In Kevin James: Never Don’t Give Up, a 2018 stand-up comedy special recorded at New York City’s Beacon Theatre, James delivers a diverse and humorous set. The special covers a wide range of topics, showcasing James’ ability to extract humor from everyday situations.
He begins with anecdotes about the awkwardness of taking photos with fans, including an elderly lady struggling with a smartphone and a woman who records him at an airport. James then transitions into a light-hearted critique of modern conveniences, poking fun at the simplicity of walker designs and the artificiality of encore performances at concerts.
A significant portion of the special is dedicated to James’ observations on health and diet, with humorous takes on lactose intolerance and gluten-free diets. He shares his own experiences with food, including amusing stories about ice cream flavors and restaurant dining.
Family life is a central theme, with James recounting amusing incidents involving his children, highlighting the innocent yet bizarre logic of kids. He humorously talks about the challenges of parenting, such as the impossibility of waking up gently by a child and the art of putting them to bed.
James also touches on personal topics like his fear of getting tattoos, reflecting on the odd choices people make when getting inked. He interacts with the audience, asking about their tattoos and joking about their choices.
The special concludes with James expressing his love for sports and his challenges with weight fluctuation. He shares a particularly funny story about an experience on an amusement park ride, where he struggles to avoid vomiting in front of his son.
Kevin James: Never Don’t Give Up is filled with relatable humor, drawing laughter from the mundane aspects of everyday life, health, family, and personal quirks.
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Kevin James: Never Don’t Give Up (2018)
Transcript
♪ Yeah! ♪
♪ Siege ♪
♪ Yeah, yeah! ♪
♪ And when you hear the sound Of the drum ♪
♪ We’ll be saying, “Here we come!” ♪
♪ Yeah, here we come Hey, here we come ♪
♪ Huh! Here we come ♪
♪ Here we come ♪
♪ Yeah, here we come Hey, here we come ♪
♪ Hey, here we come ♪
♪ Here we come ♪
Wow. New York! I gotta be honest, I was not expecting that. I was expecting a little more. I just felt… I felt like you had a little in the gas tank and kinda… Get that picture. Get it. I wasn’t ready, hold on. Come on. I’m always in bad pictures. I want to take a good one, like I’m doing something. There you go. You got it? All right, good. I just took a picture with a group of ladies backstage. Very nice, older ladies, very sweet. I don’t mind taking pictures. I just wish the person they elect to take the picture… had seen a cell phone camera once before. I get locked into say cheese position… “She doesn’t know what she’s doing, does she?” She’s just standing there. “I… I don’t… I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t… I see me. I’m taking pictures of me. No… Now I got it. Sorry. Nope. I’m in Google Maps, hold on a second.” You’re just stuck there. “It’s fine. It’s fine. Yeah, it’s fine. It’s fine. It’s all right. It happens all the time. It’s all good. Yeah, your lower back is sweaty. Yeah. Yeah. Somebody had a Caesar salad earlier, huh?”
I was in Atlanta at the airport waiting for my bag, and this woman asked to take a picture, and I was like, “Sure, no problem,” and she takes out her iPhone, and she just holds it on me, and I’m just standing there. She doesn’t say anything. I’m just standing there. Finally, I just started smiling on my own. Still nothing. Then I started turning into it to let her know I was ready, like… “There you go. This is it. Snap it!” Finally, I was like, “Did you get it?” She goes like this, she goes, “Nope. I’m getting it.” “I’m getting it?” She’s video recording me from a foot away. Like I’m a panda at the zoo. And then she was like, “Could you do something?” “Could I? Yeah, yeah. How about I sweep your legs out from under you, watch your hip bounce off the mosaic tile? How about that? Let’s see if we can keep filming with a shattered hip. How does that feel?” When do you watch that video? When are you ever gonna watch that video? When does it come up? When are you like, “Honey, know what? Let’s do it tonight. Yes, let’s crack open a bottle of wine. We’ll invite the gang over and watch a random clip of someone who doesn’t know they’re being filmed. Remember how much fun we had last week watching Coolio at the dry cleaners? Tonight we got Kevin James looking very confused at baggage claim. Check it out.” “Did you get it? Are you good? Did you get it? You good? Did you get it?” God forbid somebody walks in late, “I gotta rewind it, hold on a second.” This one older guy wanted to take a picture. He had a walker. First off, is there going to come a time in my life where I see a walker without the tennis balls on the bottom?
Honestly, all the technology we have nowadays. Could we please slow down production on the next iPhone… and just dedicate a couple guys from Apple… to work on the tennis ball on the walker problem we have running rampant in this country? It’s gonna take ’em what, seven minutes? They’ll bang out a solution. This guy had an active walker, too. He had a handbrake on the walker. How fast are you walking? I thought walking was the problem. That’s why you got a walker. You got a walker. Now you have a handbrake on the walker in case things get out of control. ‘Cause you never know when you’re walking along a highway, someone sneaks up behind you, bumps the horn, you get all crazy legs… and Riverdance off into the woods.
You guys are fun. You guys are good. That’s why I’m not doing an encore. Gonna give you the whole show up front. I don’t like encores, they’re insincere. I don’t like ’em. They’re fake. You know? I went and saw Aerosmith in concert about three, four years ago. And they were great, by the way. They were fantastic, but they didn’t play their best song. They didn’t play “Dream On.” And then they walked off stage, and the whole audience had to stand on their feet clapping for 15 minutes before Aerosmith came back out and finished their job. You know you’re gonna play “Dream On.” The whole arena knows you’re playing “Dream On.” “Let’s cut the dance, Steven Tyler. I got a babysitter needs me home by 11. Can we… You owe me ‘Dream On.’ You owe it to me.” Entertainment’s the only profession that does it. You don’t see your accountant, like, “Well, here are most of your taxes. Good night!” “You didn’t finish!” “Let’s see how loud you can get it out there, maybe I’ll come back. Just not feeling it right now. I am not feeling it.” They gotta stand out there with their cell phones, “Come on, Irv, close with the refund! You forgot the refund, Irv!”
