Good, good. It feels good to be home in Chicago in the center of the city. Huh? Oh, good. I grew up, uh, 25 miles away from here in Arlington Heights. So… And when we picked this beautiful theater for this, uh, special, I told my father, you know, “I’m gonna do this special “in Chicago. I’m gonna do it downtown.” He didn’t say, you know, “I’m proud of you. Congratulations.” He said, “Where are these people gonna park?”
It’s good to be home. I-I love this city. There are certain cities I do not like going to. I’m not a Vegas guy. I know a lot of people love to go to Vegas for a weekend. I don’t… I don’t… You could see a good, uh, portion of the population that descends on Las Vegas over a year, and I’m here to tell you we’re in trouble, okay? We’re in trouble as a nation if you look at Las Vegas. I don’t know, is anybody embarrassed anymore? Is there any embarrassment? Huh? Is there any shame? I’m checking into a two billion dollar property, right? Beautiful. Italian marble. Five-star restaurant. Chihuly art hanging from the ceiling. And I looked to my left at the check-in thing, and there’s a group checking in with an Igloo cooler. All right, not even a new one. Duct tape on the ha… on the handle. Ten cases of Schlitz. George Foreman Grill? What are you gonna do, grill chicken in the room? Aren’t you embarrassed? Come on! The place reeks of cash. Sammy Davis, Frank Sinatra, used to come. Tuxedo, cuff links. And you brought chicken thighs? So I’m like, “You know what, let me go relax at the pool.”
Go to the pool area. Now, I don’t know how you people do the pool, but when I go to, like, a public pool, hotel pool, I go away from the people. I don’t go near people. I don’t chitchat, all right? I know a lot of people like to go in the midst of people. “Oh, hi!” “Oh, we love the weather. We come once a year.” I don’t do this shit. Okay? I go away from it. I set up in my own little corner. I got three towels. I start making the thing, okay? Like a fitted sheet, everything… is tucked in. Neat. I brought a book. I see people doing this on vacation. They bring a book to the pool. You ever see these people? I watch and I go, “How are they reading here?” 118 degrees, they’re reading a full-blown book. So I’m like, “You know what? Let me try this. Let me bring a book to the pool.” So I sit down, I open up my book. Now, my biggest problem, I can’t mind my own business. I’m halfway through the first page, and I start looking around like, “What the fuck are they doing? “What is this? Why are they doing that?” There’s a group of guys came down loud. I’m not into loud people. I heard them before I saw them. It’s this group, the high-five group. You ever get this group that comes down? What? You’re 42 years old. Why are you high-fiving? You’re at the pool. You didn’t score a touchdown. What are you high-fiving people for at the pool? And they sit right next to me. I’m like a magnet for these types, right? They sit right next to me. Now I’m honed in on this group. Guy took his shoe off, four Band-Aids on his foot. How does it get the four Band-Aids? How does this happen? After one Band-Aid, isn’t that a hospital visit? What are you trying to fix… at your home with four Band-Aids? One box of Band-Aids should last your entire life. This is a one-time purchase. When you die, you should have leftover Band-Aids for generations to come. And I’m thinking if this guy gets into the pool with his Band-Aids on, they’re gonna have to drain the pool and refill it. I’m not getting into the pool with Band-Aid juice floating on top of the pool. All right? I don’t know what’s underneath the Band-Aids. There’s always a Band-Aid; there’s always a loose Band-Aid in the pool. It will find you. You’ll be talking, hanging out, right? The damn thing will just come in. You’re like, “Oh, God! “It’s a Band-Aid! “Get it away from me! Get it away from me.” You’re wearing Band-Aids, you should be disallowed in the pool area. Okay?
But this is the country, people. This is what we’re living in. We are in trouble. Igloo coolers and Band-Aids, okay? No wonder the Chinese are winning. All right? Something’s going on in the country. It’s got to be the Internet. It’s got to be the Internet. Internet’s bringing out people we never even knew existed. 30 years ago, these people never left the house. They were in their basement, talking to themselves. They didn’t leave. They had no outlet. Now you give them the Internet? They have an outlet to the rest of the world. Now they’re in chat rooms and… Where are people getting the time to do half of the stuff they’re doing online? People are living on the computer. Writing reviews on restaurants that they go to? You got nothing going on with your life? I don’t know, me and my wife, we go out to dinner. I’ll tell her right there, salmon sucked. Let’s get the fuck out of here. That’s it. We don’t run home and tattletale on the restaurant. Who’s got this time to write an 18-page essay on asparagus? Who’s doing this?
