Langston Kerman: Bad Poetry (2024)
Director: John Mulaney
Release date: August 20, 2024 (Netflix)
[ambient street noise]
[applause]
[emcee] Clap it up, clap it up! Clap it up, clap it up, clap it up! Keep clapping! Clap it up!
[audience cheering]
[emcee] Keep clapping! You gotta clap! Everybody clap! Clap it up! Clap it up! Don’t slow down. Clap it up! Clap it up! We gonna clap it up for 20 minutes! Clap it up!
[applause, cheering]
All right, this next brother coming up, he’s supposed to be telling y’all jokes. Now, I can’t verify he’s funny, but he is, indeed, light-skinned. And some people are into that. Give it up for Langston Kerman!
[audience cheering]
What up, Chicago? Yeah! Look at y’all. This is dope. Thank you for being here. Some of y’all got your winter titties out. This is cool. This is so dope. I hope everybody’s feeling good. I hope you’re having a good night. I’m doing… I’m doing great. I had a phenomenal thing happen to me very recently. Like, unbelievable shit. I’ll tell you. After months, months of persuasion, my mother-in-law finally put me in charge of her dating apps. [audience laughs] Do you understand? I’m pretending to be a 65-year-old woman trying to get her back blown out…
[audience laughs]
…on an elderly dating app called “Sunset Singles.” And I’ll be honest, I’m having the time of my goddamn life. I wake up every day. Before I greet my wife, before I unstick my balls from my thigh, I pick up my phone, I open that app, and I just start flirting. I be flirting with old-ass men in big-ass suits. You know what I mean? Turns out that’s my type. I thought I liked my wife. I don’t. I like a leathery old sea turtle. I like a wooden-teeth-looking motherfucker, with his face too close to the phone in all his pictures. And they be sending me messages like, “Greetings, beloved.” “My name is Ulysses.” “That’s right! The last Ulysses alive on planet Earth.” “All other Ulysses died in the Great Black & Mild War of 1964.” “Anyway, I am electric mailing you this evening…”
[audience laughs]
“…to inquire if you might join me on a Cadillac ride to a crab cake dinner.” “I know a place with pictures of Barack Obama in the menu, so you know it’s good.” “Sound enticing? Call me on my house phone.” “I’m terrified of technology.” Lot of people don’t believe me, that this is a thing I’ve been doing. Trying to fuck these old men. [audience laughs] They think I’m making this up. And so what I’ve done, what I’ve actually started to do, is I’ve actually started to compile some of the audio messages…
[audience murmurs]
[audience member] Yeah! What’s wrong? You don’t like elder abuse? You don’t like taking advantage of our most vulnerable communities? Agreed to disagree. What I’ve done is I’ve compiled some of the audio messages that these men send and post, and I want to share some of them with you tonight Is that okay? Can I do that?
[audience cheers]
Yeah. Oh, you changed your mind? Goddamn turncoat. Okay, this first message… No, nay. This first piece I want to share with you this evening, this first selection, is a little number that I’ve simply entitled “Love.” “Love.” That’s all you need to know. We’ll play it for you now.
[man 1] I love so many things. I love everything. I love… Mostly, I love… God, I love things. I do like them. It’s just, right now, mind’s reached a blank. But love, love is all there is. Okay. [laughs] Yeah. Gotta love it. You gotta love love. Says it all. I love to love. I live to love. I am a being of love. I asked this motherfucker where he likes to eat. [laughter] I didn’t ask him none of that. He came back with this weird-ass love manifesto. Like, I see why you’re single, sir. It sounds like you love keeping women’s hair in jars. You odd bitch. I am doing well, man. I… I’m, uh… I’m a father now.
[audience cheering]
I have a small baby at home. Yeah! Thank you! It’s very exciting. I love her so much. I might have made a huge mistake. Who knows? How do you know? You know what I mean? That’s not a familiar feeling? Nobody else feels like a bird trapped in the airport? Don’t get me wrong, ’cause I don’t want anybody… I… I love my baby. Right? Hey, hey, hey. Top five baby, aborted or alive.