I had to get my eyesight checked, so I went to Pearle Vision Center, and as I’m walking in the store, in the front window of the store, they have a massive poster of this little boy opening a birthday present and it’s a pair of eyeglasses. And he couldn’t have been happier. He was… He had, like, a little tear cracking on the side, just rolling down his face. What kind of sick parent… gives their child eyeglasses as a gift? “Well, you know, Leonard, you were very good this year. You pulled in an A-minus average. You were very good to your sister. You did everything your father and I asked of you, so… this year… we’re gonna give you the gift of sight! Enjoy vision, Leonard. Enjoy it! Not gonna lie, we were on the fence. Your father is still against it, but I was like, ‘Larry, he deserves it.’ So, happy birthday, welcome to vision. You get focus, Leonard. You get focus.” “Thank you, Mommy.” “No. No problem. Now you run and get your Christmas crutches and hurry back. We’ll talk about that dentist trip that’s always been on your wish list.”
Lactose intolerance is just a tummy ache
By the way, quick announcement to the lactose intolerant community. If I offer you ice cream, and you can’t have any, just say, “No, thank you.”
That’s it. There is no joke. That’s just the message I want to get out there. I want to silence the lactose intolerant. I don’t need to know the havoc dairy products are gonna wreak on your bowels… right before I’m about to dig into my rocky road. Are we clear? Are we good? You didn’t win an award. Gotta work it into every conversation? Why would you ever bring it up? You can feel them wanting to bring it up. They’re, like, trying to work it in. It’s like double dutch for them. They’re like… You could be at a buffet table. You just feel it. “That looks yummy, but I probably can’t have it. Wanna know why?”
“No. I don’t care why. I have no interest. Just the fact that I can enjoy it without any problems is enough for me.”
“You know what it is? I don’t want to bother you. I’m just gonna let you know, I’m lactose intolerant! Totally intolerant to lactose. Sorry, it’s just better for both of us, just so you know. It’s out there. I’m lactose intolerant. And I do CrossFit. That’s it. That’s all I wanted to say. You know, when I was first diagnosed LI, I… I decided that very moment I was gonna live every day to the fullest and just not let the little things bother me anymore, unless, of course, they contain dairy. Then they’re gonna bother me quite a bit then, but that’s me. That is my cross to bear and anyone who can hear the sound of my voice. That’s it.”
Lactose intolerant. It didn’t exist 30 years ago. You can’t name one person who was lactose intolerant 30 years ago, ’cause it did not exist. Actually it did. It’s called a tummy ache. Toughen up, America. Toughen up! If you’re a man and you’re lactose intolerant, why would you ever bring that up to another man? Can you imagine Spartacus? Like… In the arena after, like, twisting a tiger’s neck, and he’s like, “What’s that? Coffee with half-and-half? I can’t have that. I get booboo belly. I can’t do it. I’m lactose intolerant. I’m lactose intolerant. Do you have a non-dairy creamer? Can you get a non-dairy creamer?”
Where are the men? Where have they gone? Know what I think of men? I think of that picture in the 1930s of those construction workers sitting high above New York City, right, sitting on that steel beam. Right. Just eating their lunch. They’re eating their lunch. Can you imagine if the fifth guy in was like, “Hey… Is this cheddar cheese on my sandwich? I can’t have this. I’m lactose intolerant.”
“Is that like polio?”
“No! I get yucky tummy. “You guys got to scootch over! Move your knees, I gotta get by. I gotta get by, guys! Let me by. Can you guys let me by?”
“We gotta lower the beam!”
They would throw him off the back of that beam!
Lactose int… there is not a more annoying group on the planet. Check that, a gluten douche.
My apologies, the gluten douche trumps the lactose intolerant. Because the lactose intolerant is just annoying, but a gluten douche is a night-wrecker. Right? ‘Cause they’ll make you switch restaurants. They’ll be… “I don’t like this. Can we go where they have some gluten-free options? Do you mind if we switch restaurants?” “No! Order what you want, I’ll eat the gluten out of it. I’ll regurgitate it and feed you like a baby owl.” I made the mistake of picking a restaurant. You can’t do that. I went with two guys. I didn’t even know them. One was a gluten douche, the other was lactose intolerant. I chose a pizza restaurant! They’re… They’re each tying to outdo each other. “I can’t have bread. My stomach will bloat.” The other guy’s like, “Can’t have cheese. I’ll have to change my pants!” One and up. Out of the shadows like a ghost, a guy with a nut allergy came over. Yo, the nut allergy is the King Kong of food allergies! He was like, “I’m sorry, you got some food problems? Can I explain something to you? Let me break it down for you, okay? If I eat a nut… I die. I die! If a fork touches a nut in this restaurant, and I use that fork you gotta jab an EpiPen into my chest ’cause I am on my way to the afterlife. If the soil where this building was built upon ever harvested a nut or a seed of some sort, and I come in contact with it, I’ll melt into a pile of flesh. If college kids are driving by on the local highway, and one tosses out a peanut shell and the dust from that shell… works its way through the air and latches onto a nasal hair and shimmies its way up, I will explode! And you’ll be talking to a shadow of where I used to be.” Okay, nut allergy guy, you win. You win the food allergy competition. Yeah.
