[tuning]
[gentle Hawaiian music playing over radio]
[revving]
[announcer] Ladies and gentlemen, make some noise for Ronny Chieng!
[crowd cheering]
[upbeat music playing]
[crowd continues cheering]
[music fades]
Thank you. Thank you, Hawaii! I’m turning 38, so I’m harvesting my wife’s eggs this year. I’m harvesting my wife’s eggs so that we can make embryos, so we can freeze the embryos, so that we do not have to have kids right now because kids are what you have when you’ve given up on your own hopes and dreams.
[crowd laughing]
I’m still trying here! I look at my friends who are my age who have kids, and they all look like shit. [crowd laughing] It’s gotten to the point where I can’t even take a photo with them and post it on my main grid because it messes up the aesthetics of my Instagram too much. With their fucking haggard faces. Just drooping, wrinkly crow’s-feet-embedded heads. Receding hairlines. Just withering, graying hair coming out in clumps. Because of their children. Like, I did a show, and someone I went to high school with in Singapore came to the show, and after the show, I met up with them, and they brought another person with them, and I was like, “Oh, is this other person your mom?” “Thank you so much for bringing your mother to my show.” And that other person was also someone I went to high school with. [crowd laughing] That’s how fucking ugly…
[crowd laughing]
…these people have become because of their children. Just unrecognizable. So I’m trying to use money and science to push the curve back a little bit. And, um, first step of harvesting my wife’s eggs is, I have to inject my wife twice a day for two weeks. So, I have to inject my wife. I am the one injecting my wife twice a day for two weeks. Zero medical training. I was given no medical training whatsoever. The government lets you do this. The… The doctor asked me to do it. The doctor was like, “Hey, have you ever held a needle before?” “No? Perfect, here, take this, and inject your wife in the middle of her body, like Nicolas Cage in The Rock.”
[crowd laughing]
“Twice a day for two weeks with chemicals that we mail to you.” “Mystery chemicals that we send to your house in unmarked brown boxes.” “Just trust us that it’s the right thing that you’re injecting into the person you love the most.” Internet chemicals that show up… It comes in a powder! I have to make it into a liquid, you understand? It’s a meth lab in my kitchen as I’m mixing… the comp… I’m sweating the whole time ’cause I’m scared I’ll fuck up the measurements and kill my wife with these powerful pharmaceuticals that you dissolve it in distilled water completely, then you have to, like… The air bubbles are fucking up the micro millimeter measurements. And then you have to put it in the syringe. Then you have to flick the needle with a positive attitude like you know what you’re doing.
[crowd laughing]
[scattered applause]
I don’t know what I’m doing! I saw someone do this on Doogie Howser.
[crowd laughing]
[crowd whooping]
I don’t even know the angle to put it into her. [chuckling] Like, it looks so painful going in, like… I love my wife so much I can’t even bear to watch her in pain. I couldn’t even bear to watch the needle go into her. I had to inject my wife like this. I had to, like, cover my eyes, and, like, backhand it…
[crowd laughing]
…into her like Kurosawa. [imitates sword slash] “Did I get the middle of your body?” “No?” “Okay, just walk into the needle!” [crowd laughing] “I’m supposed to do all the work here? Meet me halfway.” And, uh, the doctor said, “If you do everything right, if you… measure correctly, you inject at the right times, they scan, like, this part of her body, you know, that Chicago Bulls logo.
Right? And they were like…
[crowd laughing] …”If you do everything right, based on what we can tell, you should expect 15 eggs.” [inhales] And my wife ended up getting 26.
[scattered whooping and applause]
Yeah. Always a… [applause] Yeah, always like a late, half-hearted response to… [crowd laughing] Usually, the women in the crowd are like, “Whoo, yeah.” All the men in the crowd are always like… [crowd laughing] “Is that a good number?” “Is 26 a good number of eggs?” “How many eggs equal one bebe?” “Is it four eggs is one bebe?” “So 26 eggs is six and a half bebes if you squish it together…” Let me put this in a language that men can understand, okay? Twenty-six eggs from one vagina, in one cycle, is MVP numbers.
[crowd laughing]
Twenty-six eggs is like, if Magic Johnson averaged the triple-double and killed his own AIDS.
[crowd laughing]
Okay? That’s the level of medical miracle that’s happening in whatever this part of my wife’s body, that horn of the bull that, like, curls into itself. The doctor, like, scraped out 26 eggs out of my wife’s vagina, like salmon roe. Just scooping out. Just dripping out, and then you put it in some nigiri, right? And then you eat it. That’s how babies are made. You gotta Salt Bae the eggs onto the ikura, and then you eat it. So, uh, we’re trying to make embryos. So, eggs, that’s just half the equation. I don’t know if you know how embryos are made, but eggs, that’s just half of it. She did her part admirably. So now I have to contribute my half of the embryo equation. So I’m sitting in the doctor’s office. [exhales] Like a wet pigeon, all right? And the doctor comes over. And the doctor’s a woman because of course she is. She’s like, “Good morning, Mr. Chieng.” “So, um, when’s the last time you ejaculated?” My wife is right here, and she’s like, “Yeah, when is the last time you ejaculated?”
[crowd laughing]
“We would all like to know.” It’s the one time in life where you’re not allowed to lie about jerking off. It’s when a medical professional is asking you a direct question. And it’s for reproduction. It’s for the intended purpose, so you gotta tell the truth. So I’m like, “Whatever, I’ll tell the truth.” “Uh, let me check my calendar, uh…”
[crowd laughing]
“I guess the last time I ejaculated was, um…” “Let me see… Uh, yesterday, around 3:00 p.m.”
[crowd laughing]
And my wife is like, “Yesterday… I was with you all day.”
[crowd laughing]
And I was like, “Yeah, but remember when you took out the trash?”
