David Cross: Worst Daddy in the World
Filmed on July 13, 2023 – Chicago.
Premiered February 29, 2024.
David Cross: Worst Daddy in the World showcases David Cross’s return to the stage, blending humor with candid observations about fatherhood, societal quirks, and personal flaws. Through a series of comedic anecdotes, Cross navigates the challenges and revelations of being an “old dad” to his daughter, critiquing everything from the banality of parental small talk to the absurdities of hipster culture in Brooklyn. His routine delves into broader themes of hypocrisy within religious institutions, the politics of education, and the societal divisions shaping America’s cultural landscape.
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Good people of Chicago, Illinois here at The Metro, are you ready? Back in April of 1960, a dirty, dirty Englishman met a lovely, lovely American woman in Upstate New York, knocked her up with his seed. That seed born a Jew in the woods of Georgia. It is my great honor and privilege to present to you David Cross.
Hello. Oh, come on now. I haven’t even done anything yet. Thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. Thank you. All right, it’s gonna be good. It’s gonna be good. It’s gonna be real good. You know why? Because the first show kicked ass, so now I don’t have to worry about covering another thing. Please, another round of applause for Mr. Sean Patton. You wanna hear the worst segue in the whole fucking world? So I was, yeah, I was here back in 2001, a long time ago, didn’t have a kid then, but I do have a kid now. Yeah, all right, all right. So I’m gonna talk about that for a minute. No, I do, I do, I have a daughter who, six years old, just turned six. And I mean, let me tell you something, that kid is six going on seven, if you know what I mean. I mean, she’s not special, is what I’m saying. She’s not, she’s not. I mean, she’s special to me, of course but I mean, she hasn’t demonstrated any, like, advanced logical thinking skills or artistic creativity or anything like that at all. I mean, she hasn’t, you know? If you saw her and you’d be like, “How old is she?” And I said, “Six.”
You’d go, “Sounds about right.”
But just turned six, yeah? Okay. Whew, I was gonna say otherwise, her verbal skills are a little on the lower side, yeah.
And I’ve learned so much about, from being a dad, it’s all new to me. And you know, I’m an old dad, you know, I may, you know, I’d say older, but that seems to be sugarcoating the reality. I’m old. I’m an old dad, and I’ve, there are, there are truly so many awful things about having a child, but there are. But one of the worst is I now have to engage in small talk and chitchat that I never would ever give the time of day to, you know? Like, and you have to do it all the time. And like before I had a kid, you know, if I was hanging out at the playground… No, but if I was at the park or something, and before I had a kid, and then some guy would, you know, referencing a bunch of noisy kids, some guy would be like, engage me and go like, “Oh man, boy, they’re a handful, huh?” Like, before I had a kid, my response would be, “What the fuck?” And I’d walk away and I’d be correct to do so. That’d be the right thing to do. But now I have to engage with that person because, you know, that’s a potential play date. And you have to have as many potential play dates in your back pocket as possible, because it is inevitable that at some point my wife will be out of town and I will wake up still, I mean, not even hungover, just drunk. I’ll be, I’ll be drunk. I will, you know, clinically be drunk, and I’m gonna have to put that kid somewhere for an hour just to take a shit, you know? And so I have to talk to that person now, and I have to, you know, be nice and all that.
And the thing is, you know, I live in Brooklyn, all right, so there’s just tons of younger, hipster parents. Tons. And I can’t stand them. And I didn’t like them when I was part of that scene. And, you know, and I really don’t like, so I’ll be at the playground, you know, with my daughter and this guy will roll up and this guy, you know, the, and they’re like the kind of guy who’s like got the, those bright orange like longshoreman hat, knit, wooly hats but then they roll it all the way up, you know what I mean? Like, they roll it way too, that’s too rolled up. It’s not, it’s not even over your ears. It’s not, it’s not doing the one single thing a hat is fucking made for. You’re not, and you’re bald, and so now it’s just like a pasty for your head. I don’t understand. And so like a guy with that hat, and then, you know, one of those like, you know, 23 skidoo mustaches and like a full sleeve of like, you know, retro toasters or some shit like that. And then a skirt and culottes and a big whetstone, an oily, glistening whetstone that’s like dangling off a sheath, right? This thing. And you’re like, “What the, what, who, “when, how, why,” you know? “Oh, the whetstone? Oh, yes. Oh, yes, well, I just got back from crafting.”
Me and the gang get together and we’ll craft, and I’m, right now, I’m making, I make bespoke, handcrafted, artisanal farm-to-table marbles. And, well, here’s the thing, here’s the thing. I’m, so the gang and I will get together and we’ll craft and we’ll make, you know, knives from monthly peg and jacks and we get to, because I think we’ve lost the connection, the joy that we had as youth. I think we’ve gotten so cynical in the last four or five years, you know, just, you know, with COVID and he who shall not be named. And so we play the games of our youth. Well, not our youth, but the youth of our father’s father’s father’s games, which are of an, and it’s hearkened back to a simpler, innocent time. And so that’s, and right now I’m working on an ethically sourced paddle ball that I think is gonna be.
Anyway, that asshole will come up to me and I’ll be at the playground with my daughter and I’ll be minding my own business. And that guy will come up going, “Oh, man. “Boy, they’re a handful, huh?”
“Yeah, can, can be.”
“Yeah, which one’s yours?”
“The girl on the monkey bars there.”
“Oh, oh, she’s playing with my boy. That’s my boy. That’s Copernicus, yeah. Yeah, good kid. That kid is something else, man, let me tell you. That kid is six going on 30, you know what I mean?”
“No, I don’t.”
“How, in what way? Name one way. What, does he have heart disease? I mean.”
One of the things that I learned is when you have a kid, you really are forced to confront and do something about your bad habits and your bad traits, you know? And really do something. Like it’s not like, you know, when you’re going to, you get married and you’re like, “You know what? I’m gonna be a better person and I’m gonna learn how to do this, and I’m gonna express myself.”
And you, you know, a month later you’re like, “Nah, fuck that. I’m married, it’s all done.”