Know who I feel sorry for? Shellfish allergy guy. You remember him? Remember him from the late ’70s? He was the only game in town. There were no food allergies then. He was just rare. He was just sitting out there. He was running the game. Imagine him today, trying to bring up his scratchy throat and puffy ankles? Nut allergy guy would grab him by the shoulders and knee him in the face!
I’m very, very blessed, because I don’t have food allergies. I know some are tough. I can go to any restaurant I want, which is great. I’m very fortunate. I don’t like going to restaurants where the waiters are too excited to be there. You ever get them? “Hey, how’s everybody feeling tonight?” Slow it down, man. Let’s take it down. You know, he’s very excited? “How’s everything going? How’s everything taste so far? Can I get you anything else? No? Is everything good now?” Could you let the food hit the back of my throat? Ever have the waiter that feels comfortable enough to sit down at your table with you to take your order? “How’s everybody doing? My name’s Cooper. What can I start you off with?” “Well, Cooper, I think we’ll all start off with a nice big bucket of get your ass out of my booth.” “Everybody, we’re good with that? Then maybe some jalapeño poppers?” “Yeah, just your ass out of the booth and jalapeño poppers.”
That’s why I go to restaurants like Benihana. I like Benihana ’cause it takes the waiter out of it really. Yeah. It does. It’s awesome, where they cook right in front of you. It’s good, and they give you a little show, which they need to update the show. I will be honest. I don’t need to see another smoking onion ring volcano. Or shrimp in the hat? Hey, shrimp in the hat. What, am I a five-year-old at magic camp? How about more shrimp on my plate? Why not work on that at the Hana? Yes, I’m disappointed in the Hana with the amount of shrimp they give you. It’s all about seat placement. You got to find the right place to sit. And I chose the wrong one… Third base. And unless you get, like, a southpaw chef which is very rare, you’re gonna get boned on the shrimp ’cause they start off very excited. They’re full of adrenaline. Their math skills aren’t the greatest. They’re just kinda… turn into Pete Townshend in the beginning dishing out the shrimp and you just see the pile dwindling. You see it just going down. I’m like, “He’s not even gonna make the turn.” “This is not gonna work out for me.” And he’s not even being selective in who he gives it to. He’s giving the same amount to a six-foot-four man as a baby in a highchair getting the same amount of shrimp. I know I’m gonna be stuck with two empty tails and an antenna. I also didn’t know at Benihana you’re supposed to wait until all the food is served before you start eating. I’m literally eating it off the spatula like a German Shepherd. It’s good. You guys are gonna definitely like the rice!
I went and got ice cream. That’s one of the foods I don’t mind waiting for. It’s so good. It was a long line, great little place we went to. As we got to the front, the lady in front of me had to try every sample. When did we introduce the pink spoons, the samples? Every one just come out. By the way, two is the limit, right? Or I’ll give you three. If you can’t figure what type of ice cream you want in three samples, you need to stand outside the ice cream shop and just narrow it down mentally, come up with a game plan, ’cause even if you’re off a little bit, it’s ice cream. I get it if you want to try an exotic flavor like Chattanooga citrus crunch or something, but she was like, “Can I try double chocolate?” No! No. No! Just imagine regular chocolate in your head and then double it up. No.
So great to be back in New York. We’re shooting a show out… This is so great, thank you, guys. We were shooting a scene in one of the neighborhoods on Long Island, and it was great ’cause all the people came out and watched. It was really fun, ’cause we got a chance to talk to them in between shots. I was talking to this one off-duty cop, very nice guy, for ten minutes. He was wearing a raincoat. I don’t know why. It wasn’t raining. He was great. We had a nice little ten minute chat. Then they called me back to shoot the next scene. I said, “All right, man, take it easy, buddy.” He goes, “Hey, before you go, I got a gift for you. I want to give you a cigar.” I said, “Thank you, that is just unnecessary and very sweet of you.” He said, “Just do me a favor. Just think of me when you smoke it.” I said, “What?” “Yeah, when you smoke it, do me a favor, just think of me.” I got weirded out, and I didn’t even know what to say. I was like, “Yeah, cigar, I gotta…” I just walked off. I thought, “How odd is that? You don’t give a gift to somebody and then give them instructions on how to enjoy it. What if I want to think about my kids or something else? It was just a weird exchange. I was freaked out. It was a good cigar, too. I went home and put it on my desk and I was like… It just made me feel weird. It was a nice gesture. Then it got weird. So I was like, “Forget it, man. I don’t need that cigar.”
I left it there, and then I went to work the next day. And I came home, and I saw it again. It brought up these emotions again. And I was like… “Guy makes me think of this. This is crazy right now. It’s a good cigar. I should smoke it, but I can’t now because I don’t wanna do what this guy tells me to do. I got so angry at it. I said, “Just throw it out.” That was it. I went to throw it out and I was like, “No, don’t throw it out. If you throw it out, then he wins. He wins.” Then I thought to myself, “No, smoke it, but don’t think of him.” And that’s what I did, I smoked it. But I could not not think of the guy. I was literally like… “Man… Cop in the raincoat. He got me!” Can’t get him out of my head. I could not get him out of my head the whole time. I only met him for ten minutes. I smoked a whole cigar thinking about him every second of that cigar. And not just that cigar, then it was every cigar I had! And not just cigars, breakfast. I couldn’t get the guy out of my head! I was literally like, “I wonder what he’s doing today. It’s pouring out. I betcha he’s wearing his raincoat. Of course he’s wearing his raincoat. If he wore it with a chance of rain, he’s definitely wearing it today.” I keep thinking he’s going to his friends, telling them, “I just gave Kevin James a cigar, and I told him to think of me.” His friends were like, “You’re out of your mind. He’s not gonna think of you.” He’s like, “Nah, trust me. He’s gonna think of me. It’s gonna get in there and then it’s gonna spread. You watch this.” And look at me, I’m talking about him on my Netflix special right here. Well done, cop in the raincoat. Well played, my friend.
