Tom Papa: Home Free (2024) Movie Script
1
Ladies and gentlemen,
please welcome
Tom Papa!
Good lovin'
I got a truckload
And when you get it
You got something
So don't worry
'Cause I'm coming
I'm a soul man
Wow.
Look at you.
Look at you.
DC, thank you so much for coming out.
So nice.
Love this town. It's hilarious here.
Keeps getting funnier every year.
I'm, uh, happy to be here.
I've been going through
some changes at my house.
We, uh, dropped off my last daughter,
my last child, my youngest,
off at college.
And they're all gone now,
and nobody tells you
how hard it's gonna be
pretending to be sad.
Not one tear. Not one tear.
I really thought
I was gonna cry. I feel so bad.
But I think I might be happier
than I've ever been.
And it's all right, you know.
We did all the things.
We did all the things.
Look, I love her to death.
I love both of them. I love 'em to death.
But, you know,
we had a good run. It's over.
They want me to be happy.
You don't want to think your dad's home,
in your empty room, crying his eyes out.
You want to think he's all right,
moving on with his life, microdosing,
and watching Rick and Morty by himself.
That's what I'm doing.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Because I have freedom now.
I never had freedom before.
When I was little, I don't know
if you're like me, but when I was a child,
they made me live with my parents.
And I couldn't drink stuff or smoke stuff
'cause they were always around.
And then when I got away from them,
I made my own family.
Nobody tells you, when you have kids,
your children become your new parents.
And you can't drink stuff or smoke stuff
because they're always around.
And they can't keep a secret.
But now, for the first time,
they're all gone,
and I'm doing all the stuff.
I can have martinis
in the middle of the afternoon.
Yes.
Because I know no one's
gonna call me out of the blue
and ask for a ride home from karate.
There were a lot of years
I did very questionable driving
at 4:00 in the afternoon.
"I got her. I'll get them."
I don't even wear clothes there anymore.
What's the point? My wife leaves for work
in the morning, pants off.
The dogs are so happy.
They're like, "You're one of us now."
"Ah!"
Rolling around in the backyard,
my dog's just looking at me.
"Rub your ass on this tree. It's amazing."
And she's right. It is.
It's a special tree.
But I'll be honest with you, folks.
I'll be honest. It almost killed us.
It almost killed us.
Raising kids is no joke. It's no joke.
If you don't have children, people
approach you all the time very flippantly.
"When are you gonna do it?
You should have kids."
"When are you gonna have kids?"
No. You should think long and hard
about whether you're gonna have kids.
You should have seen me
before this experiment.
I was skinny. I had long curly hair.
And I could see. I could see.
I used to have eyes like an eagle.
Now I have eyes like a crab.
My wife and I are just husks.
We're just brittle husks of what we were.
We'll be in the kitchen some days.
She'll be like, "We could fool around
right here. No one would ever know."
I'm like, "Yeah, we could."
"Or we could just lie down
on this cold floor for a while
and shut our eyes."
"It's really nice down here."
"We're not dying. We're just resting."
I really can't see anymore.
Not all the time.
Just when I'm driving at night
with other cars around.
There's a lot coming at me.
It's like a fireworks display out there.
I'm like, "I guess I'll just aim
for the dark part in the middle."
Mistaking a lot of garbage cans
for people at night.
"Oh!"
"Why is everybody out tonight?"
"They're not. It's just recycle day.
You're all right."
You've just got to get smart with it.
You have to adapt.
I'm using the curbs now.
That's why they're there.
I just ricochet my way back to the house.
But it is a real treat. It is.
Like, I can go back to being
who I was before all of this. You know?
When you have kids,
you have to pretend you're Superman.
You have children looking for protection.
And you don't have new skills.
They just kicked you out of the hospital.
"Good luck." No instructions.
You know? And... and I wasn't Superman.
And now that they're older,
I can admit, I'm just a guy.
And they know now
that they're lucky to be alive.
A lot of times, when I was a young father,
I wanted to cry. But you can't, you know?
I didn't want my kids
coming home from school,
seeing me at the kitchen table,
just sobbing.
"Dad, what's wrong?"
"Everything! Everything!"
"I can't figure any of this out."
"I don't have any money.
Do you have money?"
"I saw a birthday card on the counter.
Don't lie to me."
You can't be honest with them
when they're little.
"Dad, are there really monsters?"
"I don't know. Probably."
"I feel it sometimes. Don't you feel it?"
"Sometimes I think I hear it."
"Do you ever hear them in the attic?
What is that?"
You can't say that.
When they come to breakfast,
"Thank God you're alive!
I didn't think you were gonna make it."
"I thought I heard chewing last night.
I thought it was you."
Now I can be honest. You know?
I don't like the dark. I tell them.
No, I don't like the dark.
I don't think anyone likes the dark.
You don't like the dark. No, it's scary.
In our utility room,
we have this door that's on a spring.
As soon as you get in off the garage,
where we store all the stuff.
And the door closes automatically
as soon as you get in there.
But the switch is on the opposite wall
in these shelves.
And it's too long. It's too far.
You can't...