This Internet, there’s something for everybody. Right? You got some weird fetish, some weird thing you do… Look at how weird it just got in here, huh? Some of you are into this type of behavior. But if you like something weird… You like to, if you’re an adult, you like to dress up as a baby, there’s a Web site for you. 30 years ago, if you liked to dress up as a baby, nobody knew that. You did that in the privacy of your own home. If you ever came out of your house with a diaper on, your neighbor would go, “Look at this shit. “Call the FBI. Get this shit out of the neighborhood.” Right? It was handled. But today, just throw it up in the Google. “I like to dress up as a baby.” Next thing you know, they’re at the Hilton on a Saturday with 863 people that like to do this shit.
Something’s wrong in the country. Okay? Where do people get the time? Look around you. Everybody’s just walking around. Taking a photo of yourself? They call it a selfie. I can’t even say the word without sweating. I can’t stand the word. I call it taking a lonely. Do you know how alone you got to be… …that you can’t find anybody to take a photo? That you got 838 photos of yourself in your bathroom? What are you doing? What are you doing?
Nobody’s working. Nobody’s working. We got people in this country hanging outside movie theaters for four days for a movie to come out. Friday’s the release date. They’re there Tuesday. They g a tent they’re setting up, a little picnic area, generator, sleeping bag. And they’re dressed as the character in the movie. Who’s doing this? My family, my friends, nobody does this. Nobody does this. Okay? I’ve never called my buddy. “Frankie, what are you doing?” “Eh, nothing, I’m dressed as Batman. “I’ve been sleeping in a tent. I got the cape on eBay for 18 grand.”
I live in Los Angeles; I see it on the day-to-day. Celebrity goes on trial, downtown at the courtroom, you got people outside the courtroom, marching around with signs. All right? “Justice for Lindsay! Justice for Lindsay!” No job? You got nowhere to be on a Monday at 8:30 in the morning? I never made a sign. Have you? I’ve never wrote on a cardboard box my feelings… stapled it to a stick, drove the stick somewhere… and marched around in a circle for 12 h… “Justice for…!” Some of you are laughing at this. Some of you are not. Listen, if you’re laughing, you’re on board; if you’re not, you’re the fucking problem, I’m sorry. Okay? I’m looking at some of you. You’re like, “I don’t know why this is funny. “I dress up as Batman “and I have an Igloo cooler. I don’t know what’s so funny about this.”
The world doesn’t match my upbringing, okay? I’m here to tell you that. I grew up with an immigrant family. My father’s Sicilian, my mother’s Italian. I gotta, I gotta clarify that, all right? Half Sicilian, half Italian. But if you talk to my father, “You’re Sicilian. You’re Sicilian!” Okay, Dad, relax. They instilled work ethic into me at a young age. Young. If you come from immigrants, they don’t play around with the work. Okay? I’ve been working since I’ve been eight. Eight years old, these people put me to work. I didn’t know what was going on. I was watching cartoons on a Saturday, my-my father walked in the living room. He was like, “Hey. Go start a business.” What? Now? Right? They never bought us anything. I come from middle-class upbringing. They never bought us a damn thing. They told us who had what we wanted in the neighborhood. I’m like, “Dad, could we get a dog?” “Dog, yeah. “Two houses down, they got a dog. “You want to pet an animal? “You walk two houses down, “you pet their dog and then you come back here and cut my lawn.” What? What lawn… why…? What does the lawn have to do with a puppy? What are you talking about?
There was no napping, growing up. Once you… once you were up, you were up, okay? Not like today, where the kids are, “I’m gonna go take a nap!” The mother’s like, “That’s okay, Justin. “Go take a nap. “You’ve been up for two hours now. “You’re probably exhausted. “So go upstairs, “lay down, refresh, “and come back down when you’re good and ready to operate your day.” Not my family, okay?
