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Nate Bargatze: The Tennessee Kid (2019) | Transcript

Comic Nate Bargatze touches on air travel, cheap weddings, college football, chocolate milk and the perils of ordering coffee in this stand-up special.
Nate Bargatze: The Tennessee Kid (2019)

Please welcome my daddy, Nate Bargatze.

We’re doing it. This is it. This is, you know, it’s something.

Uh… Thank you, guys, for coming out. I appreciate it. Uh… I’m very excited. I tried to, uh… I’m always trying to lose weight, and then you think, “I’ll tape a special. That will, you know… That’ll do it.” And then you just kind of… Next thing you know, it’s already started, so…

I… I had a thing that happened that I do, where it’s like, “I gotta get it together.” Like, I… I like to golf, and so I tend to bring clubs and I’ll golf on the road. And so I was in Florida, and we go golfing. It’s very hot, humid, gross. You get kind of feeling gross. So I wanted to change shirts before I drove back, and I go to the trunk of my car, and I take my shirt off. Standing there, no shirt, and this old man walks up and goes, “Olivia?” I had to turn. I was like, “I’m sorry, what’d you just say? I’m sorry.” And he was like, “Oh, sorry, honest mistake.” And I was like, “I don’t know. Uh…” He was looking for his elderly wife, and saw… me with no shirt on, and thought that could be Olivia, at a car that he does not recognize. None of this is making him not… He’s like, “I don’t know, that’s a dead ringer for Olivia.” I don’t know who he disrespected more, me or Olivia, to be honest. I mean… we could both have a word with him.

I travel, uh, all the time, and if I… if I fly… if I fly Delta, if I buy a ticket through Delta’s system, my name in their system is Nathan. And on my license, my name is Nathaniel. I do not remember making this decision. It’s a big deal. You can’t just change it. I’ve tried. I’ve asked Delta if they could change it, and they’re like, “We can’t change it.” And you’re like, “Then I don’t know. I don’t know where we go from here,” you know? If you can’t do it, who can do it? I mean… Do you call… Is that why people call senators? Do they do it? ‘Cause I don’t know… What you have to do, you have to mail your birth certificate in. Some moms give their children their birth certificates. I’ve never received mine. I thought I was the proof of my birth. And you gotta mail it in. I’ve never been a big mailing-in guy. I’ve mailed… maybe four letters my entire life. I’ve just never done it. Stamps make me nervous. Because I don’t know how many you’re supposed to put on. Like… Where they’re gonna be like, “You should put one more on.” Uh… And they change the price of stamps, and that’s not in the news, you know? You don’t find that out on Twitter. You have to find out from old people. They’re the only people that know. They keep up with it. They’ll be like, “Stamps went up.” You’re like, “Okay. Uh… All right. Is it $100?” Like, they’re furious. “Is it $100 a stamp?” “It’s three more pennies.”

So… I will never go through that process to get my name changed. I just deal with it. And… it gets brought up. Once, I was checking a bag, and the guy behind the counter, he sees my ticket says “Nathan,” the license says “Nathaniel,” and he was like… “This is not good.” He goes, “These names don’t match.” And I was like, “But they match, right? Like… You can see the leap that we took to get from one to the other.” He was like, “But they’re not the same.” I was like, “They’re the same.” And… I’m realizing he cannot find out people call me Nate at that point, because… I mean, he can’t handle that. He’s gonna call the police over to be like, “There’s a guy with three names trying to fly right here, if you guys wanna just shoot him from over there or something.” I was like, “What do you want me to do?” And he goes, “You should go home.” That’s, like, honest, he’s like… “I can’t believe you’ve made it this far.” I was like, “Let me just try it. You know? Shouldn’t I try it?” I said, “Look, I’ll give you that those names don’t match. But what I think is gonna help a ton is the picture on the ID. Something that I’ve always loved that they did, and I think… with 70 percent of that name matching, and 100 percent face… That’s 100 and 70 percent. I think I’ll get through.” And this is what he told me. This is honestly what he said. He goes, uh… He goes, “Look, man, I get it. All right?” He was trying to relate to me, and he was like, “My name’s Joseph. That’s what’s on my license. So I can’t buy a ticket under my nickname, ‘Bart.’ They’re not gonna let me through.” And he said it like, “Right? You know? Does that makes sense?” And I was like, “That doesn’t at all. Those are two different names. All right?” I should be over there, and you should be over here, because that’s how you’re treating me. Like I’m a Joseph Bart.

I made it through. And on that trip, uh, I was going to Seattle. And if you’ve ever been to Seattle, uh, Mount Rainier is near Seattle, that’s what they call it, and… I don’t… That’s… I don’t know if that’s true. Just so y’all… Uh… It felt like y’all took that like, “Yeah.” -Uh… So… We were going out to Mt. Rainier, and I was with a buddy of mine. And Mt. Rainier is the… It’s the third biggest mountain in America. It’s a good one to go to. I don’t know who number one or number two is, but maybe one day, it’ll be number one, you know? Do mountains keep growing? I don’t think we know that yet. So it’s a good time to see it. It doesn’t have the attitude of a one or a two.