But no, with a kid, you gotta, because you don’t wanna put those things onto your kid. So you have to be proactive about it. And one of the worst things about me, I have a lot of problems. I have a lot of issues. I do, I do, a lot of bad habits. I’m so sorry. That sounds like terrible news. All right. But one of the worst traits, one of the worst things about me is I am really, really judgmental. Like severely. And I have been since I was young. I’m just an asshole. I really am. I’m just like, just, you know, and I’ve always justified it by going, “Well, I’m right,” you know, but if that, you can’t do that, it doesn’t work that way. So, I’m just an asshole in here all the time. Like at the airport, it’s just, at the airport, it’s just nonstop in here. As I’m walking around at the airport, just like in here, it’s nonstop. “What’s this asshole on about? Who’s this bitch think she’s fooling? Put on some fucking clothes. Put on some different clothes. That’s not a service animal.”
It’s not, it’s not a service animal. A fucking bunny rabbit isn’t a god-damned service animal. And. But to give you an example of what a piece of shit I am, this is a 100% true, I was in Brooklyn, I was walking down the street. I was going to do a set to get ready to go out on tour. And I’m walking down the street and, you know, we have those COVID, outdoor dining shed things. And I’m walking down and there’s this older couple, pretty old, and the gentleman was standing up and he had his hand extended to his partner and he helped her up and had just started to rain. And he took an umbrella, opened it up, put it over her, just her, not trying to squeeze himself in there. And they are just beaming at each other, the biggest smiles ever. And I saw this, and in my head, I saw this and I thought, “Oh, that’s so nice. That’s so nice that they found each other.”
And then I thought, “Found each other? Why’d I add that to it?”
And then I answered myself immediately with, “Oh, it’s because they’re both ugly.”
I’m looking at pure love, pure love. And my fucking shitty take on this is, “Oh, good for you, you ugly fucks. That’s nice. That’s nice how you found each other because if you hadn’t, nobody else would ever have you, so. You know, otherwise you would’ve, you know, died alone with a cat eating your corpse or something.”
If you had seen, if you had walked past me on the street, this is what you would’ve seen. You would’ve seen this, you would’ve seen a guy going like this, like. And now you know. I do want to say that they really were ugly. I mean like real, like, it was remarkable. And it, and it stayed with me, clearly. It stayed, it was disturbing. So, uh last year for her birthday, I took my current wife to, on a trip. She’s, she’s my current wife, like. That’s just factually correct. It’s no matter what happens in the future, she will remain at this point my current wife. Sounds like a dis but it’s not. It’s not. I think y’all should start doing that too, by the way, just going, “Y’all know my current husband Jerry, right? Jerry, get over here. I want you to meet some of my coworkers. Because it’s fucking true, Tanya.”
All right, so. So, yes, last year for her birthday, I took my wife to Bologna, Italy, a trip, and it was awesome. Has anybody been to Bologna?
[Audience Member] Yeah.
Yeah, it’s great, it’s great. And we only went for five days, which I know is a, it’s a short amount of time to go all that way, and, but I felt very strongly, and I am well aware that everyone has their own different opinion about this, but I was adamant that five days is really the maximum amount of time that you want to leave a five and a half year old at home by themselves. I think. To me. I mean, we would’ve liked to gone longer. I just think that’s shitty parenting. But. So we went, it was great, lovely people, very, very friendly people. The food is amazing. And it’s fairly small, so you can kind of get a feel for it after like three days of like doing a lot of walking around. But one thing I noticed was, and tell me if you had this observation, but there are more churches per capita than I’ve ever seen anywhere else, ever, and I travel pretty extensively. And I mean, it’s, you know, ’cause they have these like gold, like 12th century kind of cobblestone wide streets that go for a mile, right? And you could, you walk down and there’s like a church here, and that’s next to another church, and then there’s a Vespa store, and then there’s another church, and another church, gelato. And then you go across the way, there’s churches over there, and then you go down this alley and it ends up at a church, and then you go underneath the bridge, and then it, there’s two more churches. And then you go to the piazza and there’s the Grand Basilica and there’s three more churches on the other side. And it’s like churches everywhere. But, what’s weird is they’re all the same church, right? There’s no mosques, or synagogues, or Mormon tabernacles or Baptist school houses, or Lutherans, or Calvinists, or Episcopalians, or Methodists, or Seventh Day Adventists, or Unitarians, or Jehovah’s Witnesses. It’s all the same church. The same thing is happening in each one. It’s, you know, it’s all, it’s the same dead kid and the same little wispy smoking orbs on a chain and guys in hoodies mumbling, “Ooh, ooh, ooh.”
It’s the same fucking thing is happening in each one. You know, I don’t know if people were just really lazy back then, you know? Well, I want to go to church, but it’s all the way over there. And here’s something that I did not know until I went to Bologna. I did not know, this is true, but did you know that in Italy, the church pays taxes. It’s true. Yeah, they pay their fair share of taxes and it, yeah, goes into the government coffers, helps to strengthen the social safety net. So there’s medical help for people who need it and housing and things like that. And just a reminder that, you know, in America, the church and religious institutions don’t pay taxes. And the reason they don’t pay taxes is because they don’t have to. And the reason they don’t have to, there’s two reasons stated. The first one is the separation of church and state. You know, very, very great, good idea. On paper. It’s so, so important. It was very, very, very, very important to the founding fathers that it’s literally the first thing mentioned in the Bill of Rights, the first thing mentioned. That’s how important it was. The idea that the government could not dictate to the church what it can and can’t say. And in turn, the church cannot advocate for a candidate or a party from the pulpit. That’s the idea that’s stated that, now, come on, that, there hasn’t been a true separation of church and state in this country for, I mean, literally, I mean, before the ink was dry. I mean, before Thomas Jefferson got home to fuck his slaves, that wall crumbled, that was just dust. There is no separation. There’s not even a Venn diagram. It’s just two circles right on top of each other. It got so bad that in 1954, they had to create an amendment called the Johnson Amendment that they stuck on there that said, “Guys, seriously! “No electioneering.”
That’s what it said, “No electioneering.”
