Tom Papa: Freaked Out (2013) Movie Script

1
now the time is right
bright city light
turn it up a little louder
calling out your name
to come out and play
before the midnight hour
ooh
everyone getting
all dressed up
nothing's gonna stop us now
we're bringing on the night
we're taking on the town
we're shining like the stars
tonight is our night
yeah
- Thank you very much.
Yes indeed.
You look great.
It looks like you lost weight.
Good for you.
You look nice.
Sincerely, many, many thanks.
It means a lot that you're here.
A big round of applause
for the Tom papa dancers.
Thank you so much.
Really means a lot.
It really does.
Here's why I don't like
the Chinese.
Not some of them, all of them.
I'm scared of the Chinese.
I'm scared of the Chinese.
And I know
fear comes from ignorance,
and I am ignorant
of that culture.
But I'll bet most of you
are ignorant
of the Chinese culture.
Go to Chinatown,
and go to a grocery store,
and look at
what they consider food.
And you tell me
you understand the Chinese.
Bags of salted squirrel faces.
Baby alligators this big,
this big.
I've never seen
an alligator this big.
Not on the Internet.
Not on discovery.
Not in a museum.
It's like they don't exist.
Go to Chinatown,
there's boxes filled with them
with scoopers like you're
getting gummy bears
at the fair.
There's always a fish tank out
front with black water in it.
You think nothing's in it.
You come up, tap on the glass.
Something comes up,
spits at you, yells,
and goes back down.
Was that a fish or a man?
Are they selling it
or does he work here?
All right, all right,
what other culture
has buckets of live frogs
out front of every storefront?
Who?
And not just the food store.
The bank, the electronics store.
Everyone in Chinatown
is in the live frog business.
Well, let's educate ourselves.
Let's not be so ignorant.
Let's learn a little bit.
We'll take six, please.
Give us six live frogs.
They bag 'em up for you.
You get 'em home to your place.
What's your next move?
How are you killing
six live frogs on your own?
Are you just gonna get
little pillows
and put 'em over their face?
Let it go, froggy.
Let it go.
I don't know.
I don't have the answers.
Who you gonna ask
for answers in those stores?
Who's there to help you
in those stores?
One 2,000-year-old woman
sitting on a milk crate
chewing on a bat wing.
A bengal tiger in a hammock
just swinging behind her,
eyeballing you the whole time.
You go to the register.
No people at the register.
Just cats.
Cats working the register.
Smoking cigarettes,
playing scratch-off
lottery games,
eating fig Newtons
with no labels on them.
Scary, scary people.
And we owe them $4 trillion.
Gay men scare me.
Gay men scare me
because they care about
the same things
that women care about,
but with the aggression of men.
It's a dangerous combination.
Like if my wife sees
a friend of hers
who's gained a little weight,
she'll rip her apart
but be very tactful about it.
You know, "looks like Barbara
"might have put on
a pound or two.
Bah, bah, bah, bah."
Our gay friend's like,
"please, she's a walrus."
"Look at her whiskers."
Like, women will redecorate
maybe a room or two.
Maybe a half bath
if they get excited.
Gay men will redecorate
an entire city
if they don't like it.
I live in Chelsea here in town.
It was a hellhole.
It was rat-infested,
graffiti-covered.
And when the gay community
finally moved in,
they got to Chelsea
looked around and said,
"hell no.
This will not do."
And they dressed up
like construction workers
in jeans and work boots...
Suspenders and no shirts.
And they tore that place
to the ground.
And what has emerged
is a pottery barn heaven.
Everywhere you go
it smells like candles.
Gay men make everything better.
Yeah, that should be
their slogan.
This is a pretty amazing
time to be here.
It's probably the greatest
time to be on this planet.
It really is.
We are very lucky people.
But we don't always
feel that way.
We always feel freaked out
all the time,
'cause we're
the first generation of people
who's had to watch news
24 hours a day.
No other human being
has had to watch
a nonstop horror show
of other people's problems.
It's too much.
You gotta turn it off.
It'll make you sick.
You gotta treat the news like
a call home to your parents.
Shorter the better.
Right, you call,
you make it short,
like, they tell
you something weird
your dad did
with a jar of mayonnaise and...
"I love you.
I love you."
You hang up.
How are they?
They're good, they're good.
They're doing just fine.
Because it skews our thinking.
This is an amazing time
to be here, you know?
We're the people
of the 21st century.
The 21st century,
that's a pretty amazing thing.
But we have to own it.
We have to own it.
We gotta let the past go.
We gotta make some changes.
No more post office.
It's time to shut it down.
I can send a picture
of my testicles
to all of Russia from my phone.
Shut it down.
Who's communicating
like this anymore?
I've got to get a message
to my friend in Virginia.
Get me some paper
and my writin' sticks.
"Dear Mortimer,
send help immediately."
How we gonna get it there?
I know, let's give it to
the weirdo in the blue uniform
who wanders the neighborhood
and stares at the children
too long.
He'll know what to do with it.
Shut it down.
Have you been inside
a post office lately?
Even the people who work
in the post office
can't believe it's still open.
It's like a haunted Scooby doo
warehouse at this point.
Everything's covered
in spider webs.
Old machinery run by
enslaved oompa loompas.
You get to the front
of the line,
they look at you like
you're selling something
and you just walked into
their apartment.
"What the hell
are you doing here?"
"I wanna send this
to my Nana."