[crowd laughing]
[crowd cheering]
Because I also put up MVP numbers. Against a shot clock. And heavy defensive pressure. But I was thinking of you the whole time. It’s really hot the way you carried out that dripping garbage bag full of fish sauce or whatever Vietnamese people eat. My wife is Vietnamese. I’ve no idea what the fuck she eats. Nước mắm. [chuckles] And I went into the room in the hospital you go to jerk off. It’s the medical jerking-off room. Every hospital has a medical jerking-off room. Okay? It’s nondescript, not a lot of signage. Smaller than I think it should be. Lots of crinkly tracing paper under your butt. And I’m sitting in a medical jerking-off room. By myself. And there’s grown men outside the door, waiting for me to finish…
[crowd laughing]
…so they, too, can use the medical jerking-off room that we are sharing like a WeWork.
[crowd laughing]
And I’m in a medical jerking-off room by myself. And… I couldn’t go! Okay? Sorry! Sorry for not being a pervert who can just jerk off in hospitals on demand. I’m sorry! Sorry for not being a sex offender who can just jerk off as people are dying above me and below me! Sorry! Sorry the thought of someone getting defibrillated back into life in the adjoining operating theaters, as they code to death painfully, and the families crying in the waiting room wasn’t turning me on.
[crowd laughing]
So I couldn’t go. I couldn’t go. So I just call 911, right? I’m like… [chuckles]
[crowd laughing]
I’m like, “These people are forcing me to medically ejaculate in a completely sterile room.” Uh, I call the doctor back in, and I’m like, “Doc, I can’t go.” “Okay? I can’t medically ejaculate under these circumstances.” “The vibes are off.” “Let me go home. Let me go home to medically ejaculate. Can I do that?” And the doctor’s like, “Yeah, you can go home, but, you know, as soon as it comes out of your body, it expires quicker than avocados in Hawaii, alright?”
“You’ve got…”
[crowd laughing]
“You have, like, a 45-minute window before there’s like an exponential decreasing probability of…” [gibberish] I’m like, “Okay, fine.” “I’ll go home, I’ll medically ejaculate, I’ll come back in 45 minutes, no problem.” So I go home, open the front door, ejaculate immediately. Alright? This is…
[crowd laughing]
Alright? This is home court advantage. I know where everything is, I know what’s behind me. I look at the dripping garbage bag. [crowd laughing] It’s like a Pavlovian response at this point. Um… I ejaculate into a cup. Okay? It’s a cup that they gave me. It’s not a fucking coffee mug from my kitchen.
[crowd laughing]
That says, “World’s Best Dad” on it. [chuckles] It’s the cup that they use… doctors give you to test your pee for drugs. It’s got a really tight cap, right? So, I ejaculate into the cup. It keeps overflowing, so I gotta keep, like, pouring it out.
[crowd laughing]
Just overwhelming amounts.
[crowd laughing]
It’s like Ghostbusters 2 up in here.
[crowd laughing]
[chuckling] I fill it to the brim, and then I scrape off the top, and then I… And then I seal the cap as tight as I can, right? Get it really nice and tight. And then I… I put it inside my T-shirt, next to my skin, under my armpit. Nice and snug. Because the doctor told me to do that. Because apparently, like the Titanic, your body heat will keep your people alive. And then I run downstairs, and I jump into a New York City taxi, and I’m like, “Take me to Langone Hospital, please. Hurry up.” The taxi driver is like, “What the fuck are you doing with your hand?” “Are you okay?” I’m like, “Oh, yeah, no, I’m fine.” “No, it’s not me. It’s my… my wife. She’s wait… A person… It’s my jizz.”
[crowd laughing]
And New York City taxis have seen much worse. So, the taxi driver was like, “Oh, okay, cool.” “Thank you for using a cup.” [crowd laughing] “Unlike the last two dudes who were back there.” Just raw dogging at the JFK, you know what I’m saying? And, uh, we get to the… we get to the hospital, right? I open the taxi door. I run into the hospital. And because it’s New York City, someone on the sidewalk is like, “Hey, yo! Hey, yo!” “Were you that guy in Shang-Chi?”
[crowd laughing]
“Am I… Yes, I was a minor character in the Marvel movie Shang-Chi, not the main guy.” And the guy’s like, “Yo! Yo! Can I get a photo with you?” And I’m like, “Okay, sure.”
[crowd laughing]
So, we take a photo like this. So, someone on the internet has a photo of me and this stranger. And I’m doing this. Like Napoleon. If you ever come across this photo, just know I am holding my own jizz.
[crowd laughing]
So feel free to tag it.
[crowd laughing]
He was very grateful. He was like, “Aw, thanks so much, man.” And I was like, “No problem, man.” I shake his hand, right?
[crowd laughing]
Because I love meeting my fans. And I run into the hospital, right? Already hitting the 45-minute mark. End of the fourth quarter. There’s no time left on the clock. So I just take my jizz and I just throw a buzzer-beater. Right? The doctor, like, catches my jizz, like…
[crowd laughing]
Like Odell Beckham. She just, like, one hand, grabs it, and, like, in the same motion, without even putting it down, she, like, alley-oops my jizz into my wife’s eggs, right? Just takes it, and she goes, “Boom, shaka-laka!” And, uh, my sperm goes into my wife’s eggs, and then nobody knows what happens when sperm goes into the egg. Nobody knows. It’s a mystery. It’s a mystery of the universe. Nobody knows. When sperm goes into the egg, it’s unknowable. Ooh, it’s… It’s like the event horizon on a black hole. No one can know what happens when sperm goes into the egg. Sometimes, nothing happens. When sperm goes into the egg, sometimes, it becomes a bubble tea.
[crowd laughing]
Nobody knows where bubble tea comes from. It’s “tapioca.” The sperm goes into the egg, and then you shake it, and you go to Vegas, you throw it on the crap table… And if you’re lucky, if you get a good dice roll, right? It becomes a blastocyst. That’s what we call future humans, blastocysts. It becomes embryos. The doctor, she’ll take all the embryos and she’ll look at them under the microscope, and she’ll grade the embryos. Like cocaine.