Father been living up my ass my entire life. Constantly on me, questioning me. I was an altar boy; he questioned that. Right? He was like, “Do they pay you “for this shit at the church? You makin’ any scratch?” I had to ask the priest for a raise. I said, “Listen, we know what’s going on here. “You’re collecting a lot of cash during the Mass, “and nobody’s getting a cut. We need something, okay?” The priest says, “We don’t pay for Mass. We pay for funerals.” I said, “Then put me “on the funeral circuit. I’ll start working funerals, okay?” That’s what I was doing. I was working three, four funerals a week, during my lunch hour. During my lunch hour, I would have to wolf down my lunch… which was impossible to do, ’cause I had the Italian lunch, okay? My lunch had to be refrigerated in the teacher’s lounge, all right? Or it would spoil. I had to… fill out a special form… …that the school wasn’t responsible if the veal piccata spoiled in the refrigerator. All right? I had real silverware. Nobody wanted to trade at lunch. Everybody had, like, American… you know, Ho Ho, Twinkies. I-I said, “Anybody want some ‘S’ cookies? “I got ‘S’ cookies. “Stella D’oro? Nobody wants this?” And my mother would say, “Make sure you dip those in coffee.” “Coffee? “Ma, they don’t serve coffee “in the lunch room. I’m in third grade.” “Well, I’ll pack you some coffee, then!” So I would eat the lunch, run over to the church, work a full funeral. All the other kids having a ball, meeting friends for life, and here I am, eight years old, over a corpse, with incense.
The guy never pays full price for anything. My father, constantly looking for a deal, went to the dentist. Sitting down at the dentist, the dentist told him, “Listen, you need a crown. It’s gonna be about $800.” My father was like, “C-Crown? “I could get the crown. I got a crown guy.” Crown guy? “Yeah, I’ll bring in the part and I’ll pay you for the labor. I’ll pay cash.” What? It’s not a body shop!
Beautiful garden growing up, though; beautiful. We never went to the grocery store. We grew it. Right in the backyard. Beautiful. Tomato… string bean… All right? Little zucchini… You want some fruit? You picked it off the tree! But at night, we found out something was going on in our garden. There was a little raccoon… …something. Something was nibbling… on my father’s tomatoes, okay? It was a big deal. We had a family meeting about it. Most American families, they’ll call up Orkin. “We’ll just call Orkin. “They’ll come set up some traps. “Then they’ll release the animal back into the wild so it can reunite with its family.” My father’s like, “Listen, we’re gonna murder this motherfucker. “All right? We’re gonna put antifreeze on bologna.” What? “Why, Papa? Why?” “‘Cause it eats the intestines, that’s why! “Now go get the antifreeze in the garage. “We’re gonna make a sandwich for our friends tonight.” Woke up in the morning, birds, squirrels, raccoons murdered all over the property. Neighbors coming by, “Have you seen our cat?” “Nah, we haven’t seen shit. Does it like bologna?” We sent the message. Okay? Trap don’t send the message. Antifreeze makes it clear: we ain’t playing around with our zucchinis. Okay?
Old World upbringing. Superstitious… God, my family’s superstitious. I remember, once I got my first car… It was a 1984 S… uh, Celica. Toyota Celica GT, shit brown. All right? Soon as I got it, my father hung a red horn from the rearview mirror of the car, right? Just a red horn, dangling. I go, “What are you doing? This looks like…” He’s like, “It’s for the malocchio, the eye. So nobody gives you the eye.” I go, “What eye?” “The fucking eye!” Italians, Sicilians, they believe if somebody looks at you they could literally give you bad luck, just on a look. All right? So now we have to have defense mechanisms. Okay? I dated girls who weren’t even Italian. They’d get into the car. They’re like, “Why do you have a red pepper “hanging from your rearview mirror? What is this all about?” And I’d have to explain, “Nah, it’s for the demons, you know? “It’s so nobody looks at you and cripples your soul. “You don’t have that in your family? No?”
