[audience cheering, applauding]
[twinkling tone]
[male announcer] Ladies and gentlemen, put your hands together for Wanda Skyes.
[audience cheering, applauding]
[“Shining Star” by Earth, Wind & Fire playing]
[music continues, cheering]
♪ When you wish upon a star ♪
♪ Your dreams will take you very far, Yeah ♪
[music ends]
Philadelphia, thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you! Oh my God, I’m so excited to be here, Philadelphia, you know, shoot my special. You know, my last special was in 2019. It was called Not Normal. Yeah. [sighing] Since then, we’ve had a pandemic, an insurrection, Roe v. Wade got overturned…
Yeah.
[audience booing]
Yeah, I should have called that special The Good Old Days.
[audience laughing]
Shit. What the fuck, y’all? Monkeypox, lanternflies, flooding in California, Texas frozen over… Kanye’s Black ass wearing a “White Lives Matter” T-shirt…
[audience laughing]
I think I’m gonna call this special, Here Comes Jesus.
[audience laughing, cheering]
We lived through a pandemic, y’all. What the fuck? And COVID was scary, ’cause you didn’t know what it was gonna do until you got it, right? And I finally got it. It took two years, and I finally got it. Yeah. You know, but I’m… I’m vaxxed, I’m fully vaccinated, so, you know, the first two days were a little rough. I’m isolating in the guest bedroom, you know, so my wife couldn’t bother me, my kids couldn’t bother me. So on that third day, I was like, “Shit.”
[audience laughing]
“How can I get some of that long COVID?”
[audience laughing]
“This agrees with me.” “This feels like me time.” Shit, I’ve been there just napping, you know, watching whatever I want. You know, my wife, she would leave my meals at the door. You know, she was like, “Babe, uh, why is there a towel underneath the door?” You know, ’cause I’m in there smoking weed, you know, I’m…
[audience laughing, applauding] [coughing] “‘Cause you don’t want this shit!” “I’m looking out for y’all!” Then a couple of days later, she got it. Yeah. Yeah, she, she tells me, “Babe, uh, I just tested positive.” “So, you know, I can, uh… I can isolate with you.” I was like, “Uh-uh.”
[audience laughing]
“Yours is fresh. I’m on my way out.”
[audience laughing]
“You hot.” And she’s like, “That’s not how it works.” I said, “You don’t know. You ain’t Sanjay Gupta.”
[audience laughing]
“Take your ass back to our bedroom.” And then my son caught it. Yeah. And his twin sister, she didn’t get it. Why? ‘Cause she’s a 13-year-old girl and she don’t want shit to do with us.
[audience laughing]
You should see her little ass, walking, like, 50 feet ahead of us, acting like she’s Beyoncé and we Destiny’s Child.
[audience laughing]
♪ To the left, to the left ♪
[chuckling] But you know what, there’s some things that I miss about being in the lockdown. I do. Remember we weren’t letting anybody in your house, remember that? You didn’t let nobody in your house. Uh-uh. And I miss that, ’cause it was fun telling my white friends to go around back.
[audience laughing]
I loved that. “Uh-uh, Carol, go around back now.” “You know better than to come up here like that.” “You go on around back now. Git! Go on.” “I’ll meet you by the fire pit. Go ahead, now.” A lot of drinking by the fire pit. And there was some good stuff from the pandemic, right? We got online church. Oh, I love online church! Isn’t that the best? But somehow I’m still late. I don’t know how that happens. You just gotta log on, Wanda. Jeez! Love online church. Although Communion Sunday started to get out of hand. Yeah, yeah, you know, the pastor would say, you know, “Get your little wine, or your juice.” I was like, “Uh, you said wine. Say less.” So I would sit there with my little shot glass of wine an, and my Ritz cracker, you know. Yeah, ’cause the body of Christ is brown for me.
[audience laughing]
Yeah, I… I, I don’t do Malibu Jesus, that blond-haired, blue-eyed guy. Uh-uh. No. That’s just perpetuating white supremacy, that’s all that’s doing. Have you seen one of the early drawings of Jesus? He looks just like Teddy Pendergrass.
[audience laughing]
That’s my Jesus. I don’t do Jesus of Nebraska. No, thank you. So those first couple of, you know, COVID communions, I was good, but by that sixth month, boy, I was sitting there with a whole glass of a Cabernet…
[audience laughing]
…and an everything bagel. I was like, “What the hell, Wanda? What are you doing?” “This is ridiculous.” You know, by the end of the service, a cheese plate went into the situation. I got a wine ring on my Bible. I was like, “Okay…” “I gotta get back in the building. I need supervision.” You know, I… I got a friend who still hasn’t been vaccinated. No, she won’t get vaccinated. And she’s laughing at me. She’s like, “Uh, look at you.” “You don’t know what’s in that mess.” “You just put that mess in your arm. You don’t know what’s in it.” I was like, “Yeah, I don’t know.” “And if they told me what was in it, I still wouldn’t know what was in it.” “I’m not a scientist, jackass.”