[crowd laughing]
She’ll be like, “Ooh, yeah, these ones? These are A-grade embryos right here.” [snorting]
[crowd laughing]
“These ones, these are… these are B-grade embryos, so… so I don’t know.” [crowd laughing] “These… These ones? These are C-grade embryos…” [grumbles] “Oh, and these ones?” “Yeah, these… these are… These are D-grade embryos.” “Yeah, these… These will storm the Capitol someday.” Alright? So…
[crowd laughing]
You don’t want that. And then… [crowd cheering] And then you have to, like, draft pick your kids based on scouting reports and analytics. And you don’t know. You’re just projecting data. You just hope you’re not throwing away a Tom Brady in the 12th round that’s going to overcome the odds and become the greatest of all time because you can’t measure the human spirit. And, uh, we all like to think we’re good people in this room, but we’re all picking the A-grade embryos, okay? No one here is not picking your A-grade embryos if given a choice. Even if you were a B-grade embryo.
[crowd laughing]
You would still pick your A-grade embryos. Because you’ll be like, “I know what it’s like.” “I’m not putting my kids through this B-grade human existence, with sweaty palms and sciatica.” [crowd laughing] “Give me the A-grade shit. Give me the best we could do.” “Give my kid a fighting chance.” And it got me thinking about the future a little bit because I never wanted kids. I never thought I would have kids. The only thing I ever wanted to do my whole life was this. Stand-up comedy in America.
[crowd cheering]
It’s the best. Look at this. It’s the best. You are cheering because you know this is way better than having kids.
[crowd laughing]
[crowd whooping]
So much more fun and lucrative. Well, the blastocysts are real now. There’s eight of them waiting for me in the cloud. Um… 33% chance of successful implantation with grade-A embryos. So, I guess that makes me a mass murderer in Alabama. It got me thinking about the future. What kind of parent am I gonna be? Am I gonna be the same kind of parent my parents were, or am I gonna be better than my parents were? Be more emotionally supportive or whatever the fuck you’re supposed to be now, and… Thinking about it, turns out I’m gonna be just as bad as my parents were. I can… I can feel it. I can feel it inside me. I can feel the… I can feel the Chinese inside me. I can just feel that high expectation, just low tolerance for excuses. It’s in here. It’s right in here. It’s like the default app. You know, you can’t delete the calculator app. There’s no “X.” When you shake it, there’s no “X.” You can move it off the home screen, but it’s still in the OS, embedded.
[crowd laughing]
In the operating system, I can feel the Chinese. If my blastocyst was real, if it entered this reality, and it turned to be the cutest blastocyst ever. “Oh my God, look at this blastocyst.” “Everybody, look. Look at how beautiful this blastocyst is.” “I love you so much, blastocyst.” “I love you much more than I thought I would.” [kisses] And your blastocyst is hugging you back, right, they’re like… [in child’s voice] “I love you too, Daddy.” “Daddy, Daddy.” “When I grow up, I want to be a stand-up comedian.” “Just like you.”
[crowd laughing]
I just feel the Chinese coming on, right?
I just…
[crowd laughing]
You take your glasses off like Hitler in the bunker.
[crowd laughing]
“Stand-up comedy? Are you out of your fucking mind?!” [crowd laughing] “That’s not even a real job!” “What do you think is gonna happen?” “Just gonna run around America and tell jokes to strangers who don’t give a fuck about your mental health?” “And even if you do somehow manage to overcome the odds, and make it to even a semi-professional level as a stand-up comedian, do you think there’s any chance in hell you’ll be funnier than me?!”
[crowd laughing]
[applause]
[crowd cheering]
“Dad is a borderline arena act in some markets!” “Have you seen my IMDb page?” “I’m in everything! I will fucking crush your career!” Osoto gari! “Your mother and I just spent a fortune to make an A-grade blastocyst for them to become a B-grade comedian.” “I will never watch anything you do.” “Go to law school!”
[crowd laughing]
[crowd cheering]
Is what my father said to me.
[crowd laughing]
I do think it’s tough for straight men in 2024 to sincerely look up self-improvement on the internet without five weeks later storming the Capitol, okay? That men’s self-help YouTube algorithm is very unkind to straight men right now. Okay? I’m not saying it’s the biggest problem in the world. Clearly. But it is a problem, okay? Because men were genetically predisposed to seek self-improvement. Okay? We’re trying to be better people every day. Believe it or not, women.
[crowd laughing]
Once we hit a certain age, okay? Usually we die before then. Through suicide or environmental factors. BMX biking, dietary choices… But if you can live long enough as a man, you hit this age where suddenly you become very introspective, okay? You start seeking guidance from outside sources. You start looking at watches. Like… Like every man in this room has or will at some point. We’ve all been there. Guys, we’ve all done this. We’ve all looked in the mirror at some point in our lives. And we’ve been like, “What a fucking piece of shit.”
[crowd laughing]
“I fucking hate this loser.” “Look at this loser.” “Fuck this loser. I hate this person.” “I need to be a better person.” “Let me start by getting fit.”
[crowd laughing]
[woman screams] “Let me work on my health.” “That seems like a logical place to start my journey.” “Let me control what I can control in here.” So what do you do as a man? You go on YouTube, right? You look up how to lift weights. Right? You press “Enter.” You click on the first video. It’s some guy doing kettlebell swings, right? He’ll teach you how to lock your core so you don’t break your fucking spine. And then you do that for two days.
You feel pretty good about yourself.
[man] Whoo! Right? And on the third day, the same YouTube channel has a new video notification alert, The men are like, “What’s this new video from kettlebell-swinging guy?” “What could he be doing in his new video?” In the video, the kettlebell-swinging guy, he’s doing the new kettlebell exercise. “The lawnmower.” He’s doing that. And then, like 30 seconds into the video, he just, suddenly, just stops. And he looks really sad. And he puts the kettlebell down. And he looks straight into the camera. And he’s like, “Yo, guys, just real talk for a second, all right?” [sniffles] “Kettlebells are great, but I just want you guys to know that a healthy body starts with a healthy mind.”
[crowd laughing]
And all the men watching this are like, “Yeah.” [sniffles] “Yeah, that makes sense.” “That feels right, in here.” “Tell me more, kettlebell-swinging guy.”