I love…
[laughter] I love my baby! Look, hey, hey, hey, when I show people pictures of my baby, and they don’t get excited enough, I be ready to beat they ass. Know what I’m saying? If I show you a picture of my baby, and you just go, “I dunno, she’s cute,” I’d be like, “No, bitch.” “She’s an effervescent beauty.” “I think you meant to say her cheeks remind you of the clouds that wrap around mountaintops.” “Tell me she makes you feel like the warmest day in winter.” “Say you want to kiss her, softly.” “Slowly.” “That’s right.” “You a pedophile for my baby.” “You going to jail, you sick fuck.” “‘Cause you wanna Joe-Biden-sniff my baby.”
People say wild shit to me now that I have a kid. You know what I mean? Real maniacal, evil shit. I had a stranger I’ve never met before in my life come up to me the other day and tell me having a baby is the best thing that’s ever gonna happen to me. The best thing. And keep in mind, I once met Forest Whitaker in line at an IHOP.
[laughter]
Ghost Dog. I met him at the International House. This is how it happened, right? I was in line, minding my business, and out of nowhere, Forest Whitaker walked in and he asked to use the bathroom. And then the woman behind the register, she looked at him, she realized, “Holy shit, that’s Forest Whitaker,” and then she said the bathroom was for paying customers only. And Forest Whitaker couldn’t believe it. He was taken aback. He looked at her as if to say, “Ma’am, have you lost your mind?” “I’m Forest goddamn Whitaker.” “You’ve seen my eye.” But the woman didn’t budge a bit. She just looked right back at him and rolled her neck as if to say, “Sir, you ain’t special.” “This is an IHOP.” “Everybody’s got a fucked-up eye.” “We all fucked-up in the ‘HOP.” “That’s how we got here!”
And there was this crazy stand-off, right, between Forest Whitaker and the pancake lady, neither one of them budging a bit, and then out of nowhere, my boy, Will… He was outside smoking. He comes back in. He sees Forest Whitaker. He goes, “Oh shit! Forest Whitaker?” “You eat at IHOP?” “Weird choice!” And I’ll never forget it, because Academy-Award-winner Forest Whitaker, he looked at us, he looked at everybody in the restaurant, and he just went, “Man…” “Fuck y’all.” Best thing. Know why “best thing” is crazy? Because you and I, every single person in this room, we’ve all had so many magical experiences that no human should ever have to weigh themselves against. Know what I mean? It’s almost unfair to ask you to compare your greatest joys to another. It’s… Look, hey, I’ve gotten pussy and Cinnabon in the same night. That’s a miracle. This is a better example. Okay, here it is. Okay, this… Okay. Last year, for my birthday, right, me and my friends, we did a shit-ton of mushrooms, right? We got super-high on mushrooms. Real fucked up on mushrooms. And then, we went to a public park, we sat on a bench, and then we heckled an adult softball league. You understand? That’s how I celebrated my 35th birthday. And I’ll be honest, that’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me. So much funnier than a baby. This is why it was dope. Because those people had paid money to be there. The players, they had worked hard to organize themselves with registration fees and uniforms, all under the guise of spending this peaceful afternoon in the park playing sports with their friends, and then out of nowhere, a group of urban youth… White people can’t tell how old we are. A group of urban youth… Some rowdy eighth graders showed up and just started yelling weird, mushroom-y shit at them. Stuff that didn’t even make sense. I was sitting on a bench like, “Hey! Number three!” “You remember Bob Dole?” “You know Bob Dole? He was a politician, ’80s, ’90s, ran for president, never won.” “You remember Bob Dole?” “Remember he had that weird, fucked-up arm? Little arm.” “He had to keep a pen in it so nobody’d notice how mangled his little hand was.” “Remember Bob Dole?” “Well, you throw like Bob Dole!” “Fuck you, number three!” “Bob-Dole-throwing motherfucker.”
This was the best part of the afternoon. At one point, at one point, the, um… the… the… the left fielder… and I guess I’m cautious to call him a left fielder because he was very clearly an office manager, you know what I mean? He wasn’t left field by trade. But the office manager in left field, he missed an easy pop fly, right? Easy pop fly goes over his head. He falls down. Super embarrassing moment. And then I took it upon myself. I stood up in front of everybody at the park. I stood up and I shouted, “Hey!” “I’m not angry, but your mother and I are very disappointed.”