[audience laughing, applauding]
But they laugh at me. They laugh at me. They talk like, “Well, I just don’t put anything in my body.” I’m like, “You use Splenda. Shut the fuck up.”
[audience laughing]
But you know, I wasn’t afraid of the vaccine because I grew up with something called, uh, the mosquito man. Yeah. I grew up in Virginia, you know, rural area, and, uh, you know, we had the mosquito man. Like, the mosquito man comes around now, but they, you know, they call your house and leave a recording, and say they’re gonna come and, you know, treat the area, and to stay inside and bring your pets inside. Yeah. Not back then. Mm-mm. Back in the late ’60s, they, they would just pop up. Yeah, and we lived back in the woods, you know, no, no streetlights, just dirt roads. You know, my grandmother didn’t have indoor plumbing. So when the mosquito man came around, that was an exciting time for us. That was like the circus. You know what I’m saying? It’s like, other neighborhoods they would get… [humming the ice-cream song] Mm-mm. Not us. We would get… [imitating water sprinkler]
[audience laughing]
And we would lose our fucking minds. The kids, man, we would drop whatever we was doing… “It’s mosquito man!” “Yeah, it’s the mosquito man!” And we would run to the end of the road to greet the mosquito man just to get behind his truck to play in that fog of pesticide. [yelling] “You can’t see me!” We would play tag, just having the time of our lives. And the mosquito man was an asshole, right? Because instead of saying, “Kids, get out of here!” “Go inside. This is poison!” He would shoot at us like it was a video game. [imitating shooting] That asshole would slow down and crank it up more so we’d get a bigger fog. And we’re just loving it. [laughing] Just running in it, mouth wide open. [chuckling] And then when he was leaving the neighborhood, we would thank him. “Thank you, mosquito man! Thank you!” “Come back soon, okay?” And then we’d walk back home, with that pesticide just steaming off of us. Flies would land on us and then just die.
[audience laughing]
So, I wasn’t scared of no vaccine.
[audience cheering, applauding]
So I’m married, happily married. Married a French woman. Yeah, she’s French. And she, she’s white, she’s white, and, uh… And we have twins, Lucas and Olivia. They’re 13 now. They’re white too. Yeah, you know. I figured if she was gonna carry them, they should look like her, you know? And also I felt like, you know, “Hey, if shit didn’t work out, it would be easier for me to walk away.”
[audience laughing]
“It’s like I was never there.” She’s not gonna like that joke. And she’s really not gonna like that I put in my will that in order for the kids to get the money, they gotta legally change their names to Rashad and Laquisha.
[audience laughing]
[Wanda laughing] The kids are now in public school, yeah. Because, uh, since pre-K, they were going to the French School, because my wife was like, “Okay, so I’m the mother, and, uh, you know, the kids, they have to learn French first, ’cause it’s the tongue of the mother.” “So, uh, they have to go to the private French school, okay?” And I was like, “Yeah, that’s cool. You know, French first, okay.” My friends were like, “What you mean, ‘French first’?” I was like, “Would you shut the hell up? I know what I’m doing.” Anyways, I felt like the kids would bring me some homework and I’d just go… [grunting]
[audience laughing]
“Go ask the other one.” But the kids are now fluent, so my wife… You know, when they were going to middle school, she came to me, she’s like, “Okay, so the kids are now fluent in French, and I think it’s time that they can go to the public school.” “Um, is that okay for you?” I’m like, “Oh, it’s more than okay for me, ’cause by looking at these report cards, I can get these C’s for free.”
[audience laughing]
“Judging by this, we ain’t raising no little Dr. Faucis over here.” “I think we got us a couple of TikTokers.” “That’s what we’re working with.” But we did take a tour of the school before we made our decision, you know. So we went to check out the school. We’re walking through, and they had, like, the, they had the rainbow flag up, and they had the transgender flag, they had the hands across the world, you know, holding hands, and my wife is looking at it. She was like, “Oh!” “This is nice. I like this. I think it, I think it matches our values, and, uh…” “I think it’s a good environment for the kids.” “What do you think, babe? What you think?” And I was like, “Well, first of all, you know you ain’t supposed to be smoking in here.”
[audience laughing]
“Public building. What you doing?” And I was like, “I can’t believe you’re falling for this shit.” “You know they just put this up ’cause they knew we were coming.” “You take that rainbow flag down, there is a Trump 2024 poster back there.”
[audience laughing]
But it turns out, I was wrong. That is the mission of the school, inclusivity. Yeah.
[audience applauding]
And it really touched me, you know? ‘Cause I was like, “Man, just think, I mean, like, how my life would be different, you know, if it were like that when I was coming up?” Like, if I… If I was able to go to a school like that. I was like, “Man, I could’ve saved myself a lot of unnecessary dick in my life.”