It was all Old World. No real medication at the house. I didn’t know what was going on. I got a fever, my mother started cutting potatoes. Right? She would put slices of potatoes with a rag… I go, “Don’t we have any Tylenol? “Why are potatoes on my head?” I just… I grew up, I was covered in Vicks. We had vats of Vicks, they would just… rub… just rub me. They would boil water, they would drop the Vicks in the water. Then I would have to hover over the water. Right? 183 degrees. Breathing. Then a beach towel would come over my head. I’m like, “I can’t breathe! I can’t breathe, get it off!” And they would just hold me there. “Stay! Stay!” “I can’t… “I can’t breathe. Don’t we have Halls? We need Halls.”
But as odd as this upbringing might’ve… might’ve been, they taught me passion. They taught me, whatever you do in life, you do it 138%. You give it your all. Yeah. Pride. Pride in work. You look around now, nobody’s working. The people that are working, they don’t want to be there. Huh? Go to the airport. The people that work at the airport? Upset that we even showed up to fly. I’ve never seen an angrier group of people in my life. Soon as you walk into the terminal, they’re tapping each other, “Look at the, look at… They brought bags. They got bags!” I can’t take the airport, especially now, with these families. Especially now, summertime, the families, they’re coming out like ants. Ants! With these little kids… Enough with these little kids on an airplane, okay? One week old, with placenta on it, going to Hawaii. For why? And what happened to fathers in this country? Their balls have been detached and thrown in a purse somewhere. What is going on with the fathers? I’m looking at this family check in. The wife is doing everything. She’s lifting the heavy bags. She’s doing the ticketing, the boarding passes, and the father’s off to the side, like a dunce, sitting there with his son hanging off his chest in some type of kangaroo sack. “Honey, do you…? “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to speak. “I’ll just sit here like an idiot. “I’d breast-feed if I could. You know that.”
It’s even happening with my own friends. I call my buddy, I go, “What’d you do today?” “Well, I went to the parent-teacher conference.” Parent-teacher conference?! My father didn’t even know where the school was. He’d often ask me, “What grade are you in? Where are you at?” Now the buddy’s got a man-cave he can’t stop talking about. “Oh-ho, you got to come by. “Got my man-cave. “Go down there, watch the game on Sunday. Got my beer in my little koozie.” Man-cave? You’re bragging about a man-cave? My father had a man-cave, it was the house. There was never, “Change the channel, Dad!” We didn’t do that. We watched whatever he was watching. We sat there, watched it, all right? Five years old, I’m watching 60 Minutes, going, “This is terrible what’s going on in Lebanon, huh, Dad?”
It was time for me to check in, right? Now, the check-in process at the airport, they don’t want to look at you. Head down, right? No smile, nothing. I feel like I’m working, right? I feel like I work at United. “Hi! How ya doing?” Right? The only time they get happy is when the bag goes over the weight allowance. They love telling you, “You’re gonna owe extra on this bag.” And you know it’s heavy. When you’re packing it at home, you tell your wife, “We’re never gonna make it with the…” “It’s okay.” “Okay, I’ll pack it, huh?” So heavy, right? You put it up there. And you know it’s heavy, so you kind of try and release it… You do that, like, kind of soft release. Like that’s gonna take… take weight off the bag. And her mood changes, she’s like, “Ooh… “I’m sorry. “Your bag is two pounds over. You’re gonna have to take two pounds out of your bag.” Now, like an idiot, I’ve got to open up my bag in front of 187 people. I don’t know what two pounds is. I’m taking out a boot, a sock, toothpaste… “Is this two pounds? “Does anybody know what two pounds is? They’re gonna charge me an extra $8,000.” “You think the boot’s a half a pound?” I mean, I go, “Where do you want me to put this?” She’s like, “Put that in your carry-on.” I said, “It’s still going on the plane!” Wha… What does it matter… if it’s on top or underneath? They guy behind me’s 500 pounds. That doesn’t matter? What’s…? My sock is gonna take the plane into the Pacific, but you prepared for this type of weight? It’s a scam.