Then they go into
a list of stuff
they can't do for you.
"Well, I can't send it
wrapped like that.
"I can't let you pay
with that credit card.
"I can't make eye contact with
you when I'm talking to you.
I can't stop eating funyuns
when I'm at work."
Shut it down.
While we're at it,
no more change.
No more disease-infested coins.
It's 2013.
I can go to Starbucks
with my iPhone
and buy things like
captain kirk with a phaser
just pointing at stuff.
I'll take a latte.
Pew!
I'll take a scone.
Pew-pew!
Why are we walking around
like leprechauns
with pockets filled
with golden trinkets,
jingle-jangling
down the city streets,
teasing the homeless.
Why?
You run your errands,
you have to wear a belt
just to keep your pants up
from all the treasure
you're gonna accumulate
from your magic
Mario brothers adventure,
'cause they love giving it out.
Nothing ends
on the dollar amount, right?
5.15, bling, bling, bling.
6.29, bling, bling, bling.
You ever get 99 cents change?
That's a big f.U.,
isn't it?
'Cause you know they don't
have to do it.
You don't have to do it.
You're gonna do it?
Aren't you hilarious.
Thank you very much.
This will be all over
my bedroom floor
when I take
my pants off tonight.
21st century.
I say we give NASA
one more year.
One more year to make
space travel exciting again,
and if they can't pull it off
we close them up and give
the whole thing to red bull.
Right?
How dare you make space travel
a snoozefest.
You land on Mars,
and you make it so boring
that we're more interested
in watching antiques roadshow.
"Wow, I didn't know
they had an ice cream scooper
"in the 1700s.
"Maybe we should look
in grammy's attic
and"
"did you hear
we landed on Mars?"
"I don't care."
'Cause after all these years,
they blow it.
We don't land on Mars.
They land a remote-control car
on Mars.
You ever been at Christmas
and someone gets
a remote-control car?
It's fun for one person,
whoever has the remote.
That's what's happening now.
There's one guy in Pasadena
at the controls.
"I'm on Mars!
This is awesome!
It's mine, all mine!"
They call it the rover.
The rover.
What kinda lame-ass name
is the rover?
Don't you have
a marketing department
or someone under the age of 96.
The rover.
Rover's touching down.
Explore away, rover.
Godspeed, rover.
Why isn't anyone watching rover?
Because this is America.
Redneck it up a little bit.
Call it "the planet crusher."
Put some flames on the side
and some naked chick mud flaps.
You land on Mars,
a big laser gun comes out,
just starts firing.
Bwhowm! Bwhowm!
Make up some stories
about space creatures.
How are we gonna know
you're lying?
They're green and they're fast.
They're everywhere.
Bwhowm!
But we'll get 'em.
We're NASA,
"nuking asshole space aliens."
And have
the whole thing sponsored
by budweiser and Hooters.
But it is an exciting time
to be alive.
It really is.
Things are getting better,
they say.
They say things
are getting better.
They say
the economy's improving.
I don't know,
'cause I don't understand it.
Apparently nobody does.
You know, even
the people who run it,
even the people who report on it
have no clue on what's
going on with the economy.
You wake up
at 9:00 in the morning,
they're like,
"everything's great."
By noon,
"we're all going down!"
What did they say?
Why?
And I try, I read the articles.
I'm not an idiot.
I read every day
about the economy.
It's like drinking Jagermeister
reading these articles.
It's like two paragraphs in,
I'm just passed out
on the kitchen floor.
I wake up six hours later
with no pants on.
"Who's dow Jones?
I feel weird."
Nobody understands it.
That's why the whole
occupy wall street thing
fell on its ass.
They didn't even know
what they were fighting for.
"We want it now!"
"All right, what do you want?"
"I don't know!
"Maybe a tent and a razor
for my girlfriend.
I don't know."
I would pass it all the time
with my daughter.
We'd be walking
through the park,
she was like, "what's going on?
What's this crowd?"
And I was like,
"well, look, there's
a great economic disparity
"between the really rich
and the really poor,
and they're protesting
against it."
She's like,
"well, what does that mean?"
I said, "that means we have
to get really rich really fast
"and get with the winning team.
"Or you're gonna be playing
hacky sack in this park
for the rest of your life."
My brother-in-law was like,
"that's not cool.
The poor are gonna get you."
I'm like, "well, they're not
gonna get in my gated community,
"so I don't know
how that's gonna happen.
"I'm not giving them the code.
Are you giving them
the code?"
Twitter built that movement,
and Twitter killed
that movement, by the way.
It worked great for six months.
It was a good way to organize.
And then the cops were like,
"why aren't we following
them on Twitter?"
And then they start showing up,
like, an hour early.
Everyone come in the park,
"how did they know?"
And I know this is how it ended,
because I'm a white guy
and I can totally walk up to
cops in the park and be like,
"what the hell
is going on here?"
And they have to tell me.
It's awesome.
"You better fix it."
"We will, sir, we will."
It's a good color to be
if you wanna mess with the man.
It's... we don't look that great,
we're pasty, and we burn easy,
but the man doesn't really
mess with you.
Same when I fly,
my friends are like,
"how do you deal
with security all the time?
It must suck."
Are you kidding?
You should see the look
of relief in the tsa's face
when I get
to the front of the line.
They always pull me out
for the search.
It's not even a search,
it's like a meet and greet.
We take pictures
and exchange phone numbers.
I point out
all the weirdoes behind me
who I think might be trouble.
