only a fraction as hard as it is living with a man who has aqua aphasia.
I’m a former prosecutor. I’m a former sex crimes prosecutor. And you would think, based on that, that at the end of a hard day at work, my husband, the comedian, would cheer me up. You’d be wrong. One time, I came home and he was lying on the couch. And I said, “What’s wrong?” And he said, “Two of my jokes didn’t work in the monologue tonight.” And I said, “You have a show tomorrow. I’m sure you’ll get them next time.” And the, he just rolled over and made a noise, like… And then, a full hour later, he finally got around to asking how my day was. And I said, “It was really hard. We arrested a pedophile.” And then, I swear to God… when he heard that word, he smiled. And I said, “Why are you smiling?” And he said, “‘Pedophile’ is too fancy a word.” And I said, “That joke will never work.” And he said, “It might work in Minneapolis. You never know. Give it a chance in Minneapolis.”
I spit out the guacamole. Who’s the bitch now?
Every now and then, I want to let my husband sleep in. When I want to let him sleep in, what I will do is I will get up very quietly. I will take our two boys, I will bring them downstairs, and I will make them breakfast. When my husband wants to let me sleep in, what he will do is he will wake me up… and say, “I’m gonna let you sleep in.” Because he can’t even go an hour without getting thanked.
And by they way, I’m not gonna make it an hour, because there are so many questions. The morning that he tries to help out, there are so many questions. He’ll go downstairs, then he’ll come back up and just say, like, “Hey, what do the kids eat? How do I make it? Where do I put it? In their mouths? When they’re done, how do I clean up? Do I do all the dishes or just throw them in the garbage?” And then, I’m so frustrated that I just get up ’cause it’s easier to do it myself than explain it all to him. And then, he gets frustrated at me and says, “I will never learn unless you teach me.” And when he says that to me, I am so happy that the windows in our apartment have child locks, because if they didn’t, I would open them up and throw myself out. Because how do you not know? There’s that expression, “If you give a man a fish, you will feed him for a day. If you teach a man to fish, you will feed him for life.” My question that I ask my husband now is, “How do you not know how to fucking fish? You watch me fish every day. And then, when it’s your turn to fish, you eat the worm and throw the whole fucking rod in the water. What’s wrong with you?”
Sometimes my husband will open the refrigerator and say, “We’re out of yogurt.” And I will say, “We are not out of yogurt.” And he will say, “I swear to God, there’s no yogurt in this refrigerator.” And I will say, “Please don’t make me come over there and find the yogurt.” And he will say, “On our child’s lives, there is no yogurt in this refrigerator.” And then, I will walk over to the refrigerator and it will take me this long to find the yogurt.
This is my husband if he was Apollo 13. “Houston, we have a problem. There is no moon.” And then I would say, “Have you looked out both windows?” And then, there’d be a pause. And he’d say, “Houston… we’re good to go.”
But guys, I feel bad. I do feel bad about something. Every tenth time… there is no yogurt… Every tenth time I have just forgotten that we ran out of yogurt, and we did not replace the yogurt. But now my husband is too afraid of me to ask me to find the yogurt. And so, he’ll just stand there with the refrigerator door open looking for yogurt that is not there. And in those moments where I see him, with the blue light of the refrigerator illuminating his stupid face… as he scans the only three shelves over and over again… In that moment, I think to myself, “As long… as I can make him do this… I will never be bored in this marriage.”
Thank you, guys, so much! You’ve been amazing! Good night, Minneapolis.