I can't keep it open with my foot,
so you got to nail it.
And you go for it. Sometimes there's
an Easter basket, or... ah!
And it closes, and it's dark.
Oh!
Whatever has been chasing me
my whole life is like, "Gotcha!"
I couldn't admit that
when they were little.
I'd tuck in these two little girls,
these two beautiful angels.
"Good night, girls.
I'll see you in the morning."
"Good night, Dad."
"Can you keep the light on?
It's scary in the dark."
"No, no, no."
"Come on.
There's nothing to be afraid of."
"I'll see you in the morning."
Then I run to my room
and turn everything on.
'Cause it's scary in the dark,
and I knew it was scary,
because I could hear their whimpering
down the hallway.
For hours.
We did one of those DNA tests
before they left.
I highly recommend it.
I really do. I really do.
I know it's a little sketchy, 'cause you
gotta give your DNA away to a corporation.
And they're not gonna do
anything great with it, for sure.
No, they're definitely gonna
clone us in the future.
But who cares? We'll be dead.
I think it's kind of exciting.
Right? A bunch of us
fighting robots in the future.
That's exciting, right?
Six of you running through a wheat field,
with no private parts.
"Ah!"
Long hair like you never had.
"Ah!"
Learning karate and eating squirrel meat.
It's exciting!
But in the short-term,
not only do you find out
your family heritage, I expected that,
but you also find out
all your family secrets.
I wasn't expecting that.
That's very exciting.
All the secrets come out
when DNA shows up.
There's no hiding it.
DNA is like the drunk uncle
who comes to Christmas for the first time.
He's like, "Wait a minute.
You think that's your real dad?"
"Have I got a story for you!"
We knew, in my family,
we were gonna be mostly Italian,
and a little German
that we don't talk about.
When it came back, we were mostly Italian,
a little German, and a little French.
A little French thrown in.
I called my mother.
I said, "What's with the French?"
She said, "Oh, secret's out!"
"Your grandmother was a whore."
Whoo!
"I'm sorry. What did you call Nana?"
"Yep, she was a whore, all right.
Slept her way through Europe."
"That's why you have weird eyebrows
and your uncle's gay."
I don't think that's how it works.
No more secrets. No more secrets.
DNA and social media.
You know, I tour all over the country.
People do their research,
and they show up once in a while.
"I think we're related."
And I'll call my mother. "Who's Holly?"
"What do you know?"
"I know there's a middle-aged woman
in Tampa
who wants to come to Thanksgiving."
"And she looks a lot like Dad!"
"Oh, shit. She found us."
Families had secrets, for generations.
Long, deep secrets. Families kept secrets.
Anything that embarrassed them
in front of the neighbors,
anything they didn't understand,
that made them uncomfortable,
they would just lie about it
or stick it in the attic.
Just stick it in the attic.
Unwanted baby? Put it in the attic.
Undiagnosed ADHD? Get her in the attic.
"Is that your boy with a stutter?"
"What boy?" Put him in the attic.
All over America,
kids looking out of attic windows.
"Where's everybody g-g-g-g-going?"
"I want a b-b-backpack too!"
It's so sad.
And as a child, if you had an inkling
about a family secret,
and you asked the elders about it,
they'd lie right to your face.
"Who's that man living in the garage?"
"What man?"
"There's a man out there.
He's been there for quite some time."
"There's no man out there."
"Yes, there is." "Shut up!"
What a great time to be a parent,
by the way. Could you imagine?
There was a time you could tell
your kids to shut up, right to their face.
No long conversations.
No explanations.
Just "shut up!"
How much easier would that have been?
"Why is the sun hot?"
"I don't know. Why don't you shut up?"
"Well, that was uncalled-for."
Even easier to be a father back then.
You weren't even considered
one of the parents.
You just had to show up
and hit everyone once in a while.
My father would act like we were strangers
who just broke into the TV room.
"Where the hell did these kids come from?
Get them out of here!"
My mother would come.
"Leave your father alone. He works hard."
"We were just playing."
"Well, now you're just shutting up."
It was a different time.
We had an uncle
who couldn't take it anymore.
He just stood up in the middle of dinner
and just walked out the front door.
And didn't come back.
Just left my aunt and my cousins behind.
And just left.
We were like, "Where's Uncle Bob?"
And they lied right to our face.
They said he went to Siberia.
He wasn't in Siberia.
He went to his girlfriend's apartment
in the same town
and lived there for two years.
In the same town.
We'd see him around.
We'd be in the supermarket.
"Is that Uncle Bob?"
"No, that son of a bitch is in Siberia."
"Looks a lot like Uncle Bob."
"Looks like you're gonna
shut the hell up."
And then one day, he just walked back in,
sat down, and kept eating.
Like nothing ever happened.
We were like, "How was Siberia?"
He was like, "That wasn't her name."
Things are better now.
I think with the truth coming out,
things are better.
We're actually helping people,
not sticking things in the attic anymore.
We're dealing with mental health,
helping each other out.
It's a much nicer time.
Everyone's going to therapy.
Good for you.
If you need someone to talk to
and you go to therapy, good for you.
