Comedy Central Stand-Up
Bill Burr explains how watching MTV Cribs lowers his self-esteem, describes an incident he witnessed on the subway and shares why office work isn’t for him.
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Male Announcer: From New York City, Comedy Central presents: Bill Burr!
[Cheers and applause]
Alright, thank you. Thank you very much. Nice to be here in this beautiful theater. I didn’t do anything today. I’m a loser, man. You know what I was doing? I was sitting around, watching that show MTV Cribs. You guys know that show? The one where they show all the rock stars’ and rappers’ houses and all their stuff? Doesn’t that show make you feel like a loser? It kills my self-esteem. I’m sitting there watching Britney Spears. She’s like 20 years old. She’s like, “Oh my god, this is my helicopter. I had it spray-painted pink to match my top today. So cool. I put some glitter on the chuff-chuff-chuff part. We’re gonna fly up to the house.”
I’m 34, sitting on a futon, eating macaroni and cheese like, “Oh my god. I’m a loser! I’ll never own a helicopter!” You know what I love about that show though? All they’re doing is showing you what not to do when you get rich. Seriously, ’cause none of those people are saving their money. Half of them only have one hit album, so should they really be buying all of that stuff? A 20-room house and 17 cars. It’s just like, “Dude, don’t you watch Behind the Music? Haven’t you learned anything from that program? You’re gonna be smoking crack in six weeks. Save your money.”
No, they’re dumb. I’ll tell you right now, if you want to know how to be rich, don’t look at a rapper, don’t look at a rock star, look at a guy like Bill Gates. That dude is so good at being rich it’s irritating. He makes like $30 million a day, and look at him. He dresses like he works in a shoe store, but that’s why he’s always gonna be rich. He’s not showing off, trying to buy all this flashy stuff, like walking around with an iced-out laptop medallion hanging off his neck, wearing a fuzzy pimp hat to the side, sitting in a hot tub with some bitches, having a midget in his crew just for the hell of it.
[Laughter and applause]
Have you noticed that’s the new status symbol of rich people? Midgets. I’m serious. No entourage is complete now unless you have a midget. And you know what? That’s good for midgets. Seriously, ’cause historically, those people have not gotten good jobs. Even when they book a movie, they never get to be the lead, never get to be the hero. They always have to play a troll or a fairy running out from under a bridge, biting on somebody’s leg.
So I was listening to George Bush today. You guys like George? Well, yes? No? I like George. You know what I like about George? He makes me feel like I could be president too.
[Laughter]
[Cheers and applause]
No, he does. He’s like the first guy from my reading level, you know? Like, the first guy from my math class to finally go out and do something. You know what I love about George? He can’t say the word “terror.” He can’t. He uses the word every speech, but he can’t say terror. He goes, “ter.” That’s what he says. He goes, “America will not stand for ter, anybody who supports ter. If you’re a ter’ist, we’re gonna get you.” What kind of president goes, “We’re gonna get you”?
[Laughter and applause]
He’s like some redneck they dragged out of a barbecue, put him in a suit. Just standing on stage going, “We’re gonna get you.” He should just be up there with a couple of bloodhounds going, “Go get ’em, Blue. Smell the shirt. Go get ’em. Damn, that Blue’s a good dog.”
I’ll tell you one thing I have realized though. When you go to war, that’s the one time when you really have to appreciate rednecks. No, you know why? ‘Cause rednecks, they’re the one group of people that actually want to go to war. Everybody else tries to get out of it. Rich people never go to war. You ask a college kid if he wants to go to war, he says, “Um, I’m taking a sociology class, and I think war is really stupid. My roommate’s half Afghani, so that’s gonna cause some static.”
[Laughter]
You ask a redneck if he wants to go to war, he’s just like, “Hell, yeah! Absolutely. I’m ready right now. You just point the direction, buddy. I’m ready to do this.” No, they’re frightening people, but you got to utilize ’em. Seriously, you want to scare the enemy, and rednecks are like America’s pit bulls. They should just sedate those people, drop ’em off in Afghanistan. Just let ’em run wild. Just be like, “Dude, just go do everything you ever dreamed of doing. Just go crazy. Have one of your friends play the banjo. It’ll scare the hell out of ’em.”
