Your Friend, Nate Bargatze (2024)
Genre: Comedy, Stand-up
Director: Ryan Polito
Star: Nate Bargatze
Premiered on Netflix on December 24, 2024
Nate Bargatze’s 2024 Netflix stand-up special, Your Friend, Nate Bargatze, is a comedic journey through the absurdities of everyday life. With his signature deadpan delivery, Bargatze riffs on relatable topics like pizza-ordering dilemmas, domestic quirks with his frugal wife, and parenting mishaps, weaving personal anecdotes with exaggerated humor. The show opens with a spirited introduction from his daughter, setting the stage for a performance rooted in self-deprecating humor, small-town nostalgia, and sharp observations about modern absurdities. Bargatze’s storytelling shines as he recounts his days as a water meter reader, his failed attempts to manage daily routines without his wife’s guidance, and his humorous take on aging and familial dynamics.
The special thrives on Bargatze’s ability to find comedy in the mundane, whether it’s debating the dominance of dogs sleeping in beds or lamenting the complexities of fast-food drive-throughs. His observations on generational quirks, from his parents’ idiosyncrasies to his own aging mishaps, resonate universally. The show crescendos with his musings on societal advancements, juxtaposed with his small-town upbringing, culminating in laugh-out-loud reflections on AI, modern hotels, and outdated services like wake-up calls. Through it all, Bargatze maintains a warm and engaging rapport with his audience, delivering a feel-good hour of humor that blends sharp wit with heartfelt relatability.
* * *
[crowd cheering]
[“Sunday Best” by Surfaces playing]
Please welcome my daddy, Nate Bargatze!
♪ Feeling good, like I should ♪
[crowd cheering]
♪ Went and took a walk Around the neighborhood ♪ ♪ Feeling blessed, never stressed ♪ ♪ Got that sunshine On my Sunday best, yeah… ♪ I love you. ♪ Every day can be a better day Despite the challenge ♪ ♪ All you gotta do is leave it Better than you found it ♪ ♪ It’s gonna get difficult to stand But hold your balance ♪ ♪ I just say whatever ‘Cause there is no way around it ♪
Thank you. Thank you.
[crowd cheering]
Phoenix, thank you so much. That was so good.
[crowd continues cheering]
[Nate] Thanks. Thank you.
[cheering continues]
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. That’s very nice.
[crowd whooping]
This is it. We’re doing it. Uh… So… My… I love… Look, I love doing stand-up comedy. I love it. And the job I had, the last serious job, the job I will go back to when all this falls apart…
[crowd laughing]
I was a water meter reader.
[scattered cheering]
Thank you. This job was… The title was the description of what you do.
[crowd laughing]
People would ask, I’d go, “I’m a water meter reader.” “Yeah, what’s that?” Let me tell you what it is, all right? We’re going to read water meters. That’s the… That’s 100% of the job. So back when I did it, it was in Wilson County, Mt. Juliet, Tennessee. And so, back when I did it, I would have to park the truck, and like get out in the neighborhood. Like, run through a neighborhood, and type in how much water every house uses. So it’s 2001. Obviously, 9/11 happens. If you’re old enough, you remember when 9/11 happened, the whole country got very scared there was going to be more attacks. Well, we did as well in Wilson County. We figured, they just went to New York, obvious next stop, Mt. Juliet, Tennessee.
[crowd laughing]
And they are going to poison our town’s water. So they got all of us water meter readers to guard the water tanks. I really did this. I stood… just in a dark field, alone, waiting for the Taliban to show up. No weapons, no training. They gave us a lantern. A lantern! That does nothing but shows your body as you hold it up. I can’t see two feet in front of me. If someone’s got a gun, they’re like, “Shoot at the only light in that field.” I’m going to put it over my heart to see. I’m like, “What’s going on?” I mean, I think, like, to this day, I’ve always said, what did they want us to do? Call the Mt. Juliet Police? “Osama is here.” “He got past our lanterns.” “He’s in the water tank. He knew how to open that. We were…” “We were surprised by that, but he knew what he was doing.” My wife was with me when I had that job. She’s been with me way before where we’re at right now. She was in it for the benefits I got at the water company. Uh… [Nate chuckles] We have, uh… So we’ve been married 17 years.