"I've never seen
a hat like that before,
I'm just saying."
Also 99%, 1%,
that killed that movement too.
We don't like to be
pit against each other.
Also we don't like
to be clumped all together.
99%, we're all the same.
Not in this country, no, no, no.
I was just in Alabama
doing shows not long ago,
and if you do the math
we're supposed to be part
of the same 99%.
We are not.
You're not either.
I mean, maybe we're not rich.
We don't eat food with our feet.
There should be, like,
a 40% that we can be
a part of, you know?
You can make a little money,
you spend it on things
like shampoo and belts
and birth control.
Look, the world's
always stressful.
There's always problems.
We all have our problems.
We have problems.
There's a lot of problems.
But I'll take our problems
over any in history.
Really, I think
we just didn't get
everything we thought
we were gonna get.
You know, it's, like,
I wanted everything
in the pottery barn catalogue.
I only got a couple pages.
Wah!
Really?
Tell that to some people
who lived through world war ii.
14 million people dead.
Hitler running around Europe.
Yeah, but I can't download
movies as fast as I want to.
Keeps rebuffering, I hate that.
I don't think
I would have survived
any other time in history,
I really don't.
I don't think
I would have made it.
Could you?
Civil war.
Could you have
lived through the civil war?
No way.
The civil war.
Brother on brother, stabbing
each other in the guts.
All before band-aids,
by the way.
Yeah, back then you got stabbed,
you took wood chips
and shoved 'em in your hole.
You laid in a field,
played a rusty flute
and waited for help.
"Is that you,
Walt Whitman?"
boo ba doo, ba doo, ba doo
just little stuff I couldn't
have survived without.
Electricity, the little things.
Refrigeration.
Could you have survived with
just that, no refrigeration?
We lost our power for a week,
we were almost
eating each other.
No refrigeration, forget it.
No frozen burritos
for you, no, no.
No ice cream.
No ice cream!
Why even live, right?
Why be on the planet?
You got cream back then.
It came out of a smelly beast
that lived outside your
non-air-conditioned shack.
Could you imagine?
That's your dessert
when you're a kid.
You choked down your turnips,
you dad would line you up
on the lawn,
grab an udder
and squirt it in your face.
"Thank you, father.
Can I have some more?"
"You sure can, Jacob.
You're a good boy."
"We're so lucky
to be alive."
There's always gonna be stress.
You could turn off everything.
That's why you gotta enjoy it.
You gotta take
every moment you can.
I mean, this is it.
This is the good...
This is primetime.
This is it for us.
This is as good
as it's gonna get.
It's not gonna get better.
This is it.
You're gonna get
old and weird really soon.
This is it.
This is primetime.
You gotta take
whatever you can get.
That's why I don't
understand people just...
What are you waiting for?
People that shit
on the holidays, why, what?
The cookies, the music,
the smiles?
What's the problem?
What, what do you think
is going to happen?
You think fireworks are gonna
shoot out of our ass eventually?
No, it's not gonna happen.
So whatever you gotta do
to make yourself happy,
do it, do it.
Some people like to drink.
Good for you, good for you.
I'm one of you.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, I'm a grown-up who drinks.
Yeah, I have
a liquor cabinet now.
A liquor cabinet, yeah.
I didn't build it.
I just had a cabinet
filled with other stuff,
and I slowly moved it out
and replaced it with booze.
The liquor cabinet
shows you how evil
alcohol really is, doesn't it?
Think about it.
It's just a hot box.
No refrigeration,
no ventilation.
Just a hot square box.
You take a thing of whiskey out,
take a drink, put it back,
come back five years later,
it's fine.
That's evil stuff.
Put a ham sandwich
in the liquor cabinet.
You come back five years later,
there's gonna be a baby
pig man living in there.
Grown out of pork and mold.
"Hey, hey!"
But he's in a liquor cabinet,
so he's classy.
Probably a suit and fancy shoes.
Baby pig man,
another advantage of drinking.
Yeah, some people drink,
some people tickle strangers.
I like putting my balls
on a marble countertop.
I can't even say it
without smiling.
There's something so refreshing.
It's not even
that they're that heavy,
but something about standing
and not having to carry them
for a brief moment...
It's so...
And that cold dark marble.
You could do it too, ladies.
Let the girls out.
Put the hot under part
on cold marble island.
Anyone comes in, just
tell 'em your back hurts.
"I'll be right with you."
Whatever you gotta do.
Some people like to smoke pot.
Some people enjoy that.
There they are.
I always love that clap.
It's always very proud,
and then they realize
it's only, like, five people.
"Now I'm really
freaking out."
I have a reminder on my body
from those years
when I used to get high,
and it's just a reminder of
how stupid I was at the time.
I don't wear shorts
anymore because of it.
It's a bad tattoo,
and I just picked it
off a wall in New Jersey.
I wouldn't pick a t-shirt
off a wall in New Jersey.
I'm like, "I want that
on my body."
Like a moron.
It's a gnome.
It's a gnome!
I wish I was kidding.
I am not.
He's got a hat, a red hat,
and sparkles around it,
and a big lame beard.
And on the wall
he was watering a pot plant,
and even high I was like,
"no, that's going too far.
"I see him
as a magical creature.
"He should have a walking stick
"for when he goes
through the forest
and talks to the other
gnomes, I guess."
And this tattoo guy was like...
"Like that?"
"No, but yeah now."