I’m so blessed with this job. I get to work with some of the greatest people. I got to work with Nick Nolte. He’s like… Ah, man, he’s… He’s one of my heroes, you know? I was so nervous meeting him. They were bringing me over to meet him at this party. And I see him. He turns around, and he goes to shake my hand. As he goes to shake my hand, I see his hand’s in a fist, and I thought, “How cool is that, that Nick Nolte’s gonna give me a fist bump?” So I changed my hand to a fist, but then Nick opened his up at the last second, and I didn’t have time to pull out, and Nick just latched onto my fist. And he just started shaking my fist like a Magic 8-Ball. He was just going up and down and in a weird octagon, and I was freaked out. He starts talking to me. I can’t concentrate on a word he’s saying, ’cause all I’m thinking everybody at the party’s just thinking that Nick Nolte just beat me at some weird rock paper scissor game. I always think Nick Nolte’s at a party telling other people that he met me. “You ever shake hands with Kevin James? He’s got one normal hand and then he’s got can of soup! He threw it at me. I didn’t know what to do. I covered it, and he’s trying to pull it away from me, but I held on. I held on for a long time, like an eagle with talons.”
They put me up at a great hotel here, which is really fun. It’s really nice. I love being in the city. I’m trying to go to my room. The room signs, can they make those any more difficult to read? I’m in room 15,712. Okay, this is 6,415 through… 27,695. Let me see what’s over here. What’s over here? No, this is 59,627. I’m just gonna lay here. That’s all. I’m just gonna lay here. I got in my room, and I was excited, ’cause I wanted to see the view I had. Thought it’d be the park or something, but I had another hotel right there. I look out the window and right away in another hotel window, I see a guy standing there, completely naked standing in the window. I thought how weird is it that that guy got there. He was like, “Hi, room 715. Thank you very much.” He got in, got in his room, put his luggage down… “Now we wait. We wait.” He was standing there. He had his fists on his hips, just like a naked superhero waiting for someone to save. I thought, “How weird is this that he’s doing this?” Then I thought, “How weird that you’re looking at him from another hotel locked on him like a puma, just…” Turns out he wasn’t just standing naked, he was ironing. He just started ironing. I didn’t see the ironing board. He was waiting for his iron to heat up. That’s a confident naked man just standing in a window waiting for your iron to heat up. “Nope, not…” I gotta be honest, the list of things I do naked is not very long. But even if you were to add 800 things to that list, ironing still ain’t gonna be on there. Way at the bottom along with frying bacon. It’s way at the bottom. Here’s a list of the top five things you’re never gonna see me do naked. Jump… climb a ladder… install insulation in my attic… sit on wicker furniture… and feed geese. I’m never feeding geese naked. That’s it. I got embarrassed. I went back in. I had to go down to the lobby. I got in the elevator. There were other people in the elevator with me. I pressed the lobby. You always expect to go right to your floor, but you ever get out too quick and you’re too embarrassed to go back, so you’re like, “Yeah, I’m good.” The people on the elevator know you screwed up. They’re like, “Sure you don’t want to get back on?” “No, no, no, I need the basement. I gotta check the pipes. I’m the pipe checker here at the hotel. We’re good. You guys go. I’ll see you in the lobby in a minute.” And you walk over back there and you press the button again, but it’s too soon, so the same people are in the elevator when it opens up. I love any form of transit that moves you from one floor to another. That’s technology to me. I appreciate that. Like escalators. I love a good escalator, man. You appreciate an escalator when you come upon a broken one at the mall. “We’ll head to Foot Locker, then get a slice of pizza… “Let’s just do it tomorrow. I’m out of here.” When you get on an escalator do me a favor, just grab the handrail and just stand there. Let life take over. Let it raise you from one floor to another. I can’t stand the people who still feel the need to walk. Same idiots always. It’s usually the guy with the NutriBullet full of greens. That guy’s, “‘Scuse me. On the left, ‘scuse me. ‘Scuse me.” I don’t let him by. I get all big. I’m like, “Not happening! No. No!” “‘Scuse me!” “Nope, not happening! Big man Pilate time.” I love those people movers at the airport, but they’re so random. You could be walking with your luggage for two miles… then out of nowhere, the airport’s like, “You know what? Give him a little strip of, like, 18 feet right there.” “Just 18 feet?” “Yeah, just 18 feet is plenty. Just give them a false sense of hope before they walk the additional 42 miles into the parking garage. I use them, though. I could literally walk by a people mover and be like, “They got a people mover. I didn’t see that.” Ever been on the people mover and you realize there’s somebody walking outside the people mover at the exact same speed as you? You can’t even make eye contact with him. You just… slowly turn yourself away from them. It’s when I do a lot of my deep thinking. “What kind of a fat lazy sea lion are you? You couldn’t walk an additional 18 feet? It’s 18 feet, man! You are a manatee, you know that? You sicken me. No more starting New Year’s. You’re starting now. Turn your life around!” You feel so guilty. You turn around. You feel like you owe the guy an excuse. “I’d be walking with you, man, but I just helped a friend move this morning and… then I ran a 5K… 66K, a bunch of Ks. I’m not sure how many.” He’s carrying four bags of