So, me and my buddy, we rented a car. He’s driving. On the way out there, I see a dead horse… just laid out in this guy’s yard. I’ve never seen that before, and I was like, “Man, I bet you don’t think about that when you buy a horse… it dying.” You know, what do you do? That’s a huge thing dying in your yard. You can’t just scoot it off into the woods with your foot, and try to get another one that matches before the kids come home. You have to tell your wife to keep the kids away for a month. You gotta google “how to move a dead horse.” You gotta probably try to get another horse to help you do it, and that’s not easy. That’s what the blinders were invented for, ’cause it’s like, “Just look ahead. Don’t worry about what’s going on. No, look!” Or you gotta get your friends to help you, and you can’t spill the beans too quick on that. You think it’s hard for them to help you move a couch, try a dead horse. You gotta lie to them. Like, “We’re getting a divorce. Just come over. Bring your truck and some gloves.” When they get there, let me tell you, they’re gonna see it, all right? Everybody saw it. It was next to the road. And they’re gonna pull into that driveway and just be like, “I don’t think they’re getting a divorce at all. I think we’re here to move that dead horse is what I think. Let’s let him bring it up. All right, make him ask. But I’ll be shocked if we don’t touch that dead horse today.”
And if you ever have to move a dead horse, I’ve thought a lot about all this. You want to be the first one to the horse. All right? You don’t want someone else to tell you where to grab a dead horse. So you run out there, like you love it, like, you’re like, “This what I hoped it was,” and… get to the hoofs in the front, and be like, “All right, I’m here. You guys decide where you guys want to be.”

So, now we’re basically at Mount Rainier. That was the whole car ride, and… if you ever go, just so you know, uh, you have to pay to go up it. It’s not a free mountain. Someone bought it, and they’re charging tickets. It’s also all uphill. It’s a nightmare. So, be ready for those things. We drive up, we park, and we’re walking up the trail. So, we’re going up it. Halfway, I mean, I can barely breathe. And this couple’s coming down, so I stopped them. I was like, “Hey, is this enough? Where we’re at, you know? Is this, like, you get it. Like, we’re not trying to live on this mountain.” And the lady goes, “I’m 75 years old, and I did it.” And I was like, “Maybe that’s why you didn’t hear the question that I asked.” Everybody’s pretty cocky on the way down, I mean… There was women with babies, three-month-old babies strapped to their chest. I was like, “Why would you bring that much weight with you? I left my wallet in the car.” -They looked exhausted. I’m surprised there’s not just babies left up there and rangers have to come down, “Whose baby is this?” “That’s ours. We were gonna let it grow up and come down on its own.”

So, we get our picture, and we come back down, and we’re driving back. And on the way back, since my buddy was driving, he did not see the dead horse, you know? And I’m like, “We can’t not see it.” So, it’s just one road, and I was like, “I’ll just show you where it’s at.” So we get… We’re driving, and we get to it. I was like, “It’s right here,” and I pointed, and the horse was standing up, doing unbelievable. One of the healthier horses that I’ve ever seen. So I learned that horses lay down to sleep. I did not know that. I don’t know what I thought before that day. I don’t know. That they lock their knees, that’s why they have four knees. I don’t know, that’s what I… I would have probably argued with you about it. People put signs up that say, like, “Horses lay down. Don’t call 911,” ’cause people call the police. They drive by a horse laying down in some guy’s yard, and they’re like, “Y’all guys should go, like, deal with that.” And they’re like… Some people knock on people’s door. “Hey, is your dad home? Your horse died outside. I thought you should hear it from a stranger first.” Uh…

I’m, uh… I’m married. I’m still married. -And I– Thanks, yeah. I, uh… I like to say it. You know, like I’m at the same job. Just like, “Yeah, no, I still work there. -Uh… Yeah, right out of school. Only job I applied for.” -Uh… My wife will tell me that… She always says that I don’t like the way she talks, and it’s not her voice. I like the sound of her voice. That’d be a big problem, I think, if it was like, “It’s your voice. I just hate it.” To go to couples’ therapy, and be like, “Can you hear it? Right?” -Like, it’s not– You know? It’s not fun. It’s the information that she chooses to tell me at times.

We took a trip to Florida, to Fort Lauderdale, and her and our daughter are flying from Nashville where we live, and I’m flying from Detroit. We’re meeting at Fort Lauderdale’s airport. I have to find them when they land. So I called her, ’cause I was about to take off, and I was like, “What time do you guys leave?” She goes, “Noon.” And it was 11:30, and they’re still at home. I was like, “Laura, I don’t know if you even know what an airport is. But if that plane was in our driveway, I don’t think you could make it.” She said, “That’s what time we leave for the airport. Our flight’s not till 1:30.” And I was like, “All right. All right. So, what do you think I wanted to know when I asked that? Is that what you thought the best time you could give me was a time that means nothing to nobody? What time did you go to bed last night? Just tell me that and I’ll just look up all the planes that land in Florida, and I’ll guess which one I think you’re on.” She said, “I’m sorry I don’t talk the way you want me to talk.” I’m like, “I want you to talk like a regular person, all right? Like you’ve been around people before, you know?” We didn’t talk in Florida, I’ll tell you that. Uh…

She’s good at not talking to me. She can go a long time. She could do her whole marriage career. We… Marriage fights are great, because they’re all very dumb. I would say 90 percent of them are dumb, ten percent the cops show up, but… We got in a fight, uh, once, over chocolate milk. We didn’t talk for 24 hours. What happened is, I brought chocolate milk home, and she was like, “Why did you bring it home?” And I was like, “You’re supposed to drink it after you workout.” And she was like, “That’s not true.” And I was like, “Well, there’s a commercial on TV. They probably looked into it more than you did, so… I decided to listen to them.” And she said. “That’s just the milk people pushing chocolate milk.” And I was like, “You don’t even know what that statement means. You don’t know if there’s milk people, and I think chocolate milk is doing fine. I don’t think they’re sitting on barrels of it, and they’re like, ‘We got to make up a lie. We gotta get rid of this chocolate milk!'” She went to college, all right, and I did not, but she did not study chocolate milk, when is it good and not good for you. To be fair to her, though, I do not work out. So… You know? But I was probably gonna start, and I needed to get all the stuff there.

Do you ever get in those fights? Like, you’ll be at home, you and your spouse, and you guys are not talking to each other, and… But you’re in the house together, no kids, the house is quiet, and you just stay on opposite ends, and then you pass each other in the hallway. That’s the funniest part, ’cause you don’t live in a mansion. You have one hallway. And you just didn’t time it out right, and you just have to walk by each other like strangers. You’re like, “Oh, excuse me. Sorry. Yeah, no, go ahead.” She’ll be watching TV, I’m like, “Ma’am, are you watching this? I couldn’t tell, I was going to change it if you weren’t watching it.”