Now, come on, we all watched the January 6th fun time hour. We all saw that. And I distinctly remember, for real, a priest, clerical collar, everything, shouting through a bullhorn, atop a pile of maimed security, I’m imagining, about taking the house back from the demon Democrats, the White House. That’s, you know. And anytime there’s an election, you can go on the internet, on YouTube, or if you’re in the South, just turn on the TV and you will see pastors, preachers from the pulpit going, “And a vote for a Democrat is a vote for Satan himself. Yes, if you vote for a Democrat, you are lower than a burr on the testes of the taint of the ring around the bum of Satan’s asshole. And you will burn in hell for all eternity, gnashing your teeth and gnawing on your limbs because the Democrats want to take your children, drink their blood so that they can engorge their genitalia so that they may engage in orgies with drag queen, Black mermaids.” or whatever the fucking nonsense they think. So, yeah, hardly a separation of church and state. Hardly. And the other reason, as I said, there are two, the other reason that churches, the church doesn’t pay taxes, is because they are not for profit organizations. The Catholic church is a not for prof-, they’re not making a profit. They’re not really getting, yeah, the Catholic church, the same Catholic church that beyond all their church properties owned literally around the globe, over 5,000 like business offices, towers, skyscrapers. They own over a billion dollars worth of shares cumulatively. General Motors, General Electric, Shell Oil, Gulf Oil, Bethlehem Steel. And the Catholic Church even owns an observatory. They do, this is for real. In Arizona, the largest telescope, an observatory in Arizona called the Mount Graham Observatory. For real. The Catholic church owns an observatory. So, suck on that Galileo. Didn’t see that one coming, did you? Oopsies. What the fuck does the Catholic church need with an observatory? There’s only one possible explanation. Only one. And that is, they are on the lookout 24/7, 365 days a year for the second coming of Jesus Christ. It’s the only, only re-. “Have you, is there anything, have you seen anything?” “No, sir, there’s nothing yet.”
“Well, keep looking!” “I am looking, sir, I am. I’ve been doing this for a long time. I need to get some sleep.”
“Just keep looking. Stop, don’t talk to me, keep looking. Make it spin. We paid for the one that spins. When it spins, spin it up and down, spin it around.”
“Yes, I said, okay. Journal entry: 22,509. Still, no sign of Jesus Christ. Lost, question mark.”
But then one very special magical morning. Okay. “Hmm? What? Oh my, oh my goodness, oh my goodness! Boss! Boss, get in, Get in here.”
“What, what is it?”
“It’s , it’s him. Oh my goodness, it’s Jesus Christ. He’s coming back for it. Oh, wait. Ah, false alarm. It’s just Muhammad on a winged horse.”
“Shoot him down. Shoot him down! Fire up the Jewish space lasers. Come on. I think we got him.”
And I think if the church or religious institutions aren’t going to have to pay taxes, then I think they should be homeless shelters. You know, at the very least. And I don’t mean, I don’t mean turned in, hang on. I don’t mean turned into homeless shelters. I mean, like also be home, like simultaneously be homeless shelter, every church. So they’re a church, and then there’s also, so that while the pastor is up there and he’s preaching the words of Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace, words about charity and kindness and sympathy and empathy and forgiveness and tolerance and love. You know, while he’s doing that, there can be like a little like soup kitchen kind of thing where people are getting some food and maybe some clothing, medical attention, maybe some diapers for the kids, some toys, some books, and things, and clothing. And maybe just like even a shower, just for some basic human dignity, you know? Like, and so while they’re up there, the preacher’s going, “And in Matthew 11:18, Jesus says, Bring to me all ye who are weary and burdened, and take my yoke upon you so that I may ease your suffering and your soul can be at rest. And Jesus is telling us to help those who are in need of help. We have a good thing. They don’t, let’s help them out. Yeah, praise Jesus. Yes, amen, amen, yeah. And in Matthew 25:35, Jesus says, For I was starving and you gave me food, for I was thirsty, and you gave me drink, for I was a stranger, and you let me in. Yes, praise Jesus, praise.”
So that while the that’s happening, the people are there, they can be doing that and then they can look over and be like, “What? Oh, you, oh, you’ve got to be, that’s what you meant the entire time? Oh, my goodness. I have been coming here for years and I never made the connection. Ah, well thank you for the visual aid ’cause now I get it. Old mush brain over here.”
Yeah, ’cause there’s no hypocrite like the American Christian. It is literally the height of hypocrisy, the zenith. They have set the bar so high for hypocrisy. And you know, the ones I’m talking about, the ones who are pious, holy, righteous, they go to church every Sunday and they know good from bad, they know immoral from morality. They know what’s love, what’s correct, what’s not correct. No gray area, just black and white. They know, they know. And they’re up there and they say these words, these things, these ideals. And yet something happens. Once they cross the threshold of the church this transformation occurs. It’s almost magical. So they’ll be in there going like, “Yes, we need to treat others the way we should be treated. And we need to treat others with sympathy, empathy, and kindness, and love. And oh my God, it’s a Mexican rapist! There’s a. Tucker, gimme the phone, there’s a Mexican rapist! Hang on a second. Yes, police, yes, I want to report a Mexican rapist. I’m standing outside the Church of Selfless Benevolence and there’s a Mexican rapist here. What? I don’t know, she looks like she’s nine or 10, but. But she’s pointing to her belly and crying. So please send one of your tanks, send one of your glorious taxpayer-funded tanks.”
But I think if we went to the church and we said, “Hey, you know, because of the stuff that we’ve just been talking about, which you know, is not applicable in any way, shape, or form anymore, we think you should start paying your fair share of taxes like any business.”
And I think the church would say, “No.”
And then I’d say like, “Well, why not? Well, how come?” “Well, because we need the money. You know, we couldn’t afford to pay taxes. We would just crumble as a business. We’re just scraping by here, you know? We’re, look, we’re just a little mom and pop and Holy Ghost. We’re a mom and pop, Holy Ghost little startup, you know?” “Well, okay, well, what do you need the, what do you need that money for? Is it for more jewel encrusted golden cups?” “No, we got plenty of those. I think we have all of them. Do we have all the, yeah, we have all the jewelry-encrusted golden cups. So we’re good with that. No, we got plenty of those. Bah, bah, bah, no, no, don’t, those stay here, don’t touch those. No, those stay here. We need ’em to give the place a little zha-zhing, you know?” “Well, I don’t understand then why, if it’s not for, so why do you need the extra money?” “Well, I’ll tell you, okay, and it’s not cheap. It’s quite expensive. But every year, literally every year, we have to pay tens of millions of dollars in settlements to the people that we’ve raped and molested. Every year. It’s a lot of money. And look, no one’s happy about it, you know? Everyone’s got their damn hand out. You know, every time somebody snitches on a priest, then we have to go to the priest and go, “I’m sorry Father O’Brien, but the Hernandez boy ratted you out. So we’re gonna have to send you secretly, under the cover of night, to another parish again. So is there any place you’d want to go?” “You know, I’ve always wanted to rape a boy in Pennsylvania.”