luggage. I’m holding a Wendy’s bag, you know? I’m not even holding it. I’m resting it on the rails. I can’t even lift my fat lunch for 18 feet. You ever been on the people mover and realize you’re passing a Cinnabon? There should be a handbrake or an exit ramp. If they did their research correctly, they would realize the people on the people mover… That is your core Cinnabon audience! If they were really smart, they’d have every people mover go directly into a Cinnabon, right? Filtering in like a luggage carousel. Fatties just falling in like, “What the heck was that? Oh, Cinnabon. Yeah, I’ll take two. Extra icing on both, please. Yeah.” I love Cinnabon. I should not have it. I gotta get in shape, I gotta… I love sports. That was my dream, to play professional sports. That was my… Yeah. Yeah. I don’t think I have to tell you people how that turned out, but I still love it. I still love it. I love sports, sports clothing. I love Under Armour. I told my manager, I said, “Hey, I wonder if we can get an endorsement deal. Could you call Under Armour and see? ‘Cause I noticed the Rock got one… I thought maybe we can get one.” He was like, “You want me to call them?” “Yeah, can you give ’em a call?” He’s like, “All right…” He called me back five minutes later. I was like, “That was fast.” He’s like, “Yeah, that was fast.” I said, “How did it go?” He said, “Not good. In fact, they asked if you wouldn’t mind not wearing their clothes.” Be careful with the clothes you buy when you’re getting fat then lose weight. You gotta change your wardrobe accordingly. I threw on a mesh shirt from when I lost weight a long time ago, and I went to work out in it. Thank God I walked by a mirror. I was like, “Oh, no, no, no, no.” I looked like a bag of avocados. Took a little weight off, I gotta get more weight off. I was getting so big, I was taking longer in the shower. It was like washing a van, you know? It was like… I just started negotiating with myself.’ I’m like, “You know what? I’m just gonna do the front today. I can’t be washing all day. I got things to do, errands to run. I’ll get everything else tomorrow. I’m done.”
I get cold fat. Big people get cold fat. Cold fat is when your body temperature is 100% correct, but there’s a section of your body that’s just ice cold. My wife will find it all the time. She’ll be like, “Your left love handle is freezing right now.” She’s not wrong. It’s like the blood said, “I can’t do this. I can’t get from there back to the heart. I don’t know what you want from me. I just can’t make this… You weren’t this big when we started together. I can keep your shoulder warm, but I say we let the love handle go. Eventually it’ll break off like an iceberg and just float away from us.” Gotta get in shape, man. I had to get a pedicure. I didn’t know what a pedicure was a month ago. A pedicure is where somebody else trims your toenails ’cause trimming the toenails with a cooker in front prevents you from getting… It’s tough for big people. It’s daunting when you can’t see it. It’s like diving for pearls. You gotta hold your breath, go down, try to get… Get as many as you can before you black out. You’re like, “Whoa.” Then you assess. You’re like, “I only got three! I got seven left. This is gonna take some time.” You’re coming in. You try to do different angles, trying to get your foot up on something. You come in at a weird angle, and you can’t even see. It’s like detonating a bomb. You’re like, “Please don’t take off the little toe!” When your first move to trim your toenails is back and then forward ’cause you need momentum… drop the ego and make that appointment. I got my colonoscopy. Little scary going in. Everything is fine. I was nervous. The doctor called me three days before, and he said, “Here’s how it’s gonna go down, Kev. The day before the procedure, you don’t eat at all. The morning of the procedure, I’m gonna take a camera, and I’m gonna snake it into your colon. I’m just gonna keep feeding it up there. And don’t worry. If I see any abnormalities, I’m just gonna burn them off on the spot.” I was like, “Whoa… I can’t eat anything the day before?” He’s like, “No.” I’m like, “Why not?” He said, “When we get in there…” I was like, “We?” He’s like, “Yeah, the team.” I’m like, “The team?” I always thought a colonoscopy was an individual sport, like bowling or archery. He’s like, “When we get in there, I want it to be like a clean highway. I want it to be pristine.” I was like, “First off, you gotta take the word ‘pristine’ off the table if we’re talking about my colon, okay? ‘Cause my colon is not gonna look like the poster in your office, I promise you. The supermodel colons you got in there all glistening and stuff. Mine’s gonna look like it went to war. If it had a voice, it would be like a Nick Nolte voice.” “How you doing? I’m Kevin James’ colon! I’m his colon! Crap, Reggie. Crap.”
Parents Don’t Love All Their Kids Equally
I want to be around a long time. I got four kids now, by the way. Four little ones, yeah. Do we have parents of young ones? Yeah? Couple there. Yeah. Kids are great. It’s the greatest gift on the planet. Children. There’s no better gift. When we had our first daughter, I freaked out. I told me wife, “There’s nobody on this Earth I will ever love as much as this little girl ever, ever again. I’m just gonna pour all my love into this child.” My wife felt the same. Then she got pregnant again. We were worried. We were like, “Wait, we just said we love this one so much, how do we split up our love?” Honestly, we were nervous about it. Our friends were like, “Relax. Everybody goes through it. It’s unconditional love. You love your kids equally.” And I gotta say, they were wrong.
I don’t care for the second one, I just don’t…
She’s just a little needy. Every day, it’s the same… “I’m hungry.”