[crowd laughing]
“What other advice do you have for all areas of my life?” “Including my relationships and financial investments.” “Please give me guidance, kettlebell-swinging guy.” So what do you do? You watch his next video on autoplay. Then you watch his next video. Here comes the YouTube algorithm with a suggested video. And here comes another suggested video. And a week later, Jordan Peterson is telling you that women use makeup to control men.
[crowd laughing]
Five weeks later, you’re storming the Capitol dressed like a buffalo.
[crowd laughing]
[applause]
[crowd cheering]
That’s a very realistic sequence of events, by the way. That’s not even an exaggerated timeline. Every man in this room has lost a buddy to the algorithm. We all know someone who lost their fucking mind on that men’s self-help, Andrew Tate masculinity, YouTube self-help algorithm. If you don’t know anyone who lost their mind… [crowd laughing] …you’re the one who lost their mind. You’re currently in an echo chamber of assholes. ‘Cause real friends tell you when you’re losing your mind. It’s very tragic. All these men who are trying to be better people, and they’re seeking guidance. But that YouTube feedback algorithm loop just leads them to be the worst version of themselves. There’s tragedy in that. Like all those people. They were just trying to lift weights.
[crowd laughing]
They weren’t trying to cause an insurrection. They didn’t even know what that word meant. They were just trying to do this. They’re trying to do this. They didn’t know what angle their forearm was supposed to be vis-à-vis their torso, right? Is it 90 degrees or 45 degrees? Like, is that a different exercise or is that the same reps when you…? They Googled it one time, and then, five weeks later, you’re taking a shit on Nancy Pelosi’s desk.
[crowd laughing]
And the US Marshals are garnishing your wages. Because you take one wrong turn, and life moves pretty quick! I’m not saying, as a man, don’t take responsibility for your own actions. Okay? I’m just saying that YouTube algorithm is very alluring to straight guys. It… It sucks men in in a way that I don’t think women understand. It really preys on that men’s need to seek guidance from somewhere. It’s very hard to resist. It just draws… draws you in. That’s why fucking Mark Zuckerberg is trying to MMA fight Elon Musk right now.
[crowd laughing]
That guy fell for his own algorithm. Do you understand? Mark Zuckerberg was just some fucking nerd. And for, like, 20 years now, he’s just been looking at our data, right? Jerking off every single day. Just looking at our data, jerking off. Money piling up. Billions of dollars. Data. Jerking off. Money, money, jerking off, data. For 20 years, that loop. And who knew after two decades of that, one day, he just looked at so much data, he was like, “Oh shit, oh shit.” He fell into it. Now he’s trying to MMA-fight Elon Musk. That guy jerked off and came on his own face.
[crowd laughing]
Like, it’s out of control. Zuckerberg is a billionaire who has every material need you could want in this reality. And he invented that shit, and he still fell for it. What hope does the average man in America have? Just walking… Just waddling down the street looking… looking for a taco on his phone. He’s gonna get sucked into his phone. He has no chance. That fucking guy has no chance. Because even the good guys in this room… we’re all, like, on a razor’s edge to being a piece of shit, okay?
[crowd laughing]
That margin between a good guy and a piece of shit is razor-thin. I gotta tell you. If you have the means, every day is just a battle to stay on that nice edge. And you know what? An Instagram post could push it either way! [crowd laughing] Okay? It depends on the post. Was it cute animals or was it boobs?
[crowd laughing]
That’s gonna determine your integrity for the next six hours. I do think, as a society, we need to, uh, do a better job of identifying, like, when we have a disagreement with someone who’s genuinely trying to have a good-faith discussion to reach higher understanding, and who’s just talking shit. We are spending too much time on the people who are just talking shit, and we’re not spending enough time on the people who are genuinely trying to have difficult conversations about difficult topics. Like, for example, me, right now,
I’m just talking shit, okay?
[crowd laughing]
This is one-way shit-talking. I don’t care about any of your opinions. Do not send me any of them. I do not care. You paid for me. I didn’t pay a cent for any of you, okay?
[crowd laughing]
[crowd cheering]
Free market capitalism has determined the direction of this shit-talking session. If you don’t like it, take it out on Adam Smith. But if I was having a conversation with someone I disagree with, in good faith, I would probably start that conversation with what we do agree with. That’d be a logical place to start a difficult conversation. For example, MAGA. Make America Great Again. They have a point. America’s not doing so great right now. Right? Our kids’ math scores are down.
[crowd laughing]
Our children’s science scores are down. When judged according to international metrics, uh, healthcare systems not doing so great. Wealth gap disparities increasing exponentially. There was an implied promise to a generation of Americans that if you do certain things, work hard, go to college, be a good person, you would have certain outcomes. And those outcomes didn’t materialize for the majority of people because baby boomers entrenched in decision-making positions lowered the capital gains tax…
[crowd laughing]
…so that their net worth essentially compounds year after year. In post-World War II, US leadership traded the domestic manufacturing industry for National Security by making the US dollar the default international trade currency, which gave America the ability to impose economic sanctions on foreign countries to a US financial banking system, but consequently increased the value of the US dollar astronomically, which made it impossible for anyone to manufacture anything in America. [inhales deeply] Although the logic at the time…
[crowd laughing]
…was that Americans were supposed to upskill en masse, away from the menial manufacturing jobs, but everyone here’s too much of a dumbass to stay school, so we just traded domestic manufacturing to Asia and the rest of the world at the expense of working-class families. But if you don’t read enough… [crowd laughing] …it comes out as, “Let’s go, Brandon!”
[crowd laughing]
And it’s like, you have a point, but you don’t have the vocabulary to describe your reality because you didn’t read enough. You gotta keep reading beyond the hashtag. There’s a book behind the word. You gotta keep going. You can go at your own pace, but you gotta finish the required reading. Otherwise, we can’t have a conversation. We’re all catching up to each other. I’m friends with MAGA. I’m friends with the MAGAs.
Some of them are my good friends.
[man] Whoo!
Yeah. Hawaii MAGA.
[crowd laughing]
The friendliest of all MAGA.