Every part of that airport bothers me. The TSA… the security checkpoint. This is what’s guarding our country? Have you seen what’s in the blue shirts at O’Hare? Do you feel safe with this type of security? I’ve been all over the world… Egypt, Lebanon, Beirut… I’ve been all over. The security in their airports… unbelievable. All military, neat, hats, machine guns… Have you seen our first line of defense? Y-You see the first guy they send out… “Take out your laptop!” “Your liquids, your creams, your gels…” And can we leave the shoes on? Have you seen people’s… Have you seen people’s feet…? Guy took his shoe off, looked like he had a machete hanging off his toe. I swear to God. Like he could cut… provolone… just a thin… slice… of provolone. How does your toenail get to this point? Don’t you glance down and go, “Shit, I got to cut this before it starts coming through my shoes”? These are basic skill sets.
But I got a fear of flying. My biggest fear… I’m gonna die in a crash, right? What, this Malaysia thing’s freaked me out. Two months ago, this thing went down. Nobody could see it, right? Nobody could find it. Where is this damn thing? They tell me before I fly, “Your seat could be used as a floatation device.” Where are these seats? They can’t find 283 seats floating in the ocean? Where did the seats go? What do you do, though? You’re on a plane, it loses control, and you start heading for the ocean, right? You’re on the plane. Oxygen comes down. People start breathing. Me? I’m hanging myself. Gone! You think I’m hitting the water at 6,000 miles per hour? What does that feel like? I’ll take the hanging, okay? I’ll take the hanging. But knowing my luck, I’d hang myself, the pilot would regain control. And I’d be the only idiot hanging for seven hours on the way to Beijing. With people ringing the call button, “Do you want to get him down? “He keeps swinging into my area. “I’m trying to eat my cashews and watch Frozen. “Could you unwind him? He keeps hitting my tray.”
So, I got this upbringing, I got this weird way of looking at the world, right? Finally found someone who could deal with me. I got married last year, and I’m happier than shit. I gotta tell ya. My wife is an angel, okay? A complete angel. T-The total opposite of me, okay? Loves people. Loves people, she’s from the South. She’s always smiling. She’s like a dog, she likes to play. She likes to come out and play. I’m like a cat, I love to hide, right? Her friends come over, they’re, like, comfortable. Right? I like people at the house, but, like, her friends stay long. Like, my friends… uh, you know, my friends, after the game, they’re gone. Hers? They’re like, “Oh-oh, I’ll just sleep here.” “No. No, you’re not.” Her friends, like, open the refrigerator. I’m sorry, I didn’t grow up that way. You don’t open anybody else’s refrigerator. Right? The refrigerator and the master bedroom… you don’t, you don’t look at. You ever get a tour of somebody’s house? “This is the master.” And you’re like, “Oh, okay.” You don’t go in there and go, “Oh, do… this where you fuck? You fuck here?” “Right here?” No! You just skip it, and you move on to the baby’s room.
No, a friend came over the other night. She comes right in. She goes in there. She starts shopping… like it’s Jewel, right? Took out a bowl of cherries. Beautiful cherries… I just bought them, right? I didn’t even get to taste them. What I like to do is, I like to take out the cherries, put them in a separate bowl, give them a nice wash, and slip those in the refrigerator, right? This one takes out the cherries. She’s eating the cherries, and we’re, she’s talking to me and my wife. Now, it’s all over my face. I can’t hide it, all right? I’m sitting there, I go, “I-I got to go to the bathroom.” Now I go hide. I go… Like a cat, I go somewhere else. And my wife has to come get me. She’s like, “Wha…? Would you come out here?” I go, “She’s eating the cherries.” How does she know I’m not making a cherry pie with that?
But that’s why I fell in love with my wife. Totally different. I’ll come home, and the pizza delivery guy will be in the house, while my wife goes to our secret stash… and pays him. I go, “Why is the delivery guy in our kitchen?” I didn’t grow up with delivery people. I was the delivery person. My father would order a pizza in January, right? 38 below outside. And he would tell me, “Uh, go get the pizza. “It’s gonna be ready in 30 minutes. I just ordered the pizza.” I go, “They got delivery. Why don’t you just…?” “I’m gonna pay delivery when I got you? Go get the pizza…”
But the customer service, right? I-I run into it a lot, the customer service, ’cause I handle, in my house, all the hook-ups… Internet, whatever we need. Gas, I do all that. Got on the phone with the cable people, right? I don’t know if you ever try to hook up cable over the phone with these people? There’s a pre-recorded message that says, “We’re gonna monitor the call for quality assurance.” Right? So, as soon as I get a live operator, I tell them, “Just so you know, I’m recording the call on my end, too, okay? “You got me, I got you. Behave. Behave.”