I shouted that in front of everybody. And what y’all have to understand is that that joke did fine here. Fine. Y’all are cool. But at the park? I fucking killed. You know what I mean? Y’all are okay, but at the park, I goddamn destroyed. Me and my friends, we were high-fiving and shit. Jogging bitches, they stopped. They were laughing. The Mexican man with the popsicles, he winked at me. Gave me a free Snoopy. Destroyed, right? But here’s what you also have to understand, is that when I said that, I was on mushrooms. Right? I was as high as the day is long. So when I said that, and me and this person in left field made eye contact, there was a brief moment where I was his father. You understand? I was this 40-year-old white man’s dad. And I’ll be honest, I was disappointed. Because this isn’t the life that I imagined for my white son. Maybe that’s good enough for your white boys, but not mine. No, sir, his mother and I had worked too hard, too hard, to give him a life he didn’t even earn. We paid off the DUI. We bribed the college admissions offices. We introduced him to people named Humphrey. And all we ever asked of him was that he not shame us. Don’t embarrass us in this public way. And I got so angry, so in my head rageful at what my son was doing, that out of nowhere, I shouted. I shouted in front of everybody, “Hey!” “I’m selling the house in the Berkshires and I’m cutting you out of the trust.” And then no one laughed, ’cause no one knew what the fuck I was talking about. Mexican man took back his popsicle. “Gimme that shit.” “Thought you were funny. You’re weird.” “You’re a weird guy at the park.”
Best thing. You’re telling me I’m the best thing that’s ever happened to my parents? You? You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to your parents? Most of us still get embarrassed when we have to read out loud. The other day, I was reading my daughter a bedtime story, and I ran into the word “pterodactyl.” Fucked up my whole evening. I was just sitting there like, “What the fuck… is a ‘peterodasatill’?” See, see, see, this is the government trying to put the names of prescription drug medications in our children’s books! They trying to get my baby hooked on this shit. They trying to make my daughter a petero-head. Can’t be the best thing, man. There’s so much I’m dumb about, so much I don’t understand in the world. Okay, great example. Let’s talk about this. As it relates to COVID, right? Specifically the COVID vaccine. Am I the only person, am I the only one in this room, who thought Walgreens would have a separate staff? You know, like for the medical interventions. I thought there’d be, like, Walgreens doctors. And Walgreens nurses. It’s not. It’s the same n*ggas. It’s the same people who sell you batteries. Some of y’all don’t get it. Listen. Hey. Hey. The key for the deodorant and the key for the Moderna? It’s on the same ring. It’s just one dude being like, “Whatcha need, player? Yeah, I got you.” “Oh, Pfizer? Nah, I can’t get you the Pfizer.” “Gotta call the manager for the Pfizer.” “You want that Johnson & Johnson, I get you that right now.” “We keep that with the Hot Pockets. I can get you Johnson & Johnson.” “But Pfizer, we gotta call the manager. He got the big key.” “Also, please fill out this form, because I am now your primary care physician.” “We gon’ change up your diet. You eating string cheese.” “It’s on sale.” Can’t be the best thing, man. I still get hard when I ain’t supposed to be hard. Know what I mean? That’s not a threat. I don’t like how you’re looking. That’s not… I’m not threatening you. You enjoy your evening. I’m saying I get boners when I didn’t expect… to have a boner. Like when I’m waiting for the train. Everybody be looking at me like, “Damn, he really loves the train.” But I don’t. I’m not a train guy. I’m not. I just can’t help it. I… And I used to think it was just a me thing, you know? I used to think I was the only person hard in my local Chipotle. But after years of careful research, I’ve come to discover it’s not just a me thing. In fact, every dude in here has the exact same problem. Ladies, whether he’s ready to admit it or not, every dude has found himself at work, just in a marketing meeting, with a throbbing erection he can’t explain. Just avoiding pie charts, ’cause those are making it worse somehow. Like, “Oh God, are we at 98%?” “Lord.” “I’m about to bust. I can’t.” “I pray to God they don’t push that pie chart next to another pie chart, ’cause that’s titties, and I’mma cum.” “I’mma cum from that pie booty.” We can’t control our bodies. That’s why I don’t listen to anything men have to say about reproductive responsibility and the women…
No. ‘Cause we be hard.