[audience laughing]
[audience whooping]
I didn’t, I didn’t need all that dick! That dick weren’t for me. That was Carol’s dick. That wasn’t my dick. Because I knew, I knew. I… I knew in the third grade. Yeah. I remember having a crush on, uh, my brother’s girlfriend’s, uh, sister. She was an older girl, and I remember telling her, you know, I… I said, “You know, I wish I were a boy and then you could be my girlfriend.” Yeah. Cute, right? That bitch shut me down. Oh my gosh, she crushed me. She was like, “You don’t say that. That’s disgusting.” “That’s nasty. You’re nasty.” You don’t like girls, you like boys. You don’t like girls, you like boys.” And, and I was like, “Okay,” you know. “I guess I’ll put this in a box.” “Deal with it when I can afford therapy.”
[audience laughing]
“I guess bring on the dick.”
[audience laughing]
And even then, it took me a long time. Like, I was a, I was a virgin until I was a junior in college. Yeah. And even then, I was just like, “Let me just get this over with.” And I found the shortest guy with the littlest hands I could find.
[audience laughing]
Teeny hands. ‘Cause I was like, you know, “I ain’t trying to have a whole meal.” I was just looking for toppers, you know. Just do toppers. And he was nice, he was nice, so then I started having sex with guys, you know. But you know, it never really did anything for me, but they seemed to enjoy it.
[audience laughing]
And I guess that was enough for me, ’cause, you know, I’m an entertainer.
[audience laughing]
[audience cheering, applauding]
I’ll give you a show. But these kids know, man. These kids know. My daughter has a, has a friend, little gay boy, Justin. Yeah. I was talking to my wife. I said, “You know, Olivia’s gonna ask us if Justin can come over for a sleepover.” “How do you feel about that? She’s like, “Well…”
[audience laughing]
“You know, Justin…” [speaking French] “…and, you know, I like his parents, so…” “Yeah, I’m okay. Are you okay?” I was like, “Yeah, I’m okay with it.” I said, “But I will have a conversation with Justin when he gets here.” “I’ll be like, ‘Look, Justin, now when you walked through my door, you were gay.'”
[audience laughing]
“‘That’s how you better leave here in the morning.'”
[audience laughing]
“‘All right?'” “‘I don’t wanna hear no bi-curious shit over breakfast.'” These kids know, man. And they out there trying to go backwards, right? Florida. “Don’t Say Gay” ban. What the hell, right? Tennessee, no kids can go to the drag shows. Like that was a problem in the first place. Oh, I can’t tell you how many drag shows I’ve been to and everybody’s up in arms because they ran out of highchairs and booster seats. What the fuck is wrong with them? At the library, they even stopped the, the drag queen’s, uh, story hour. They were reading books to kids, and they stopped that. They said, “Well, a man dressed as a woman is confusing to kids.” Well, have you seen Sesame Street?
[audience laughing]
I think if the kids can figure out Snuffleupagus, they can handle RuPaul.
[audience laughing, applauding]
Texas. They’re banning books in Texas. Banning books. “Well, we’re protecting the kids.” Well, if you really want to protect the kids, ban assault weapons, that’s what’s killing the kids. Not the books. [audience cheering, applauding] I mean, until a drag queen walks into a school and beats eight kids to death with a copy of To Kill a Mockingbird…
[audience laughing]
I think you’re focusing on the wrong shit.
[audience cheering, applauding]
And you’re not protecting the kids. You’re protecting homophobia, that’s what you’re protecting. And transphobia is rampant. Hundreds of bills being introduced across the country, and it seems like it, it comes down to bathrooms. They really don’t want trans women to use the ladies’ room. Let me tell you something. For anybody who’s ever been to a ladies’ room, there ain’t nothing ladylike in there. If you go into a public ladies’ room and it’s clean, you better play the lottery, ’cause you got lucky. I don’t know what the fuck happens to women when we go into that restroom. It’s like, you could see a woman, she could be in, in heels and, and a fucking gown and a, and a tiara. As soon as she crosses that threshold of the ladies’ room, it’s… [growling, groaning]
[audience laughing]
What the fuck? Would it kill you to flush, ladies? Just a flush, please! And it’s always that one stall, where the door is just slightly ajar. Ooh, you don’t go in there. Something’s God-awful in there. And there’s always that one woman in line who just can’t wait, and she’s like… “Um, ladies, is, is, is anyone using that one?”
[audience laughing]
“Go ahead.” “Knock yourself out, Nancy Drew. Go ahead.” And she’s like, “Oh, thank you! Thank you” “Oh, God! Oh, God!!” [gagging] Dumbass. I… I went into one stall, and everything was clean, except there was a, a puddle of pee on the floor. I was like, “What the fuck happened here?” And I thought about it. I was like, “I know what.” “She probably lost her hover skills.”