So the next morning, I come down for breakfast, I got a guy in my yard already. Cable guy‘s in the yard already. My wife is like, “What is he doing?” I go, “I don’t know.” Now, I handle that. That’s another thing you handle as a husband. You got a guy in your yard, you take care of that. You don’t send your wife. “Go… go see. Go out there.” As a husband, you have to handle stuff. You make reservations to a restaurant, as the man, you check in. You go right up to the… “I got a two Maniscalco tonight, you got that?” You don’t send your wife. I see it all the time. Wives go up… “Hi, we’re here. “Two for, uh, Johnson. “It’s ready? “Honey? You want to… “It’s ready, honey! You want to come up here?!” Handle it. So, I handle the cable guy. I come outside in the yard. I go, “Hey, what’s going on? What are you doing?” “Oh, nah, I can’t do it! “I can’t do it! “I can’t get at the… the cable, I can’t get it.” What?! You don’t come to the door, introduce yourself… How’d you get back here? “I can’t do it. I gotta take a break.” Break? You didn’t do nothing. He’s telling me he can’t hook the cable up because the cable’s in my neighbor’s yard. I gotta ask my neighbor if it’s okay for him to go get the cable. I go, “Julio, you broke into my yard…” “…can’t you just break into his? “It’s your cable. Go get the damn thing.” “I can’t do it.” So me and Julio go over to my neighbor. I just moved into the neighborhood. I don’t even know the guy. I knock on the door, the guy came to the door, had a full medical mask on. If you have a medical mask on, and you answer the door, that’s gotta be the first thing out of your mouth, okay? Why you got this damn thing on. I come to my door, with a medical mask, I take it down: “Listen, doing some painting in the garage, gets into my lungs, that’s why I got the mask.” This guy, nothing on the mask. Started talking through the mask. He’s, like, “What’s going on?” I go, “No, no, no… what’s going on in here?” I just bought the joint next door. Do I gotta put it up for sale? Why the hell do you got a medical mask on, on a Monday morning, okay? Let’s get into that. I’m gonna send Julio in your yard. Is he gonna come out with no head? What are you doing with the mask?
I live in the negative. Live in the negative. My wife is in the positive, okay? Came back to our house, I said, “Put the ‘for sale’ sign up. There’s a guy with a medical mask living next door.” She’s, like, “Maybe he has a respiratory problem and that’s why he has the mask.” I go, “Or maybe he’s got 16 bodies in drums, “in formaldehyde, in his basement. Put the sign up, we’re moving.” You can’t get any customer service with the cable.
Here, I went to Chipotle couple weeks ago. Love Chipotle… they make a really nice burrito over there. It’s so terrific, the employees can’t stop eating it. The employees are never working. They’re always in the dining room eating. Ever walk in there? I’m, like, “Where are the workers?” The only guy behind there is the guy cutting chicken, just looking at you. Right? He’s not trained on burrito building. And I’m watching the people order… I mean, there’s a sneeze glass there, right? But people always hook the arm over the glass: “I’ll have corn; I’ll have more corn…” Just say, “corn.” It’s not soundproof. It goes right over the glass. Get your claw out of the salsa. And nobody talks to the Chipotle people. There’s no conversation that happens. They listen to the same shit eight hours a day, right? Just, “steak… “beans… cheese…” gone! I never seen anything like this. It’s like you’re not even… It’s like a robot. “Chicken… “peppers… lettuce…” And the employees… All… day… long. And God forbid if you ask for guacamole… oh, my God… the whole store goes into a panic attack. They don’t even know how to tell you it’s extra money, right? You’re, like, “Put some guac on that…?” “Uh…” “It’s $1.80 extra. Is that o… is that okay?” Yeah… it’s okay. Most stressful job at Chipotle has to be wrapping these damn things, right? By the time the wrapper gets it, his employees have populated the burrito with so much ingredients, the guy can’t even find the tortilla. He starts sweating. He’s, like, “How am I gonna wrap this damn thing?” Right? It’s a workout. He’s gotta get down, gotta use some quads, a little core, start… tucking and fold… tuck and fold. It took me 23 minutes to get a burrito out of this place, huh? I felt, at the end of this, Chipotle owed me something. So I asked for a water; I filled it up with Coca-Cola. Huh? Least I could do. 23 minutes in line, I go to the Coca-Cola machine, and I stare at them while I fill, like this. Coca-Cola in the see-through glass… what are you gonna do? What are you gonna do about it? It’s everywhere you go.