[crowd cheering]
Thank you. And, uh, I know… You know, the longer I’m married, the more I realize why she was put in my life. I would not be here if she was not in my life. I know all of this. Now, I’ve also become very reliant on her because of this. I don’t know anything about me. Like… I don’t know what I like and don’t like to eat.
[crowd laughing]
I mean, someone would be like, “You want to try this?” And I got to get her involved. I’m like, “I don’t think so.” I don’t know how long to microwave something. I have to ask her every time, as if her family invented the microwave. “How long do we microwave this for?” And she’s like, “Do it till it’s hot.” It’s like, “But I know you know a number. You know, just…” “Just say the number. I don’t…” “I’m either gonna call my mom, or you’re gonna tell me the number.” If she doesn’t tell me, I type in 90 minutes and I walk away. [Nate laughs] I do do my own laundry.
[crowd cheering]
Thanks. Thank you. I think that’s what it deserves. My mom did my dad’s laundry growing up, so I thought all wives do husbands’ laundry. And I’ve always done my own, and to be honest, I felt it had been forgotten about over these past 17 years. The sacrifice I was making that other husbands didn’t have to make. One day, I was driving home and it popped in my head, and I was like, “All right, I’ll bring that up.” I mean, I didn’t bring it up that day, you know? I was like, I’m sure there will be a time where we’ll be in some fight, I’ll be losing this fight… and then, I mean, I just come, I’m like, “I do my own laundry!” She’s like, “Fight’s over!” “You win. I forgot how good I got it.” So I sit on it for, like, six months, like a long… [laughs] We finally get in a fight. I don’t remember what the fight was about. Nothing. I don’t know. It wasn’t laundry. I remember that. So, I’m losing this fight. And so, in my head I’m like, “This is it.” I mean, honestly, I was sad to see it go. That’s how good I felt. I felt bad for her. I mean… I was like, “She thinks she’s winning this fight.” “I’m about to drop a bomb on her right now.”
[crowd laughing]
So just out of nowhere, I just go, “I do my own laundry!” And I said it like, “They don’t make them like this no more.” I was shocked that it started a second fight I never saw coming.
[crowd laughing, applauding]
[Nate laughs] Thanks. We do laundry very differently. She’ll read the labels, I’ll wash a rug and a suit together. I’m… I don’t know. “You wanna put your shoes in there? Put your shoes.” The washing machine’s always a foot from the wall when I get done. [chuckles] It’s like, “That was a lot of stuff you put in there.” You know? Yeah. “And look, it’s almost all wet.” I travel a lot. Obviously. So she’ll be at home with our daughter. We have a wonderful daughter, as you have seen.
And…
[crowd cheering]
But I know it’s hard. You know, she’s home, my wife has to be the mom and the dad, and the good and the bad parent. You know, and I come home and I’m super fun. Or I’ll mess up the routine. This is just stuff she tells me. And…
[crowd laughing]
Like, I’ll go… When I go home, I’ll lay in bed with our daughter and then we get in trouble for talking. I’m not the one talking, by the way. But we get yelled at as if I’m the one talking. I do get it, because I don’t think of the consequences with everything. Like, we have one dog. I would like another dog. My wife does not want another dog, because it’s a lot. It’s a lot to have two dogs, ’cause you got to open the back door and let two dogs out.
[crowd laughing]
Then you shut it, and now… now they’re out there. You’re inside, not dealing with it, but… But then they want to come back in and you’re like, [grumpily] “Got to go let all these dogs back in.” You’re like, “One dog, two… Look at all these dogs everywhere.” Look, I… To be honest, I’ve never taken care of the one dog we have, but… Two? Two would be fun. Our dog sleeps in our bed, and someone told me you’re not supposed to do that, ’cause you lose dominance over the dog. And, you know, I asked him, I said, “What year do you think it is?” These are all doodles. They’re barely dogs. It’s a person. They’re people. This guy acts like it’s 1980 when you kept the dog outside all year. Those, you needed dominance over. You had a wolf in the backyard. Friends come over. “You want to go outside?” “I wouldn’t.” She’s the cheaper one of us, as well. Not in a bad way, you know. She likes the lights being off. Turn the lights off, you know, save money. Turn the… Get the lights. All the lights off, it’s a fun time, being in that environment. Turn the light on, find your seat. Get a stick, knock the light back off. Sit in the dark and be sad and just be… just sad all day. But you’re saving nickels upon nickels. Right when I get in bed, “You turn that light off?” “I can’t tell if that’s on.” “Well, get out of bed, turn it off.” Eighty years, we’ll give our daughter the $37 from all the nickels we saved. All right, look, I can be wasteful. Like, if something gets to the bottom, I will throw it away. Ketchup. If ketchup gets, like, that much left, I’m like, “Bleh.” She will put the old ketchup with the new ketchup. That way your ketchup’s always gross.