“All right, Pennsylvania, he wants to go to Pennsylvania, so send him to Pennsylvania. Don’t tell anybody, don’t tell the parish. Loose lips, huh?” And then I might say to the church, “Well, okay, but okay, I mean, pardon my naivete, but what if, I’m just crunching the numbers here, but what if you stopped raping your children?”
“Nathan, did you hear what he said? Stop raping. Yeah, no. No, no, no, no. That’s, yeah, you probably think that’s easy. That’s an easy thing. No, we, no, that’s not, we’re not gonna stop. That’s, no, that’s what we do. That’s kind of our brand, you know? That’s our, that’s our thing. We’ve been doing it since before Christ was born. I mean, yeah. I mean, you figure that one out. No, we’re not gonna, we’re not gonna do that. That’s the, yeah, okay, Captain obvious. Yeah. It’s literally the first benefit listed in the job application for a priest. Yes, right there. You get to fuck your flock. Yeah. Go to fuckyourflock.com. It’s all there. Scan the QR code, please. And speaking of unwanted pregnancies, you know, I live in New York. I live there by choice. And I pay, I pay for the privilege of living in a liberal, progressive city that shares the ideals of my wife and I. And I forget, I mean, I live in a bubble for real. And believe me, I’ve been traveling all over this country, and I want to live in that bubble. Because of so many reasons. But like, what’s going on with the anti-abortion movie? Like, you forget. In New York, we don’t have to deal with any of that nonsense. So we, you forget about the ferocity of it. But I’m from the South, you know, I grew up in Atlanta. My family’s still there and I go back three or four times a year. And I just forget until I go home. And then you start seeing the anti-abortion billboards. And especially as you start getting out, you know, becomes more country, they become more frequent. And, it’s always a variation of the same billboard. You know, it has been for decades now, where it’s just on one side there’s a photo of an adorable baby, right? Adorable, cutie, six-month-old, you know, adorable baby. And look, all babies are adorable, you know, except for the ones born with a weird thing. But they’re not gonna put that up there because that kind of fucks up their all life is precious. You know, they’re appealing to emotional heartstrings, right? So they gotta, you gotta, so, you know, they’d be like, “Get that fucking monstrosity off of there. What are you doing? I’m trying to make some money. Let’s go. Come on, no, get, put a picture of an adorable baby, okay? Please. All right. And also while you’re at it could, in Photoshop, could you extend her eyelashes a little bit and maybe plump up her lips a bit just for me for later? All right, thank you.”
I’ll be in the confessional booth, okay? Yeah, we know where the real pedophiles are. We don’t have to look too far if you truly want to find ’em. But yeah, so it’ll be a photo of an adorable baby. And then on the other side, it’ll say like, “Choose life. You fucking whore. All life is precious.”
And I think what the pro-choice movement should do is to buy the very next billboard after that, right? Like 150 feet down the road. So you see that one, and then like 15 seconds later, you see, and it says the same thing. It says, you know, “Choose life. All life is precious.”
Same font, same size, same color. But then instead of a photo of an adorable baby, it’s a photo of like a 32-year-old dude in his basement apartment, like jerking off to anime, right? Just going hard. Going hard, man. Rule 34! Right? A big pile of empty Monster Energy drink cans at the foot of his gamer chair and a big gas mask bong on the table and just sitting with his filthy mustard and cum-stained robe splayed open, hunched over the computer going, “Is there a Bitcoin just for fascists?” Yeah. Precious, fucking precious. All life. All life is precious, yeah? Yeah, all of it. It’s not. It’s not. It’s not, guys, it’s not, all life is not precious. And I’m gonna tell that, I’m gonna tell that to my daughter, you know? I’m gonna sit her down and go, “Hey, listen, kiddo, has anybody tried to tell you that all life is precious and God and the Bible and all that? They have? Okay, well, I, this is your dad talking, okay? That is a load of horse shit, okay? It’s just not true. It’s simply not true. It just, in the two and a half blocks that we walk to school, we pass by a lot of unprecious life. Nothing precious about any of ’em, all right? I don’t wish them ill will, I don’t want ’em to die or anything, but they’re not precious. It’s not, you know, words matter. You know, they fucking matter. And see that boy over there? Copernicus? Yeah. I want you to stop hanging out with him, all right? He’s fine. His dad is a bit of a douche. And hey, you know what, kiddo? This would be a great place for an edit.”
He still there. He’s probably still holding that orange. I swear, I swear to you. Oh my God, it’s true, it’s true. Hopefully he’s okay. But yeah, yeah, yeah. And speaking of unwanted pregnancies, I’ve learned so much from my daughter. It just, like, and one thing I learned, that they don’t really tell you about, but you have to, you have to like constantly censor yourself, edit your responses to the kids. Like ’cause kids will often say some really funny shit, just some gems, right? But you can’t laugh because they don’t, they didn’t intend for it to be funny. So it’s upsetting to them, it seems dismissive. And they’re trying to be sincere and so you can’t laugh. It’s, you know, they take it poorly. And a good example of this, like, this is 100% true. So when my daughter was about four and a half, my wife was outta town, and we were having breakfast, and there was a little lull in the conversation, and I’m over, you know, cleaning up some dishes and stuff. And then after about a minute, she says to me, and apropos of nothing, we had not been talking about anything like this at all. So she just comes out with this, she goes, “Daddy, I’m sad you’re going to die soon.”
And you know, my immediate reaction was like, “Oh, my God, she’s a witch.”
And I went over and I sat down next to her and I very quickly bound her hands and legs, threw her in a sack, drove to a river, and dumped her off the bridge. But here’s the thing, I love that kid so much, and I’m almost embarrassed to say that I’m surprised at how much I love her. Not because of her, but I just didn’t think I was capable of that depth of love for another person or thing, you know? I mean, I truly, I used to think I had kind of a mild form of autism when it came to love ’cause I never had that connection that, you know, you see in the movies and the poems and the books and the, you know, like, you know, “The Notebook.”