“Oh, really? That’s some news. We’re all hungry, get in line.”
She’s my angel, that one. She stops in the middle of the day. She comes into my office middle of the afternoon. “Daddy, can I talk to you?” I’m like, “Yeah, what’s up?” “I just want you to know, I love you.” Yeah, and I’m like, “Are you kidding me? I love you.” She’s like, “No! I love you so much.” I’m like, “I love you so much.” And she’s like, “No! I love you more than brownies.” I was like… “Thank you. Thank you. I… I love you more than gluten-free brownies.” What do you say? I didn’t know what to say.
The new one, our little new one, she’s not a daddy’s girl right now. I wish she was. The other day, she was crying standing in the hallway, late at night. I told my wife, “Let me go deal with her. It’ll give me a chance to bond with her.” I walk into the hallway and I’m like, “What’s the matter, sweetheart?” She stops me. She goes, “I want my mommy. I don’t want you. Go downstairs.”
The first thing she said threw me the most. She said, “I want my mommy.” She didn’t say, “I want mommy,” like we both know who mommy is. She said, “I want my mommy,” like “I don’t even know who the hell you are.” Then in case I’m confused, she makes it very clear… “I don’t want you!” Not only that, I don’t even want you on the same floor as me. You need to be a floor below me… “Chubby.”
I think she said chubby, I’m not sure. It was late at night. It was under her breath, but I think I heard, “Out of my face, fatty” or something.
Kids are just so amazing. Kids have abilities adults don’t have. ‘Cause they can go places mentally, they haven’t been scarred by life. They can just do it. I was at a doctor’s appointment. I had to get a checkup. I’m in the waiting room with my daughter. We’re the only people there. We’re there for, like, 20 minutes. I’m going out of my mind. I am so bored. I went through all the magazines, and I couldn’t take it anymore, you know? She couldn’t have been happier. She was just sitting there smiling. Finally, I was like, “What are you doing?” She said, “The air around my hand tastes like Rice Krispies.” First thing I thought was, “She’s gotta get checked out.” Then I thought, “What a gift that is. The gift to be able to taste Rice…” I gotta tell you honestly the air around my hand right now does not taste like Rice Krispies, but I want that gift. Imagine being stuck in traffic, “This sucks, it’s gonna be two hours. Wait a second. I got chicken cutlet forearms. I totally forgot about my chicken cutlet forearms!” An ability kids don’t have is the ability to wake an adult up gently. They all do it the same way, they walk in very stealth like and stick their face so close to yours you can feel the tiny pulsations of air firing out of their baby nostrils. And they speak at a volume, as if they’ve been in a heated argument with you for the last 25 minutes. “Daddy! Shea’s foot keeps touching my foot!” Okay. After I peel myself off the ceiling, I gotta breathe into a brown paper bag for 20 minutes.
Putting Your Kids To Sleep Is The Worst
Putting kids to sleep is an art form. Do you do it? Are you the one? Mothers are fantastic at it. I don’t know what it is. They’re motherly, that’s what it is. My wife’s so good at it because she wants to be there. That’s the thing. By the way, when she gets there, they feel comfortable. When they feel comfortable, they relax and go to sleep. She’s out of there eight minutes later. Glitter shoots out the door. Everybody’s sleeping. Every once in a while, I’ll get the call like a relief pitcher.
“Honey?”
“Yeah?”
“Can you do me a favor?”
“What’s up? Just watching the game. Tied up. 11th.”
“Could you put the girls to sleep tonight? Could you do me a favor?”
“Yeah. You want me to do it?”
“Yeah, yeah that’d be nice. Could you, please?”
“Um… Yeah, I want to do it. I so want to do it tonight. Should I put them tonight?”
“They sleep every night. That’s how it works. Yeah.”
“Okay, I’ll do it right now. I’m gonna go.”
And we go. But I don’t wanna be there. I’m not thinking how much I love them. I’m thinking how do I get these animals to sleep and get back to the game. But that’s the problem, ’cause when you go in there anxious and plan on being somewhere else and getting out of there, kids are like wolves, they can sense when you don’t want to be there. First of all, they look at you funny ’cause you’re not the regular. They’re just kind of like… I get nervous right away. I feel like a narc wearing a wire.
“Nothing. I just want to go to sleep. Who wants to sleep with Daddy?”
You just gotta lay there. It’s a waiting game. That’s all it is. It’s who can out-wait the other party. That’s who wins the putting to sleep war. And sometimes you win. Sometimes you wait there long enough, they’ll fall asleep, you go back and watch the game. Other nights, it’s four in the morning. You fell asleep. They’re up putting toothpaste in a light socket. You lost that one. Just chalk it up to a loss. It’s fine.
But don’t engage with them. You cannot engage with them ’cause their goal is to stay up forever. That’s what they want to do. They’re very good at it. They’re professionals. Don’t talk to them, just lay down there and just shut your eyes and don’t talk. Don’t engage with them. They’re gonna be like, “Daddy?” You’re like, “Please, no. No Daddy. We’re going to sleep. Sleep time.” “Daddy, I love you.” “You shut up. You don’t love me.”
And when you think they’re asleep, do me a favor, add 25 minutes to let that cement dry, ’cause that is the difference between a rookie and a champion right there. Don’t ever peek to check if they’re asleep, ’cause I promise you one of ’em is gonna be standing over you like a velociraptor, just kind of… She will sense the heat in your eyelid as it raises. She will elbow her sister, boom, you just pressed reset and added six hours to your night.