[crowd laughing]
Toothpaste. I will use it to what I think the average person uses it to. I don’t think I should feel muscles trying to get it out. I’m not going to have an iron on top of it. But she’ll do it more. So I know when I’m done with it, I give it to the hobo I married. She cuts it, gets it all out. I married an old man from the Depression, is who I married. She would have thrived during the Depression. I don’t think she would’ve known there was a Depression. A pizza party is my nightmare. I’ll have friends over for pizza. So I’ll be like, “All right, we gotta order pizza.” And she goes, “How much?” I go, “Order the most.” “I don’t want to run out of pizza in front of my friends.” She goes, “Just call and ask them.” I go, “I can’t call these 40-year-old dudes and just be like, ‘How much pizza do you think you’re gonna eat tonight?'” They have a real… They have a family. They work in a building, right now. You want me to call and be like, “You have a big lunch today?” “No, we’re trying to save money, so I need to know exactly how much pizza you’re going to eat in eight hours.”
I just want to buy stuff and her not know I bought it, and… that’s so hard. I think if I knew the name of my bank, I could do it. But I got to go through her to get that information. I poke around, I’ll be like, “If I had a bank, what bank do you think I would go to?” I also, once a week, walk into a bank and go, “Hello, is my money in this bank?” She has to get me out of stuff all the time. If I buy something and it doesn’t fit, I’ll never take it back. I’m embarrassed. I’m pretty sure it’s going to be the exact same people. And they remember me. And right when I walk in, they’ll be like, “We knew you couldn’t handle that shirt.” She takes back groceries to the grocery store. [incredulously] Yeah. Food. I… Honestly, I don’t think it’s allowed. I… Honest. I think she’s bullying these 15-year-old children. They don’t know what to do. Their mom walks in being like, “Your bananas got weird too quick.” And they’re like, “What?” “You picked them out. They’re not mine. What are you talking about?” “I’m gonna change them. I’mma go change them out.” “Yeah, that lady is stealing bananas.” Recently, I was walking to my car and I had a college kid come up and he was raising money, uh… You know, for nature. Or it was for Earth. It was nature and Earth. Uh… I don’t know. He used real words. But it was, you know, basically… I felt he even looked at me, like, “It’s going to Earth.” I was like, “Yeah. Well, Earth is going through it right now.” So… He was telling me everything Earth is going through. You know, it’s pollution. He said, “Our water’s being poisoned.” You know, I said, “Not under my watch, but I understand.”
[crowd laughing, cheering]
I think I was buying a tree, I don’t really know. But I tried to give him cash and he was like, “Oh, you got to do a credit card.” I was like, “Okay.” So, I give a random iPad all my family information. It was $75. So he, like, swipes the card, and then after it goes through, he goes, “Just so you know, it’s a monthly charge.”
[crowd gasps]
Yeah. [chuckles] Yeah. He told me after. And he was like, “Look, you can cancel it on the website.” I was like, “I don’t know what’s going on right now.” He goes, “Put your email down for the receipt.” I was like, “All right.” I just put my wife’s email address down. Guess who’s going to put a stop to this real fast?
[crowd laughing, cheering]
She’ll have that tree cut down tomorrow. I called her, ’cause I have to call her when I sign us up for stuff, and… [chuckles] She answered the phone, just goes, “I’m on it.” Hung up. She runs everything. She does stuff, doesn’t tell me. We got a new roof, and I did not know that. A whole new roof, I found out from my neighbors. They were like, “How’s that new roof going?” I go, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” And they go, “You didn’t know you got a new roof?” I go, “No, I did not.” And then I had to go get her, I was like, “You gotta go talk about that new roof you didn’t tell me about.” “I looked like an idiot out there.”
We live… So, in our neighborhood, we live in a cul-de-sac, which is very exciting, because I grew up on a straight street… and I always dreamed of living in a cul-de-sac. You see them and you’re like, “Can you imagine being up in one of those?” We do all the cul-de-sac stuff, you know. Like, if anybody comes down there, we’re like, “What are you doing down…” Just, any car. We’re like, “You better get out of our cul-de-sac.”