I'm not going, but good for you!
I'm not right.
There's a lot needs to be fixed.
But I'm having a good time.
And I know if I go to therapy,
they're gonna stop it.
I know what's wrong with me.
I eat too much, and I drink too much.
"Don't you want to find out why?"
I know why.
Life is hard, and that stuff's fun to do.
We all got stuff.
Everyone's dealing with stuff.
Everybody in here's got something.
I still shoplift.
I do.
You should do it too. It's fun.
You know when you're a kid and you steal?
I never got caught, and I'm still going.
Yeah, I'm undefeated.
Not big stuff. I'm not an ass.
Little stuff, like dental floss and candy.
Stuff like that.
Stuff we shouldn't have to pay for
in the first place.
You know what I mean?
Pens? I'm not paying for pens.
I'm not giving you money for pens.
I steal pens.
CVS, Walgreens...
You. If we're hanging out,
I would get your pen.
Try it. It's really fun.
Especially as an adult,
they don't really mess with you.
Some 16-year-old manager of a CVS
sees you sticking a Blow Pop
in your pocket.
"I don't have time for this shit!"
"Call the cops on my principal?
This is ridiculous."
The older I get,
the more I'm gonna steal, for sure.
Oh yeah, when I'm 80,
that's all I'm gonna do.
Wake up in the morning, have coffee,
go to Best Buy and roll that place.
"He's back! What's he got this time?
Looks like a PlayStation."
"Should we take it back?"
"No, follow him to his car."
"He falls asleep before he turns it on.
He'll be all right."
Oh.
Helping kids now, that's better, you know?
Helping kids out, that's a good thing.
When people have little problems,
great teachers are helping them out.
We didn't have that. When I was a kid,
we didn't have great teachers.
They were a hot mess.
They had no answers for us.
They just called me hyper.
That's what they would tell my parents.
Every back-to-school night.
"This kid's hyper."
"He talks all day
and makes friends in the middle of class."
Oh! We got to stop that shit immediately.
They would show up,
adjust their wigs,
do a shot of Jack Daniel's,
and throw shit at us.
They were always throwing stuff at us.
Erasers, chalk...
My best friend got hit in the head
with a dictionary.
Yeah, right in his head.
We didn't need Adderall. We were focused.
Our lives depended on it.
We had a Spanish teacher.
She used to come in so hungover,
there was a 50% chance
her boobs would pop out.
We were focused.
Muy bien! Muy bien!
If you do go to therapy,
just know, you're gonna go forever.
You gotta go forever.
Because we don't get fixed.
There's no fixing this.
I've never had a friend come up,
"Last day of therapy. I'm all better now."
It doesn't work like that.
We're not... We're physical beings.
We're constantly changing,
constantly changing,
evolving, and decaying.
That affects you physically,
and that affects your emotions,
minute to minute, second to second.
You can't pay
that much attention to yourself.
We're an ongoing project.
Sometimes I really think
my whole emotional makeup
is completely dependent
on what I ate that day.
Ever had one of those days?
"Cool Ranch Doritos?
I haven't had those in a while."
And a half hour later, I'm like,
"I think I'm gonna kill myself."
"Why are my eyes hot? I feel weird."
Always changing.
I don't know any of you,
but I know for a fact,
you're slightly different now
than when we started the show.
Right? The weed's wearing off.
The alcohol's kicking in.
Some of you didn't get a chance to eat
and you're all cranky.
Some ate too much. Now you're all gassy
and offending your neighbors.
Some of you are jammed in the middle.
You thought about peeing?
You really should have peed.
You really should have peed.
We're not supposed to be happy
all the time.
Don't put pressure on yourself.
Don't feel like you're less than
because you're not happy all the time.
That's a lie.
That's a social media construct.
We're not supposed
to be happy all the time.
Happy's like a coke spike.
It's like way up there.
You know? No one's happy all the time.
Clowns are happy all the time,
and they freak everybody out.
Walking around with permanent smiles.
'Cause they're killing things at night
and thinking about it during the day.
We're not supposed
to be happy all the time.
Happy's way up here.
Joyful, you should be joyful.
But that's down here. That's down here.
Joy is right down there.
And depressed, right under it.
Right there. Right there.
So close to joy, and all day long,
just "Zim, zam, zim, zam, zim."
"Zim, zam, zim."
There'd be no comedy
if we were happy all the time.
We wouldn't be here right now.
This is how it works.
You come in,
we laugh for a couple of hours.
As soon as it's done,
right back to Shitsville!
Yeah.
That's what I called your life.
Shitsville.
It's all right. I live there too.
Not supposed to be happy all the time.
Think about all the paintings
in all the great museums
of all the great people
who came before us, right?
Queen Elizabeth, Joan of Arc,
Washington, Jesus.
Not one smile. You ever notice that?
No one is smiling.
There's no paintings
of Lincoln and his bros, like...
One famous smile, the Mona Lisa,
and it's a shit smile.
That's the kind of smile
you give to someone
when they get on your elevator
at the last minute.
"Couldn't wait? Couldn't wait? Okay."
"Now you're pressing all the buttons.