[Laughter]
Seriously, you wouldn’t want to draft a guy like me. I’m a comedian. I’m useless. I’m a coward. I don’t like confrontations. You draft a redneck, not only is that dude a psycho, he’ll actually save you money. Those guys show up to the army like, “Here’s your M16.” They’re like, “I already got one. I got some stuff in the trunk you ain’t ever seen before, buddy. I went on the internet, got me some of that surface-to-air stuff, took it out hunting, got me a moose and a duck at the same time. I didn’t even see the duck. Duck was over here. I’m aiming at the moose. Duck’s over here. That’s my peripheral over here. And the shot went up the moose’s ass, and the shrapnel from his antler hit the duck. Duck came down. It was the best damn duck I ever ate.”
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So anyhoo, I took the subway here this evening. I hate taking the subway ’cause I have a very howdy doody kind of “mug me” face. No, people tend to mess with me when I’m on the train, you know? So I don’t look at anybody when I’m on the train. I just, like, stare at the floor, you know? This is a true story. One night, I’m sitting there, staring at the floor. There’s, like, 20 other people in the middle of the train. All of a sudden, I hear this lady’s voice at the back of the train. I swear to God. She’s sitting there; she’s going, “Ow! Let go of my neck.” I swear to God. She’s like, “Ow! You’re hurting me. Let go of my neck.”
And you know, it’s like, you don’t want to look when stuff like that’s happening. You try to ignore it. You just sit there going, “Settle that. Make it go away. Don’t want to see the rest of that.” But it just keeps going. She’s going, “I said ow! You’re hurting me. Let go of my neck!” So finally, I got to look. I look down— I swear to God, man—this dude has got his girl right by the back of the neck. He’s going, “You shut the hell up. You shut up.” She’s like, “Ahh!” “Shut up!” “Wah!!!”
So I don’t know what the hell to do, you know? ‘Cause it’s like, I really want to help her out, but I really don’t know how to fight, so what am I gonna do? I’m gonna walk down the end of the train. Five seconds later, I’m gonna be going, “Ahh! Let go of my neck. Ahh! I was just trying to help. Wah!!!” So I didn’t do a damn thing. I didn’t. I just sat there. I was like, “To hell with her. She picked him. It’s not my problem. I don’t know if she’s into that kind of thing but…”
[Laughter]
So I was watching a little bit of Oprah the other night. I don’t really like that show, but my girlfriend likes it, and I want to get laid, so, you know. No, no. You pick your battles. You know what I like about that show? They always examine relationships on that show. You know what I realized? Whenever they do that on those talk shows, 90% of the time, the dude is always wrong. It’s unbelievable. Two people; 90% of the time, the guy’s always wrong. The woman is always, like, totally innocent. Like, “I was just trying to make him some chocolate chip cookies, and he didn’t think there were enough chocolate chips in the cookies, so he started beating me with the cookie pan. It was horrible.” And the guy’s always the biggest moron ever. Like, “Well, what? I wanted some cookies.”
Now, I’m not saying guys aren’t jerks. I’m a good example of one, you know what I’m saying? But women can be jerks too. They should balance it out. You know what group of women I’d love them to do a show on? Those 24-, 25-year-old gorgeous women who go out and hook up and marry an 80-year-old rich guy. You ever seen them hanging out with Hugh Hefner, some 70-year-old guy in his pajamas? Now, if they were just honest about it and were like, “Look, this guy is gonna die in, like, seven or eight minutes. I’m gonna get a bag of cash and a Lexus,” I wouldn’t have a problem with it. But they always try and lie and be like, “No, I love him for who he is. It has nothing to do with the big yacht. There’s just something about the way he drools in his bathrobe as he pushes the checkers along. It’s really enjoyable.”
I just want to be like, “Lady, you’re humping him for his money.” See, that’s something I could never do, man. If some 80-year-old billionaire, rich old lady came walking down the street, started hitting on me, saying like, “Hey, there, sonny,” you know, started grabbing my ass, “Oh, you’re pretty firm. What, are you in the Navy or something?” I’d just be like, “Lady, get the hell away from me. Right, you’re old. You’re gross. I’m sorry. I’m sure you were unbelievable back in the ’20s when you were doing the Charleston, making beer in your bathtub, but you are at least four decades beyond humpable. I’m sorry.”
No, how do you have— I don’t understand. How do you have sex with somebody 40 or 50 years older than you? I’ll tell you the only way you can do it. You know what you got to do? You got to put the will on the headboard.
[Laughter]
No, so at any point, if you lose your nerve, you just can read some of the stuff that you’re getting. You’re just sitting there like, “Oh, my god. This is disgusting. What is becoming me? Ooh, a house in Miami. Okay, I can stick this out a little bit longer. I guess this isn’t as bad as I was thinking a second ago.”