And even if you get them to sleep, the dismount from the bed… that is the most crucial move of the evening. You can undo all your hard work with a sloppy dismount because it’s like a human game of pick-up sticks. You gotta move your body parts without moving any of theirs. You gotta get out of the bed. I’m big, so when you roll to one side of the mattress, they come tumbling into the vortex. Everybody’s awake. Starting from scratch, that’s what I’m doing.
You do bedtime stories with your kids? I can’t stand them. They’re not like when we were kids. The kids are so young they don’t understand what you’re saying. It’s about spending time with mommy and daddy. That’s all it is. It was quick. It was three pages. Tommy lost a bike. Tommy hopped a fence. He found his bike. Now it’s about these children’s authors, the book is like War and Peace. You gotta read the whole thing. I’m like… They’re not even listening. You ever do a little editing on your own, where you’re just like… If a couple of pages get stuck together, I’m not thumbing them apart. No. Like, the other night, I read them Goldilocks and the Two Bears, we get it. The night before that, it was Horton Thinks He Hears a Who, Turned out to be nothing, good night. Be careful what you say around kids. Kids are like sponges. They may not understand what you’re talking about, but they will take what you said, and they internalize it, and then they throw it back out at you at the most inappropriate time. I was at a little girl’s birthday party with my daughter. Outta nowhere, my daughter just goes, “This cake tastes like beer.” No, no. No. Two thoughts pop in my head immediately. Number one, I have to convince every other parent there I have never, ever, ever given her a taste of beer in her life, and number two, now I gotta try the cake. I gotta give it a shot.
I threw up on my kids at a theme park
The other day I was playing with my daughter. She’s two and a half. She was wrestling with me. She’s on my chest. We were having fun. Then all of a sudden, the action slowed down a little bit. She stopped, and she looked at me, and she sneezed… right in my mouth. And I threw up on her… immediately. Not like a little puke, like I… like a fire hydrant. I knocked her off my chest. It was that fast. It was achoo… The reason I’m telling you this is my wife got mad at me for throwing up on our daughter. She was like, “Why?” “That’s your own flesh and blood, why would you throw up on her?” Why would I throw up? This isn’t me not wanting to finish her tuna sandwich! Mucus that originated in her was launched unbeknownst to me right in my mouth, nothing but net, hit that little punching bag in the back! Why would I? Like I made a choice. Like I was sitting there, she sneezed in my mouth, I had time to think. It’s just not right. “We should take some toys away from her, teach her a lesson. You know what? Check that. I’m gonna throw up on her, hold her legs. You hold her legs. I’m gonna get her. I got nothing. You gotta hold those chunky little legs.”
I thought about both our actions, how similar they were with different outcomes, right? It’s so violent, the body reaction, but they’re very similar in a sneeze and throwing up. But a sneeze is so enjoyable, and she did it the right way, too. ‘Cause when you’re young, you don’t think to block a sneeze. That’s how you’re supposed to sneeze. You’re supposed to just let it go. That’s why when we’re home alone, that’s what we do. We get the sneeze feeling. Hey, nobody’s here. You just let it rip and then you watch the pixie dust in the light for 20 seconds. Still can’t feel my legs. This is awesome. This is euphoria. I’m good.
Throwing up, man, that’s a different story. Ooh. This was horrible. I took my kids to an amusement park. And we’re there, and I know I can’t do the rides like when I was young. I used to be able to do any ride. I can’t handle it anymore. I can’t do it. So I was like, “I have to do something, though. The day’s starting to wrap up, and I gotta get on a ride, ’cause my son hasn’t seen me go on a ride with him at all. We haven’t done anything bonding together.” And I’m like, “I gotta pick one out quick and just be a man. I gotta go on some of these rides.” So I scouted which ones I could do and not get sick.
I was like, “Teacups, they’re out for sure. I’ll throw up immediately.” But then I saw the pirate ship. You ever see the pirate ship that goes back and forth? No, no, no. I scouted it. Believe me, it’s only three minutes first of all, and it doesn’t go up all the way around, which I was worried about. I thought it was gonna go over the top. It doesn’t. It’s a very short ride. So I said, “I’ll do it.” And I get my son, “Hey, you wanna go be pirates, man?” He’s like, “Yes, Dad, let’s do it.” So we get on the ship and we buckle in. And we’re like, “Yeah, let’s do it.” Boom. By the time the ride got here, I knew I made a massive miscalculation. And I just said, “Ooh, this is not good. This is not good.” I just knew. You know when you know you’re gonna throw up? You’re like, “No, no, no, no.” I was like, “I can’t do it!” I had to buckle down. I gotta be strong about this. I can’t. My son will remember this for the rest of his life. He’ll remember the time daddy threw up on the pirate ship. I can’t do it. I gotta be a man. I sucked it up. I care too much about him and his respect of me.
By the time the ship got here, I didn’t give a crap about my son. I didn’t care about anybody in the world. The only two people I cared about was me and the kid in front of the red button who could stop this thing. But he’s not looking at me, ’cause he’s looking at his phone, probably on some carnie dating site just swiping.
Now I’m really panicked. Then the ship went back one more time. You know when you get that water in the back of your mouth? Kind of like vomit’s way of ringing the doorbell.
“Hey… How’s it going? We’re in the neighborhood. We’re gonna be coming by in about a couple minutes or whatever. I don’t know if you have a mint handy in the house. You might want to get a mint ready. There’s a whole bunch of us, too, so you should leave the garage open. We’ll see you. Yeah, we’re coming back. We are coming back. It’s on.”