Went to Best Buy looking for a TV. Salesman came out. He had one these eyeballs, one of these fucked-up eyeballs, looking into the kitchen area. Listen, if you got a fucked-up eyeball, and you’re in sales, you gotta tell me that right off the bat, okay? You have to open with that: “Listen, I know my eyeball’s looking into ‘DVDs’ right now.” And I could say, “Okay, what eyeball can I trust? Where do I need to be?” “What eyeball do you think is “gonna start looking at the Samsung? “Tell me; I’m confused. I need an eyeball.” But that’s why I got my wife.
My wife chills me out, all right? She’s from the South, she’s Spanish, she’s Jewish… who knew these people even existed, man? Spanish Jew from the South. I didn’t even think the Jews went down there. But Italians and Jews… very similar, you know? People say “same corporation, different division,” all right? We get along… there’s an obvious, you know, thing with the religion. I went to my first Passover dinner. She’s, like, “My mother’s gonna have Passover.” “Okay, we’ll go to the dinner.” 7:30, we sit down at her mother’s house. I’m starving, right? Starving. They start passing out pamphlets, like, reading material… I’m, like, “What’s going on? What are we doing here? What’s with the…?” She’s, like, “No, we read for two hours.” Two hours?! I said, “Listen, I’m Italian. “As soon as I sit at a table, I gotta have bread within 15 seconds of sitting down, all right?” “I need something to do with my right hand, I need a… “Is there some oil coming out? “We got oil? I need oil. Now. Hungry.” And the food they start bringing out? Oh, God… terrible, terrible food. Jews have no idea what the hell they’re doing in the kitchen. These people have no cuisine. Celery, crackers, jam? I’m, like, what is…? We’re losing… people are leaving. We need food. After breakfast, they fall apart, the Jews. After a bagel, cream cheese, lox… where they going? They got nothin’. The have nothing. Has anybody ever said to you, “We went to this Jewish restaurant last night…” “The gefilte… amazing!” I respect the Jews, but let’s just have the Italians cater the Passover meal, all right? Come on! I could read for a couple of hours with some meatballs on the table.
When I first met my wife, I had some secrets. Right? I couldn’t share ’em. Everybody’s got a secret in the room. Everybody… everybody here has a secret. Especially that lady. My secret? I couldn’t digest dairy, okay? Something you can’t share, first month of dating. You can’t be out to dinner and go, “Listen, I can’t have any dessert, or I’m gonna shit the bed tonight, all right?” No, you just eat the dessert and you deal with the consequences later on. All right? Went back to her place, started to watch a movie. Halfway through the movie, the dairy starts dancing, right? I had to ask her, real cool… this is in the beginning, where you have to be cool with everything… You’re, like, “Listen, you got a bathroom or something like that?” “I don’t know why… you got a bathroom “or something like that, or something? Something I could u… something I could use?” Hoping she would say, “Yeah, it’s down the hall to the right, and then you go outside.” She’s, like, “No, it’s just around the corner. You want me to pause the movie?” I said, “No, actually, could you, could you turn it up a little bit? I want to…” “Turn it up. I want to hear the acoustics in the bathroom.” So I would lock the door, I would put the water on in the bathroom. Get some noise going. I later told her, right? I said, “Yeah, I got a dairy problem.” She’s, like, “Dairy? I thought you had OCD. I thought you were constantly washing your hands.” “Washing my hands? I was farting into your towels.” Anything to muffle the sound, just… Oh, God, I hope she doesn’t wash her face with that. God, I can’t go back out there. It’s rancid. It’s so rancid.