[audience cheers]
We be hard, and if you got a hard dick, you should maybe tuck it in your belt and shut the fuck up. I’m not trying to hear your hard-dick opinion. You can’t be erect and correct at the same time. Thank you. Hey, I’mma run for president. I’mma be up there giving speeches, hard as hell. Like, “Damn, Putin got them big bombs, don’t he? Shit!” “Putin bombs look like titties. Fuck!” “Big ol’ titty bombs.”
I think I just have fear about what it means to raise a child, you know? To bring a person to their greatest potential, that’s scary. Fear, honestly, that existed throughout my wife’s entire pregnancy. Terrified, genuinely afraid. The entire time, I was terrified I was gonna end up with a white baby. Terrified. And I’ll explain it. It’s not as confusing as you think it is. I’m biracial, right? My mother’s Black, my father is white. My wife is the exact same mix. So… if I’m half-white, and she’s half-white, and recessive genes kick in, we could end up with a fucking daywalker. A little surprise white baby! Just a little tampon-colored Tyler, with varicose veins. Talking ’bout, “Daddy, I’m in the mood for poached eggs.” Ew! I don’t want a white baby! I don’t want a baby that ages like a Gypsy curse. Why does this baby look older than me? I hate it. Hate this white baby. And I don’t have anything against white people. I don’t. Honestly, I’m a big fan of your work. I really am. Rollerblades? Y’all did that. Don’t let anybody tell you you ain’t make rollerblades. Y’all are the reason we shred. Like I said, man, my father’s white, so I… Okay, this is the best way. This is it. Okay. It… Here it is. It’s hard to blame the white man for all of your problems when the white man still pays your cell phone bill. I’m on the devil’s family plan. I can’t… I can’t be that… You know what I mean? I can’t be up here like… [emphatically] “Brothers and sisters!” “I said, brothers and sisters, and maybe even Vin Diesel.” “It’s hard to tell with him. What color is that exactly?” “Periwinkle?” “Looking like a old-ass cauliflower.” “Anyway, we must overthrow the white man.” “We must bring every single white person to justice, except for the white people who send me money on my birthday.” “Also, the entire cast of The Office.” “They are hilarious.” “And whichever white person invented fruit on the bottom of yogurt.” “I tried it, I love it.” “I love it. The other day, I ate a boysenberry flavor.” “I took a good, healthy poop, and I thought, ‘Oh, this is why white people act like that.'” “Too much power. I feel too strong.” “I want to open a private prison and use a neti pot. I love it!” “Take my shoes off on a plane. I love it.” “Feels good.”
Fear. Know what my biggest fear is with a kid? Genuinely, this is my biggest fear, is how do you make your kid into a good person? Do you know what I mean? If you have kids, if you’re a parent, and I think we can all agree on this, you’re just guessing. All of us. You’re… We plug in a formula. We plug in the exact same formula. You teach ’em to share, you give them motherfuckers vegetables and shit, and then you just hope. You just hope your kid doesn’t into, like, a serial killer. Or even worse, one of those people who draws Lion King characters with human titties. You remember those psychopaths in school? Those future Republican senators? Any cartoon titty kids here tonight? Anybody want to fess up to what they did? Nobody ever raises their hand, but statistically, that can’t be correct. The math don’t check out, ’cause every class I was in, I’d look over and some kid was disgracing the Disney corporation. And let’s be clear, ladies and gentlemen, That’s not what Walt Disney wanted. Walt… Walter Disney… Walt Disney wanted good, wholesome content. Also, to exterminate the Jews. He wanted dead Jews And good family-friendly content. And now you look over and some kid is drawing Zazu, just the bird from Lion King, with big, heavy lunch lady titties. Big casserole and spatula titties. Now the bird can’t fly. Talking about, “Simba, I can’t help you become king. My back hurts.” “What god would make me like this, Simba?” “Kill me.”