So now I’m panicked. I’m praying that there’s a little girl in front of me. I’m hoping she throws up… so I can piggyback my puke with hers and try to hide it from my son, ’cause my son’s here. I’m a big guy. If I can puke with her and throw it this way or at least blame her. She didn’t puke, but I did. I threw up big… in my mouth… And I swallowed it. ‘Cause that’s what a man does!
Take that, lactose intolerance! And that’s what men do. Then we got fake tattoos and got cotton candy after that. So good, all food. I can’t. I get too fat and then I… I lose weight, gain weight and lose it again. That’s why I can’t get a tattoo unless it’s like an accordion. I just can’t pull the trigger. Do we have any tattoo people here today? Yeah, you got? What’s your name? Roscoe. Roscoe? How’s it going, bud? Nice to see ya. How many you have? Three. Three? Give me one, what you get? A Tasmanian devil. You got a Tasmanian devil? Why’d you do that? Just ’cause you liked… You were 19. That says a lot right there. Cool. You got a Tasmanian devil, what else? You got three? A clown in shackles. A clown in shackles… First one’s kinda cute, right? The Tasmanian devil, but then… Roscoe got a clown in shackles. A clown on its own is weird enough. Can you imagine that? They don’t even see that at the tattoo shop very often, but you were like, “We’re almost done, I want shackles on this guy. You never know when he’s getting away. You just gotta keep him down.” What was the purpose of the shackles and the clown? What does that represent? I forget. You forget, good. I don’t know if I’m buying that, Roscoe. You don’t get a clown in shackles unless you’re huffing paint somewhere. Out in Yaphank. I don’t think you’re… You can’t forget something like that. You got shackles and a clown. What happened, man? You were in Maui. Okay. I was a little high. You were a little high. He’s also got a straight jacket. Okay. Now it’s starting to make sense. You could’ve stopped at Maui. I was good. Anybody got more than Roscoe, any more than three? You got a few here? What’s your name? Hi, Selena, give me one of your tattoos. Oh, that’s so sweet. It’s your’s mom’s actual handwriting? You took it from a piece of paper? That’s sweet, that means something, Roscoe clown with shackles! I get that. That makes sense. She wasn’t high in Maui doing crazy meth, you nutjob! Keep going, Selena, you talk. Two what? Two Hello Kitties? All right, you’re off the hook, Roscoe. How many you got? Seven? What’s your name? Billy. Hey, Billy. Nice to see you, bud. You got seven? Give me one of ’em. What did you get? Bill, look at me, man. What the heck is wrong with you? He’s like… You can jump right in. When I finish my sentence, you can pop right in. That’s how conversation works. I feel like I’m talking to somebody in Tel Aviv or something, you know? “How’s it going down there, Billy? Is everything all right?” “Everything is great, Kevin. Thank you.” Give me one of them. What is it? A lion. A lion. You just got a lion? What does the lion represent? What did you get that for? It’s a long story? We got plenty of time. We’re just shooting a special. What is it? You’re a Leo. That wasn’t so long. That was pretty quick. Wow. Okay. So you got a lion. That’s cool. What else? Give me another one, Bill. You got the Grim Reaper. Okay, we’re moving on. We don’t need to talk to Billy all night. Okay, you got the Grim Reaper. You got Jesus, too. Balance it out, yeah, you need that. If you’re gonna get the Grim Reaper, you have to get Jesus. Okay, what else you got? Give me another one. You got some Chinese thing. “I got some Chinese thing.” We could tell it means a lot to you. That’s a fun day at the tattoo shop for Billy, huh? “What do ya got?” I got a lion, got the Grim Reaper, got Jesus… I need a Chinese thing. You got like a Chinese thing? Chinesey, but not. It’s kinda like a thing. Just Chinesey thing, just something. What’s a Chinese thing? What is it? It’s supposed to be “live for today,” but the Grim Reaper fights that. You got it all. You got it all happening on your back, right? Another on the front. What you got there? An Irish thing… Are you Irish? You’re not even Irish. Wow! You just were everywhere, all over. Do you have any tattoos you regret? No, you don’t regret any of them. Good for you. I like that, Billy. At least you own up to it, good. Yeah. You see people who regret them, and I feel horrible. I saw this one guy on the internet, on the inside of his arm, it said, “Never don’t give up.” Oh… I felt so bad for him, ’cause we know what he wanted to say, and he was so close! ‘Cause “don’t give up” works or “never give up” works, but he backed his ass into a double negative. And that’s two stupid people, ’cause you know the tattoo artist could have said something at some point. I just wrote, “Don’t give up.” Want me to put “never” in front of it? Yes, put “never” in front of “don’t give up,” okay? A little less this and a little more… You don’t even have to go to a shop to get a tattoo anymore. You know that? They have a service called Tattoo 2 U, where they will send a van to your house to give you a tattoo. “Yeah, how you doing? Listen, I got like three DUIs. I’m currently under house arrest. I’m pretty hammered right now, but… I need the Tasmanian devil on my left ass cheek immediately. I need a clown in shackles just hanging out around my waist line. Could you guys send a van? I’m in Maui.”
You guys are the greatest. God bless you all! Thank you! Good night, New York!
♪ Get up! ♪
♪ Siege ♪
♪ Yeah! ♪
♪ And when you hear the sound Of the drum ♪
♪ We’ll be saying, “Here we come!” ♪
♪ Yeah, here we come ♪
♪ Hey, here we come ♪
♪ Huh! Here we come ♪
♪ Here we come ♪
♪ Yeah, here we come ♪
♪ Hey, here we come ♪
♪ Hey, here we come ♪