Great. Nice to have you."
Sometimes you just need perspective,
to know that you're doing all right.
You know?
I go to shitty bars. You ever do that?
Every town's got one.
Do it. Do it.
You know the bar I'm talking about.
It's weird, no windows.
There's just one porthole on the door.
You never see anyone go in or out.
The door has padding on it,
for some reason.
Go in there. Go in there
in the middle of the afternoon
and buy drinks for the 80-year-old guy
sitting at that little crummy bar,
under the saddest Christmas lights
of all time.
They've been hanging there since 1937.
Buy that guy some drinks.
No one knows his name.
They call him Popeye,
but nobody really knows his name.
Listen to his stories.
How he fought in every war,
lost money in every recession,
has every STD known to man.
After an hour of that,
you come back out into the light.
You're like, "I think I can do this."
"I'm gonna be all right."
It's hard to feel good.
It's hard to feel good.
I don't feel that great right now.
Do you? I'm having a great time,
but I don't feel good.
Do you feel good? No.
Yeah. You feel fat. We all feel fat.
Yeah. Not fat, puffy, puffy.
Definitely puffy.
We could totally pee this out.
Don't you think?
We could totally pee it.
It's just water weight.
Water mixed with adult chicken fingers,
and mac and cheese bites,
and ice cream we eat standing up
in the kitchen when our family's asleep.
No, you don't need me calling you fat.
You know what's wrong with you.
Might not be fat, might not be fat,
but there's something.
There's something you don't like
about you. We all carry it.
I don't know what it is,
but you're thinking about it right now.
Maybe you got weird love handles.
Maybe a misshapen nipple.
I've seen a lot of those.
The one that keeps wandering off
to the right for no reason.
Everybody's looking this way,
and she keeps going over there.
A lot of feet. A lot of feet out there.
A lot of feet. It's feet season out there.
I see 'em at the airport.
A lot of bad feet out there.
A lot of middle-aged women
seem to be evolving right before our eyes,
growing extra toes in real time.
You ever see that? Next to the big toe,
there's a jut that comes out at the side.
Looks like it comes in handy at home,
you know, raking the leaves, and...
...returning emails, and talking
on the phone at the same time.
You're in public now.
How about some socks?
We torture ourselves. It's our brains.
I think our brain's main objective
is to collect insults hurled at us
throughout our life, store them,
and play them over and over
in a loop until we're dead.
And even then, I bet it doesn't stop.
I bet it doesn't stop.
I bet I'll be looking at myself
in the coffin at the end,
"Oh, I am disgusting. Look at me."
"Why'd they put me in that tracksuit?
I never wore that."
"How could I be dead
and still look sweaty? I'm the worst."
Most of these insults, by the way,
this weird, little, low self-esteem
you have every once in a while,
that's from insults long ago.
This isn't fresh stuff.
This is how long
your brain has held on to it.
No one insults you as an adult.
When's the last time in the supermarket,
someone rolls up, "Nice waddle, fat ass"?
Standing behind you at the register.
"You look poor."
"I'm shopping for my family."
It was when you were little,
when you first went to school all excited.
"So long, everyone.
I'm going to kindergarten."
And you walked into school all excited,
and the other kids came running up,
"You smell like ham."
"Why would you say that?
I'm here to color and make friends."
Thirty years later,
walking through your house,
"I'm not getting that promotion.
Everyone knows I smell like ham."
"They're gonna give it to Donna.
Everyone loves Donna."
"She smells like cookies."
Only our brains, by the way.
Only our brains.
Other animals don't have this problem.
Your dog doesn't have low self-esteem.
Your dog doesn't call himself
a piece of garbage,
even while he's eating out of the garbage.
He doesn't sit on the couch afterwards
and beat himself up.
"What is wrong with me?"
"I have got to get my act together."
"I told everyone on New Year's Eve,
'no more garbage'."
"I said it in front of a room
full of people."
"They left that door open a crack.
I lost my shit back there."
"I can't go for a walk looking like this."
No, your dog eats the garbage,
sits on the couch,
"Thank you. I see what you did for me."
"Thank you. I love you too."
"I ate it all. I ate it all."
"I even ate the bag. Yes, I did."
"Yes, I did. You know why?
Because I'm a good boy."
"Yes, I am. I'm a good..."
"Oh, I'm sorry."
"Oh God, I threw it up. I'm so sorry."
"Are you gonna clean that up? No, no, no."
"I'm gonna eat that too."
"You do for me, I do for you."
"I think there's an avocado pit
stuck in my ass."
"Don't worry. We'll deal with it
on Wednesday when you're late for work."
"Don't worry about it now."
Got to be more like your dog.
Treat yourself
like your dog treats themselves.
Really. Cut yourself some slack.
You know? Don't be so hard on yourself.
What's the objective here, friends?
What is it? To look amazing?
No, it's to stay alive. That's it.
Just stay alive. That's all you gotta do.
And you're here tonight, so you did it.
Congratulations.
Well...
I don't know if it really
necessitates applause, really.
It's a lot of momentum
at this point, isn't it?
Yeah.