[audience laughing]
She probably was in there hovering, and that knee went out on her. [groaning] “Damn it! Aah” “Oh shit.” “I got pee in my shoe.” “Damn it.” “This is some bullshit.” And sometimes your hover skills can be on point, but, you know, our bodies are so complex that, you know, I don’t know if it’s a wild hair or something, but sometimes you go, and you get two streams coming out. One’s going down your thigh, one’s shooting out that way. Like, what the… And then you try to marry it together, like, “Come on, y’all!” “Come on. Come on, work with me, y’all, come on.” “Ah, shit. Damn it, this is some…” [groaning] “All right, come… All right, come on.” Ah. Peeing like a scorpion, you’re like, “This is some…” “Pee just went in my booty hole. This is not right.” “This is not right.” And then, and then when you give up and say, “I’m just gonna use a seat cover,” you go in there and put the seat cover down, and as soon as you turn around… [imitating water flushing] …the toilet flush and snatches your seat cover!
[audience laughing]
You’re like, “Shit, I’m just gonna pee on the floor. Fuck this.” So I welcome my trans sisters into the ladies’ room. Please. Maybe, maybe you’ll make us do better, you know. We’ll be like, “Come on, ladies!” “Let’s pick it up around here.” “We got some new members coming in, come on.” My son, Lucas, he’s been, uh, begging me for a snake. Yeah, that’s it. For years. For years, a snake. Yeah. Yeah. “Mommy-boo, can I please have a snake?” Yeah, they still call me “Mommy-boo” ’cause they’re racist, you know.
[audience laughing]
And I’m like, “Lucas, you’re not getting a snake.” Every Christmas, “Mommy…” Every birthday, “Can I have a snake?” And I finally just snapped. I was like, “Look, Lucas, you’re not getting a snake!” And he’s like, “Why?” I said, “‘Cause I’m just not gonna let you be that white.”
[audience laughing]
And I had to break it down for him. I said, “Look, man, you, you, you have a Black mother, okay?” “Black women just don’t tolerate stupid shit.” “It makes our ass itch.” “I mean, getting a snake and bringing it in the house and calling it a pet?” “That’s dumb.” “That’s just dumb. Know what else you’re not gonna do?” “Extreme sports. You can forget about that.” “I ain’t buying you a bike, and now you up there flipping all up in the air.” “That’s not the way that bike’s supposed to be ridden. You ain’t doing that.” And then he goes, “Uh, is that why you won’t let me wear shorts when it’s cold?” “Exactly, Rashad. Exactly.”
[audience laughing]
He’s like, “Rashad?” I said, “Don’t worry, you… You’ll find out. You’ll find out.” I tell you, lockdown was rough for me. It was. It was rough, man. ‘Cause everything racial popped off, right? George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery. The country’s on fire. And I’m stuck in the house with white people.
[audience laughing]
And Ahmaud Arbery put me over the edge, man. That, that one broke me. So, you know, I was outside, standing by the fire pit, upset, drinking, Wearing my “I Matter” T-shirt.
[audience laughing]
And my wife comes outside. She comes over, she goes, “Uh, babe?” “I know you’re upset and all, you know, about, uh…” “About all the racism and all, and, you know…” “You know, I’m sorry, uh, you know, that…” “That, you know…” “You know…” “Racism.” “But, you know, the kids, they are, they’re a little worried about you.” “They say, ‘Why Mommy-boo upset?'” “So, you know, maybe you can go talk to them about the, um, you know, racism.” I looked at her, I said, “You know what, Alex, why don’t you go talk to them about the racism?” “‘Cause I can’t explain things that are being done to me.” “I can’t explain that, so why don’t you go talk to them?” “A matter of fact, why don’t you go talk to them about white supremacy and make sure we ain’t raising a Proud Boy up in this motherfucker?” “Why don’t you go do that?”
[audience cheering, applauding]
Huh.
[audience laughing]
“I can make us some crêpes.” She made crêpes. And they were delicious. But I get it, though. I get it. I get it. ‘Cause it’s uncomfortable to talk about, right? And I was sick of explaining it to her, so I said, “You know what?” “I’m just gonna start pointing shit out for her.” So we had to go to the bank to drop some paperwork off, right? So my wife is driving, I’m in the car. We pull up to the bank. And I noticed the parking lot was kind of scarce, and I didn’t see any… any activity going on in the bank. So she’s like, “Yeah, just go, you know… just take the papers in the bank and, uh, okay, just drop it off.” And I’m looking, I’m like, “Are you sure it’s open?” “I think so.” “You know, just… just go and, uh…” “I am not going up to a bank and…” “But, but why?” “‘Cause Black people don’t go up to banks and…”
[audience laughing]
“You know why? ‘Cause somebody will call the cops and say, “Hey, there’s a Black woman trying to break into the bank.'” “‘She looks like Wanda Sykes.'”