How do you make them good? This is a… This is a weird transition after that titty joke, but… I used to be a high school teacher. That’s what I did before comedy. I taught 9th, 11th and 12th grade English. I’m the reason your kid pronounces it “liberry.” I coulda helped. I chose not to. I wanted to see them flail. Teaching’s tough, man. It… You… This is what made teaching so difficult for me, is that no matter how challenging a kid is, right, no matter how difficult a kid is, you have to maintain this hope, this faith, that they can still grow into better people. Right? That they can still find the best version of themselves. And that’s so hard, because so many kids deserve to be pepper sprayed. Right? They deserve to be Maced. In their fucking eyeballs. Until they learn to contribute to society. Some of the meanest things ever said to me came from children. Not my enemies. Little unwashed people. Motherfuckers who don’t wipe so good. This is the meanest thing anyone’s ever said to me. I had a little girl raise her hand, middle of class. She raised her hand to tell me she didn’t think I could ever become a professional male model, because I have too much adult acne. You understand? She interrupted class to tell me… Keep in mind, I wasn’t trying to be a male model. At all. I wasn’t doing nothing sexy. I was trying to teach this bitch to read. But something so hateful in her spirit saw me up there trying my best, and she thought to herself… [flatly] “Uh-uh.” “Uh-uh. No way. Uh-uh. Fuck that. Uh-uh.” “This motherfucker’s got too much confidence.” “No, this bumpy-faced n*gga, he believes in himself too much.” “I need to let him know that just in case he was thinking about changing careers, male model is not an option.” “I know he’s trying to make us think critically about literature, but fuck that.” “He needs to think about the back of a Proactiv bottle.” “His skin is terrible. He looks like multigrain. I’mma tell him.” “I’mma tell him he looks like bread.”
There are kids who I taught that I still want to fight to this day. To this day, there’s this little bitch named Edna. I’ll decap Edna’s knees if I ever see her again. This is really what I want. Some of y’all might work in education. I think this’ll make sense. I want to stab Edna in the stomach, right? I wanna knife her up real good in the belly, and then afterward, I want to stuff the wound with Hot Cheetos so she’d die all spicy and shit. Fucking hate Edna. Edna’s the reason I stopped writing poetry. You understand? She stole the magic of verse from me. Let me be clear, this wasn’t my original dream. I didn’t want to perform behind a bar, you know what I mean? I wanted to be a poet. I was… Oh, man. I’m telling you, I was going to be a poet. I… Y’all, I… I was gonna write silky metaphors. I was gonna wear a thick tweed jacket. I was going to go down on weird ladies with hairy armpits. I was going to be a poet. And then I had to teach an after-school poetry program for Edna’s class. And every day, for eight consecutive weeks, that little girl hurt my feelings. She made me sad for two lunar cycles, and now I want her dead. This was a poetry class. And this is where I messed up. This was my mistake. I’m going to admit that up top. This is where I messed up. I thought the best way to get these kids to write their poems was for me to share one of my own. Right? Huge mis… Right. Yeah. I get it. I fucked up. I should have just read them Tupac lyrics like my teachers did for me. “Listen up, kids.” First off, fuck yo’ bitch And the clique you claim “That’s called a stanza.”
Even worse, the poem that I read them was a poem that meant a lot to me at the time. It was a poem about a friend of mine who died in a car crash. This girl I know who died in a car crash. And in the poem, I do all this metaphorical work to compare her death to the death of a spider I found in my windowsill. And the final lines of the poem go… The exact final lines of the poem go, How close to God this spider must feel Weaving a world above the earth The string as thin as breath The breath so easily silenced A net of wings Fluttering toward blind quiet Before I could even finish, before anyone even had a chance to process the words coming out of my mouth, Edna just went, “Damn! This poetry n*gga’s gay as hell.” [tightly restrained seething] Fucking bitch. I oughta kill this stupid little bitch. [angrily muttering] I’ll punch you in the head, stupid bitch. Punch you dead in your fucking face. Kids break you. They break the person you thought you were going to be, and then we subsequently break them, and it becomes this ugly cycle of broken people. This is a great example of what I mean. Years ago, I read this article about a teacher in Idaho, right? Teacher in Idaho who got fired from his job, he got arrested, he got taken to jail, because he brought a puppy to school to show his class. Right? Seems harmless enough. He brought a puppy to the school. He showed the puppy to his students. And then afterwards, he fed that puppy to the class’s pet snapping turtle.