Forever and ever.
I need some big tube socks now.
Don't do drugs, kids.
I also got kids around too.
That's another thing.
You don't wanna be high when
you got kids around the house.
They always know.
They always know.
I made that mistake once.
My friend was getting high
watching football.
"You want some?"
"Yeah, okay."
I was flying,
I hadn't done it in so long.
The whole time walking home
I'm like,
"I hope they don't notice.
I hope they don't notice."
My little one
came right up to me,
"you look different."
"I am different.
I'm a loser.
"You look different too.
"You're so little.
"What's it like to be so little?
"Look at your hands.
"They're like paws.
"No wonder you always
drop stuff.
"You have paws.
"Why do you have pockets
in your little pants?
"Seriously?
Where are you going?
"You don't have money or keys.
Why pockets?"
I love kids.
I like kids a lot.
I'm in a good spot with mine.
I'm finally done raising
them, which is awesome.
Yeah, they're nine and six.
I made it.
It took a long time,
a lot of ups and downs,
but I am done.
I'm not even kidding, i...
Really.
They don't even need me anymore.
You should see
their Christmas list.
It's not even toys.
It's, like, appliances
and furniture.
I think they have
an apartment in Detroit
I'm not aware of.
You know what it really is?
I just can't
discipline them anymore.
I can't do it.
I can't fight with little people
and their little problems,
I can't.
I got big stuff I gotta
deal with every day.
I can't fight with you
and your socks
and not wanting
to pick them up, I can't.
This is my
parenting technique now.
I go, "you brush your teeth."
They go, "I don't want
to brush my teeth."
And I say, "fine,"
and I walk out of the room.
"I tried to help.
You don't want my help.
I'll let life
take care of you."
That's what life does,
it disciplines you.
It corrects you
when you're wrong.
Walk down the street
with no pants on.
Life's gonna let you know
it's not a cool thing to do.
Look, who's gonna make her
brush her teeth more,
me saying it over and over
or a bunch
of eight-year-old girls
cornering her in the locker room
and calling her "shit mouth"?
That happens once,
she's gonna brush her ass off
for the rest of her life.
She'll be 50 going,
"don't call me shit mouth."
Can't do it.
And, look, how long are
we gonna live with each other?
What, another eight,
nine years tops?
Why all the tension?
Let's enjoy ourselves, you know?
Let's have a good time and
go our separate ways as friends.
I want them to look back
and be like,
"you know what?
That guy was fun.
"I like him.
"He was a little weird,
but he was kinda funny.
I like that guy."
They're not gonna say it
about their mother,
so they might as well
say it about me.
Well, look, there's a good cop
and a bad cop, right?
And she's the bad cop.
My wife's amazing.
She does everything.
But she's not very popular
in the house.
Well, she's fried.
She just wakes up pissed off.
She doesn't even have a fuse.
Soon as she opens her eyes,
"did everybody do
what they're supposed to do?"
"What was I supposed to do?
I was asleep.
"Was I supposed to get something
from sleepy town or...
I'll go back.
You want me to go back?"
And I know we're supposed
to show a united front.
You know, right or wrong,
as parents,
you back each other up
against these little people
who are trying to kill you.
But she's so off the charts,
I can't do it.
I'll lose all my credibility.
The kids and I just
roll our eyes all day long.
She'll be like,
"everybody get to bed!"
They're like, "dad?"
"I know.
"It's not like it gets better
when you go to sleep.
"Trust me.
"I've got four more hours
of this.
"She's making you go to sleep.
She's making me stay up."
And, look,
I like the whole thing.
I love the chaotic mess
that it all is, I do.
I fought it for years,
I tried to keep it clean.
That's not fun.
Life is about a mess.
Make your life a chaotic mess.
Yeah.
I'm not saying you need kids.
You don't need kids,
but get something.
Get some hermit crabs, get...
Get a three-legged dog.
That'll be good stories.
You'll have
a lot of laughs with that.
Get something.
Make it a big chaotic mess.
Do it, really.
Just make it a big thing.
I do it all.
I do it all.
I go to dance recitals now.
If that doesn't show I love you,
then nothing will.
I go to dance recitals.
Always on a sunday,
when I have a much better offer,
and I have to say no
and carry hair products
and tutus through the city
and go to dance recitals.
And, look, I don't want
to sound like an idiot.
When your kid goes up there,
it's amazing, it's amazing.
You know, I didn't even know
they were learning something
all year.
No idea.
I just dropped them off.
"Someone else
is watching them for an hour.
"Let's get a drink.
You want a drink?
Yeah, let's go.
We got time."
And then they waddle out there
on the stage,
and they do
a little funny dance,
and they kinda stumble,
and it's heartwarming,
and you get choked up
and misty-eyed,
that lasts for, like,
30 seconds.
And then you have to sit
through 4 1/2 hours
of other people's
useless bags of garbage.
And the only people
who are honest
in the entire auditorium
are the little boys
that got dragged there
against their will.
There was this...
At this last recital,
there was this chunky monkey
in a leotard
stomping her way through a solo.
I don't know how much money
her father gave to this school.
She shouldn't have been
outside in the daylight,
let alone on stage
in a spotlight.
And out of the darkness you
just heard this little boy yell,
"make it stop!"
"Somebody stop it!"
I wish I had the balls
to be so honest
that grown men have to carry me
out of the auditorium
into the lobby,
'cause you know
that was the kid's plan.