[audience laughing]
She didn’t get it. She didn’t get it. She thought I was being ridiculous. Yeah. But I understand why, because she does whatever the fuck she wants to do. Yeah. We were in France, right? Had to go to the grocery store. We’re about to cross the street, the dude’s closing the gate of the store. And I go, “Ah, babe, we’re too late.” She said, “No, we’re not.” She ran across the street…
[audience laughing]
I backed the fuck up and went home. Like, America home. But that’s how she rolls. And then something happened that, that got to her. We were, uh, standing in the backyard or whatever, and during, during the shutdown, they built three new homes next to us. Big homes, right? So my wife is standing out in back, and she’s looking at the house, and she’s like… [grunting] “Hey, babe, I think, uh, “I think that window is going to be a problem because, uh, they can see into our, uh, master bath.” “I don’t, I don’t like that window.” And I was like, “Well, babe, I mean, we have window treatment, it’s cool.” “We’ll just close our blinds, it’s all good.” Hmm. Hmm. And when she does that “Hmm, hmm”, oh, it ain’t over. She ain’t letting it go. Right? And she didn’t. A couple days later, I’m in the house, my phone rings. It’s Alex. I’m like, “Why is she calling me? She’s home.” So I’m like, “Hey, babe, you, you okay?” “Yes. Uh, can you go up to our master bath and look out the window, please?” So I go upstairs. I open the blinds. There she is in the house being under construction. She’s in the window over there. I’m like, “What are you doing?” She’s like, whoo-hoo.
[audience laughing]
“I can see you!” “You see me?” I’m like, “Get out of that house!” “Oh, I just wanted to see. I told you this was going to be a problem.” “Get out of that house!” “Okay, okay.” So she comes home. I am livid, right? She’s like, “What is your problem?” I said, “Do you know what you just did?” I said, “You did exactly what Ahmaud Arbery did.” “There was a house under construction, he’s being nosy, checking it out.” I said, “But when he left, they chased him down and murdered him in the middle of the street.” “If they caught you in that house, they would’ve chased you down and asked if you wanted to see the other two models.”
[audience laughing]
She got it. She got it then. She was like, “Oh shit.” Yeah, she dropped her accent and everything. Put her cigarette out, and punched Carol in the liver. I was like, “Damn!” She got it. She got it. Yeah. She realized it’s privilege, you know, it’s privilege. She can do what I can’t do, you know, without consequences, right? Like, like, like Black people can’t be weird. We can’t. We have, we have to fit the stereotype. We don’t fit the stereotype, it freaks people out. It… It’s like how people are blown away that Lizzo can play the flute.
[audience laughing]
“Did you know that Lizzo can play the flute?” “Really?” “Yes, an actual flute!” “She doesn’t even play it with her asshole or anything, she just plays the flute.” “Like, classical.” Can’t be weird. Look at Elijah McClain. Elijah McClain, young Black man in Aurora. Yeah. He was, uh, walking home, it was cold outside, had a little jacket on. He was walking home and he was listening to his music. He was waving his hands, walking, listening to his music, walking home, minding his business. Somebody called the cops. “Hey, there’s a Black guy acting weird.” “Seems sketchy.” So the cops show up. They question him, and, and, and Elijah’s like, “I’m fine. I’m fine.” “I’m… I’m an introvert, I’m fine.” Cops think he’s on drugs, so they call the paramedics. Paramedics hold him down, shoot him up with ketamine, killed him. Yeah, just for being weird. Then the cops tried to justify it. “Well, I mean, it was cold outside. He had on a little, thin jacket.” Like, well, what about those people at the Green Bay Packer games? Standing outside in the snowbank, no shirt on, with a block of styrofoam cheese on their head? That’s some weird shit. White people do weird shit all the time. Renaissance fairs, what the fuck is that?
[audience laughing]
I don’t get it. You know what was weird? You know what was weird? That fucking, uh, uh, shaman guy. On January sixth, that shaman motherfucker. Half man, half horse, what the fuck was that? His face was painted, uh, blue and white, whatever, wearing that fucking flag, got fucking hat with horns on it and shit. You know, where was the call to the cops for that guy? “Hey, there’s a weird motherfucker about to leave his house.” “This is some crazy shit.” Where’s the call for that guy? He shouldn’t even made it to DC. They should’ve shot him as soon as he walked out of his door. Tagged him and put him in the zoo.
[audience laughing]
[Wanda laughing] Oh my gosh. January sixth, man. Wow. That was some… That was the epitome of, of white privilege like that, right there. That was the epitome of white privilege. January sixth…
[audience cheering, applauding]
Never seen no shit like that. Black people were watching January sixth like, “What in the Wakanda forever is going on here?” I mean, they were just climbing up the walls, I mean, just scaling the walls of the Capitol. And I mean, it, it looked like a, a zombie herd. They looked like a zombie herd, man. You know, just, just like they’d been bit, you know, like Giuliani bit all of them. They were just infected. They had that crazed look in their eyes, you know. “Nancy!” “Nancy!” You know, hair dye dripping down the side of their face. “Nancy!”