I’ve never felt like that, you know? Like “Wuthering Heights,” you know, I haven’t read it, but I assume there’s some love shit in there. And I’ve just never felt that for anything, any person, you know? And I have a wonderful dog, you know? But I would take a bullet for that kid. Instinctively, I would take a bullet for her. I would not take a bullet for my wife. No, no, no. Absolutely not. No, fuck that, fuck that. No, no, no, no, no, no. What? Honey, it’s your bullet. He said. He said it’s, I’ll be downstairs playing video games. No, but I would take a bullet for my dog. Now here’s the thing. Here’s the thing. I love that kid so much, I really do, but at the same time, and I’m 100% sincere when I say this, I also resent her. I really do. Because she’s rich. She’s a fucking rich kid. And I know it’s not right. I know it’s a leftover hangover prejudice I had since I was a kid. I grew up really poor and I was always suspicious of rich people. I didn’t get it. I didn’t like it. And I just didn’t like rich people. I still don’t, you know? And I’m rich. I’m rich, you know? I mean, I’m not rich, rich, I pay my taxes, but you know what I mean? You know what I mean? And when that kid is whining about dumb shit, I’m like, oh, like, “Stop it! You’re fucking rich. Stop, like, you know. You have central air. Do you understand? Are you hot? Push that button, you’ll cool down. Are you cold? Push that button, you’ll heat up. Do you, you have a teepee in your playroom that’s not your bedroom. Can you conceive of how fucking rich you? You’re sitting there eating an organic banana that your mother made me go to three fucking places in the rain to get you an organic banana. Like that fucking matters. It’s the biggest scam in the world. It’s bullshit. Anybody can throw an organic sticker on anything. Nobody does their due diligence. It’s all, also, are you eating the peel? All right, then who gives a shit? Why do I have to pay a 500% markup for a fucking organic banana? You’re not gonna eat. Okay, so I’m sorry. Let me, let me get this straight. Lemme get this straight. So our water is contaminated, our air is polluted, our homes are slowly trying to kill us, but yeah, an organic banana, that’ll set everything straight. Yeah. Hey, you know what? I didn’t have anything organic until I was 40 and that was by accident and I’m fine, all right? So seriously, quit your whining. Young lady, seriously, listen to me, listen to, listen to me. Listen to me. Until you drive your 1982 Chevy Malibu with a broken side mirror an hour and a half through a snowstorm in Western Mass so you can do a set for a bunch of disinterested, drunk, antisemitic, racist Christian patriots for $30 and a cold egg roll, then, then you can complain to me about how your purse doesn’t have as many sparkles as Madeleine’s, all right? Also, that purse that was made by prison labor. That’s right, an innocent man was framed by a bunch of dirty cops. They planted drugs on him so they could boost their gotchas, right? They knowingly, and because he was Black and indigent, they were just like, “Oh, this’ll work.”
And they planted drugs on him. Then when the rest of the precinct found out about it, you know what they did? They all covered up for him. The whole thing is corrupt from top to bottom. They’re all corrupt pieces of shit. And then those cops perjured themselves on the witness stand. And in cahoots with a crooked prosecutor and a crooked judge knowingly sent an innocent man to prison, ruining generations of lives. He made your purse.”
Another thing that’s changed since I had a kid is news affects me more. It affects me differently. It affects me in deeper ways that I can’t shake that are depressing. And like before I had a kid, get up in the morning, cup of tea, turn on the computer, you know, and there’s a Yahoo News front page and be like, top story, you know? A woman in Florida murdered her three-year-old daughter. And you know, before I had a kid, I’d be like, fuck, man. That’s messed up. How’d the Braves do? You know? Now though, now that I have a kid, I see those stories and they just, I cannot shake them. And they really are depressing and disturbing. And you know, next morning, a man in Florida murdered his six-year-old son. Jesus, fuck, god damn. Next morning, a woman in Florida murdered her four-year-old daughter and son. Next morning, a man in Florida murdered all his nieces under the age of eight. Next morning, a couple in Florida murdered their twins. And like, I see this like, you murdered a three-year-old? You, what the fuck is wrong with you? You mur-, you don’t have to murder a three-year-old. There’re three. There’s a million ways they can die. Just leave ’em at the top of the stairs and go do laundry. What are you thinking? You don’t have to scream and yell when they’re running into the median. Just like, “Cody, stop.”
You know, I mean, you’re not thinking, right? “Hey, kiddo, hey, here’s five inches of water. I’m gonna go make some fish sticks. Oh no, I’m free.”
You know, what the fuck? And now you’re gonna go to jail for the rest of your life. It’s stupid, it’s depressing. It’s really disturbing and depressing. And also you live in Florida, avail yourself. So the service is there, just be patient. You know, there’s like a 32.6% chance they’ll be shot to death by the time they’re in eighth grade. Come on now. Is your kid Black or brown? The cops will murder him for you. I mean. Man, I think it is really messed up that they’re gonna have to change the end of the “Flintstones” theme song just because of Florida. You get, do you get it? How you guys doing up there? You guys get it? How about y’all? Do y’all get it up there? Back of the house? You, you guys? All right, that’s enough time. Man, what is going on in Florida? Like, they are just so proudly ignorant. They love it. They love their, they’re, oh my gosh, it’s amazing. The this is, this is true. This is only a couple weeks old. All right, this is “Frill.”
I’m gonna read this to you. Don’t have it memorized. All right.
“If you want to see the outcome of Ron DeSantis’s stop woke act, look no further than changes made to a first-grade social studies text “about Rosa Parks.”
All right, so here’s what the old version was that kids were learning about Rosa Parks. “The law said African Americans “had to give up their seats on the bus “if a white person wanted to sit down.”
Well, that’s pretty much what it was. But apparently that was causing the youth of Florida to just, I don’t know, just become heroin addicts. It’s just, it’s tough, it’s tough news to process. So they had to change it. Stop woke. So they changed it. So they changed it to, “She was told to move to a different seat “because of the color of her skin.”
All right, it’s pretty much, well, I mean, it’s less specific, but that’s not incorrect. But apparently too much. Again, the kids were committing mass suicide, just jumping into trains and it was just awful when they were told that. So they changed it further. What I’m gonna read to you is what they are currently teaching kids in Florida about Rosa Parks. “She was told to move to a different seat. “She did not. “She did what she believed was right.”
[Audience Member] Wow.