[crowd laughing]
Aloha MAGA. They’re in Hawaii right now, Making Aloha Great Again. I became friends with them because I filmed two seasons of a TV show in Hawaii, Doogie Kameāloha, on Disney+.
[crowd cheering]
[applause]
MAGA Hawaii welcomed me into their homes. “Ronny, please, come over. Please, we’re having a barbecue.” “We’d love you to meet the family, meet the ohana, please.” “We’d love to have you over.” So gracious. You show up, they’re so warm and welcoming. “Thanks for coming. Take whatever you want.” “There’s some Kalua pork, there’s some loco mocos, hot dogs.” “Hey. Here. Here.” “Touch my gun.” [crowd laughing] “Touch it. Just touch… Just take it.” I’m always like, “I… I don’t want to touch any of these guns, okay?” “I don’t know where they’ve been. I don’t know where they’re going.” “I don’t have time in my schedule to attend depositions.” [crowd laughing] “Just give me the loco moco.”
[crowd laughing]
Very passionate people, my MAGA friends. And I respect their passion to some extent. I do. They’re like, “I love America. I would die for this country.” And I believe them. I believe they love America, and I believe they would die for this country, which is very admirable. But it’s like, man, you are willing to die for your country. Why aren’t you willing to learn math?
[crowd laughing]
Also for your country, like… Like, do both for your country. I know you wanna die for your country, but we’re losing the engineering jobs to Asia right now. So if you… We need less people to die for their country. We need more people to do their homework for their country. Like, do your homework for your country. Like, actually sit down and show the work, and, like, do the… That’s a more efficient way to show your patriotism. If you take that “I want to die” energy and you put it into homework, you will fucking top the school, I’m telling you. It’s… Sky’s the limit.
[crowd cheering]
Dude, you’ll… you’ll solve a lot of problems, you’ll create a lot of jobs, you’ll increase the GDP. Just do… do your homework for your country. “I’d rather die!” [crowd laughing] I… I thought so. I thought that might be… I thought that might be the case. Dying’s easy, math is hard.
[crowd laughing]
These quadratic equations making me suicidal. Uh, we try not to talk about politics, my MAGA friends and I, out of mutual respect. Inevitably, it comes up. Some stuff I’m wrong about, some stuff they’re right about, but sometimes, like, their messaging is so convoluted. Like, I can’t get to what their core issue actually is, because their surface messaging is so chaotic. Like, sometimes they’re like, “Ronny, China caused COVID, but COVID isn’t real.” [crowd laughing] So, is it fine then? Does it mean it’s fine? I don’t know how to feel about it now. ‘Cause one minus one is zero. I don’t know what to tell you. The… The math analogy works for concepts, not just numbers, you can… “X” is anything. Why are you yelling at me about China? Always yelling at me about China. “China is doing this. China did a weather balloon, with a camera.” “China’s got an artificial island in the Pacific doubling as an aircraft carrier base.” “China’s doing TikTok. Why is China doing TikTok?!” I don’t know.
[crowd laughing]
I’m not from China. I’m from Malaysia. [scoffs] I’m from Malaysia, not China. I’m… I’m third-generation Chinese Malaysian. Malaysia. You know Michelle Yeoh? Oscar winner? Malaysia? Yeah, that’s Malaysia. Sama-sama. Malaysia. Saya anak Malaysia. Malaysia. Malaysia, not China. Malaysia. We are the ones who lost the plane.
[crowd laughing]
Okay? You guys remember that? Did you see the documentary on Netflix, suggested after my special?
You guys see that? That was us.
[crowd laughing] That was us. We’re the “lose the plane” people. Okay? We’re not the human rights whatever… I don’t know… TikTok… I don’t know what that is, okay? We’re the… [mimics plane engine] “Ah! Where is it?! Where the fuck is it?!” That’s us. Uh, my… my MAGA friends all hate US tax. That’s like a universal party platform. There’s different types of MAGA, right? There’s, like, MAGA light, MAGA concentrated, but, like… Right, it’s unfair to group them under one banner, but one uniting party principle is, “Love America, fuck US tax.” And I get it. I also hate US tax now that I’m in the highest bracket.
[crowd laughing]
Yeah, I’m MAGA with that. Fuck US tax. Yeah, fuck American tax. Feels good to say it. Like the words give you power, right? Fuck US tax. Fuck American Tax. You like it? You like it when I say it? When this fucking foreigner says it? You like that? Fuck US tax. You like that? You like it when this accent says that? Fuck American tax. You like that? You don’t see a discrepancy in energy? “Love America, USA, USA.” “Fuck US tax.” Put politics aside for just three seconds. Okay? If it’s even possible. Just for three seconds, just consider this concept in a vacuum. Just as an academic exercise, okay? When you love something, you give it money.
[crowd laughing]
Right? Like that’s one of the primary ways we show love for individuals, organizations, ideas on Kickstarter, sports teams… We go like, “Yeah, we give it money.” So when you go, “Love America, USA, USA.” “Fuck US tax.” So what are you saying? You love America so much, you want it to be poor? You want your country to be poor? You want it to be a beggar on the street. A street beggar. You want your country to be a street beggar on the street? I love my mom. Sometimes I give my mom money. [crowd laughing]
Give your mom money sometimes.
[man] Yeah! Look how alien this concept is to white people.
[crowd laughing]
[applause]
Just… silence.
[crowd laughing]
Give your mom money sometimes. “For what?!”
[crowd laughing]
Because she’s your Ma. [chuckles] And you love her, right? She loves you back, so fucking cut her off a piece every once in a while. Probably tore stuff giving birth to you, cut her a piece of the pie. Arbitrarily, even. Just give a… I’m sure your mother would appreciate it. No matter who your mom is, how self-accomplished she is, I’m sure your mom could use it. Fix the driveway, invest in infrastructure. Something. [crowd laughing] Sometimes Americans treat their country the way they treat their parents.
[indistinct chatter from crowd]
Yeah.
[crowd laughing]
“I love my mom. I love my mom. I would die for my mom.” “But fuck her, she made her choices.”