[audience laughing]
You know what was really bad about January sixth? Look at our congresspeople. They’re old. You can’t scare old people like that! Y’all, they made old people hide. You know how painful that is? I remember when I turned 50, I’m playing hide-and-seek with my kids. I’m stuck underneath a coffee table. After a while, I was like, “Shit, this shit hurts.” I started making noise. “Hey, I’m over here!” “Come find my ass!” I’m like, “I ain’t playing this shit no more.” I mean, come on, you can’t tell Chuck Grassley to scramble. “Come on, Chuck, we gotta hide. Let’s go!” “Huh?” “What? Uh-ha.” “What did you say? Ha?” “Gotta hide, huh?” They all should have just hid under Mitch McConnell’s chin. Never would’ve found them there.
[audience laughing, cheering]
Now, now watch some Democrat come at me for making fun of Mitch McConnell’s chin. Yeah. They’d probably be like Cory Booker or somebody, you know, on his IG run. “You know, taking jabs at jowls does not move the conversation forward.”
[audience laughing]
Annoying! You know that’ll happen, because when they go low, we go high, right? Yeah. That’s bullshit. I’m sick of that! Sick of going high! I want to go low, I want to have some fun! ‘Cause being a Democrat is painful, y’all. It’s pain… It’s like getting a wedgie every fucking day. Just got to take it! ‘Cause they make up all kinds of shit, but why do we have to be handcuffed to, to facts and reality when they’re living in some alternate universe, just making up shit? ‘Cause, you know, politics is just straight-up entertainment now, especially on the Republican side. A, A… All they’re doing is entertaining. You know what it’s like? It’s like the Dems are PBS, and the GOP is TLC. Man, I could watch TLC all day! That shit is fun. What would you rather watch, PBS NewsHour Or Dr. Pimple Popper?
[audience laughing]
Huh? Frontline or Sex Sent Me to the ER? Masterpiece Theatre or 90 Day Fiancé? Even Democrats make it hard to be Democrats. You know, like Kyrsten Sinema. Switched parties now. Independent. Yeah. You know, she was, uh, she was at some forum, and she was talking about the differences between the House and the Senate, and she said the Senate has to cool the, the passions of the people, because the worst thing you can do is give a child everything it wants. Yeah, that’s bullshit. That’s why she shouldn’t be in office. If she thinks of the voters as children, that’s bullshit. You know, I don’t think asking for tax reform and, and making billionaires pay their fair share, I don’t think that’s childish, right? And children ask for stupid shit. You know what my kids asked me one time? They asked me if they could eat their breakfast before they go to bed so they could sleep in.
[audience laughing]
I’m telling you, politics, man, sometimes you gotta turn it off. Gotta turn it off just to protect your mental health. Yeah. Like… Yes. I had to turn it off because I was getting triggered. I was getting triggered. Know what my trigger was? Red hats. Fuck Santa Claus!
[audience laughing]
I see a red hat, my fist would just ball up. I didn’t even know I was making a fist. I figured it out when I was at brunch, and, uh, some guy was like, “Hey, Wanda!” And I turned around, and he had on a red hat. And I was like, “What!” And he was like, “Oh, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m just a Curb fan, I’m sorry.” And I was like, “Uh, okay, thanks, man.” And now I feel like shit, right? So I was like, “Let me go over and talk to this man.” Right? He was in profile, so, I’m walking over and, and I see the red hat, and he sees me coming and he starts to turn. And I see white lettering on his hat. And I was like, “Oh, this motherfucker here.” So I’m making a fist. And then I got closer. He turns around. The hat said, “Make a Wish Foundation.”
[audience laughing]
I was like, “Hey, man, you want to take a picture, want me to sign something?” “How about a hand job? I’m an entertainer!”
[audience laughing]
The country is so divided. It’s fear, man. It’s fear. That’s why you see so many of these red states, you know, they want to ban, uh, critical race theory being taught in school. Yeah. DeSantis, Marjorie Taylor Greene… Yeah. They say it’s teaching white kids to feel bad or shame for being white. That’s nonsense. ‘Cause there are white kids out there who are proud of their grandparents who marched with Dr. King and who was on those buses with those Freedom Riders, right? That risked their lives. And look, we’re here in Pennsylvania. What about the Quakers? The Quakers, the Quakers are abolitionists, and, and they helped Harriet Tubman. They, they would hide slaves in their homes. Come on. And, and let’s not forget about their delicious oats.
[audience laughing]
So I don’t think people like DeSantis, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Glenn Youngkin from my home state of Virginia… I don’t think they’re worried that, uh, you know, CRT will make white kids feel ashamed of being white. They’re worried it will make their kids ashamed of them.