We take our trash out, uh… one of the days. I don’t know the day, but it’s a day. We’re doing it. There is one day. I know we forgot to take it out a couple weeks ago. That stress could break up a family. All week was like, “Everybody, eat out of your hands.” We had friends over, “Put your trash in your pockets, take it to your homes.” We got very lucky with our neighbors. Our neighbors are super cool, and we’re very close with them. Uh, they all have real jobs. They, like, went to college and stuff. And… one of them is a management consultant, so he manages all the consultants and… Yeah, it’s a tough job. All right? There’s a lot of consultants and he’s like, “You better get back.” You know? “You can’t…” “Just can’t consult up in here.” So, he’s busy. Our other neighbor’s an actuary. I thought that was with birds. I was like, “What’s that bird right there?” He goes, “I don’t know.” And I was like…
[crowd laughing, cheering]
“As an actuary, you don’t know what that bird is right there?” I went to career day for my daughter’s school, and, like, I get what I do is very fun, but I was nervous, ’cause I’m there with real people and they’re smart, and… So I was hoping to sit at a table alone. They put me at a table with a surgeon. Which I… I think they did it on purpose. Almost to show the kids, “Here’s the difference between reading.”
[crowd laughing, cheering]
So the kids, like, come up, you know, and they’re like, “What subjects do you use for comedy?” And I was like, I don’t even know what subjects they’re taking. Uh… I was like, “I do English. I do mostly English onstage.” They asked him, “How long do you go to school to be a surgeon?” You know, and he’s like, “54 years,” or whatever. It’s like… They asked me, they’re like, “How long to be a comedian?” I was like, “You’re good now.” So… “Look, finish elementary school, make your parents happy, but then I’d get out and get after it.” I had a hard time in school. There was… I got… I barely graduated, got into a community college, barely got into a college they have to let everybody in. I went to community college for one year, I have zero credits. Community college, a lot of people don’t know, is college when they’re like, “You’re probably going to stay in your community. So…” “We’re just going to show you the ropes around town.” “Kind of give you a lay of the land.” That whole year, I don’t have credits, because I had to take remedial classes. Which remedial is basically for… They’re classes for someone my age now trying to go back to school because they don’t remember school. And I took them right out of school. I just… They’re like, “You don’t remember school?” I was like, “I just came from school.” They go, “It looks like you’ve never heard about it.” Everybody in there was, like, 50. I’m like, “Well, who’s the teacher?” “I think you have to tell me if I ask. Who’s the teacher?”
I took such basic… I took Speech. In college. I’d go… I would ride there with my friends, going to a business class or something. Whatever you go to. I was like, “All right, I’ll catch you after Speech.” And I still say a lot of words wrong, that’s what I don’t understand. I say, uh, “Poim.” “Poim.” Which no one ever knows. Uh, poem. Like… Yeah. P-O-E-M. I go, “poim.” Well, fix that, Speech class. What if I want to be a “poim” writer? What if I have a lot of great “poim” ideas? And no one takes me serious, ’cause I’m like, “Listen to my poims.” “Ol.” I say, “Ol.” A super Southern one. Uh… Oil. I don’t even know how to say it. Like, to y’all. Oil. O-I-L. Yeah. Yes. [laughs] I go, “Motor ol.” Like, “Tinfol.” I mean, Southern community college, that should be mandatory that they fix that. They should write O-I-L on the board, and I just go, “Ol.” They go, “We’re gonna take care of that. All right?” “There’s a pretty good chance you’re gonna be working with a lot of that.” “Silver War.” That’s how I say it. Instead of “Civil.” I go, “Silver War.” Because… You know? Look, that might be on me. All right? I’m not… I’ll tell you, I don’t even know anything about the “Silver War.” I don’t know anything about history. And I can tell, because every history movie I watch, I watch on the edge of my seat.
[laughing, applause]
“What is gonna happen?” I watched Pearl Harbor. I was just as surprised as they were, you know? I don’t read. Yeah, and I think that matters. Reading is the key to smart, I believe. And… I don’t do it. I think it’s caught up to me. I want to do it. I like the idea of reading. I even buy books, but these books are the most words. And… It’s every book. You just open it and you’re like, “What are you talking about?” It… I mean… And they don’t let up. Every page, just more words. How about you put some blank pages in there? Why don’t you let me get my head above water for two seconds?