As soon as he gets out there,
"anyone get a light?
"That's a horrible show.
Am I wrong?
That's terrible entertainment."
My new thing now is I skate.
I'm skating.
I skate, ice skate.
Put on clothes in the winter
and go on ice.
Because people wake me up
at 6:00 in the morning
saying they're bored.
Can you imagine?
The sun's not even up,
and there's a little face
saying, "I'm bored."
If a roommate did that,
you'd punch him
right in the face.
"Well, now you got
something to do.
Go ice that down."
But society doesn't let you
punch little girls in the face.
So I get up.
And we make unicorns
with glue sticks
and glitter and stuff,
and we run out of activities
by 7:00.
So now we skate.
And I know what you're thinking.
"Tom, do you even
belong on skates?
Do you know how to skate?"
No, not at all.
That's not the point.
Does a bear belong
in the circus on a unicycle
going around in circles
in a party hat?
No, but he does what he's told,
and they feed him
when he's done.
And I'm the best skater
in the family.
That's how moronic
this activity is.
I can't do it at all,
and I am the leader.
So I go out and people
attach themselves to me,
and I just try and keep them up.
And they fall off one by one
like discarded Christmas trees.
And eventually we all
crawl to the edge for safety.
And we get up, and we're hungry,
and we're wet,
and then we move as a pack
into the city and look for food.
And we sit in a diner,
and we buy pasta
for, like, 50 bucks,
and get ripped off
and spill stuff on each other
and make a scene,
and eventually we warm up
and forget how miserable we were
and plan our next skate.
And this is my life now.
I do weird stuff
with people I make.
I used to do weird stuff
with people I met in bars.
Now I make people,
and I do weird stuff with them.
Now we're living
their lives for them.
We're on top of them.
We're taking
their tests for them.
We're planning their playdates.
We're in their life
all the time,
and it's failing them,
it's failing them.
Kids are showing up at college...
There's reports of kids
showing up depressed
'cause they don't know
how to do anything, anything.
They're just like,
"my bed isn't made again today!
"Why is this happening?
"I used to wake up,
my bed would be made,
"and there'd be
Mickey mouse pancakes.
Now nothing."
We're failing them.
All their test scores
globally are in the toilet,
in the toilet.
We kicked ass
when we were little.
You know why?
Our parents didn't care.
I'm going to school,
you go to work.
We'll meet here at dinner.
Don't screw up.
And we got our little book bags,
and we'd head out of the house
like little businesspeople,
and we got stuff done.
You had meetings
at your lockers.
You bought cliff notes
off the black market.
You forged signatures
if you had to.
And we were number one
in the world.
Number one.
It's arrogance.
It's arrogance of the parents
that think you're so important.
You're not that important.
It's easy to make a kid.
It's really easy.
And then your job really
is when they're little
stop them from waddling
into traffic,
electricity, or a weird uncle.
That's it.
That is it.
Other than that,
get out of their way.
All the best people
on the planet
didn't even have
their parents around.
Steve Jobs was an orphan.
Albert Einstein left home
when he was 15.
Abraham Lincoln,
when he was six years old,
cooked and ate both his parents.
Yeah, little-known fact,
but it's true.
Wasn't in the movie,
but it happened.
That's why he was 60 feet tall.
Human bone marrow.
We all show up on this planet
with our personalities
already intact.
As soon as you're here,
you're made, you're made.
And you're either
allowed to flower,
or you're stomped out
by the grown-ups in your life.
My kids are exactly the same
as when they got here,
exactly, and I had
nothing to do with it.
Nothing.
My little one is tough as nails.
She has a back
like Michael Phelps.
She eats rocks.
She's a killer.
We're all scared of her,
all the family.
We're at the airport, I was
like, "where's the luggage?"
She has it already.
"Let's go."
"Hurry up,
she's getting in the cab."
"Where'd she get money?"
"I don't know."
And she was
that way immediately.
She came out of my wife.
They put her on that little
baby bread warmer shelf.
She immediately
started getting up
like she had somewhere to go.
"Argh!"
Nurses were passing out.
They never saw a baby
do a push-up
their first five seconds
on the planet.
"Agh, let's get out of here."
I can't control that.
I just have to watch her
and hope she doesn't turn evil.
That's all I can do.
And the other one is smart.
She's always been that way.
She wants help
with her homework now,
I can't do it, can't do it.
Fourth grade math,
I'm out, I'm out.
It's fraction time.
Good night, I'm out.
I get nervous
when the pizza guy comes
I have to do the change
and the tip in the moment.
I just hold up balled-up money
like I'm from a small town
in Belgium.
You need more of this?
You want more?
We infantilize these kids.
No one talks
to their kids the way we do.
You gonna put on
your jammy-wammies?
You gonna get all cuddly-wuddly
on the couchie-poo?
You have a big day tomorrow.
You have your s.A.T.S.
Yes, you do.
Yes, you do.
Other cultures, the kids go to
school and work immediately.
These little Chinese kids
putting together our iPhones,
kicking ass over there.
Seriously, they go to school
for, like, 50 hours.
They bicycle home 500 miles.
They give their ancient
grandparents a sponge bath,
one piece of seaweed,
off to the apple factory
for the night shift.
And they're happy
for the benefits.
Our kids go to school
for, like, three hours,
then waddle around all night
looking for candy.
"Mahh!
There's gotta be
some skittles somewhere."
Every generation is smarter
than the one
that came before it, right?