[audience applauding]
And we can’t come together until we deal with white supremacy, right? Its… America, I mean, come on, we have to face our history and all the awful shit that happened. That’s the only way we can move forward, because right now, America is like living in a horror movie. Yeah, it’s like I Know What You Did Last Summer. But more like, I Know What You Did the Last 400 Summers. Right? It’s like America’s at that campground, walking through… “Hello?” “Is, is anybody there?” And then reparations just jumps out at you. [growling, grunting] “Hello, Karen!” “Brad.”
[audience laughing]
[Wanda chuckling] Reparations. And you know what? Whenever reparations are brought up, we always hear the, hear the pushback, and the argument is always, “Why should I have to pay for something that I had nothing to do with?” Okay, well, some of you have trust funds. You ain’t earned that. Some of you have homes and businesses that you didn’t build, but they’ve been passed down generation for generation in your family, right? Great-Great-Grandpappy left you something. But you accept it. So, think of reparations as part of your inheritance.
[audience laughing, cheering]
Comes with the package. For white supremacists, I think their biggest fear… They, they know that one day, they will be the minority. And that’s scary, ’cause they see how shitty it is. Oh, you’ve seen the videos. And they’re afraid, like, maybe we’ll treat them the way they treated us. But that’s, that’s ridiculous, because Black people, we don’t even think like that. We don’t sit around talking about retribution and what we’re gonna do to them. No! Well, at least not at the last meeting, we didn’t do that.
[audience laughing]
And I think Black people, over and over again, have demonstrated who we are, right? Right, look, look at the Emanuel eight, those beautiful Black people who were gunned down in their church, by Bible study. And what did they do? Hours after it happened, they’re in court telling that guy, that, that white supremacist, that they forgive him. “We forgive you. We forgive you.” And I know some of y’all are like, “Well, not all Black people, Wanda.” “How about that woman who went off on Jeffrey Dahmer?” I mean, yeah, I remember her. You know… “I hate you, Jeffrey!” I remember that. But come on, he ate her brother!
[audience laughing]
Well, Black people don’t think like that. We don’t. And plus, let’s be honest. White people would make the worst slaves on the face of the planet.
[audience laughing]
“Ooh, my carpel tunnel is acting up today.” “I don’t think I can… I can’t…” “It’s excruciating pain, I can’t…” They’ll be leaving the fields early. “Hey, hey, where you going?” “Uh, Harry Styles tickets, hello!” “Get your ass back here!” “I’m gonna need to see your supervisor.” So, I’m still in menopause. Yep. Breaking news. Just fighting off those hot flashes. But you know what angers me the most is when I’m watching TV, and I see all these commercials for men. They’re always fixing something for the dudes, you know? Yeah. And a lot of it, I don’t really see it as a problem. Yeah. Like, you know they’re, uh, fixing, uh, bent dicks now, did you know that? Have you seen that ad with the, with the bent carrot?
[audience laughing]
Who knew that was an issue? They’re fixing bent dicks now. I say, “Fuck you.” I don’t give a shit about your bent dick. That… I think gout is more important than that. How did that even get on the to-do list, bent dicks? “Ah, poor Peter has a banana dick. Aah.” “It’s not funny, Wanda, it can cause infertility and painful…” I don’t give a shit. I don’t. I don’t care about your crooked dick, your hooked dick, your bent dick, banana dick, I don’t give a fuck. I’m over here growing a full beard, sweating through my sheets every night. Fuck you and your hooked dick. I don’t give a shit if your dick curves so much that when you bend over, you fuck yourself in the ass. I don’t care! I don’t. I don’t care. I don’t. Suffer in silence, please.
[audience laughing]
I was talking to my gynecologist about it. I was like, “What treatments are out there?” You know, because I can’t take the, you know, the patch or the hormones because of the type of breast cancer I had, right? So I can’t take them. So my doctor said, “Now they’re giving women, um, microdoses of Xanax now, and that seems to help with the hot flashes.” I said, “Oh, okay, so it’s the straight hysterical woman syndrome, huh?” So they’re like, “Here, you crazy bitches, maybe this will calm you down.”
[audience laughing]
I’m not taking that. So that’s why I kind of wish that, that men… Okay, I don’t wish, I pray, that men would go through a little menopause, you know? ‘Cause then maybe they’ll find something to help us. Right? Like, what, what if, uh, if guys, like… Okay, let’s just say, like, one, one of your testicles, right? Let’s just say one of your testicles would just start throbbing a little bit. So you’ll know it’s coming. Like it’d have, like, an aura to it. And then all of a sudden, it, it swells up, and whoosh! It catches on fire. You know? You have, like, a nut flash, just whoosh! And, and it could be the right one, it could be the left one, you never know. And, and it happens, like, six, seven times a day. Just, that thing just going like that. Whoosh! You go, “Oh shit!” “Nut flash! Nut flash!” I would love that. But you know, they’d give them some relief, right? They’ll probably start making underwear with little fans in them or something. Or just make it legal where guys can walk around with their nuts out. You’re like, “Oh, my God, his nuts are out!” “It’s okay. He’s going through something.” “He has a note from his doctor. Leave the man alone.” You know those lactation stations you see at the airport? They’ll shut those down. Yeah. They’ll become ball-cooling rooms. You’ll see dudes in there just… Whooo… “Uh, this is a doozy. Oh, boy.” “How’s it going, Pete?” “Oh man, it’s bad. It’s bad. It’s bad.” “Hey, Pete, did you do something different with your penis?” “Yeah, I got that hook out. You noticed that?”