[audience winces, groans]
Everybody okay? I didn’t do it. I’m just a reporter. You understand? He fed a baby dog to a living dinosaur in front of children. And every article I read had the same reaction many of you are having. Every single one was like, “Oh my God.” “What kind of irreparable damage has this man done to these kids?” “What kind of permanent damage has he done to these poor kids?” And I kept reading those articles and thinking about my experience as a teacher. And I kept thinking, “Man…” “Fuck those kids.” “Fuck them.” What kind of permanent damage did those kids do to him? ‘Cause he wasn’t like that at the beginning of the year. He didn’t start off that way. That wasn’t written in the syllabus. They broke him! They broke his brain. They taunted him and they teased him and they took pictures of his paycheck and they posted it on the internet. Till one day he snapped, and he found himself holding a dog over this ravenous reptile staring out at 11-year-olds like… “Is this what you want?” “Are you not entertained?” “I swear to God, if one more of y’all brings up my divorce, I’ll kill this fucking dog.” “Today’s lesson is about minding your goddamn business.” “Turn to page 18.” Okay, this next selection from “Sunset Singles”…
[laughter, applause]
This next piece I want to share with you is a personal favorite. It’s a personal favorite. It’s a little number that I’ve simply entitled, “Sophisticated.” “Sophisticated.” We’ll play it for you now.
[man] Hello, this is Joe calling. You have a very sophisticated voice… [haltingly] …as well as a very sophisticated… Oh… You must be a very sophisticated person. I’d love to meet up with you, if you’d like to have a drink. I’m a lawyer. Give me a call if you would at area code… [playback halts] Okay, first of all, first of all, can anyone hear definitively prove that that wasn’t Joe Biden? Can you definitively prove that that wasn’t America’s horniest president who’s trying to stutter his way into a little side malarkey, you know? Little malarkey on the side. And for those of you pulling back, because I do see some of you… You’re getting out… Yeah. You’re wondering, “Maybe this is too far.” Let me remind you. I’m trying to have sex with him. He’s not a victim in this situation. He’s a 138-year-old man who I’m trying to give some pussy. I’m a hero in this story. How do you make a good person? People say love. Love, you know, the thing that Flavor Flav and Brigitte Nielsen have. They say that’s how you make a good person. I don’t know if I believe in that. I don’t know if I still believe in love, honestly. I just found out that my wife thinks that I’m special needs. And yes, she means it in a derogatory way. She’s a bad lady. She should go to jail. Lock her up. The other day, she called me from work and she said this to me, verbatim. Verbatim, this is what she said to me. Now, keep in mind, I have changed some of the words to make me sound better and her sound worse. But verbatim, this is what she said to me. She called me up and she said, “Hey, I’m making chili tonight, and I need you to heat up a can of beans.” Then she said, and I’ll never forget it, “And whatever you do, don’t put the can in the microwave.”
You understand? She told me, her emergency contact, not to put a can… And when she said that, I took a deep breath. You know? I took a deep breath, and I really thought about all the time we’ve spent together. The love that we’ve shared, the bond that we’ve built. I took a deep breath, and then finally, very calmly, I said… I said… I said, “Bitch, I’ll fucking kill you.” “I will kill you dead.” “I will take that gun that we bought after white people tried to take back the country from other white people, and I will shoot you in the leg.” “Is that what you think of me?” “That I’m metal-in-a-microwave stupid?” “You let me cum inside of you.” “You let that cum become a person.” “You leave me alone for hours, completely unsupervised, with that cum.” “Not to mention all those loose cans of beans.” And this whole time, she just been thinking, “Damn. I bet some day he gon’ kill himself with a microwave.” “I bet some day, he gon’ put a can of SpaghettiOs in the microwave, push the popcorn button, and blow his fucking face off.” “And then our daughter’s gonna have to grow up in a world where people refer to her dumbass daddy as ‘Orville Deadenbacher.'” It’s a long way for a pun. Some say too long. That’s critique I’ve heard. Too long.