But it’s fun. It’s fun being married, sharing my life with a beautiful woman. All my friends got married when they were real, real young. In their early 20s, they all started families, start popping out kids. I was the last guy to get married, all right? So they were excited for the bachelor party. You know, married guys with kids, they’re looking for a prison break, right? The phone started ringing off the hook. “We gotta plan your bachelor party.” My buddies say, “We gotta plan your bachelor party, or I’m gonna fake my own death soon, all right?” “I’m six weeks away… “from starting a fruit stand in Nicaragua. I gotta… I gotta get out.” So my buddies, they plan a Miami weekend. Go to Miami for the weekend. It happened to be urban weekend. It was Black Weekend in Miami. So we looked like four mozzarella sticks at the pool. My friends still think they’re in their 20s. My buddy’s like, “Let’s go to the pool. Let’s start talking to some chicks.” I’m like, “Steve? You have tits.” “It’s over, Steven. “You have a C-cup “with a beautiful areola. “No one’s looking for that, Steven.” But when you’re in your 40s and you… go on a vacation, a lot different than when you’re 20. When you’re 20, you don’t even carry a toiletry bag. Everything’s loose. Just gel, hair spray, cologne. Just lives with your clothes. When you’re 40, the toiletry bag becomes the focus of the trip. It’s so big, when you unpack, you got to hang it. You hang it on the back of the door. You unzip it and it just unfolds. No more hair spray. There’s no more gel. Nobody’s got hair. It’s Propecia. Antidepressants. Stool softener. A therapy rubber band. My buddy had a bad shoulder. He brought his therapy rubber bands. He had to hook them up to the door. And he had to work out his shoulder before we went out. But we talked a lot on our trip.
My buddy’s, uh, ex-military. Do we have any, uh, active-active military here? Any military people? Yeah? Where at? Front? U-Up top? Marine? Yeah? All right, give it up. Give it up for the, for the United States military. Love the military. My buddy’s got me into so many military-type shows. I can’t stop watching this stuff. It’s all I do. I go home after my shows. I watch SEALs, Special Ops, Rangers, documentaries. The bin Laden thing fascinated me. I wish I was on the hit. I wish I was there for that. Just on a SEAL’s back. Just like, “Where we go?” “We found him? You got to be kidding me!” Just how they conducted that raid with night goggles… vision… helicopters right over the house… 3:00 a.m., Pakistan. One of the, uh, one of the helicopters fell out of the sky. Guys were still in the air. They looked at it, said, “Fuck it. We’ll still do it. We’re here, right?” They start coming out of the helicop… They surround the house. Bin Laden’s people didn’t know what was going on. They hadn’t had company in 13 years. Now you got United States military all over the property. One guy came out of his bedroom in his underwear, eating some hummus. “What is go…?” They find bin Laden in his bedroom. Three girlfriends, a couple of wives. How does that happen? How… What’s the upside on being married to bin Laden? Where do you meet him? This guy didn’t have a table at a nightclub in Pakistan. Right? Girls, they walk in. “Oh, my… Binny, Binny’s here! “Hi, Binny! Hi…” My buddy… being ex-military, he’s ready for the end of the world, this guy. This guy has got a lot of weapons at the house. Got a compound bow and arrow. Now, if you don’t know anything about a compound bow? The arrow travels at about 300 yards per second. Can take out a giraffe, no problem. He’s got this thing in the house. I go, “John, what the hell you got this in the… in the house for?” He’s like, “You kidding me? It’s for home invasion.” “Home invasion”? Could you imagine the poor bastard that breaks into my buddy’s house? As a burglar, you can’t even prepare for something like that. The burglar thinks nobody’s home. He comes through a kitchen window. My buddy hears him. He gets out his bow and arrow. The burglar’s in the living room. He suspects nothing. He’s stealing valuables. Then out of nowhere… Do you know the mindfuck on this? The burglar has to process… “I got an arrow hanging out of my chest right now.” Did I break into an Apache’s home? Are there Indians here? Is this a casino?
You guys are great. Thank you so much for coming out. God bless you. Thank you. Thank you. So nice.