It turns out
it's not that hard to stay alive.
All these close calls you've had
in your life, and you're still going.
You're still going.
Constantly. Just constant close calls.
And every time there is a close call,
everyone else thinks
it's hilarious, don't they?
"Dude, that bus was this close!"
"Dude, how long were you under the raft
at the pool party? Oh my God!"
Constantly choking on stuff.
I once got a Pachinko ball
stuck in my brain.
Know what Pachinko is? It's like pinball,
but with these little ball bearings.
And when I was a kid, I realized
the ball bearing fit perfectly in my nose.
I thought, "This will be hilarious.
I'll put one in this nostril."
"Then I'll close this nostril
and shoot it at my friend's face."
Good joke.
I got it all set up, and then I realized
how funny it was gonna be,
and I inhaled.
I don't know where it went.
It was a weird trip to the emergency room.
"Get it out!" It was so embarrassing.
"He thinks he's funny.
Tell him what you did."
"Tell him what you did."
"Just get it out."
A lot of close calls. We're always
electrocuting ourselves. Constantly.
How many times have you, like,
"bzz, bzz." Everywhere you go.
Why is it we all know
what batteries taste like?
Because we're stupid,
and we're lucky to be here.
I had a college roommate.
This guy used to drink
grain alcohol straight,
and then he'd light his farts
in front of everybody.
Nightly. Nightly.
Even that guy is still alive.
He is.
He's a lawyer in Phoenix.
People come to him with their problems.
They have no idea
he's just a twitchy brain stem in a suit.
I'm surprised we're alive
from all the food we eat in this country.
Oh my God!
We have a good time,
but we don't eat well.
We're the only country that has
a nationwide hot-dog-eating contest.
Hot-dog-eating contest.
A hot dog is the worst thing
you can put in the human body.
They've done studies
that every hot dog you eat
takes 30 minutes off of your life.
That should be a national emergency.
Does it stop us? Hell no!
Instead, we have a contest
and put it on ESPN on the 4th July,
to shine a light
on the best and brightest of us all.
We feed them to our children
at the barbecue.
We yell, "You get off that trampoline,
put out your cigarette,
and eat this hot dog."
"Show some respect."
But who cares, right?
Thirty minutes off your life.
It's not like it comes off tonight.
It's not like you eat the hot dog today
and lose it this evening.
No, it's at the end,
when it's weird and scary.
So you're telling me,
with every hot dog I eat,
I have 30 minutes less
of staring at a wall in a nursing home.
Waiting for a stranger to change me.
Sounds to me
like hot dogs are a superfood.
Seems like we should be eating hot dogs
with every meal.
They should redo
that food pyramid
and put a hot dog on top.
I know there's pressure.
I know there's pressure.
There's always a lot of pressure.
I don't want to make you
feel bad about yourself,
or add to your feelings
of low self-esteem.
You're beautiful. You're all beautiful.
You really are. You're miracles.
This is insane
that we're here in this moment at all.
That somehow, all this stardust
in this vast, crazy universe
somehow came together
and cobbled together you!
You're a miracle, and you're sitting
next to another miracle.
We're all miracles.
I know it's hard to think that sometimes.
When you stop at 7-Eleven
around midnight on your way home.
Not exactly crawling with miracles.
It looks like a lot of mistakes.
That's okay.
They're miracles too. They're just
making weird choices, that's all.
No, you're all beautiful.
I'm attracted to all of you right now.
Mostly 'cause you're covered up.
Let's be honest, right?
Everyone's got their own style.
Everyone looks great.
A couple hours from now,
we peel these layers off...
Oy-he-he-he.
Different story.
A lot of weird dangly bits.
Strange Jack and the Beanstalk hairs
coming out of your ass.
Things growing on your body
you didn't think grew on a human.
"Is that a barnacle? What am I?"
"What am I, a boat?"
I don't like seeing
myself naked, honestly.
I come out the shower.
I'm the only one in the bathroom.
I catch myself in the mirror. "Oh!"
I towel up immediately,
like a fancy lady, from tits to thighs.
Like a pig in a blanket,
with one soft serve towel on top.
My nipples used to be up here.
They were here. I saw a picture of me
in high school. They were here.
They're here now. They're here.
Really, they were here. They're now down...
I'm touching them right now. They're here.
It's like they quit
and walked off the job.
No two weeks' notice.
Just flipped over the desk,
gave me the finger, and made a run for it.
And they're still on the move.
They're still on the move.
I never catch 'em, but they're moving.
They're like two ex-cons in a wheat field.
When I'm 80,
they're gonna be in my pockets.
It's hard to feel good about yourself,
especially with social media.
Every time you open up your phone,
there's some people that look great.
They're always calling you a loser,
because you don't live like them, right?
You get all these cold plunge people
on your feeds.
You get these jackasses.
Act like you're a loser
if you don't start off at 6:00 a.m.
in a bucket of ice water.
Shut the hell up.
Get off of my phone.
I'm gonna do a video
about the benefits of a long hot shower.
That's a winner, where you just keep
making it hotter and hotter and hotter,
and then you stay an extra 15 minutes,
and you come out like a wet noodle,
and cancel all your appointments
for the day.