Yeah, that’s, I don’t know if you noticed, they leave a little wiggle room in there. She did what she believed was right. We’re not saying it’s right because, you know, it, I mean, she should have just moved and listened, you know, obeyed her superiors and she didn’t. Sounds like somebody was getting a little too big for their britches and she wouldn’t move. And I mean, she did what she believed was right and now we gotta deal with all these vape stores. The Rosa Park story. Martin Luther King, Jr. told us all about a dream he had. But everyone knows it’s boring when people tell you their dreams. He was rude and insolent. Nevertheless, a kindly white gentleman named James Earl Ray was so moved by his dream that he decided to gift Martin Luther King with a present. He looked around his house, what is there, what could I possibly give him? Then he said, “You know what, “I’ll give him these free bullets. “But I live so far away, how can I get them to him quickly?” In Germany, in 1932, a confused, but, well-meaning young man tried to come up with a solution to a problem everyone had. He tried everything, but nothing worked. And he was forced to use his final solution. And although there were very fine people on both sides, two wrongs don’t make a right. It’s just nuts, what’s going on in Florida in the, this, you know, moms for liberty banning books. Nothing says liberty like banning books. And you know, as I said, I live in New York. I live there by choice. I live in a place that shares the values of my wife and I and I’m thrilled that I can raise a kid there in Brooklyn. I’m thrilled where it’s, you know, the exact opposite of my shitty, fucking childhood. And you know, we live in a very diverse neighborhood, culturally, ethnically, economically, it’s diverse. There’s, you know, and it’s great. And she, she goes to a great school down the street, public school, great public school. And she’s in the minority. She’s in the minority at that school and I don’t freak out. She’s got white friends. We made sure of it. No, it’s awesome and I’m, but what’s gonna be weird is, you know, at some point she’s inevitably going to have a conversation with a kid who was educated in Florida, or Georgia, or South Carolina, or North Carolina, or Kentucky, or Virginia, or West Virginia, or Tennessee, or Alabama, or Mississippi, or Louisiana, or Texas, or Oklahoma, or Arkansas, or Idaho, or Iowa, or North Dakota, or South Dakota, or Arizona, or Utah. And it’s gonna be weird because they will have completely different frames of references, you know? They’ll be understanding completely different worlds of what is real and what’s not. What occurred, what history is, you know? And, you know, my daughter will be there on the playground, you know, and be like, “Hi, I am Marlow and I’m six.”
“Oh, I’m Eve, I’m six, too. I’m from Florida. My mom’s making fish sticks for dinner.”
“Hey, you wanna play on the monkey bars?” “Yeah.”
You know what? There’s a better way to do this. Yeah, this makes more sense. Is there anybody who’s willing to come up here and read something with me?
[Audience Member] Sure!
Oh, ma’am. Okay. Yeah, come over, enter this way. And be mindful, don’t step on this. That’s a light, that’s glass. Okay, great. What’s your name?
[Jackie] Jackie.
Jackie. All right, thank you.
[Audience Member] Jackie!
Watch it, yeah, there you go. What’s your name?
[JP] I’m JP.
JP. Okay, lemme, let’s figure this out. This’ll be, I’ll put you over here. Here, step up.
Yes.
Lower?
Thank you.
You’re welcome. Okay, cool. Now Jackie, I have to ask you, because everyone will, this is like the what, 56th show we’ve done or something like that. And I know people are gonna ask you, they’ll ask me, are you a plant?
Am I plant? Oh, like.
Like a person, a shill in the audience?
No, no.
Okay, yeah, I think this will be better to do it this way. This will make more sense. If you see two lines next to each other, then we both read ’em at the same time. That’s called dual dialogue.
Which, what two lines? The highlighted ones or the?
No, just if you do. Go start. All right, I’ll start again, okay? We’ll start from there.
Right, in the part,
Start from the top. it says, David, is you, right? No?
Yeah. I should have, what was I thinking? I should have put JP. David. Oh, boy, I fucked that one up. Yeah, I guess I’ll read David’s part. All right, I’m going, I’m gonna start over, ready? I mean, I think this will be better to do it this way. Makes more sense. And if you see two lines next to each other, we both read at the same time. That’s called dual dialogue.
And I just read this part?
Well, I would, that’s one way to approach it. I would go with the present tense as opposed to past tense. So if you were to read that in present tense, it would say,
“Oh, and I just read this part?”
Where it says audience member, here, I’ve highlighted.
Okay. So.
Oh, so. [David & Jackie] So I’ll read Marlow’s part?
No, no. You read the part of audience member, you’re audience member.
Hello, I have a name. Maybe you would call me by my name instead of the insulting and dehumiliating audience member.
Or dehumanizing.
Whatever, it’s the same shit.
You can make up words. You can make words make up words. Okay, well look, I’m gonna be doing this, reading this all over North America and Europe. Probably not Mexico. But anyway, I can’t anticipate every person’s name.
I have a very common name. It’s Shonda Viciamarillian.
Oh, hmm. What kind of name is that?
It’s Roman for lightheaded.
Roman, you mean Latin?
Nope.
Okay, well just, all right, you’re the other kid. Let’s just read the script, okay?
Yes, I’m really excited to tackle this truly important work.
What? Are you being sarcastic?
Yes.
Well then fucking act like it! Deliver the line the way it was meant to be delivered.
I’m really excited to tackle this important work.
Wow.
Are you?
Wow.
Are you being sarcastic?
Look, can we just do the script where your kid talks to the homeschooled kid from Florida or wherever? I need to take my insulin shot pretty soon.
Oh, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know you had diabetes.
I don’t, I just really love glucose. Can’t get enough of it.
Is that supposed to be a joke?
Ha ha ha ha, I know, right? Do you think I could open for you?
[David] Would you do that joke?
I would only do that joke. Twice.
Twice?
Once in Mandarin. Look, are we going to do this thing or not?
Yeah, yeah, sure. But I want to hear you do that joke in Mandarin first.
Fuck. Tonal language.
What was that?
All right, yeah.
Okay, well, that’s Cantonese so. That’s not. Hey, you were going for it, that’s fine. Well done. A lot of people won’t. All right. All right, ready?
Okay.
That’s not, that wasn’t the script. This is the script.
Oh, sure, oh.
That wasn’t the, no, this is the script.
Oh, that was a script about the script.
Yeah. Well, alright. You ready?
Yeah. Okay. Hi.
Hi.
I’m Marlow and I’m six.
I’m Eve, I’m six, too. Wanna play with me on the monkey bars?
Yeah.