[crowd laughing]
I love being in America. I do. I love being here. I had my options. I came here. I love being in America because this is the country that puts show business above everything. And I am in the business of show business. So naturally, I’m gonna come here and do it. I do this in America, “Fuck America. Fuck the president. Fuck US tax,” money, money just comes into… [crowd laughing] “Fuck the president.” “He’s too old. Fuck this president.” The money comes in. Money just comes in. Like printing money. I do this in Malaysia, same… same words, same… same clothing, same haircut, facing the same direction, in Malaysia? Jail.
[crowd laughing]
Like, the arbitrage value is out of control. Same product in different loc… Obviously, I’ll do this here. Why the fuck would I do it anywhere else? It’s the best. I think, uh, sometimes people forget I’m a first-generation immigrant here. Because my second-generation or later American friends, like, their parents were immigrants. And the way they talk about their parents is so disrespectful. And they forget, like, I’m also an immigrant. They’ll be like, “You know my parents? They’re immigrants.” “You know immigrants. They’re so cheap.”
[crowd laughing]
Like, “Don’t come over. My family’s over this weekend. My parents are here.” “My parents are immigrants. You know immigrants. Ugh!” “They’re so cheap.” Yo, I want to defend immigrants here for a second, all right? Fuck that shit. Yeah, my mom lives in Singapore. She is not an immigrant. She is still extremely cheap.
[crowd laughing]
Okay? Being cheap is not an immigrant thing. It’s genetic.
[crowd laughing]
Cheap people are cheap. They’re not choosing to be cheap. It’s just inside, it’s not a choice. Chinese baby boomers are cheap ’cause they don’t know how to have fun. They haven’t had fun in, like, 50 years. They, like, forgot the energy of fun. Like, of all the Asians right now in the Asian fun hierarchy, from most fun to least fun, Chinese baby boomers, least fun of all the Asians right now. I can say this. I’m Chinese, okay? You don’t fucking say it.
[crowd laughing]
This is our “N” word. You don’t fucking say it. I say it. You don’t fucking say it. Least fun… You don’t fucking say it. Least fun of all the Asians, Chinese baby boomers. Right now, of all the Asians, most fun Asians, uh, the Koreans, okay? You gotta give it up for the Koreans.
[crowd cheering]
[crowd laughing]
Give it up for the Koreans. You gotta tip your cap and respect the back-to-back championships of the modern-day Koreans just killing it with the fun and the pop culture. They’re… Everyone’s… They’ve got Blackpink. They got music. They got BTS.
[crowd cheering]
Dude, BTS is right now in the army fighting Kim Jong-un.
[crowd laughing]
Do you understand? BTS is at the DMZ right now, just going…
[singsongs pop beat playfully]
[mimics machine gun]
[crowd laughing]
Just an unstoppable force of entertainment. [chuckling] Taking down countries and dictatorships. They got, uh… Koreans got, uh, the Parasite movie, Oscar-winning. They got Past Lives. They got, uh… Crash Landing on You.
[crowd cheering]
Just dominating the Netflix home page of white people. [crowd laughing] Never thought I’d see the day when white people’s homepage is full of K-drama. Just binging. Non-stop. They got, uh, Squid Game. Dude, Koreans have more fun dying in Squid Game than Chinese people have at comedy shows. Chinese people at comedy shows, they’re looking at their phone. “Do I have to look up?” “He’s here? Okay, I’m gonna video for six minutes.” Full flash video. This is… This is how I live in the moment as a Chinese person. Koreans, most fun.
Uh, Filipinos know how to have fun.
[crowd cheering] Yeah, they love having fun, uh… Vietnamese people know how to have fun. Cambodians know how to have fun. Hmong people know how to have fun. Even Japanese know how to have fun. In a reserved way. [crowd cheering] Outwardly stoic. Inside, just anime.
[crowd laughing]
Outside, unreadable. Inside, just the intro to Sailor Moon.
Right? Just…
[crowd laughing]
[humming the intro to Sailor Moon]
Outside is just, “Ohayo gozaimasu.”
[crowd laughing]
Japanese people have so much fun sometimes they go straight back to work. [crowd laughing] “You’re not gonna change your suit? Just straight into the office? Alright.” [chuckles] Uh… Everyone knows Chinese baby boomers, least fun of all the Asians. Because for Chinese baby boomers, their primary directive in life is, “Do not get scammed.” That’s like the overriding directive that informs the entire decision-making tree. RoboCop, primary directive, “Do not get scammed.” “Do not arrest OCP executive.” “Do not get scammed.” And for Chinese baby boomers, there’s no value proposition, okay? It’s just pure price sensitivity. That means any money outgoing is a scam.
[crowd laughing]
“If money leaves my possession, that was a scam!” [crowd laughing] So the whole time, they’re just tensed up, they’re just looking for scams when they go out. They’re just like… They can’t even relax. “Scam’s coming!” It’ll be a two-drink minimum over here. Parking guys, tip… [grumbling] Tensing up. Meanwhile, Koreans in the back just having fun.
[crowd laughing]
Filipinos dancing like… Chinese baby boomers just tensed up. The further they get from their house, as distance X increases, they know the fees will increase and so the ex… The expenditures are gonna increase, so they keep tensing up. The further they get, until eventually, like, their whole body tenses up into, like, a “C,” right? Like a “C” for Chinese.
[crowd laughing]
And then, in the back you’re like, “Go, go, have fun! Have fun!” They just refuse to have fun. Like, my mom came and visited me in New York City. Her only son, she came to New York City. New York City is the kind of city where, as soon as you open your front door, it’s like $1.50. Like, if you touch your door knob, it’s like, Apple Pay $1.50, just going… It goes into the universe. My mom came in and approached the front door in New York. She’s like in the back of the apartment, “I’m good, I don’t need to leave the house today.” My mom isn’t even scared of Asian hate. She’s more scared of inflation.