It’s the silent treatment. The silent treatment is a very common thing. Everybody knows what it is. Uh, I think women are just born knowing it. I don’t think you’re taught it. I don’t think it’s like, “My mom did it, and her mom…” It’s an instinct that’s in us all, that we all just know. And here’s what made me, uh, think of that. I re-watched the movie Sixth Sense, and I’m not trying to do a six-inch joke. This is a 20-year-old movie. I also have to spoil it, but it’s… I mean, it’s 20 years old. So, if… If you don’t know by now, I don’t know what to tell you, you know? And don’t be like, “We were gonna watch it tonight. Uh… We were gonna go to Blockbuster on the way home, and… -What?” There’s… But… So he’s… You know, he’s dead the whole time, and I don’t know. I mean, that’s… If you haven’t seen it, that’s a pretty big part of it, but… for those that have, think about when you watched it. When we saw this movie for the first time, none of us knew he was dead. That was the biggest surprise we’ve ever seen in our life. You know? We just thought his wife wasn’t talking to him for, like, a year. That made more sense to us than him possibly being dead. And when I watched it, I was like, “What, do they show him dying?” Yeah, that guy shoots him with a gun. That’s how the movie starts. That’s how obvious. They’re like, “Hey, he’s dead.” And we still watched it for two hours, just like, “I know what this guy’s going through, you know? This is… This is a movie about marriage and how hard marriage is. Yeah. Even if you get shot, it’s your fault.”

On a, uh… On a sadder note, of sorts, we, uh… We had to put our dog down recently. And, uh, it’s a tough thing to do. You know? There was… Nothing was wrong with her. I’m just really busy right now, and… She was… No, she was very sick. That was a joke. All right? She was… That was a joke, and she would have loved that joke, so don’t you worry about it. That’s the type of humor she had. She was a rescue. It’s not your labradoodle humor, all right? It’s a little darker. She, uh… She was a wonderful dog. We loved her. And, uh, her name was Annie. And the reason we got her was my sister worked at a vet, and people do put dogs down for no reason. So, if someone brought a dog in that was fine, they just didn’t want it, uh, my sister couldn’t do it. So she would walk the dog back and then just steal the dog. Like, I don’t know the laws on all that, but… I’m sure now people are finding out their dog is still alive right now, like, they’re like… So, uh, we got Annie. Annie was getting put down. She was a hunting dog, and she was terrible at it. And she was bred to be a hunting dog, and she was just like a misfit toy that just couldn’t, didn’t do it. She got shot once, and that’s ’cause the guy, like… He would be, like, doing target practice, and then she’d just walk in front of the targets. He would hit her, and he was like, “What are you doing?” And she was like, “What are you doing?” She had, uh, no awareness about her, like the senses that dogs have. We had turkeys in our backyard once, and I let her out to go chase these turkeys. You know, retired hunting dog. I figured, “That’s fun.” And… we have a very normal backyard. It’s not Yellowstone Park. You can see all of it at all times. I, like, push her out, and she just pees and then comes back in the house. Never sees the turkeys. I’m looking at her like, “You didn’t feel anything? Nothing was going… Like, I sensed it as a human on the couch. I felt there was turkeys outside. You wanna take just one lap around, see if…”

The guy used her a lot for duck hunting. So he would shoot a duck, she was supposed to run and go get it, and then bring it back. So what I like to picture is he shoots the duck, she runs out, comes back, no duck. She’s like, “I don’t even know what we’re doing, all right? I did not… A million things flew in the air when you shot that gun, and I’m supposed to know which one you hit?” And the guy’s just looking at her, and then she’s like, “You’re not even the guy that I came out here with. Uh… Do you see… Is there another guy out here by any chance?”

Our daughter would put birthday cone hats on her, and one time, one slipped over her eye, and it was like that for six hours. I was just trying to see how long… Like, how’s it accidentally not coming off? And she was just going about her day. Just eating, drinking, like, “Yeah, I can’t see out that eye no more, all right? That’s the cards I was dealt, and that’s okay.” Then I pulled it off her. She was like, “Ah, I didn’t know  you were a doctor.” I’m like, “I am a doctor.” Just two dumb animals talking to each other.

So she had skin cancer, and she would get all these spots on her. So we kept getting them removed, but it was really starting to take a toll on her and she was older. So we knew the day was close. And our daughter, she’s six now, but she was five at the time. This was her first pet. She was best friends with this dog. Annie was the first thing that was gonna die in her lifetime. So it’s a lot of stuff to have to explain to a kid, you know? So I was talking to my wife about like, “How are we going to tell her?” At first, I was like, “Let’s just act like we didn’t have a dog.” Five-year-olds are smart, but if we stick together on this, and she comes home from school and is like, ‘Where’s the dog?” And we’re like “What dog? Like, I don’t… I’ve never seen a dog. Don’t you think I would know if there was a dog?” But I read an article about the long-term damage of that. It’s pretty good. So… I was just honest with her. I sat her down. I said, “Look, Annie’s very sick, and she’s older, and she’s gonna die soon. This happens, so just love her as much as you can right now.” And she took it as good as a five-year-old can take it. So, the next day, I told her again. You gotta tell kids over and over again. I kept telling her. I didn’t want this to be a surprise. And then Annie surprised us by living six months longer. I mean, we were way off on when we thought she was gonna die. But I already started telling my daughter. I didn’t want to stop and then have to start it again. So I just kept it up for six months. Every day, I was like, “She’ll die. All right? She will die. She will die. I will die. Your mom’s dead.”