[audience laughing]
“He’s straight as an arrow now.” “Looking good.” I would love to see a dude in this board meeting. You know? “Okay, all right, now for… Let’s go over first quarter earnings.” “If you look, uh, you see sales were up.” “Sales were up by 22%, and that, um…” Hmm. “That, uh…” “That totally crushed what our target was, 22%. So…”
[audience laughing]
“But if, if we look at, uh, transportation, transportation, uh, went way up, and, uh, wasn’t expecting that, so that really, uh… Hmm” “That cut into a lot of our sales, so, um…” [groaning] “I’m sorry, guys, I’m having a nut flash.”
[audience laughing]
[moaning] “Wow!” “Whoo. This is a bad one. Oh, my God.” “Hank, get over here and blow on my balls, please.” So, I saw my doctor recently, and, uh, my breast doctor, because it’s time to replace my breasts. Yeah. I got too many miles on these. So… So he said, so he said, “It’s time to replace them.” But he gave me an option. He said, “Wanda, look, you’re, you’re 59, and, uh, we can put more implants in, but I mean, do you want to have to do this surgery again in another 13, 14 years?” “I mean, you’ll be kind of up there.” I was like, “Yeah…” He said, “So what I can do, I can take tissue from your midsection and make you some, you know, nice breasts.” And I was like, “Well, first of all, thank you for calling it tissue.”
[audience laughing]
“Very professional on your part.” But then I… I heard some rumblings, and it was Esther. For those of you who don’t know Esther, when I got in my forties, I got this fat roll. It ain’t going nowhere, so I just named it. This is Esther. Esther loves bread, alcohol, and cheesecake. That’s all she wants. “Where my drink!” “I want some cheesecake!” So, so I heard Esther rumbling, and she was like, “What’d he say?” I was like, “Esther, he’s not talking to you, he’s not talking to you.” And I told the doctor, I was like, “Email me, email me.” I said, “Email me, ’cause Esther can’t read. Email me.” “Email me the details, right?” So, uh, cause you know, I think I’m gonna do it, it makes sense, you know. But then I… I get nervous, ’cause I keep having these thoughts, you know, like, “What if I take Esther and put her up here, and she tries to choke me to death in my sleep?” You know, Esther’d be like, “I hate you!” “I can’t taste nothing up here. I hate you!” Or what if she, she gets los… You know, she longs for home and she works her way back down? You know, and I have some long, droopy titties? You know. Esther be up here just doing squats. [grunting] Trying to get back down. “I’m back, baby!” You know. But I think I’m gonna do it. I think I’m gonna do it. Yeah. ‘Cause you know… Yeah!
[audience applauding]
I… I don’t want to be in my seventies, you know… Y’all watching online church, and the pastor’s like, “Uh, Saints, let’s pray for Sister Sykes.” “She’s getting her new titties on Tuesday.”
[audience laughing]
I’m grateful that I have good doctors. I do. They’re good doctors. And that’s important, you know? Although I did have to, uh, change gynecologists, ’cause my old gynecologist, oof, she was, she was just chatty. Just talked too much, you know, like… I don’t mind talking before the exam starts. But once I get in the stirrups, you shut the fuck up.
[audience laughing]
And sometimes, those exams, they gotta check the front and the back… You just leave. You know what you did. Get the hell out of here. Don’t even look at me! But this doctor, man, she was just too, too chatty, you know? It’s like, she would talk like we were good friends or something. You know, I… I get in there, and I’m… and I’m in the stirrups, I’m in the stirrups, and she’s like, um, “Hey, Wanda, you know, they just opened a Greek restaurant on the corner.” “Maybe if you have some time, you could stop and get some lunch.” I’m like, “Is this bitch really talking hummus?” So then I started having thoughts. I was like, “You know what, I’m gonna make her feel as uncomfortable as she makes me feel.” So I was like, “You know, one day, she gonna start talking, and I’m just gonna take my big toe and brush her bangs back.”
[audience laughing]
“Hey, girl.” “You streaming anything good lately?”
Hey, Philadelphia, thank y’all so much! I love you! Thank you!
[audience cheering, applauding]
[upbeat music playing]
Thank you!
[Wanda] Oy, vey. And up. Use your knees, Page. Come on, push it.