Okay. We fir-, wait, we have to pray the Pledge of Allegiance first.
What’s that?
The Pledge of Allegiance to the flag. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, except for New York and California.
And to the Republicans for which it stands, one nation under the police, with. Aren’t you gonna do it?
I don’t know what that is.
It’s the official saying of America. I do it at school.
Oh, what school do you go to? I go to PS62.
You call your living room PS62?
No, that’s my school. Ms. Claven is my teacher. She also plays piano there, too.
My school is at home and my mommy teaches me.
Oh, your mommy is a teacher?
Well, now she is because the old school was teaching us lies.
Oh, I know what a lie is. Like two plus two is five or something like that.
Two plus two is five. No, no, a lie is like saying that Black people didn’t wanna be slaves or that there are Jews in heaven. Made up lies like that. Like when the old school tried to teach us symbol rights.
What’s symbol rights.
Symbol rights is a trick of the devil to get us to like other people. Did you know that Jews are the devil, too? And gays? In fact, the Jewish Democrat devil invented rainbow flags to groom us into sodomy. They won’t teach us that at school either so that’s why mommy teaches me now to keep me safe.
Well, safe from what?
From the Hollywood pedophiles or the Communist Jews, or Muslims, or Mexicans, or libtards, or angry, lazy Black mermaids who are all out to get me!
Oh. Okay. Well, can we play now?
I have to make sure you’re not vaccinated first.
‘Cause of the boogies in the air?
No, because George Soros and AOC and the liberal woke fake news. Sorry, I’m not really that comfortable with this.
Oh, just read it, just read it.
Okay. Look, I thought you were gonna do Tobias jokes. That’s why my mommy and I came down here. That’s why we entered the contest. We weren’t expecting a whole diatribe about the limitations and dangers of homeschooling.
Wait, what contest are you talking about?
Yes, at Panda Express. They had a contest to win a free ticket of soy sauce. Packet of soy sauce.
Yeah, ticket of soy sauce wouldn’t make any sense. But you’d get a ticket and then you’d go?
That’s what I thought I was getting today.
Yeah, so you would get a ticket and then they’d get, then you’d go back to the same person and say, “Can I turn this?”
To get your packet of soy sauce.
That makes no sense to me. Or would you just, would they go, “Here, can I have some soy sauce, can I?” Would they give you a ticket for some and then you’d, and who do I give this to? Me. Okay. And then they give, it seems extraneous. It seems like an extra step.
It is.
Anyway, continue.
But we lost the contest and ended up with two tickets to this show. My bad. I thought you were Dave Atel.
Come on, mommy, let’s get out of here. This guy sucks. Can’t even finish a bit. Worst daddy in the world? My asshole. More like worst daddy in the whole country.
JP. Give it up for Jackie. Before I go, I want to talk about something real quick. So I can’t speak for any other comics, but for myself, when I put a set together and get ready to go out on a tour, the first show is always a good bit different than when I get to this part of the tour. And you know, as I said, I think this is my 56th, 57th show, something like that. And you know, as you can tell, I’m pretty extemporaneous and I write all my stuff on stage. So I’ve been riffing a lot. And then, you know, the show kind of evolves and changes and I’ve stopped. I have to drop some bits because it’s just too fucking long. And then other bits kind of evolve and then new things happen while you’re on tour, like the Ron DeSantis thing that was, you know, pretty new and sometimes, like a theme will present itself, right? Which I think has happened in this set. And unintentional, never intended for it, but I, and I wanna speak to that just for a second. So as I said, I’ve been all over the country and it’s really, really, really ugly out there. It’s bad. I mean, there’s some bad, I’ve never, it’s so divided and the anger level and the undercurrent of this, of violence and the incivility and the ignorance, willful ignorance. And it’s just really weird. And I don’t, you know, the level of racism and antisemitism and anti-Asian sentiment and which people were okay with. And see it used to be, it used to be if you were gonna run for office and you said, “If you elect me, “I will usher in a white nationalist Christian theocracy.” People would be like, “Uh, no, thank you.” But now like, “Absolutely, go, yeah. Can you sit next to the neo-Nazi and you guys do it together?”
And it’s crazy, it’s crazy. And I also, I don’t ever remember the level of giddiness, just the joy and the gleefulness that people have knowing that other people are suffering. Like they’re psyched. Like if somebody commits suicide, like in the trans community, and what’s happening to them is horrific. You know, there’s, people are high fiving, thumbs up emojis. Yeah, fuck that, you know? And it’s just ugly. And look, America was never great, but it was hopeful. There were periods where it was, there was progress being made. There was more, we were trying to be kinder, more inclusive, equal rights for everybody. And I think if America wants to get back to that place, then we need to build a time machine and go back and kill the person responsible for the mess we’re in now. And I’ll do it. I will do it. And I understand the canon of how this works. Once you use the time machine, then you’ve altered the space-time continuum and the fabric is ripped and torn and the time machine can’t exist anymore so it stops. So, but I’ll do it. I will, I will go back and I will kill Jesus Christ. I’ll do it, I’ll do it for you. I’ll do it for all the kids out there. And I’m not gonna go to like when he was 30, you know, ’cause he was kind of ripped as I understand, you know? Dude was cut and had like a 12-man security detail with him at all times. So I wouldn’t go there. And I certainly wouldn’t go to when he was first born. You know, the immaculate conception, the Virgin Mary. And I think that’s a little unseemly to kill a one-day-year-old. But we really don’t know anything about Jesus though. Literally from the day after he was born up until he was like 30 and a half. Right, we don’t know anything about like teenage Jesus. We know, you know, we don’t know anything about 14-year-old sullen, mopey, you know, covered in acne, hormones raging outta control. Just emojis, it’s just, you know? School’s a prison, you know? Right, just constantly jerking off, right, constantly. 14-year-old boys jerk off seven times a day minimum, all right, and Jesus is no different. And you know, they didn’t have Nivea back then. There was no lotion. So 14-year-old Jesus’s dick looked like an overcooked hot dog that had been left for, left in the rain for a week and then discovered by a pack of rabid raccoons. Yeah so, and we all know the story about the, you know, immaculate conception, right? That’s heartwarming story where God implanted His seed into the Virgin Mary, right? So He could give us His son, right? God took His seed, His cum, seed is cum. That’s what it is, seed is cum. That’s what He, so God took His cum and He put it in the Virgin Mary. And here’s the thing, here’s the thing, He’s everyone’s God, everyone on the planet. He’s everyone’s God so He had to figure out which cum He was gonna put into the Virgin Mary ’cause He’s got literally thousands and thousands of different cums.