[crowd laughing]
She can’t believe the prices of things anymore. You take her out to Central Park. “Let’s go to Central Park, it’s free.” “Look how beautiful New York is in autumn. Look at this.” “Why are these hot dogs five dollars? It’s like, “No, this…” “The price is right. No one is scamming you.” “That’s the correct amount of money to pay for that.” “You haven’t been out of the house in 50 years. That number is correct.” “That’s how much things cost after baby boomers destroyed the global financial economy in 2010 pursuing subprime mortgages, okay?” That’s… That’s… If anything, you scammed yourself. That’s you scamming yourself. Yeah, “You played yourself.” DJ Khaled. [crowd laughing] My mom came to visit me in Hawaii. Her first time in Hawaii. And if you know Hawaii, locals and the Hawaiians here, the least scammy culture on the planet. Could not be more generous as a community. You get so much more than you give when you’re on the islands of Hawaii. And, uh, my mom comes, and she lands, and she gets to the hotel, and they welcome her, “Aloha. Welcome to Hawaii.” And they put a lei over her, like a ring of flowers. They put it over her, and my mom does this.
[crowd laughing]
“I’m not paying for that.”
[crowd laughing]
And I’m like, “You can’t do that, Mom.” “They’re not trying to trick you into buying something.” “They’re trying to welcome you to their homeland.” “They’re not tricking you into buying just ’cause you touched it.” “This isn’t Thailand. Just put on…”
[crowd laughing]
“Put on the lei, you’re embarrassing me in front of the Hawaiians!” Mahalo.
[crowd laughing]
[applause]
[crowd cheering]
These Chinese baby boomers, most scared of being scammed in real life, the first to get scammed on the internet. For people who live in fear their entire lives, extremely gullible. Because these baby boomers, they don’t have the… they don’t have the antibodies to deal with the internet. Completely clueless when they go on now. Like, watching baby boomers go on the internet now is like watching babies wandering into the kitchen by themselves, just looking for cookies on the kitchen countertop, just like… Running their hands blindly on the kitchen countertop. Pulling down knives. Kitchen knives coming straight down into their eyeballs, into, like, the soft part of their skull. They go in the kitchen, they open the oven, they turn it on. They stick their head inside. They’re like, “Any pictures of my grandkids in here?” “Is this link safe to click on? Is this link safe to click on?” “Is this link safe to click on?” Just falling for every basic bitch internet scam possible. These fucking baby boomers tumbling into internet scams like pandas rolling down a hill.
[crowd laughing]
Just jujitsu-rolling into scams every single day. Loving scams. “Oh, what do you want? 20 Target gift cards?” “Yeah, sounds like a legitimate way to pay for antivirus software on my phone.” “Everybody, look. Look at this link. Look, there’s a…” “‘What’s the one trick your doctor doesn’t want you to know?'” “Okay, I’ll click on that link.” “I knew it. I knew my doctor was scamming me!” “That was a trick he didn’t want me to know.” “I’m gonna invalidate his medical degree with one click right now!” [grunts] “This is not the scam. My doctor is the scam. Let me…” [grunts] Click on this… These fucking internet idiot savants who can’t remember a single goddamn password, but for some reason, can make any piece of misinformation go viral. Like a Russian cyber army, just spreading misinformation around the world in family group WhatsApp chats. Everywhere. “Everybody, just look at this article. Is this real?” “Look at it. Is this real?” It’s how they fact-check! They spread it. “Look at this, this is a real…? Everybody, weigh in.” “I’m not saying a hair dryer in your mouth will kill COVID.” “Okay? But what? You can’t ask questions anymore?” “Look at this article from cnn-n-n-n.ru.” “Quick, send it to your uncle, send it to your…” “Send it to our whole family tree. Everybody needs to see this.” Has there ever been a dumber generation of idiots more susceptible to fake news than these fucking baby boomers literally believing everything they see on the internet? I get the very reasonable argument that every generation of human is going to be naturally a little bit smarter than the last, due to the exponential technology growth curve, okay? But this has got to be the biggest gap in human history! The information asymmetry right now is just out of control. You literally have people in Honolulu right now auto-driving their Tesla Cybertrucks as they vape out the window, and their phone AI is trading cryptocurrency. Meanwhile, you have baby boomers, they can’t even right-click.
[crowd laughing]
They can’t even right-click. “There’s one button! How do you right-click on one button?!” It’s scary. They don’t know what’s real anymore. “Hey, Ronny. Look at this photo of Bigfoot shopping at Whole Foods.” [crowd laughing] “Bigfoot is real now!” “Look, there’s an image of him buying kombucha at Whole Foods.” “What technology exists that can fake images?” I’m like, “Mom, that’s not real. Stop sending it around. It’s not real.” “How do you know?” They always get so indignant about it. Like, “How do you know that it’s not real?” “How did you know that?” Because the font, the font is off and the resolution of the image is blurry, and that lighting state doesn’t make sense for that image! And that’s not standard dimensions for a news article. I can’t give you this knowledge. It’s like Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink! I’ve seen so much shit on the internet, my brain instantly filters it. You’ll never have this skill set, so just stay off the internet! This world is not for you anymore! Stop making decisions! [crowd cheering and clapping] But anyway, respect your elders.
[crowd laughing]
It’s a Confucian value. Maybe if you give your mom some money, she wouldn’t get scammed so much. Yeah, well… Think about the correlation between those two phenomena. Uh… People always ask me, like, “Why do you shit on your mom for money?” “Why don’t you shit on your dad for money?” Alright, uh… [chuckles] No, I don’t talk about my dad because, uh, my dad has no context for show business. Like, we grew up in Malaysia. Like, his families are rubber tappers in Malaysia. My aunts and uncles are still in Sitiawan in Malaysia right now tapping rubber. They have no context for show business. Very smart people, but they don’t know this world. My dad, he was the first guy in his family to get a college education. He went to Manchester College, which has merged with the University of Southern New Hampshire. He got his master’s of economics there. Put himself through it. Very smart guy. And he was a good immigrant. He came to America, to New Hampshire, to get his education, and when he graduated, he went back to Malaysia. He didn’t take anyone’s job, he left.