[crowd laughing, applauding]
My eyes can read good. It’s my brain. My eyes are such good readers. I feel so bad, ’cause they’re attached to this dumb brain. I mean, they’re looking at these words, they’re like, “You’re not getting any of this, man?” “That’s the fifth time we’ve read that sentence. Let’s try another one.” Fiction, non-fiction. I don’t know which one’s the truth. I read every book as the truth is how I handle it. From what I can tell, we have a pretty big wizard problem in this country right now. We went to… Like, we went to Europe last year. And by the way, on the way to… We were flying from Nashville to London, and we go, uh… It was 4:42 p.m. Nashville time. So as a game, as a family, I said, “Let’s guess what time it is in London.” So I said 12:42 a.m. Our daughter said 1:42 a.m. My wife, her guess was 11. And that’s it. Yeah, she didn’t say the 42. And, I was like, “Just say the 42.” She goes, “You know what I mean.” I go, “I know, but just… show our daughter you know what a normal person would say.” That started a pretty big fight. If you go to Europe, just so you know, uh… it’s the most old. It’s very old. You think we’re old, and you get there and you’re like, “Good night.” Uh… “What have y’all been doing over here?” You just walk around, they’re like, “That building is from 8.” You’re like, “Good golly.”
Went to Australia as well. Australia’s very far away. I’m going to tell you, our Earth is bigger than I thought it was. We flew 16 hours, over 500 miles an hour. Barely made it. Barely. I think we went the wrong way, as well. I had jet lag there. I did not mind it, ’cause I woke up early. I woke up at 5:45 a.m., and I don’t ever wake up that early. So I was, like, first in line at the breakfast buffet. Here’s what I will tell you, when you get up at 5:45 a.m. noon is pretty far away. I mean, you will bet your life it’s noon, and it’s maybe 8:30. By 6:00 p.m., it’s like, “How are people out?” “Why won’t the sun go down?” That’s the next phase of my life, getting up early, you know? We’re starting. We get up at 9:15 a little bit. Yeah. You know. I’ve never seen my daughter go to school, but I’ve been close. I’m cold now too, that I’m old. Forty-five. I just get cold, I always have to bring a jacket. It could be 135 degrees outside and I will walk around with a jacket. And I see these young people, and I just think, “Where are your jackets?”
My body’s falling apart. My… My shoulder hurts, ’cause I stand onstage like this. It’s crazy. This was a huge mistake to get into this. If I had known that this would be a big problem, I would have probably tried to not make it a habit. My body can’t handle this. And I went to the doctor to try to fix it… I mean, they talked to me like I was an old car. He goes, “I wouldn’t put any more money into it, to be honest.” I pulled a muscle recently, I guess it was in my soul. I mean, it was dead middle of my body… I thought it was the front. Then I was like, “Well, my back hurts too.” You know? So… Well, what’s in the middle? What muscle is in the middle? I went hiking. I jumped off a rock. I mean, a foot high. When I landed, it felt what I would imagine being struck by lightning feels like. I felt it through my fingernails. Fifty-fifty if my zipper’s up or down anymore. It’s a true flip of the coin. I don’t know what’s happening. I’ve zipped up my whole life. And now, just head out, like, “All right, see you boys later.” Just head out. Take my pants off at home. They come off easy. I’m like, “Ah, that was four hours I was walking around like…” I think it’s ’cause I’m peeing so much longer. And I’m not used to this new old rhythm yet. ‘Cause in your 40s, there’s a lot of false stops. You learn pretty quick to be like, “Let’s hang back.” “Let’s let traffic thin out a little bit.” I watch young people come and go. I’m like, “Tell my family I’m okay.” Food is still… I still have a problem with food. I… I love processed food. I love it. I’m a farm-factory-table guy.