So… we get… Finally, the day was here, and our daughter was at school. And so my sister and my wife, they took Annie to go have to put her to sleep, and I went to go pick up our daughter to tell her. I’ve already been telling her. And so I picked her up, I told her. It was brutal. Very sad. She took it as if this was the first she’s heard about it. We get home, and my wife was like, “How was it?” Which is already a dumb… Like, “It was great. -You know? I… …loved it. Can’t wait for the next thing to die. Uh… Nice to say ‘I told you so,’ you know.” I told my wife, “It was terrible,” you know? And then my wife goes, “You didn’t tell her that I did it, did you?” I was like, “No, why would I say that?” Like, I didn’t even think about it, you know? I looked at her like, “Is that what you would have said? Would you have told her that I did it?” “Your dad’s been talking about the dog dying. Well, he’s finally had enough.”

We’ve been married, uh, 12 years, and our wedding, uh… it was not good. -There’s… This is not… This is not my fault. This was… My mom and my wife planned the wedding, and they’re both cheap. So they cut corners. If we hire someone… If we hire someone to do something to our house, I promise he does not do that job full-time. He’ll be fixing our dishwasher, and we’re like, “Do you paint houses?” He’s like, “Yeah, I probably could paint houses.” You know? His business card says, “How hard could it be? Right? Can’t be that hard.” -Uh…

We got married on Friday the 13th. Got a pretty sweet deal on that. They were wide open. We were like, “What times are available?” They go, “Every one of them, all 24. You can call us that day if you want.” Her brother married us, that was free. The photographer was just a buddy of ours that had like a… He just bought a new camera. So we’re like, “You gonna do our wedding?” Never done anything professionally, and it showed. -Uh… His camera stopped working during it, and he started taking stuff out of it, like that would be the problem, like… It’s like, “Yeah, you know what? I bet they put too much stuff inside of it when they built it. You should yank some wires. That’s not supposed to be in there like that.” Our DJ was awful, and that’s because we got my mom to hire the DJ. I don’t know who thinks to ask someone in their 50s for DJ recommendations. No one ever is like, “Mom, are you in with the local DJ scene by any chance?” She hired someone older than her. He just had CDs, and this was when computers were doing real good. He got, uh, super drunk, played the same song three times in a row. “White Wedding,” which he said was by Billy Joel. He only had one leg… seriously. And that’s fine, you know? No one cares… until he starts messing up, and then you’re like, “Why does he have one leg?”

The best wedding I’ve ever been to was my cousin’s wedding. It was a real redneck affair. It was right outside Louisville, Kentucky, where my parents are from. And my cousin’s name is Tuesday, which is a good start. The invitation said, “Tuesday’s getting married, rehearsal’s Friday, wedding’s Saturday.” People were like, “We gotta be there Monday for this wedding? How long is this wedding? It’s a week?” We get there, I’m wearing a button-down shirt, khaki pants. Nothing crazy. I’m wildly overdressed. I look like I work there. -Uh… Everybody else just has a football or basketball jersey on. My uncle, his daughter’s getting married. He has his tuxedo jacket, pants, cummerbund, bowtie. No shirt. They forgot his shirt, and instead of waiting to go get it, he was like, “Let’s do it without it.” Right? Like, that’s… And he doesn’t have a body that’s like, “That’s cool, man.” You know? He has a body that you’re like, “Put your jacket on backwards. Flip it around.” Yeah. Then you see his back, and you’re like, “Oof. All right, go back to regular way. Yeah, that’s my fault. I didn’t… How’s your back worse than your front?” Uh…

We go into the church. It’s bride and groom. Looks like it’s home and away That’s how many jerseys are in there. -Uh… Guys are drinking beers in the church. Like, that’s something I’ve never heard, a pastor be like, “Guys, can we not drink alcohol in the church?” They’re like, “Oh, I didn’t know this was the nice part of town. All right.” Uh… The reception is next door, just at a lady’s house. Like, in her backyard. Like, she doesn’t do… It isn’t like, she’s like, “And I do receptions all the time.” We were her one and only reception. So we walk over. They took a horse and buggy. The horse was the oldest horse I’ve ever seen. I thought it was a donkey. I thought they got a deal on a donkey. And the guy was like, “This horse was in the Kentucky Derby.” You’re like, “The first one that they did? Is that Secretariat’s father? How old is this horse, man? You know they lay down, right?” Uh…

So we walk. They took… They… It took them… It took them 45 minutes. They went up a driveway and back down the next driveway. They’re sweating, almost divorced by the time they get there. The reception, like I said, it’s in her backyard. They put plywood on the grass, like, side-by-side, to make a dance floor. We danced just to a radio station on a boombox. Just, like, 104.5. You would have to stop for weather and traffic updates. There was a punch bowl that was low to the ground, like on a low table. And so I was giving it to kids. I was trying to help out. And then someone was like, “That’s wine.” And I gave it to so many kids. I don’t know anything about wine, but I don’t think they tell you to pour it into a bowl. Like, that’s not… No one’s ever like, “Let’s get it out of that box, get it in a bowl. You know, let’s let it breathe a little bit.” I got a couple of nine-year-olds pretty loose that night. The end of the night comes, everybody’s drunk. Children, adults – it’s across the board. A fight breaks out, we hear someone yell, “Fight!’ And I mean, you’re sitting there, you got a 50/50 shot it’s not your side of the family. We get over there, it’s 100% our side. It’s my dad’s aunt and uncle, both rolling around on the ground. They’re in their late 70s. He wanted to leave, she did not, so they thought, “Let’s just handle it in front of everybody.” She’s on top of him. She punches him. He then punches her, and you’re like, “You can’t do that,” you know? So we gotta get them apart, and he starts fighting us, and he’s a pretty good fighter, all right? He’s punching women in public. You don’t think he’s handled some dudes in his lifetime? That ends the night, you know? You can’t be like, “Guys, let’s calm… Cut the radio back on, find a good station.” Uh… Tuesday, uh, is sadly divorced now. That did not work out. My dad’s aunt and uncle, sadly, they’re still… It did work out. They’re still together. So…