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No, I got some issues, I guess. I do. I’m not gonna lie to you. Like, beautiful women. I don’t trust beautiful women. I just don’t. You know why? ‘Cause you know what I’ve noticed in my life as a man? Beautiful women are only around when you have stuff. When your life is going great, they’re all over the place. But when you’re broke, you can’t find a beautiful woman. You’re, like, under a bridge. There’s, like, trolls and ferrets running around. They’re just not around. Then the second you get some— like, you get a little money, they come out of the woodwork like, “Oh, my god, you have some stuff? Can you buy me some stuff? I want some stuff too.” Then the second you go broke, “Oh, my god, I left something over here next to this guy. He has stuff. I’ve always loved you.”
[Laughter]
Come on, you know what solidified my issues? This is what solidified it. Okay, I was at a Yankees game one time, right? And I’m sitting, it was, like, the end of the inning, and Tino Martinez catches a foul ball to end the inning. You know how they always throw it into the crowd? There’s, like, a hundred people going, “Tino, Tino, throw me the ball. Throw me the ball.” There’s a beautiful girl sitting right in the front row, of course. “Oh, my god, I have these. Eh, I get to sit in the front row. What, this doesn’t happen to everybody?”
So there’s a hundred people asking for this stupid ball. He walks right up to her, just hands it right to her. Didn’t flip it. Didn’t toss it. Handed it right to her. You know what I’d have to do in my lifetime to ever catch a foul ball? First of all, it would have to be, like, the one in a million chance that the ball was actually hit way the hell up where I was sitting in, like, the upper, upper, upper deck, which means the ball is gonna be coming in at about 100, 120 miles an hour, so I got to figure out, like, which body part I’m gonna sacrifice to slow it down, and then I got to pounce on it, curl up in the fetal position as eight guys punch me in the back of the head, and I pray to God that I can hang on until security gets there. And he just walked right up and just handed her the ball. She probably didn’t even know what it was. Like, “Basket? Oh, baseball. Oh, my god, let me take this home and stick it next to my other unbelievable free things that I don’t appreciate shelf in my house.”
[Cheers and applause]
So anyhoo, I was taking the— you want to know what the greatest thing about this job is? It’s that I don’t have a boss. That’s what I love about this job. I never wanted a job where I had a boss. That’s why I used to always work in, like, warehouses, ’cause if my boss is giving me a rough time, I could just get on a forklift and just, like, drive away from him, you know? And I realized I was too stupid to run a business, you know what I mean? I just knew I was never gonna be that guy in the big office, big long table, going, “In the fourth quarter, we need to increase production. Okay, Cathy, you’re using a little bit too many paper clips, and we need to just kind of tone that down. I’m not singling you out. We just kind of”— I could never do it, so I realized the one thing I could ever do, my greatest thing I could ever do, was work in one of those cubicles, and I refuse to do it.
Cubicles should be illegal, man. You know what a cubicle basically says? It basically says, “You know what? We don’t think you’re smart enough for an office, but we don’t want you to look at anybody, so you’re gonna get in there, and you’re gonna shut your face.” And you just get in there, and you’re, like, hunched over, typing away. Around lunchtime, you pop your head up like a gopher, like, “Hey, Steve, you want to get a sandwich?” “I said get in there and shut your face!” “Ah, I was just asking for a sandwich or something. God, I hate that guy. I really hate that guy. It’s time to go on the internet and look for a weapon.”
[Laughter]
Pathetic, man. You know what I love about the cubicle? I always love the pathetic attempt to try to make the cubicle like a home, you know what I mean? There’s always, like, a stuffed animal in there or, like, a picture of your mom with, like, her disappointed eyes looking back out at you like, “Why have you accepted this as your lot in life? Why don’t you have the balls to get up and walk out of this thing?” I’m telling you. Those people need to be rescued. You ever walk by a cubicle? The person in the cubicle always looks back out at you ’cause they’re starved for some sort of human contact. They just start up a conversation like, “Hey, hey. Is it raining out? I haven’t seen the sky in, like, six days. They don’t let us look out the windows.”