[crowd laughing, cheering]
I want… I want the most hands involved in my food. It’s coming to an end. You can feel… I can feel it. I can’t do it anymore. It really hurts. I… You know, and I tell myself, like, “I’ve done it. I was…” Yeah, my jersey would be retired of eating fast food. I’ve done all the stuff. I’ve had Taco Bell and threw it away in my neighbor’s trash so my wife didn’t find out. I used so much ketchup once at a restaurant, that a stranger walked up to me and goes, “That’s a lot of ketchup.” Do you know how much ketchup you got to use? That guy doesn’t want to get involved, you know? But he sees it. I mean, his wife’s like, “Let it go.” He’s like, “I think I got to say something. I don’t…” “I don’t think he knows that we’re all… No one’s using that much ketchup.” I went to a McDonald’s drive-through and my window did not roll down. That’s the universe saying, “Give it a rest.” And I fought through it. It’s embarrassing, because they can tell, because I had to pull past… Because I got to open my door, so it’s going to hit the speaker. So I gotta drive by it. So the car behind me is like, “Are you leaving?” I’m like, “My window don’t roll down.” And I got to open the door. Now the speaker is by the gas tank. So I gotta yell my order out. Now that guy hears it. And then I look at McDonald’s screen, well, they got it all on the board, just let the neighborhood know what I’m ordering. And then I drove by the window, the drive-through window, and I got to go by it, ’cause I got to open my whole door. So I go by it, and I see them, they’re like, “Where are you going?” I was like, “Nowhere.” And I go by, and they see my whole body sitting in a chair. It’s crazy. If you’ve never done it, it’s the most vulnerable I ever felt in my life. Just… You’re just sitting there, and you’re like, “Hi.”
They see your feet. They see your feet. They just throw it at me like a bear, just throw it. Our family, we just eat a lot of fast food. Our family text thread, my dad texted, he was like, “I found a way to get a Big Mac cheaper.” And he said, “You can order a double cheeseburger and ask for Big Mac sauce.” So he goes, “It’s cheaper, and they get rid of that third bun, so it’s Atkins.” Uh… That’s how you do it. That third bun is the one you’re like, “I don’t know if I need the third bun.” My parents are getting older, they’re not super old, but they’re at the age where, you know, if they trip, they will fall to the ground. There’s just an age where it hap… I mean… Like, if I trip, my body hasn’t touched the ground in 40 years. But for them, it’s just, I don’t know. It’s like the upper is like, “We’re going.” And… the lower is like, “What?” And it’s just… Boom. And I mean, there’s no, like, “Whoa.” It’s just, they don’t even know what’s happening. They’re just looking at you and you’re like, “You’re not feeling any of this?” And they hit the ground so hard. It’s like they got thrown off a roof. Everybody hears it, they’re like, “What’s going on?” I’m like, “My parents are down!” “I got to get ’em up.” “My mom’s got a bruise that won’t go away for two years.” I just walk ahead of them now. I’m like a Sherpa. Just let them know the terrain that we’re about to hit. “Got a little carpet coming up.” “Got a little carpet. When we go outside, a little brighter than inside.” “Yeah, and cobblestone. You ain’t gonna make that. So…” “Lay down. Lay down on the carpet.” “I’m gonna back the car up in the building.”
We had my mom go pick up our daughter recently at a friend’s house, and I texted her the address, and she drove to the wrong house. She knocked on the door, another grandmother answered. Well, this is no good. This is like two dogs seeing each other through a fence. It’s gonna be hard to get them both back inside. So, my mom, she goes, “Is my granddaughter there?” And the other lady goes, “I have three grandsons.” No solution. Just two grandmothers. “You have… You have stuff? I have stuff too.” They talked for 30 minutes. It’s the wrong door! I had to go get my daughter, then find my mom. And wives are the ones that keep it together the longest in a relationship. If you see an old married couple, like, 80-year-old… They’re 80, the wife is just… She’s with it. And her husband’s like, “Where are we at right now?” Like, he… I mean, our brains fall off a cliff, dude. Like, they’re… The only reason he’s out is because she’s like, “You better get out and let people see you a little bit.” It’s like some zookeeper walking some old gorilla around. “Let the kids touch you.” Everybody’s trying to feed him. “Don’t feed him that.” “I think he wants it.” “He definitely wants it. He’s too dumb to know he can’t have it.” My dad goes to the hospital all the time. I mean, he… He has surgery eight times a year, probably. He loves it. He loves it. The doctor will go, “Look, you could just stretch.” And he goes, “Let’s just do the surgery.” He had surgery ’cause he was addicted to Afrin, the nose spray. Yeah. Look, I… I got addicted to Afrin as well. I would honestly tell you, if you don’t know what it is, I would tell you not to get involved. It’s one of the best things I’ve ever been part of. When I was on it too, my wife was furious. I had to try to hide it from her. She could hear it from three blocks away. Just one little puff, “What’s that?” “I ain’t gonna live like this!” “I ain’t work this hard not to do Afrin in my own home.” So my dad, they go to the doctor, him and my mom. And the doctor was like, “Do you use Afrin?” And my dad goes, “No.” And the doctor was like, “I can tell that you use it.” “I was just saying that.” So… He goes, “How long have you used it?” And my dad said, “Five years.” Which is a lie. And my mom, she’s like, “Well, tell the truth.” You know, she goes, “He’s used it for 45 years.” He used Afrin 45 years. Just for reference, if you don’t know, the back of the box suggests no more than three days. I mean, there’s not a medicine on Earth that tells you to give it a good 45-year run. I think about my parents a lot because, I mean, the world is getting very futuristic. And, like them, I’m from the 1900s. You got to watch out for the 1900s people. We’re old.