That’s our family, you know? We come… It’s a pretty wild bunch. My dad is a magician. He’s done that my entire life. He was a clown at the very beginning, just in case you’re like, “How do you get into something like that?” Uh… It goes clown, then magic. There’s two steps. You can take them in either order. I was born, he was a clown. It was never weird to me. I thought everybody’s dad was a clown. My, uh, first memory of my life is I was five years old, and I remember my mom walked me out to the front yard, and my dad pulled up… We had this old red Mazda. He’s dressed as a clown, that doesn’t even faze me. That’s just how he left. How else would he come home? And… The Easter Bunny was in the passenger seat. That’s the first thing that I remember, to my life. If you want to know how you get into comedy, that’s a pretty good nudge. And I remember it didn’t fit. The Easter Bunny head didn’t fit in the car. Like, he couldn’t sit normal, so his head was bent to the side. And I remember he had his seat belt on, and he’s just like… and I was like… I like to think about all the other people that saw that. Just in the car next to them, just at a red light, you’re like, “I didn’t even know they hung out like that.” Uh…

So, me and my dad, we do… He just does magic now, and he’s very good at what he does. He’s very funny, and we do shows together. So, uh, one time, we did this show. Magicians have conventions where they get together and they buy and sell tricks, and they give a lecture, and they do this big show. So this guy was putting one together in Des Moines, Iowa, which is the birthplace of magic, something a lot of people don’t know. And… It’s not, but that does sound like it could be. I don’t know why. I said that in Des Moines, and people are like, “I think I already knew that.” Uh… They’re like, “No. Uh, yeah, he’s… No, he’s right.” So, this guy calls me, he’s like, “Your dad’s performing this year, so we want you to come down, and we’re gonna make you appear out of a magic trick.” I’m gonna come out, I’m gonna surprise my dad, surprise the audience, everybody will go crazy, and then I’ll do five minutes of stand-up, and that will end the show. He’s like, “It’s gonna be a big deal.” I was like, “All right.” I agreed to it. I fly to Des Moines. I’m hiding. I’m in my room. No one knows I’m there. The show starts. My dad’s out performing, I climb in a box backstage. When my dad gets done performing, they ask him to stay and help, and they push the box out. The trick is, the guy has a very pretty lady assistant. She walks around, shows the box is empty, and then she climbs in. Normally, it just falls apart, and then she disappears. But now, it falls apart, and it’s me, and I pop out. And you have to come out big. I don’t know if you’ve ever appeared out of a magic trick, but… if you do, you can’t just be like, “How you doing?” -You know? Like… It’s gotta be a big grand, like, “Can you believe it?” And I look at my dad, his face is so surprised. He had no idea. But his eyes are just like, “Why would you ever do this?” And I was like, “Is this not a good time to visit you?” Uh… The audience is clapping, but they’re not going that crazy… Like, they start… The clapping starts dying down, and as I’m standing there, it’s, like, hitting me. I was like, “I don’t think they know who we are.” That guy told me they did, and they don’t. They don’t know that’s my dad, they don’t know I’m a comedian. This looks like the stupidest trick they’ve ever seen. It doesn’t make sense. They’re like, ‘A pretty girl goes in and just a whatever dude pops out? That’s your trick? Your trick is backwards, sir. It’s backwards.”

And now I gotta do comedy, but they don’t know I’m a comedian. So I get a microphone, they’re like, “He’s gonna talk to us now? How long is this trick?” When you do comedy in front of people not expecting comedy, it does not come off as comedy. It sounds like a mean speech. They were just like, “Get back in the box. Where’s the girl? Is she fine? Can we hear from her?”

I don’t think things through. That’s the message tonight, guys. There’s not… There’s no message. But if there was, it’s I don’t think things through. No. I’m a huge, uh, Vanderbilt fan. -And… Thank you, a couple of us. Yeah, the storm is coming together. Uh… I mean, I, uh… I did not go to Vanderbilt, too. Vanderbilt asked me to say that, and… I was like, “I think people know,” and they go, “We do too, but just say it.” -Uh… Vanderbilt went to their first bowl game in football in, like, 20 years, in 2008. And, uh, so we all go to it. We’re very excited. It’s at Tennessee Titans’ stadium. So, me and a bunch of buddies get together, we go tailgate, we get a cornhole, a grill. Like, we’re going… we’re going all out. And my ticket was at will-call, so I went. I was like, “I gotta get my ticket. I’ll be right back.” So I go get my ticket, and before the lady gives it to me, she ripped it, which means you have to go in. And it was, I mean, a full three hours before the game starts. I was like, “I don’t want to go in yet,” you know? And she was like, “You have to go.” And I just walked in to just an empty stadium. Sixty thousand empty seats. I go to my seat, I don’t go to a different one. I went to, like, the one I’m supposed to go to, like a loser. The players are, like, in jeans. They’re not even dressed yet. I was like, “I’m real excited for the game!” I startled them. They were like, “I didn’t know anybody was in here. Uh… Did you go to Vandy?” I was like, “You would think with how early I’m here, -but… I also think if I went to Vandy, I wouldn’t be in the situation that I’m in.” I walked to the top of the stadium and watched my friends tailgate. I just sat up at the very top. And I was like, “I’m already in, guys. Yeah, I decided to save our numbered seats.” Uh… Nothing was open. I stood in front of a concession stand, like I was waiting for an iPhone to come out. Just that gate was down, and I’m already trying to figure out what I’m gonna eat. And they came and opened it, and one side got stuck, and I helped them. I go, “I’ll get that.” So I helped them open it. They were like, “You work here?” I was like, “I’ve been here a bit longer than you have, so…”