That's a winner.
All these guys
always showing me their abs.
They've always got their shirt off
where it should be on.
Like at a school or a bus stop.
"You want abs like these?"
"No, honestly."
What am I gonna do
with those abs? Nothing.
They're not gonna help my life at all.
I'm not impressed by those guys.
I feel bad for those guys.
I know they're alone.
They have to be alone.
You can't live with another person
and have abs like that,
doing crunches under the coffee table
24 hours a day.
When they're trying to watch their shows.
No one's gonna stand for that.
No, they live alone
in a one-bedroom apartment
with a pull-up bar,
eating protein shakes,
and shitting like a goat.
They don't impress me. You impress me.
People who live with other people
in a family. That's impressive.
You think abs can do what you do?
Get a whole family ready for school
on a Tuesday morning in the dark?
Making individual breakfasts
for every needy bastard in your house?
'Cause God forbid they eat the same thing
on the same damn day. They never do that.
And then feed all the animals
at the same time?
And clean what pops out
the other side of them almost immediately?
Then drop them all off at school.
Then pick them up at the end of the day,
20 minutes later.
Then drive them around
like you're their Uber driver
the rest of the afternoon,
taking them to all their dumb activities
they can't even do.
No way. You think abs is gonna sit
in a little chair at a dentist's office?
Flipping through a sticky magazine,
just waiting for the dentist to come out
and give you a $5,000 bill?
A $5,000 bill, because the little bastard
stopped brushing his teeth.
And you knew it. You knew it.
You knew he wasn't brushing his teeth.
But you stopped asking,
because you didn't want
to ruin bedtime every night.
You got tired of being the bad guy.
You checked the brush,
you checked the brush,
and it was wet, but that was a lie.
That was a lie.
That was a con job.
He was wetting his brush,
sitting on the toilet,
probably looking at porn on his phone.
And now you have a $5,000 bill.
But as crazy as that house is,
you know, and costly,
I would much rather live
with all those heartbeats,
all those needy heartbeats,
than live alone with my abs.
You know? 'Cause on some level,
your family has to be grateful.
They'll never say thank you.
They'll never say,
"Thanks for keeping us alive."
But that's literally what you're doing.
You're literally keeping them alive.
Without you, they're dead. They're dead.
I could leave my daughters
with a can and a can opener,
come back 24 hours later, dead!
Dead.
They'll never say thank you, so don't wait
for it. Gotta draw it out of 'em.
When you see them tomorrow, "My friend
last night told me to remind you,
without me, you're dead!"
"Or worse, no teeth. You'd have no teeth."
"Like a jack-o'-lantern in December."
"Going to school with a smushed-in face..."
"...wishing you were dead."
"So you're welcome."
No, so I block all those people
on Instagram.
I don't have those guys
on my Instagram feed.
The only thing on my feed are bakers.
That's it. Just bakers.
I love baking bread. I can't stop baking.
I love it.
My whole algorithm is nothing but bread.
Bread and babies. That's all I got.
My favorite guy... Oh, you'd love him.
He's two feet tall. He's five feet wide.
He's just a French baker.
He's just one ab. He's just...
He's just one buttery ab.
And he bakes croissants.
That's all he does. He bakes croissants.
He puts them in the oven, bakes them,
breaks them out, cracks them open.
Steam comes out.
Then he eats them on camera,
and I get aroused.
Food is my love language,
or my family's love language.
That's how we all communicate,
through food.
My mom would make salami sandwiches
for me every day for school.
That's how I could tell
how much she loved me at the moment.
If I got one salami sandwich,
not that great.
If I got three, I was a good boy.
They used to call me Tommy Salami.
That's how many salami sandwiches I'd eat.
They just visited me, my parents.
Oh my God. I love 'em to death.
But two weeks, they came to my house.
No hotel, two weeks.
Didn't ask, just showed up.
Two weeks! That's not a visit.
That's an insurrection.
Man. My father is so cheap.
He picked the date they had to be there,
and the one before and after it,
until it was cheap enough,
and then he bought the tickets.
I would have paid. I would have paid.
I would have paid for the flight,
or a hotel, or a sniper.
I love 'em to death.
Don't get me wrong. I love 'em to death.
It's a blessing to have your parents.
It really is.
But, oh my God, it's a lot.
My mother was, like... She was so cute.
She's like, "Don't worry."
"We're not gonna be a bother.
We're just gonna hang around."
"It's not even gonna be like we're there.
You don't have to entertain us."
"We just want to be around." "All right."
Yeah, right.
I'd try to sneak into the kitchen,
early in the morning,
get one cup of coffee
before it all starts.
They're just sitting there at the counter,
like two lonely sea lions.
They've been waiting
since 4:00 in the morning.
"We didn't know
when you were gonna get up."
When people stay with you,
there's no activity
that eats up enough hours of the day.
You take them to the beach.
"There's the ocean."
"All right, back to the house."
"Twelve more hours till bedtime."
The problem is, they have no activities,
they have no hobbies.
They don't crossword-puzzle,
they don't pickleball, Sudoku, nothing.