You were smarter
than your parents.
So these kids, with technology,
it happens so much faster,
so much faster.
Just think about their phones.
Think about the amount
of pornography
they have in their pockets
24 hours a day.
You know what I had to do
when I was eight years old
to see a picture
of a naked lady in a magazine?
I had to run an underground
railroad for porn.
A series of meeting points
and backpack drop-offs
and swapping out
bicycles in abandoned garages.
Get it through the woods,
into the house,
into the basement,
into the crawl space.
Cuckoo! Cuckoo!
We'd crawl back through
the dirt with a book of matches.
Could you imagine
showing a playboy
to an eight-year-old now?
They'd be like, "no, I was
into that in preschool.
More into feet now."
I'm raising girls.
It's all girls in my house,
all girls.
Whenever I say
I'm raising girls,
women always go,
"it's gonna suck.
"Wait till they go
through puberty.
Your life is over."
Really?
You want a boy
going through puberty
with what they do
around the house?
"Where are all our tissues?
"Why are we going through
so many tissues?
"Why do I only have one sock?
Where are my socks?"
Some hairy gollum
crawling down the hallway,
taking a shower
for an hour and a half,
coming out all sweaty,
"aghh."
You can have it.
I'll take a girl anytime.
Love girls.
But I know there's a limit,
there's a limit to how much
I can teach them.
At a certain point,
I gotta just back off
'cause I don't know it,
and my wife takes over.
'Cause there's certain things
that women know
that you only know
from other women.
You only share it
with other women.
We don't really know it.
It's like this weird
martial art.
It makes you
so strong and cunning.
It's like this lady karate.
Very devious.
One of your master strokes
is making us think that
we're the powerful ones.
I really thought it for years.
Well, the whole game
is set up that way, isn't it?
"I'll ask her on a date.
I'll ask her to marry me.
"I'll give her my name.
Agh!"
And women are very smart,
they go along with it.
"Okay, maybe I'll hyphenate it,
but all right."
And then she does something
one sunday afternoon.
You realize, my god,
she could kill me in a second.
So much more cunning.
Women will get rid
of a lifelong friend
just from an eye roll at dinner.
"Did you see how that bitch
looked at me?"
And she's gone.
You'll never see her again.
Gone, like old time Russia.
Out of the contacts.
Out of the picture frames.
Disappears.
You know how scary
that is to a man,
to know that everyone
in your life
is on a giant roulette wheel
of death?
And that we're on there too
at double zero
just going around?
It's not gonna land on me,
right?
What are the odds?
It's a terrifying concept
to a man,
'cause we never get rid
of our friends ever, ever.
Right? You meet a guy
in kindergarten.
If he's your friend,
he's your friend for life.
He could be the biggest
jackass on the planet too.
He could become
an alcoholic drug addict,
Rob a liquor store, go to jail,
come out ten years later,
come to your house,
pee in your pool,
hit on your wife,
you're like, "that's Don.
"He's crazy, right?
"But you gotta love him,
you gotta.
"Look what he's doing
to the mailbox.
Hilarious, dude!"
And you think the closer
you get to a woman,
the safer you'll be,
and you're wrong.
You're in more danger.
'Cause you're being manipulated
in ways you don't even know.
Think about it,
every guy who's married
is fatter than when
he started, every one.
You think that's a coincidence?
You think men are just
so overjoyed with matrimony
that they're just walking
around with chocolate sundaes.
"Wow, my life turned out
so much better
than I thought it would."
No.
The common denominator is
that you're married to a woman.
And when you marry a woman,
you think she's gonna love you
and care for you
and Cherish you,
and you're wrong.
Her first instinct
is to keep you.
She's a nester.
The woman is a nester.
She makes the nest,
builds the nest,
wants everyone in that nest
all the time.
And guys are always trying
to leave the nest, always,
just to look for worms
or do loopty loops.
Sometimes check out
another nest.
"Who's in that nest?
I'm just looking."
And women are aware of this,
and they want to prevent it
from happening
by feeding you all the time,
essentially making you
too fat to fly.
So if you ever try and leave,
you land on the ground
and waddle in circles
like a fat duck.
And then all
the pretty birds look down,
"he's funny.
I'd never have sex with him,
but he's hilarious."
But you should be more powerful.
It makes perfect sense
that women are strong,
'cause your lives
are so much more difficult.
You have so much more
to deal with.
It's amazing.
You have a lot more
to deal with.
Just the makeup alone.
Just this never-ending
art project you're involved in.
Carrying luggage around
your entire lives,
filled with art supplies.
Brushes and pencils and paints.
Just painting the same face
over and over and over.
You're like a crazy Van gogh
with an etch a sketch.
I don't even know why you do it.
Who are you doing it for?
It's not for us.
We don't care.
All we care is that
you're not a dude.
That's all we care.
It's for other women.
It's that woman-on-woman
hateful competition.
It's nasty.
You ever see women
say hello to each other?
Nasty business, right?
It's all smiles up here.
"Hi."
"hi."
Then they give each other
that slow look of death
up and down.
Find a weakness, hang on it
until she knows that you notice.
"Sorry about that.
You can get that
taken care of."
Brutal.
You should see the moms
at my kids' school
trying to out-hot the other moms
hilarious.
7:00 in the morning.
They show up dressed to kill
to out-hot the other moms.
Are you high?
No kid wants their mom
to be hot.
You just want a mom.