I’m not smart. At all. No, I’m pretty… I, uh… I’m smart enough to, like, answer my six-year-old’s questions. She’s like, “Why is the sun hot?” I’m like, “‘Cause it’s on fire. That’s a stupid question.” And… I tell her that, all right, because I know that she’ll be smarter than me next year, and then just for the rest of her life. So I am really sticking it to her while I can. I know nothing about, like, adult stuff that you’re supposed to know about. Uh, global warming, that’s one that everybody yells at you about. They’re like, “You better do something.” I’m like, “I’m so tired of it. Let’s do it.” Like… I’m like, “I barely made it out of high school. I don’t really know how rain works. So why don’t… why don’t you let me figure that out, and then I’ll do global warming. But I’ve seen it rain without clouds. Where’s that water coming from? So… I’m pretty swamped with this rain stuff right now, but once I get to the bottom of that, then we’ll do global warming, and I got some pretty good ideas, you know?” We recycle, you know, and we recycle because my wife, it’s her… She gets all the credit for that. I would never recycle if I was by my… I don’t… I don’t do it if she’s not looking at me, so I would never do it if I was alone. I looked up a list of, like, “All right, what are you supposed to do for global warming, as an individual?” And it was a big, long list, but the first thing on the list was my favorite. It just said, “Just talk to your friends and family about it.” Think about your friends and family. Like, not the ones that are the good ones, that are close. Think about how… far out it goes. When you guys get together, be like, “You mind if we talk about global warming? I just thought this would be a good time to get into it.” I had a great aunt and uncle fist fight each other at a wedding. “Let me get in the middle. Any chance this fight was about global warming? Because I just would love to get that conversation rolling, you know?”

I get it. We’re supposed to… It’s supposed to… It’s for our kids’ kids, and their kids, and we wanna make sure they have a good Earth, and their environment and stuff. We don’t want ’em to have a bad Earth. And we don’t want them to be mad at us, and yell at us, but I don’t think they will, because I don’t think we get mad. I don’t ever see litter on the ground and call my grandmother, and be like, “Where do you get off,” you know? “I don’t know how you show your face anymore, all right? It’s cloudy today. Is that because you smoked on planes? Probably. Why’d you have to smoke that high? Where do you think that smoke was going?”

We did stuff as a kid. I did Earth Day as a kid. I think they still do Earth Day. And we did it. I’m from Old Hickory, and we’re a plant… Like, DuPont Plant is the… We were a plant town. So, they had a plant, and we went and planted trees in front of the DuPont Plant, and there was just black smoke coming out of this thing. And we’re just in front of it, like, “This is for Earth.” And you can’t even see us, it’s so dark. And we’re just like… “This is for the Earth and stuff, and we’re gonna breathe better.” And you’re like, “I don’t know if that’s the problem.” Uh…

I, uh… Here’s what I’m doing for, you know, my daughter’s future environment, is, uh, what I decided to do– They… They say we won’t have water. So, I put a bunch of buckets outside to collect water, and when she turns 18, and she’s like, “Do I get money?” I’m like, “Something a little better than money. Uh… I bet you’ve always wondered what those buckets were doing outside. Well, they’re all yours. And that’s for your kids, and their kids. Everybody gets a bucket of water.” No.

Look, guys. All seriousness, though… global warming, we gotta… you know, we gotta stop it. Or… more of it. I don’t really know which way we want to go, but… It can’t stay warmer. I know that. It’s gotta be one or… You know, something’s gotta happen. Something. Can’t stay where we’re at. So, go… I don’t know what direction you want me… Just go. Look, in all… Guys, in all seriousness, as… To use this as a platform for global warming, guys, I felt like, you know, I was a spokesperson for all of Earth. All right? I think… I’ll give you a message that I don’t think no one will give you, and I’m here to say that we’re doing fine. So just relax. You know, we’re in a time where everybody yells at you, and everybody’s bad. We’re doing great. All right? I did some… I looked up, I did some research. And I was like, “Let me look at the other planets. Let’s see how good they’re doing.” And… I don’t want to… I mean, it’s unbelievable. They’re nowhere right now. Uh… Some of them have too many moons. That’s how stupid they are. And… So let’s calm down. All right? We’re doing so… We’re so much farther ahead. I mean, they haven’t started, and we’re almost done. -So let’s… celebrate being first! Don’t be sore winners.

Look, in all… Guys, in all seriousness… I don’t know. No, look, the world, we’re… It’s getting very advanced. All right? I have, uh… I’ve been to a dog bakery. I’ve been to a dog bakery in my life. And this wasn’t in, you know, Beverly Hills, or, like, Miami or something. You feel like they would have that. And this was in Mt. Juliet, Tennessee. And if you don’t know where Mt. Juliet is, it’s fine, but I bet you can tell that doesn’t sound like a town you would drive through, going, “I bet they have a pretty good dog bakery here.” Uh… I went in there, and no one was in there. The lady was looking at me like, “Are you here to buy this store from me?” That was her only hope. I talked to her, she had some time on her hands, excited to talk. And, uh, she said her and her husband bought the store for their 27-year-old daughter who graduated from college with a degree, and came out of college, and said, “I want to own a dog bakery. I want to make cakes for dogs.” Which, if I asked my six-year-old what she wants to do when she grows up, I think she’ll tell me she wants to make cakes for dogs. And I’m gonna tell her that she can do whatever she wants to do, hoping she doesn’t turn 27… and go, “Let’s talk about those cakes for those dogs.” Maybe they’re usually busy. Maybe I was in there on a slow dog birthday day. I don’t know. All right? She told me everything was organic, and I was like, “That’s good. That’s what I like to hear. All right? This is for that dog that’s outside licking gum off the sidewalk right now. And if anybody deserves organic food in our house… it’s not this little girl, not gonna waste it on her. It’s for that dog that’s wandered out on the highway, ’cause it doesn’t know what cars are.” But, look, next time you guys go to Mt. Juliet for a vacation, let me tell you, look, do… do ’em a favor, go by there, all right? Swing through, you know, buy some dog cakes. Uh, and I’ll be honest with you. I’ll be upfront with you, guys. I bought a dog bakery. It’s not going that good. All right?