[crowd cheering]
It’s so… I mean, my great-aunt Helen from the ’30s. She’s deaf. They didn’t know she was deaf back then. The doctors, they had no idea. They were baffled. That’s how… That’s how good doctors were back then. They just said… They looked at her as they smoked in her face. These were real doctors. They were like, “I don’t know.” “She’s rude. I’ll tell you that.” I mean, I think what I saw growing up… I mean, we would go watch… My dad’s a magician. So we would go watch my dad do magic at the Wilson County Fair. County fairs are great. If you never… They’re still going around. I don’t think the government knows about them, but… I mean, we ride these rides that were on the interstate an hour ago. So we would go watch my dad. So my dad would do magic. Right next to him, they had a donkey jumping off a high dive into a pool. So pretty hard to keep everybody’s attention. When my dad is like, “Is this your card?” And everybody’s like, “This donkey’s about to jump off this high dive.” That’s something you don’t think you wanna see, till it’s up there. And I use the word “jump” very loosely. These donkeys are falling off this high dive. But you can’t put that on the sign, you know? “You gonna watch a donkey fall off a high dive?” “No.” “Okay.” “What if he jumped?” “Well, at least he’s into it.”
So the donkey would go up this ramp, like, 40 feet in the air. And it would just stand there ’cause it doesn’t want to jump. It’s not in on this, so… But it gets stuck ’cause donkeys can’t walk backwards. Not positive if that is true, but I… I’ve never seen a donkey go backwards. I’ve never even really looked, but I honestly think, 45 years, I would have seen a couple donkeys go backwards. So the donkey stands there, and a dog, he sends a dog up the ramp, it barks at the donkey and the donkey jumps in the pool. And as someone that has seen this, I tell you, when that donkey hits the water, you’re like, “We should probably get out of here. Uh…” It’s not as fun as you thought it would be. I mean, this is going to sound dumb, but you’re really surprised you’re seeing what the sign said you would see. PETA got a hold of that. They shut it down. And that was one I think everybody was like, “Fair enough, we get that.” Another one PETA had to shut down, this was again, like, the 1980s. I was alive. You could fight an orangutan at a fair. They would have an orangutan just sitting in a boxing ring and guys would pay to fight it. And I say “guys,” because I just can’t imagine one woman ever fought this orangutan. I think you can put an orangutan in a room with a thousand women, and when they walked out, like, “Did anybody fight it?” “It never crossed our mind to fight it.”
[crowd laughing]
[crowd cheering]
Put three men in that room, two of those men will fight that orangutan. The other one would’ve started it, going, “I think y’all should fight that orangutan.” So, guys get in there and they’re like, “All right, we’ll go fight this orangutan.” And the orangutan would just knock everybody out. Because we don’t have the internet to look up, “How strong is an orangutan?” It’s all word-of-mouth back then. You had to meet a guy that just fought an orangutan. You’re like, “But the arms are skinny.” He’s like, “I know. That’s what made me get in there as well.”