They're just two Italian parents who eat.
They just eat and then talk about
what they ate last night.
And they talk about
what they're gonna eat tonight,
and is there time to eat in between?
They're like two retired raccoons
just going through my kitchen.
My mother was dumpster diving
under the kitchen sink,
looking for scraps.
"There's still meat on this chicken bone."
"I don't know why you threw that out,
Mr. Big Shot."
My father was talking to me,
eating a cookie.
He dropped it by mistake, stepped on it,
peeled it off the bottom of his shoe,
and ate it!
Right in front of me!
I was like, "What are you doing?"
He looked at me like a toddler who knows
he's in trouble but doesn't know why.
I'm like, "No shoe cookies!
No shoe cookies!"
"Why are you eating
a shoe cookie right now?"
He's like, "That? No, come on.
I beat it. Five-second rule. I beat it."
It's not how it works.
If you drop a cookie in the toilet,
you don't get to eat it if you're quick.
I love 'em to death.
Look, I know
it's a complicated relationship.
If you're lucky enough to still have
your parents around, it's a blessing.
But I know you feel guilty
a lot of the times.
Because sometimes they call,
you don't pick up.
Then when you do pick up,
you get impatient,
because they can't use the phone.
You say something mean before you hang up.
I know you feel guilty a lot of the times.
But don't, don't,
because I got news for you.
They're not saying great things
about you either.
I guarantee you my father
was in the guest room at night,
"We've gotta get the hell out of here."
"Mr. Big Shot won't let me
eat shoe cookies."
"Who the hell does he think he is?"
"I got you one, by the way, if you want."
"A little nightcap."
And now it's putting family
in perspective for me.
Now that my kids are leaving,
I'm gonna be them. I'm gonna be them.
You know?
I'm gonna wanna just hang around.
I'm gonna want my kids to like me,
and all that kind of stuff.
I love family. It's a great thing.
I come from a big family. I love family.
But it's a heartbreaker at the same time.
You're gonna get your feelings hurt.
You can't have that much love
without getting your heart broken.
It's the same as
when people buy those big dogs.
I never understand these people.
They get these giant dogs.
They're all filled with fur and love.
And they take over the whole house.
And everyone falls in love with them.
And they're dead in three months.
I couldn't take that heartbreak.
I need something small and shitty
that's just gonna twitch and pee on itself
for 25 years.
Losing limbs, one at a time.
Eyes popping out.
"I'm still with you, Tommy.
I'm still with you."
I have a friend
that just got a Great Dane.
Are you high?
A Great Dane?
That dog should come with a shovel.
Couldn't handle it.
It's the same with the kids.
They take up the whole house.
And then, before you know it,
they're on their way out.
They don't remember the first five years
you did that stuff for them.
They have no memory of it.
Then the last four years,
they're trying to get away.
So you get, what,
eight years in the middle?
I'm not sure it's worth it.
I told my daughter before she left,
"Just so you know,
I did all of this for you."
"I did all of this for you."
"I didn't want this house.
I didn't want to live in this town."
"I didn't want any of these animals."
"I don't even have friends anymore.
All my friends are your friends' parents."
"I did this all for you,
and now you're gonna go?"
"I should go."
"You can have it all."
"Just give me a backpack
with a Van Halen CD and some weed."
"And I'll go back to living the life
I was living before I met you."
Oh, but I love 'em so much.
So funny.
You don't really plan your life, do you?
It just kind of unfolds.
It just kind of happens.
You have a couple of ideas,
but it just kind of happens.
I didn't know
I'd be at this point in my life,
talking about this family.
It just happened.
I just got tired
of eating pizza by myself.
I was eating pizza by myself all the time.
"This is getting depressing."
I was eating pizza by myself
when I saw a pretty girl.
I was like,
"You want to eat pizza with me?"
She was like,
"Yeah. I'm always eating pizza by myself."
"Me too. Let's eat pizza together."
"Okay."
Then five years later, we're going
through the airport, through security,
with a naked toddler and a cat carrier,
breaking down a stroller
with our feet at 6:00 a.m.,
sweating our asses off.
And our life was over. It was over.
All because I couldn't eat pizza
by myself.
And I can't tell you
what you should do with your life.
I don't know.
Have kids, not have kids. Who knows?
Get married, not get married. You know?
But for me, it was worth it.
For me, this whole thing was worth it,
because now I know, at the end,
there'll be someone
to pick up the phone. You know?
At the end, there'll be someone there
to pick up the phone when the police call...
...and say they found me swimming
in the fountain at the mall again.
"Come on down.
No, he's having a good time. No rush."
"No, his pants are on this time.
He's actually having a good time."
"Kids are throwing pennies at him.
He doesn't even feel it."
"He might have stolen a PlayStation.
We'll talk about it when you get here."
We're all going the same way, though.
Whatever you choose,
we're all going off the same brochure.
We're all headed the same way. You know?
If you're young here tonight,
and you see an old person,
I know you don't think
that that's you in the future.
You look at an old person,
that's not you in the future.
That's like looking at a sequoia tree
or a unicorn.