I… All right, we’re almost done, so don’t worry about it. Uh… And I think you can tell… I always think people are like, “He’s talking about dog bakeries. He’s about out of stuff.” Uh… Yeah, where were we? Where is this going? I, uh… uh… First, thank you. I can’t thank you enough for coming out tonight. It means the world, and, uh… I’ve been making… This is how I’ve been closing shows on the road, and I want to close my special with it. Uh… I’m assuming that people saw the Netflix, The Standups, the little half-hour… -…that I did. Thank you. Thank you for watching it. Thank you for coming out. Uh, so some stuff’s happened since that special, and I want to give you some updates to a couple of stories I told on that special. And if you haven’t seen it, I’ll walk you through it. Don’t, you know, think you’re gonna be lost, and I think you’ve seen what I’ve talked about. I bet you’re like, “I bet we’ll catch up quick.” So, just…

So the first update is about the Cape Fear Serpentarium. And… if you… if you haven’t seen it, you could… you could pause it right now and go watch it, but you might be like, “I can’t handle really much more of you.” But… If not, I’m gonna walk you through it. Uh… Or maybe just a reminder. But a very quick, unfunny version is I went to Wilmington, North Carolina to a guy’s house, and he had a bunch of snakes, lizards, and a crocodile. When I was there, a crocodile got out and a lady wrote a TripAdvisor review about it. That’s the very quick, unfunny version. If you haven’t seen it, don’t think that’s all it takes to get a Netflix special. Uh… So the first thing is the lady that wrote the TripAdvisor review messaged me after the special came out. And if you write a review on TripAdvisor, you can see how many people look at it, and it jumped 50,000 views the day the special came out. So… But she did not know this for a couple of days, so, I mean, she was like, “I’m crushing it as a reviewer. All right? -I swear… You better… I’ll bring your place… You better treat me right, Applebee’s. I’ll bring this whole place down!”

The next update to it is the, uh… So that… So Cape Fear Serpentarium has closed down. – Aww. -And… I know, you guys had a chance to go to it. Uh, it is closed. So the guy that owned it, his name is Dean Ripa. I do not know this guy. He was there that day. Uh, I saw him that day. I don’t know him. I mean, this place will be a part of my life for the rest of my life, and I was there for one day. But… So he was a very original guy, he was his own guy. And, uh, there’s… You can see there’s great stuff on him. There’s another thing on Netflix called 72 Deadliest Animals, they interview him in that. There’s also great YouTube clips where, like, he would bring, like, venomous snakes to local Wilmington news channels, and he would barely pay attention to these snakes. He would, like, have it on the table and he’s not even looking. They’re like, “Could you grab it maybe more?” And he’s like, “What’s that?” They’re like, “We didn’t ask you to bring that in, by the way.” And he’s going, “You need me to leave it in the car? What’d you want me…” I remember when I was there that day. There was cages empty. You’re like, “Is that supposed to be empty?” He’s like, “We’re cleaning that. If you see something, tell us, but I’m pretty sure… I’m pretty sure we’re cleaning that one.” So the main reason it closed is, uh… sadly to announce, that guy, he has, uh, died. Uh, he passed away. And it’s pretty… pretty wild stuff. Uh… So, how he died, a little different than most. And… I will just tell you, uh… You know, and I already know what you’re thinking in your head, and his wife shot him. So, yeah, you weren’t thinking that, I can tell you that. It’s unbelievable. I mean… The odds of this are definitely higher than if you don’t own a snake museum, but there’s still… It’s insane. So… This all happened after we taped that last The Standups, and so, uh, I would let… I was telling an audience to guess, like, how he died. And so I’m just gonna tell you the guesses where people, you know, “A snake got him,” good guess. “Crocodile ate him,” solid guess. Someone yelled “cancer” once, and I was like, “What?” Like, I don’t… I don’t know if I’d present it like this if I knew the answer was “cancer.” “Let’s go around the room, everybody. Guess how he died. Cancer? That guy got it. That was a good guess.” You know? One guy guessed it once, in Huntsville, Alabama. And it was an older gentleman, he was sitting up front, and, uh, he just goes, “Did his wife shoot him? You know when someone guesses your guess, and you’re like, “You’re the worst, man.” I was like, “Did you look it up?” And he had a flip phone on his table. He wasn’t looking stuff up. And I was like, “Why would you ever guess that?” He was like, “Because my wife shot me.” And I was like, “Oof. Well, that’s fair.” I bet he guesses that with every death he hears, like, I mean, just, “Frank died.” “Did his wife shoot him?” “No, and I’m not gonna tell you anymore if you keep guessing that, all right? That’s the last one.”

The final update. That’s what this next… The special after this is gonna be just more… just all updates. And… it’ll be something you don’t know, like, “Remember when my car didn’t start?” You’re like, “I don’t… Who is this update for? Uh…” I like to, uh… I like to drink iced coffee with milk, and… Thank you. Uh, I told a story. I went into a Starbucks inside a Target. I ordered, uh, iced coffee with milk, and the guy gave me milk with ice in it. I did not want milk with ice. I wanted iced coffee with milk, and he heard milk with ice. I have learned that a lot of people do drink milk with ice. People send me pictures all the time… of adults just drinking milk with ice. And they stay in the Starbucks. They don’t even, like, run to their car, like, “This is so embarrassing. I gotta stop…” Like, they… -…do it openly. My wife puts, uh, ice in our daughter’s milk, and I was like, “Oh, you do that because of my joke?” And she’s… she’s not a big fan of my comedy, so she was like, “I haven’t seen it.” I was like, “We have Netflix, you know.” She was like, “I don’t think we do,” I was like, “I know we do.” And she was like, “I’m just so busy right now.” Uh…