[cheering]
Love. You want to talk about love? My mom… My mom has been married four times to four different men. Four. That’s a Jodeci’s worth of husbands. Some of y’all are white. That’s a 98 Degrees’ worth of husbands. For the older people, Jersey Boys. Four different husbands, and sometimes I think my mom’s the only person who’s truly figured love out. You know what I mean? She’s the only person who figured out what love is supposed to be. Because while the rest of us have potentially wasted our lives trying to find some perfect, special someone who may not even exist, instead my mom gets married every El Niño. She finds a new husband every other Toyotathon, and she just be having fun out there. She’ll marry anybody. Old-ass karate students. Grown men who order apple juice at restaurants. At one point, I’m not making this up, my mom married a disgraced NBA mascot. Yeah, that’s not a Mad Lib, that’s a choice she made. In front of God and the government. And all right, let’s just start from the beginning. I’ll walk you… You have questions, I have answers. First of all, did you know that NBA mascots could be disgraced? No? Even worse. Did you know these disgraced motherfuckers could fuck your mom? Apparently, it could happen to any of us. Apparently, none of our mothers can resist the sexual chemistry of a dishonorably discharged Benny the Bull. My mom married Benny the Bull. And not at his best.
No!
[applause] Don’t clap for that! Shame on you! It’s hurting my family! And the next question you’re naturally asking… You want to know how did he lose his job as Benny the Bull, right? How does one lose such a coveted position as Chicago mascot Benny the Bull? I’ll tell you. He was fired from his job as Benny the Bull because, and I’m not making this up, in 2004, he got caught selling drugs after a game in full costume. Just standing in the parking lot. Even the police walked up like, “Benny, what are you doing?” “Those are your work clothes!” He was arrested, he was banned from the stadium for life, and my personal favorite detail, they added his name to the Wikipedia page. When you go home tonight, look it up yourself. Go to wikipedia.org/Benny_the_Bull, and then, when you’re there, scroll down to a section entitled scandals. And there you will read about possibly the dumbest man for whom I’ve ever had to buy a Father’s Day card. Love. What is it even mean, to be a good person? You know what I mean? Given the state of the world, what does “good person” even really mean? All of our heroes are monsters, and all of our monsters have podcasts. What does good person even mean? I don’t… There is no good and bad. It’s not just good and bad. It’s not just right and wrong. It’s not just dark-skinned Sammy Sosa and Hello-Kitty-colored Sammy Sosa. There are so many different shades of Sammy Sosa in-between. My personal favorite, tapioca Sosa. Good and bad, that’s all bullshit. This is a great example. This is a perfect metaphor of what I’m trying to say. My favorite restaurant in the world, my absolute favorite restaurant in the world, is McDonald’s.
[audience member whoops]
How dare you.
[audience laughs]
Watch your goddamn mouth. I love McDonald’s. I don’t care what anybody says. I love it. It’s… I love everything about it. I like the food. I like the service. When people show me fight videos at McDonald’s, I root for the staff. Y’all don’t know how to act in a classy establishment. The manager has on a visor. Show some respect. I love McDonald’s. The other day, I’m at McDonald’s, and I order myself a 10-piece nugget. That’s my shit. Now, here’s where the story gets crazy. Because the woman behind the register, she winked at me. She winked at me. And then she gave me 12 nuggets.