You don't want a hot mom.
You just want
a flowered house dress
and wobbly bingo arms.
Right?
Big, sloppy mom boobs.
You curl up in her
like a cinnamon-scented
beanbag chair.
That's a mom.
And I got news for you,
if you are the hot mom,
the other moms
aren't calling you hot.
They're calling you a whore.
The products that women
get tricked into buying.
They told women
it might help their ass
if they buy these
skechers shape-ups.
Have you seen these
orthopedic moon boots?
They're like sneakers
attached to Frankenstein feet.
They're walking through the mall
like cirque du soleil on stilts.
"How's my ass?"
No one's looking at your ass.
We're looking at your feet,
afraid you have scoliosis.
The whole idea of
what it is to be a woman
in this culture is demented.
It's demented.
All right,
every image of a woman,
it's something you can't be
and it's something
we're not interested in.
Right, every ad with a woman,
she's 6'8", emaciated,
little boy boobs,
and bubble lips.
Just scowling at us
through black mascara.
That's not a woman.
That's nice on a billboard.
What would you do with that
if you got it into your house?
That'd be like having
a live giraffe
in the living room.
Knocking over lamps,
hiding behind the piano.
"What do we do with it?"
"I don't know,
give it more cocaine.
It seems to like it."
That's not a woman.
You want a woman, a partner
for the rest of your life?
Get a strong woman.
Get one with a big back,
help you mow the lawn
once in a while.
You don't want a cool,
skinny chick.
They get sick easy.
Get a strong chick.
Stands at the stove
and stirs for hours.
"Welcome home!
"Children play in playground.
"We not have playground.
I build it.
They play now."
That's a woman,
especially in a family.
Right, that's another
burden of the woman.
The whole thing falls on you,
the whole thing.
You know, we thought
it was gonna be different.
We were gonna be
the first generation of guys
who were gonna pitch in, 50/50.
Anything you do,
we're gonna do too.
50/50.
Our dads didn't do it,
but we're gonna do it.
50/50.
Didn't work out.
It can't be 50/50,
'cause we don't like these kids
half as much as you do.
It's a lot of work.
The whole thing's a lot of work.
A lot of work.
I haven't slept in nine years.
Nine years, no sleep.
No sleep in nine years.
I knew the baby part,
I knew that.
I didn't know you don't sleep
for the rest of your life.
Did not know that.
You lay down
like you're sleeping.
You close your eyes like
you're sleeping.
But you're listening
for trouble 24 hours a day.
My little one threw up
off the top bunk bed.
All I had to hear
in my sleep was, ""
she doesn't even know
what's happening yet.
And I'm running like
a marine in his underwear,
grabbing anything
that looks like a bucket.
A cat, the pillow.
You don't find anything,
just go with your hand,
just do it, just do it.
I'll catch it,
I'll deal with it.
Just do it in my hand.
But that's the whole deal
right there, right?
Your kid gets sick
in the middle of the night.
You do more chores
in ten minutes
than you did in four years
of college.
Bagging stuff up,
carrying bodies,
doing laundry.
It's like you're working
for fema
in the middle of the night.
They come down the hall naked,
stuff in their hair,
"am I okay?"
"Go stand in the tub.
Stand in the...
Get her out of here.
She smells."
And the only thing
we have to clean in my house
is all-natural cleaners.
My wife wants to save the planet
with orange peel mist.
She's like,
"it really works."
No, it doesn't.
They wouldn't have invented
all these other products
if orange juice did the trick.
Your kid throws up,
you don't care about the planet.
You wanna see Mr. Clean.
You want that bald bastard
just smiling at you.
His tight shirt and an earring.
You don't know
if he's gay or straight
or a pirate.
Just looking at you like,
"yeah, I might kill your cat,
but I'll leave this place
smelling like lemons."
That's what
you're supposed to do.
I guess that's what life is.
Just get it and go and go.
I don't want to get old though.
Looks creepy.
Doesn't it look like it hurts?
Seriously?
You ever look at
an old person on the street
looking at a curb
they have to go up?
They'll do, like, five dry runs
before they go for it.
Grabbing onto strangers.
"Hey."
That's another amazing thing
about the time we live in.
Science is moving
at such a rate,
we're gonna be able to stop
the effects of aging.
How amazing is that?
There's gonna be no aging
at a certain point.
But the real bummer,
we're gonna just miss it.
We're gonna be the last
generation of old people.
How awful is that?
They're gonna look at us
on the sidewalk like, "eww.
"Remember when that
used to happen?
Look at their necks.
They're like testicles."
Now we're at the weird stage
where people
are just hanging on.
The doctors are just kinda
working out the kinks.
They're just kinda make us
last longer.
Like, "get a load of this guy.
"He shoulda been dead years ago.
I filled him with
batteries and jujubes."
I don't wanna just last.
Do you wanna just last?
People always
take pride in that.
Just... people in their family
just keep going,
especially if they're
a degenerate.
Then you hear that story.
They love telling that story.
"You know, my grandfather
ate bacon every morning,
"smoked three packs
of cigarettes a day,
"drank whiskey every night.
Lived to 98 years old."
Yeah, and I'm sure he was
a real treat to hang out with.
Big bacon bag of bones
with a racist ashtray
for a mouth.
Permanently attached
to a vinyl recliner,
sucking on an oxygen tank
like he's scuba diving
in the living room.
Can we agree on that?
If you need an oxygen tank,
maybe it's time
to wrap things up.