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I was on the subway the other day. This is a true story. I’m standing there, right, minding my own business. This black guy goes to get on the train, right? All of a sudden, the doors, like, closed on him. You know how that happens? They kind of open and close up. [Thumping] It’s like they’re trying to, like, dice you up. [Thumping] So it’s like typical New York. There’s, like, 20 people watching, but nobody helps out. Everyone’s just standing there like, “Wow, I think it’s gonna cut his arm off.” So the dude’s stuck in the door. The conductor comes out, starts giving the guy a rough time as he’s stuck in the doors. He’s going, “Come on, buddy, let’s go!” He’s like, “You’re holding people up. Let’s go!” So the dude in the door starts flipping out. “What the hell are you yelling at me for?” He’s like, “I’m stuck in the doors.” Then he makes it racial. He’s like, “I bet you wouldn’t say anything to all the crackers sitting over here.” It was, like, me and three other white dudes sitting there. So he gets into it with this guy. He keeps coming back to that point like, “I bet you wouldn’t say anything to these crackers sitting over here.” And after like the third or fourth, “Crackers sitting over here,” me and the three white dudes kind of start, like, looking at each other like, “Dude, shouldn’t we, like, be getting offended at this point? This is getting ridiculous. I can literally feel the heat from his finger as he’s going, ‘Crackers sitting over here.’ Somebody should do something.”
So you know what? Nobody did sh*t. We just sat there and took it. That’s what sucks about being white in that situation. There’s no unity. There are no brothers when it comes to white people. We are not— we are just complete individuals. We don’t care about each other. “That’s not my brother. My brother lives in Ohio. I don’t know that guy.” I’m not concerned about over here. I’m concerned about from here to right here, here. It was unbelievable. I got called a cracker for, like, 18 stops.
[Laughter]
I’ll tell you, that’s funny though, when someone gets racial with you and you’re white because you’re not allowed to get racial back, you know what I mean? So it’s kind of awkward. The dude’s going on, “White boy! You cracker!” You’re like, “Yeah, you stupid jerk.”
[Laughter]
No, you can’t get racial back because the second you get racial back when you’re white, then all of a sudden they wheel out that podium and have that press conference. You got to be like that guy standing up there going, “I disgraced the company. I disgraced myself. I’d just like to state that there was no air conditioning on the subway. I wasn’t thinking clearly. I have nothing against Mexicans. I went to Tijuana. I had a great time. Please. Please, don’t do this.”
No, that’s why a lot of white dudes, we can get uptight in certain social situations. We got to watch out for the podium. No, that podium can come out of nowhere. You’re not even trying to say something. You’re like, “Yeah, I’m thinking of getting a shirt.” “What shirt?” “I’m thinking the black shirt.” “What the hell did you say?” “I said black shirt. I should have said African-American shirt. I apologize. Please, I need this position. I have a mortgage. Please, don’t do this.”
[Laughter]
So anyhoo, I got a computer recently. That’s one of the biggest things in my life. I’m really trying to get more into this whole technology thing. I’m awful with computers. I’m one of those guys, basically every button I hit on my computer, my computer has to shut down, regroup, and somehow deal with my idiocy. You know what I mean? Then there’s always some 8-year-old I see later on a laptop like… [scoffs] [chittering] He’s breaking into the Pentagon, downloading movies that haven’t even been made yet. “I just got a plane ticket for 6 bucks.” You just want to slam his head in the thing.
I’ll tell you the only thing I like about my computer is, I really enjoy spell check. No, I love it. You know what I love about spell check? You don’t have to be close to getting the word right. Have you ever noticed that? All you got to do is just get it somewhere in the ballpark of the word. It’s almost like your computer can just start guessing like, “Ah, sh*t, I don’t know. ‘Dinosaur’?” And you’re sitting there like an idiot, like, “Nah. I wasn’t trying to spell ‘dinosaur.’”
So then what does your computer do? It starts throwing out every “D” word it can possibly think of. Like, “Okay, how about ‘dictionary’? ‘Diarrhea’? Any of this stuff looking familiar? Are we moving towards the goal or away from it?”
You ever spell a word so bad though, your spell check has absolutely no clue what the hell you’re trying to spell? What do you end up getting? You end up getting a question mark. You got a million dollars’ worth of technology just looking back at you like, just like, “You got me, buddy, which is pretty amazing ‘cause I have all the words. Yeah, and that doesn’t look like any of them. I can’t even make a guess that’s so screwed up. What, you’d like, pass out, whack your head off the keyboard? Please tell me you’re not that stupid.”
Alright, that’s it for me. You guys were a lot of fun. Thank you very much. God bless you. Thank you for coming out.
[Cheers and applause]