So, all of it’s true, except my wife, my wife does like my comedy. She’s very nice to me, but, uh… All the rest is true. And the truth of it, too, is it’s happened to me two times. Twice, and let me tell you, one time is a lot of times. The second time, you start looking at yourself. You start thinking, “What am I doing? I don’t know if I know how to order.” I would say… I looked at… I ordered it in a mirror, just to see what it looked like. Like, “Iced coffee with milk.” I was just trying to see what they would see. I thought it was happening… There was a third time I thought it was happening. I was at a Starbucks at an airport, and she put the drink down, I was like, “They’re doing this on purpose.” I was convinced that they’re just calling each other, like, “Let’s drive this guy crazy.” But she just put too much, uh, milk into it. It was an honest mistake. And she told me, ’cause she set the drink down, and we’re both just staring at it. And she just goes… “That feels like a lot of milk, doesn’t it?” I was like, “Not as much as usual, but it does feel…”

So, I have, uh… I’ve changed my drink up… since then, and I honestly did it because I don’t think I say “milk” good. I was having this one problem, and I was like, “I’m not gonna say milk.” So, now I drink iced coffee with cream. That’s all I changed it to. I’m tired of saying milk. All they kept giving me was milk with ice. I was like, “I’m gonna say cream, they can’t do cream with ice. That’s against the law.” So… I’ll get rid of the one problem that I have. And I’ve only been drinking coffee for maybe four years. Not very long. I only order this one little drink. I get very nervous when I order coffee, ’cause it’s a whole world, and I don’t know the world, you know. They always ask you a bunch of stuff. They’re like, “What kind of cream? I’m like, “Just please do it. -Just do it.” You know? Sometimes they’re like, “Heavy cream or half-and-half?” I’ll go, “I’m sorry, I’m not taking questions right now, so… if you could just do whatever you think it is, and if it’s wrong, I won’t even tell you. How about that? I will walk out of here as if that’s exactly what I ordered. I will go outside, I will throw it away, and go try again at a different Starbucks.” That’s how I’ll handle the entire… That’s why they have so many Starbucks, so you can just keep going. -Someone’s got to get it. If I have to get my wife’s coffee, she has to text me what she wants, ’cause I don’t know how to pronounce, like, most of the words there. So I just show them the phone. I go, “She wants this.” They’re like, “Does she want it sweetened?” I’m like, “Guess we have to call her now, don’t we?” And… I make them talk to her. I go, “Talk to a stranger’s wife. Say what you said to me.” Have you ever been to a Starbucks, like, inside? Like, you go inside, and there’s, like, a big, long line, and you’ll be waiting, and they try to take your order before you’re even to the front. You’ll be in the back, They’re like,” What you want?” You’re like, “I would like to wait till I get right in front of you. Yeah, you see how everybody looked at me when you said that? I didn’t care for that, so… How about we do it like a regular, normal business, you know, and you let me do it right in front of you? Starbucks is, like, waving cars down on the street, like, “We’re trying to get your order started in case you ever come here one day.”

Uh… So I was in, uh, San Francisco, and I bet there’s a bunch of fun coffee places, and I live in my dumb world that just… I just want this one little drink. So I go into a Starbucks, and I get in the front, and I was like, “Uh, I’ll take an iced coffee with cream.” She goes, “With cream?” I go, “With cream.” She goes, “Iced coffee with cream?” I go, “Iced coffee with cream.” She goes, “With cream?” I go, “With cream.” And she said it one more time, “So, iced coffee with cream?” And that point I should have said, “What’s going on right now? Where are you at in your head? Because I… I feel like we’re in two different places.” But I was nervous, and there was people behind me, and I was like, “Cream or no cream, honestly. I’ll give you $20 if you let me leave right now. I cannot… This is the most I can talk about this. I don’t even know what’s happening anymore.” So I paid, I go stand in line, where you gotta wait for your drink. There’s, like, five of us waiting for our drinks. So she puts the iced coffee up there first. No cream, and I was like, “Whatever.” I’ll just do it myself, you know? Like, I don’t like doing it myself, but I was like, “All right, I’ll just do it.” So, before I could get it, she’s walked back with a can of whipped cream, and she’s shaking it. And I’m just looking at it, like, thinking that’s someone else’s. I’m like, “Someone’s getting whipped cream. That’s fun. One of you guys are getting whipped cream?” And I look down, and she starts spraying the whipped cream on top of my iced coffee. She just yells out, “Iced coffee, whipped cream!” Yells it out. The other four people, they turn their back. Like, they don’t want you to accidentally think that’s what they ordered. And I’m just left alone. Like, “That’s what you thought I said over there? You don’t think I would have said ‘iced coffee with whipped cream’? You think I’m just some nut job?” Like, “I’ve had too many problems in this Starbucks, so I’m gonna use the words that I want and no other words: Iced coffee, whipped cream, cup.” And they didn’t have a top for it. So whipped cream, it doesn’t sink and become less embarrassing. It moves. It’s like a buoy in an ocean that everybody sees. I’m walking through the crowd like, “This is my favorite drink. I don’t know if you guys drink this at all. Does anybody… Nobody does this? I’m surprised.” And I walked outside and threw it away and tried again at a different Starbucks.

All right. Thank you, guys. I can’t thank you enough. You are unbelievable. Thank you so much for coming out. You were, uh, really, you’re awesome.

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Rory Scovel: The Charleston Special (2015)

Rory Scovel: The Charleston Special (2015) | Transcript

Rory Scovel’s first hourlong stand-up special, directed by Scott Moran and filmed at the Woolfe Street Playhouse in Charleston, SC. The special was produced entirely, from building the set to hanging lights, by Rory and a crew of his closest friends.

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