Seriously, if the planet doesn't
have air for you anymore
and your best friend
is a nickel slot machine,
one more lap
and hit the showers.
And, look, we can't
just keep living on.
We can't, we really can't.
It's getting too expensive.
Social security, medicare.
We don't have the money.
We can't afford it.
We can't afford
to keep the old people.
We need a plan.
A secret plan.
Don't tell the old people
about it.
We'll communicate through
computers and whispers.
We'll just agree
not to kill them, exactly,
but not to work so hard
in saving every one of them.
We gotta treat it
like a trip to the vet.
We know you love muffins,
but it's gonna be
really expensive.
There's a lot of other
muffins out there.
And, look,
I wouldn't be so scared
if I knew what happened after.
Is this it?
We just die and that's it?
Nothing more?
Nothing more?
Or do we get to go
to some place even greater.
This is a great party.
You wanna keep the party going.
Ooh, it's... yeah!
But if there is some place
magical and better than this,
how 'bout a text?
How 'bout an email?
Nothing.
Nobody's said...
We search all the time,
and nothing.
My little girl wanted to go
to church for the first time,
and we don't go to church.
I believe,
but I don't believe enough
to ruin my sundays.
I can't totally not believe,
'cause I was raised catholic,
and I'm terrified all the time.
If you were raised catholic,
you know... you can't shake it.
You're just... no.
My wife was raised catholic.
She has the balls
to completely not believe.
She's like, "the church
is a patriarchal system
to keep women down...
It's bullshit."
I'm like,
"yeah, I'm with you."
But then on the side I'm like,
"dear god, I'm sorry
I live with this devil.
"I don't know how this heathen
got in my bed.
"If we die at the same time,
"I'm totally cool
with splitting up.
"Send her where
you gotta send her, big guy.
I'm coming with you."
But my little girl wanted to go,
and it makes sense,
'cause the church
is the coolest building
in the neighborhood, isn't it?
It's got spires
and rainbow windows
and bells ringing.
She's like, "I want to see
the show that goes on in there."
I was like,
"all right, let's go.
"Let's get dressed up
and go to church.
I'll take you."
It felt right.
Like when I was a kid.
So I put on the suit and tie.
She dressed up like a little
girl's version of a woman,
which is hilarious...
Little lipstick, you know?
Everything's poofy.
Poofy dress, poofy socks.
Little heels this big.
She can't even walk.
She's like a Billy goat
on ice, just...
But she thinks she's hot
'cause she's carrying a purse
filled with chapstick
and pennies, you know.
And I feel great too,
'cause I'm walking with
the cutest puppy on earth.
Everybody that comes by,
"she's so cute."
And I milk it,
I'm like, "I know.
"We don't have time for this.
We're on our way to church.
We're filled with goodness."
Every sunday.
And we were having a great time.
We were having a little date.
She's yapping.
We're holding hands.
It's a great time.
And she gets up
the church steps.
The doors open.
She freezes.
Starts digging into my hand.
She's shaking like a leaf.
She's looking up at the giant,
bloody catholic Jesus
hanging from the ceiling.
And I realize we never
told her the stories.
She's looking at me like,
"this is a haunted house."
And we sit in the pew,
it's all creaky and old,
and old people are petting her.
"Hello, little girl."
She's holding her purse
like a roller coaster rail.
Just two eyes.
Terrified.
And it is a haunted house.
You look through her eyes,
and the rainbow windows
from the outside
tell the story of how he died,
so it's someone being
stepped on and stabbed.
And big thing where
they christen the babies.
"Daddy, what's that?"
"That's where
we dunk babies underwater
their first time here."
Then this old lady gets up
and starts crossing the altar
on the way to the organ.
I was like, "no, not the organ.
This is not gonna go well."
And to say she's old
is a compliment.
Shoulda been dead for years.
It was like a wicked witch
made out of beef jerky.
She gets up to that organ.
She reaches out
her old lady talons.
The veins are coming off
like she's been attacked
with silly string.
She hits that organ.
Bom bom!
All I hear next to me is,
"I wanna go now.
I don't like it here."
Minnie mouse
is losing her marbles.
Bom!
I start laughing,
I start that uncontrollable,
you're not allowed to laugh
but you're laughing,
so now you're snorting.
"Let's get out of here."""
Bom bom!
Then the headliner comes out.
The priest comes down the aisle.
I swear to you,
he looked like Dracula.
Long head,
the hair all greased back,
and he's in his robe,
so it doesn't even look
like he's walking.
He's floating down the aisle.
They're doing the whole smoke
show in front of him, he's...
He gets to the microphone.
"Velcome, everybody.
Velcome."
I fall out.
I am laughing out loud.
I'm laughing.
She's crying.
People are turning
and shaking their heads.
We gotta go.
We gotta go now,
before this gets any scarier.
Before he starts talking about
drinking the blood of Christ,
let's beat it.
So we go running out the aisle.
We get outside.
Outside, birds are chirping,
sun's shining.
We sit on the steps,
look at each other,
just start laughing like,
"what the hell was that?"
And, look,
I don't know what god is
or that spirit thing
that we're always chasing,
but whatever it is
we were so much closer to it
on the sidewalk together
than whatever was going on
inside that haunted house.
But we're not giving up.
We're going to a black church
next time.
'Cause that's where god
really lives.
Thank you guys so much.
You guys were a wonderful crowd.
Thank you.