[crowd laughing, applauding]
So PETA put a stop to that also. Yeah. Look, whatever you want to say about PETA, they did some real work in the 1900s. There’s… The first… One of the first things they had to do, car manufacturers, before crash test dummies were invented, they would use a pig in a car wreck. So they sit a pig I guess upright. And this little pig… Pigs are smart. Pretty good day for this pig. It’s like, “You gonna let me drive a car?” Pretty fun, pretty fun day. He’s got his elbow out. “Are y’all kidding me right now? You gonna let me drive this car?” I don’t even know what that shows you. Pigs don’t have necks. That’s what I was around when I was growing up. I mean, I look at my daughter, and I have more in common with a Pilgrim. And Pilgrims believed in witches. Little side note, I would like to say, I think the witch phase was the toughest phase for women to have to go through. Not to get serious, but a lot of people say voting. I disagree. I think it’s witch, then voting. I think it’s witch, pretty big gap, then, you know, voting. You jaywalk back then, the whole town’s like, “There’s a witch.” You’re like, “Here we go. Here we go!” And I’ll give it to ’em, because they could’ve flown away, but none of them ever did. [chuckles] All right, sorry. That… Look. Just trying to get a witch joke in, it’s pretty complicated. There’s a lot of moving parts. You got to bring up Pilgrims somehow. I took a typing class in seventh grade. That’s how…
[crowd applauding, whooping]
And I thought it was a waste of my time. I… In my head, I was like, “Who’s going to be typing?” “Cursive is the future.”
[crowd laughing, applauding]
That’s why I… ‘Cause the future… I don’t know what’s going… I don’t know technology. I don’t know what AI is. I don’t think you get to know what AI is and also see a donkey jump off a high dive. I think it was one or the other, and I saw the donkey, so I’m out. If I send an email and it says the file is too big, I don’t know what to do. My best guess is… I try to resend it. That’s what I try to… You know how dumb that is? The computer’s like, “No.” And I go, “What about now, though?” Hotels are getting futuristic. A lot of hotels, when I stay at, now, when you take a shower, they have half a glass. So, it’s open. So the water gets on the floor. Because that’s the future. They want water on the floor. And I’m old and dumb, I come… You know, we really tried to keep the water inside the tub. It was a pretty big deal, but now, they want the floors wet, that’s what they want. They want to do no glass, but I’m still alive, so they’re like, “All right, do half a glass.” “Once that guy’s gone, we’ll do no glass, floors are wet, drains off the balcony.” When I first started going on the road, I would have to do a wake-up call. That’s how I got up in the morning. I’d have to call a guy I don’t know, and just be like, “Will you wake me up tomorrow?”
[crowd laughing, applauding]
That’s the last person I would talk to, was him. I would call my wife, then a man I’ve never seen. “You promise you gonna wake me up tomorrow?” We would tell each other good night. So no one’s done a wake-up call in probably 20 years now. So this guy on the road with us, he’s 24 years old, he’s never done a wake-up call in his life. And so, we’re staying at a hotel, and he saw the wake-up call on the phone. And he goes, “I’m going to do a wake-up call.” And I told him, I go, “Don’t do it.” “I mean, that’s like an ashtray on an airplane.” He was like, “No, I want to do it.” “All right.” So he set it up. Next morning, his phone rings, he doesn’t answer the phone. He doesn’t know that’s the main part of your job. You gotta answer the phone and let the guy know you’re awake. So then that guy, who’s young too probably, is like, “I guess I got to go knock on the door.” “I’ve never even seen this service used so it must be the most important person alive.” So he goes up and he starts knocking on the door. My buddy still doesn’t answer the door. So the guy goes in the room. I swear this is real, ’cause look, this is two young people, they don’t know what they’re doing. So he goes in the room, like, “Do I have to touch this guy?” “Is that what a wake-up call is?” “I gotta touch a guy I’ve never seen, in the dark?” So I’d imagine he started making noises, just going, “Hep. Hey, now! Hep!” “Hep, hep, hep. Hep!” Hoping he doesn’t have to touch this man. But he had to touch him. I swear, that’s what he told me. He woke up to another guy going, “Hey, buddy.” “It’s time to wake up.”
Thank you so much.
[crowd cheering]
♪ Feeling good, like I should ♪
[“Sunday Best” by Surfaces playing]
♪ Went and took a walk Around the neighborhood ♪ ♪ Feeling blessed, never stressed ♪ ♪ Got that sunshine On my Sunday best, yeah ♪ ♪ Every day can be a better day Despite the challenge ♪ ♪ All you gotta do is leave it Better than you found it ♪ ♪ It’s gonna get difficult to stand But hold your balance ♪ ♪ I just say whatever ‘Cause there is no way around it ♪ ♪ Everyone falls down sometimes ♪ ♪ But you just gotta know It’ll all be fine ♪ ♪ It’s okay ♪
[dramatic jingle playing]