[crowd laughing]
And my dad had the vision to see what I didn’t see. He knew he had a ceiling on him, because of the way he thinks and talks, and he went back to Malaysia. And he was right! For him. He went back. It was the right choice for him. He became a very successful corporate executive. Uh, he retired to a farm in Johor Bahru, Malaysia. Love farming. He retired to a farm. That’s how much this guy loved it, but he had no context for show business, so he wouldn’t understand anything I’m doing. Like, he wouldn’t understand what I’m doing in Godzilla vs. Kong. He’d be like, “Why don’t you just run that way?”
[crowd laughing]
“Dad, I don’t control the edit. Okay?” “I’m just Honolulu Chinatown shopkeeper No. 3 in this…” “In this epic clash of titans between the giant lizard and the giant gorilla, okay?” “I’m just connecting Act 1 to Act 2, I don’t have a say in how this plays out.” Because of that, I stopped telling him about what I was doing. I felt he wouldn’t get it, and he stopped asking me. So I didn’t tell him I got hired on The Daily Show. He found out the way all parents find out about their kids’ accolades, through a local newspaper. So, one day, the local paper reported that I got hired on The Daily Show, and he called me immediately. He was like, Ronny, what’s this I hear about you joining “The Everyday Show”? And I was like, “Oh no, it’s The Daily Show.” “I joined like two years ago, Dad.” He was like, “Oh, okay. Well, what’s The Daily Show?” I’m like, “It’s just like another late-night American talk show.” “They kind of invented modern American satire.” And… [clicks tongue] And, uh, my dad was like, “Oh, that’s cool. Are you the host?” I’m like, “No, I’m a correspondent.” He was like, “What is that? What’s a correspondent?” I’m like, “Yeah, correspondent is, I help the host with comedy segments.” And he was like, “Oh, okay.” “Hey, Mei! He’s just a sidekick.”
[crowd laughing]
And so he had, like, no context for what was a win, what was a milestone in this industry. And so, I stopped telling him, and he stopped asking me. And I didn’t need that from him. We… We were totally fine. We’d talk about other stuff. Not about work. We weren’t fighting. It was all good. Uh, and he passed away very suddenly, uh, in 2018. He died on Christmas Eve. Died on his farm, like, no warning, no explanation. He just left one day. He left so suddenly, we had to go back to handle his estate. If anyone here has been so unfortunate to be in that position, when you have to handle someone else’s estate, it means that they left so abruptly that other people had to come in and close the administrative loops in their life. And so it’s me, my wife, my sister, brother-in-law, went back to Johor Bahru, and part of me trying to figure out his estate was I had to hack into his laptop just to figure out what banks he was using. So, his laptop was right on the kitchen table where he left it, and I opened it up, and it’s password-protected, and I know this guy so well, I’m like, “His password is going to be the birthday of his favorite child.” So…
[crowd laughing]
…I type in my sister’s birthday, and spot on. Spot on. It was my sister’s birthday.
[crowd laughing]
As it should be. She’s, like, an anesthesiologist in Australia. She’s like way more respectable person than me, actually saving lives like a good person. Contributing back to society, not like this fucking asshole. I get in… [chuckles] I get in trouble on the internet for shit I said two years ago, every six weeks. So it should be her. She should be the favorite. So, I log into his computer, I open his web browser, I look at his browsing history, and the whole time, I’m like, “Please don’t let me find my dad’s porn.” “Please don’t let me find what positions my dad was into.” “Even if it was just missionary, I wouldn’t be able to handle it.” “I’m gonna have to burn this laptop.” For real Chinese people, when we burn things, it goes to our ancestors, and then my granddad is gonna see it, and it’s like, I don’t… I don’t want that for them. I’ll be fine, but they’re gonna have an awkward time. I’m considerate like that, uh… So I open the web browser, look at his history, and way to go, Dad, no porn. What a clean-cut guy. No porn. He only went on the internet twice a day. Like clockwork. 6:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m. Like the farmer that he was. And every time he went on the internet, he’d only go to two websites each time. So, the first website he’d go to was a local news website, and the second website he’d go to twice a day, every single day, was my Twitter page. [crowd] Aw… So, he’d be reloading my Twitter page twice a day just to see what I was doing. And I post stuff like, “Hey, Honolulu, Hawaii, I sold out five shows, uh, this week, why’s there so many homeless people here?” I’d post stuff like that.
[crowd laughing]
And, uh… he would read that, and then he’d be like… I assume, he’d be like, “Oh, Ronny’s doing okay.” “He’s in Hawaii, he sold out some shows, and oh, I guess there’s a lot of homeless people in Hawaii.” Uh, and, um, that was his quiet way of keeping up with me. He never told me that, and I never knew that, and we never discussed it, um, which is a very nice sentiment. Unfortunately, uh, as best as I can tell, this is the last tweet my dad read of mine. [crowd laughing] So, as best as I can tell, forensically, based on internet browsing timestamps, the last tweet my dad read of mine, and quite possibly, the last thing he ever read before he died on his farm, was me posting on Twitter, “If you’re a baby boomer on Twitter, I already know you’re a fucking loser.”
[crowd laughing]
Now, obviously, this was not directed towards him. I didn’t even know he had Twitter. I didn’t even know he knew what Twitter was. But I stand by the statement.
[crowd laughing]
[applause]
And I know that’s kind of a weird way to end the show, but, um…
[crowd laughing]
[chuckles] …if it’s any solace, uh, this was his phone when he died. [crowd] Aw! That was his, uh, wallpaper and his screensaver. And… [chuckles] And I didn’t even know. And it’s a photo of me and my wife, and we’re in Hawaii. And I’m wearing two leis ’cause my mom threw one off and I put it on.
[crowd laughing]
And, uh, I didn’t know that this was his screensaver and his wallpaper. Uh, and… [applause] Uh… I… I like to… I like to think that, uh, that is the last image he saw of me. That’s what he remembered me by when he left. And, uh, I also would like to tell my sister, I won!
[crowd laughing]
I won! It was me! It was me! You guys have been great. Thanks for coming out, Honolulu.
[crowd cheering]
[gentle Hawaiian music playing] [cheering continues] [gentle Hawaiian music continues playing] [music fades]