[audience member]
Whoo! Come on. Some of y’all get it. Some of y’all know exactly what happened. For those of you that don’t, don’t worry, I’ll explain. Eleven nuggets is a mistake. Right? That’s a miscal… She ain’t go to college. That’s a miscalculation. That’s a miscalculation of the nugget. Eleven nuggets is a mistake. But 12 nuggets? She’s trying to fuck. Right? She’s trying to have sex with me for 12 nugget… The box doesn’t even close all the way. With 12 nuggets, it’s just sitting wide open, ready for me to come inside. Put some sauce on it. You know what sauce I’m talking about. It ain’t barbecue. It ain’t barbecue. And my wife doesn’t even like when I go to McDonald’s. She gets so upset. “Oh my God, McDonald’s? That stuff is terrible for you.” “They make their nuggets out of failed pregnancy tests.” She says wild shit. Evil shit about McDonald’s. And yet here I was, standing in front of a woman willing to give me more nuggets than I’ve ever experienced in my life. Just a utopia of nuggets in a bag. And I swear to God, in that moment, in that exact moment, it took everything in my being not to run away with the McDonald’s lady. Yeah, not to just run away and start a new life. Bro, we’d have a beautiful life. The McDonald’s lady isn’t going to make me read. The McDonald’s lady isn’t going to make me fold fitted sheets or vote during midterm elections. The McDonald’s lady is just going to give me nuggets. She’ll give me nuggets, then she’ll give me nasty McDonald’s sex. Gimme just that raw… It’s just sex and nuggets and sex and nuggets and sex and nuggets, till we both die at 48, happy. Just keel over and die from nugget poisoning, dead! And maybe, hear me out, y’all, maybe, maybe, that’s what we all should want.
[audience member claps, cheers]
Maybe that’s the dream. No, you’re right. Maybe that’s the dream we should all be chasing. Let’s be honest. The world is ending. It is. That’s not political slant. You don’t gotta agree with it. It is. Ice caps are melting. Bumblebees are dying. They added Black people to Jackass. We’re done. This grown Black man being like, “Kick me in the dick, Johnny Knoxville.” “I’ll try it!” We’re done. But here’s a ray of sunshine I offer you before we go home this evening. Here’s a little silver lining. The other day, I read an article about a woman who kept a box of Chicken McNuggets for six years. Six years, she kept the box. She’s single. Six years. She ain’t seeing nobody. She got all them nuggets everywhere. She kept this box of Chicken McNuggets, and on the day of that sixth year, the day that six years hit, she opened that box, she looked inside. You’ve already guessed it. Those nuggets were exactly as she left them. No change whatsoever. No mold. No crust. Them little things that be growing on Morgan Freeman’s face.
[audience groans]
Those old, little n*gga chocolate chips he got popping up everywhere. Nothing. And I read that article and I thought to myself, “Holy shit.” “Most marriages don’t make it six years.” Right? Most of our promises before God end well before these nuggets ever did. Maybe all of this is a fallacy. Maybe all these suggestions of eternity and everlasting are bullshit. Maybe we should just be eating what we want, and microwaving cans. And jerking off to the green M&M. Do you know what I mean? Just beating our meat to the green one, ’cause she got eyelashes and we like that. I don’t care if you take her boots away. She’s still got them eyelashes. Let me see them eyelashes! You know what I like. Maybe the only forever we can guarantee is Chicken McNuggets. Then I thought to myself, “Holy shit.” “I shoulda got my dick sucked by that McDonald’s lady.” Because maybe the preservatives in her mouth would’ve transferred onto my penis and made my nuggets last forever. And that, above everything else, would be the best thing that’s ever happened to me.
[laughter, applause]
And if you didn’t like that joke, just know that getting my dick sucked is a metaphor for finding true happiness beyond the broken expectations of a dying world. If you did like that joke, fuck yeah.
[applause, cheering] This final selection from “Sunset Singles”… This final piece I wanna share with you this evening is untitled. There’s no title for this one, but I will say, it is by far the most haunting message that I have ever heard or received in my time on this planet Earth. Truly bone-chilling shit. That’s all you need to know. We’ll play it for you now.
[man] Oh, you’re our… It’s good to be here. And I’m just here searching for that special one. If I don’t write you, I don’t like you. If I write you, then I like you. Let’s watch it grow slowly. Slow but steady. Hit me up if you think you like me. Let’s get familiar. So now y’all gotta go home with whatever that is. Thank you, Chicago.
[applause, cheering]
This was dope. Thank y’all for being here. Aw, you! Thank you.
[“Escargot Blues” by Guantanamo Bay Surf Club playing]
[mellow, soulful music playing]
♪ Oh, she’s joining the circus As a part-time clown ♪ ♪ Travelling from town to town To make her grandpa proud ♪ ♪ Oh, she’s putting on Her makeup in the mirror ♪ ♪ All the lions and the tigers In their cages whisper in her ear ♪