So He had to go, “Oh, which cum am I gonna put inside the virgin? “Should it be Indo-Asian, or Nordic, or Mayan, “or Aboriginal, or Namibian, or Incan, or Arapaho, or? “You know what, I’ll go with Jew. “Jew is, Jew’s my, yeah, that’s good cum. “That’s good cum.” And then God took His cum and He’s, God’s way in the heavens. He’s all the way in outer space. And He had to take His cum and send it, right, through all the different galaxies and solar systems. And it had to, He sent it all the way, but it always had to maintain an internal temperature of 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit. Right, otherwise the cum would have degraded. And so He had to like speed it up and then slow it down and you know, it had to go through different galaxies and solar systems until it got to the Milky Way and then it got, found our solar system, you know, avoiding planets, and moons, and asteroids, and space dust. And always again, maintaining an internal temperature of 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit. Then get it to Earth and then go through all the different atmospheres, ’cause God loves atmosphere, so He gave us a whole bunch. And He’s gotta go through the exosphere, and the thermosphere, and the mesosphere, and the stratosphere, and into the troposphere. And then wait for the opportune time for Mary to go like this. And then, up and went. And because Mary is a human woman, she went through the nine-month gestation period and where she grew Jesus. And then God sent the angel Gabriel to Joseph and Mary to explain what was happening. And to say, “You have to go to Bethlehem, okay? Either to be counted for the census or to not be counted for the census. It’s a little vague and historians aren’t really sure of exactly what, but we need to get you, for the sake of the story, we need to get you to Bethlehem, okay? It’s called a writer’s device, all right? So we need either to for the census or to not be, or it doesn’t matter. You need to go to Bethlehem.”
And then, you know, Gabriel went back up the chimney, and then Joseph put Mary on their donkey, Dinkles. That was the name of the donkey. It’s in the Bible. Joseph, Mary, and Dinkles the donkey. They went to Bethlehem. And we all know this part of the story. They got to the inn in Bethlehem, the inn, singular, there’s only one. They got to the inn, but there’s no room at the inn. So they had to sleep in the manger. Now, here’s a question. 2023 years ago, what was the difference between a room at the inn and the manger? There’s no difference, there’s no difference. You’re still sleeping on hay next to a goat. You know, they act like it’s an Airbnb where the Wifi went out. No, it’s, I’m sure that when the innkeeper told Joseph, “You’ll have to sleep in the manger,” he’s like, “Good, some fucking fresh air for once, you know?” And so they got to the manger and they laid down on the hay, and then Mary started going into labor. They started timing her contractions, coming quicker, quicker. And then she’s about to give birth to the son of God. And there’s a little, it’s a little commotion in there. And she’s gonna give birth. “Joseph, it’s time, it’s time. And Jesus is coming. And there’s, but he’s not coming out. He’s not, what’s happening, ’cause I can feel it. And he’s trying to get out, but he’s not coming out.”
And here’s what they leave out of the story. But when God implanted Mary with his cum, He forgot to do something that’s really integral to the whole process. He forgot to fuck Mary. So her hymen remained intact. So Jesus is ready to come out, but there’s this wall of flesh and he’s like punching, and kicking, and screaming, and clawing, and scratching. And he can’t do it and it’s traumatic. I mean, ask any Scientologist what happens in there. It’ll scar you for billions of lives. And I mean, it messed him up good. It gave him a Messiah complex. And then, and so Mary sussed out what was happening, said, “Joseph, hang on, I’m gonna get back on Dinkles. “Maybe take, go round triple speed, “see if I can knock this little fell out of there.”
And she did. She tore her hymen, came back, and then she laid down and she started. She laid down and she started to give birth to the son of God. And then here comes Jesus out of this massive, hairy bush. I mean, got a Jewish woman in biblical times, come on. It’s a massive, hairy bush. And here comes Jesus. And he’s covered in placenta. There’s a little bit of blood. And there’s shit, too, because that’s also part of the birthing process. When you give birth through the vaginal canal, you lose control of your bowels and your sphincter and shit comes out. It happens, there’s shit. So here comes the Lord and Savior of all mankind just covered in shit. And they cleaned him off with some hay and some goat urine. And then, so I would go to Jesus when he was like four, all right? And I would dress appropriately so as not to arouse suspicion. I would bring something to distract the villagers. You know, I’d be like, “Hey, check this out. It’s a Furby.”
Then take Jesus. “Hey kiddo, come out. I wanna I want to take you down to the river and show you something that’s pretty cool. All right, so listen, kiddo, listen, so this is very important for me to say and very, very important for you to hear. I want you to know this, okay? You are a beautiful person with beautiful ideas. You live your life in a clean, honest way that is all about other people. You’re about kindness and generosity, selflessness, love, unconditional love. You’re about diversity, equity, and inclusion, all right? And, this is not about you, okay? This is about your fans who are gonna take every word, every word you say, and willfully, maliciously twist it for their own perverted sense of power. And everything they do is completely antithetical to everything you ever preach and the way you wanted us to live. and they will literally murder millions of people in your name and drive millions of others to suicide in your name.”
All right, Chicago. Thank you, thank you. Thank you guys. Thank you so much. Really, you guys were awesome. Thank you so much. Thank you. All right. Thank you. Thank you guys. Oh, I know what a lie is. Like two plus two is five or something like that.
Two plus two is five? No
No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
What the?
Okay, so, just punctuation wise. So this is.
Like, I should really emphasize the five. Two plus two is five?
No, no, you would emphasize. So that word is italicized and bolded. So you put emphasis on that.
Two plus two is five.
But you also, there’s no, yeah, there’s no question mark. It’s an exclamation mark.
Is five, like five! That’s what you want.
No, the. Tell me what you want.
I am, I’m telling you, I’m telling you. I’m in the process of telling you. So the word is, is italicized and in bold. So you put the emphasis on that and then you wouldn’t say it as a question ’cause there’s no question mark. It’s an exclamation mark. So I’ll go back and I’ll do it.
Okay, you’re back, you go. Oh, I know what a lie is. Like two plus two is five or something?
Two plus two is five.