But it is going to be you one day,
before you know it.
If you're older and look at a young person
and think, "I still look like that,"
you don't. You don't.
You don't.
I know it's a clich,
but I'm turning into my father.
It's happening. I'm not planning it.
I just bought a three-pack
of silicone spray the other day.
I don't even know what it is.
I don't know what people use it for,
but I knew it was a deal, so I bought it.
Just like my father would.
And now I'm gonna give one away
to the mailman for no reason.
Just like my father.
We all think we're young,
and strong, and healthy,
and you all look beautiful tonight.
But before you know it,
you're gonna be in line
at the airport, at the gate,
you're gonna be wearing a neck pillow,
thinking it's cool.
And you're gonna break into
old people exercises, out of nowhere.
Just gonna start doing some of these.
We're gonna be those old people
who start coughing, out of nowhere.
Not eating anything,
not drinking anything,
and they just explode!
Turning purple. The eyes popping out.
And then they just stop
and continue with the conversation.
"Are we gonna talk
about what just happened?"
"You literally almost died a second ago."
"No? All right. Continue with the story
I've heard a thousand times."
"This is great."
It's hard to be an old person
nowadays, though. It's hard.
Can't even retire anymore.
They keep raising the retirement age.
That's not cool.
That's not nice to the old people.
That's not nice to the young people
who have to work
with old people that long.
Do you...
Do you really want
an 80-year-old pilot? Really?
"Buckle up. We're going to Dayton!
I mean Denver. You know what I mean."
"I'm so tired."
"I should have retired a while ago,
but they won't let me."
"I'm close to death, and so are you!"
If we're gonna make old people work,
let's have fun with them. Rent 'em out.
Rent them out to people
who want to take the carpool lane.
Tell them they're going to work.
You get to the office, drop 'em off,
someone takes them the other way.
"Are we almost there?"
"You were already there." "I was?"
"Didn't even eat my lunch."
Rent them out to people
who do those haunted hayrides.
Just drop six old people
in the woods along the path.
I don't mean to mock old people.
I really don't.
I want to be old people.
I want you all to be old people.
That would be a blessing, you know?
It'll be great. I'll still be on tour.
I'll come to your nursing home.
I'll tell jokes.
You won't be able to laugh.
You'll just blink and fart at me.
I want to live till I'm one of those guys
that starts dressing like a sea captain
for no reason.
You ever see these guys?
They don't have a boat,
they don't live near the ocean.
They just show up
like Captain Crunch one day.
"Toot, toot!"
Got the hat, the buttons, the whole thing.
And we just have to go along with it.
I hope you have a good rest of your year.
I do. You know, enjoy yourself.
I don't think
it's gonna be a great year.
Uh...
Seems like it's gonna be pretty annoying.
I'd say turn off the news once in a while,
but it's getting tougher to do.
Everyone's got dumb phones in your pocket.
Every time you open them, "Ah!"
Another jackass yelling at you, right?
"I just want to find a coffee place."
"Oh! Ah!"
Terrifying, these phones.
I had to describe
to my nephew the other day
what "nuclear Armageddon" was.
Yeah. Thanks for that, TikTok.
The kid had no idea what it was.
He's 17 years old, by the way. Yeah.
I was like, "Maybe there's an advantage
to being a C-student. Good for you."
Everyone's yelling at him to read more.
He was happy until a week ago.
I was like, "Yeah, look. Yeah, look,
we're all gonna die one day,
and there's a way
we could all die on the same day."
So don't worry about it.
You can know too much in this world.
You can know too much.
You don't need all this information.
Just because it's feeding us all the time,
doesn't mean you need it.
You don't need it all. You know?
Sure, you can die in a nuclear attack.
You could also die in a squirrel attack.
I saw that on YouTube.
It's a horrible death.
They gouge out your eyes
and fill you with nuts.
You can know too much in this world,
my friends.
If someone gives you
a chocolate chip cookie,
you don't think about
what's in that cookie.
You don't think about all the butter,
and the fat, and the sugar, and salt.
Made with someone's hands.
Someone's hands!
They say it like it's a good thing.
"Here's a handmade cookie."
Don't think about that.
Someone gives you a cookie,
"Thank you!"
Do you want to know
all your friends' political views?
Not if you want friends, you don't!
Don't ask those questions.
You can know too much.
I'll be honest with you.
I don't want to know what my wife
is thinking about most things
most of the time.
We've been happily married for 24 years.
You know why? We don't ask dumb questions.
"Are you happy right now?"
"Is there anything
I should change about myself?"
We don't ask those questions.
You want to be happily married?
Shut up and keep going.
Couples therapy? Are you high?
Pay a stranger
to pick at your old fights? Hell no!
I tell my wife every night,
"Look, you're a mess. I'm a mess."
"Let's watch a show."
I'll be honest with you.
She doesn't like me right now.
She hasn't for, like, two months.
I have no idea why.
And I'm not gonna find out.
She'll come back. She'll come back.
Twenty-four years.
She'll forget. She'll come back.
No, I love her to death. We're so solid.
If we didn't get divorced
from all the animals we live with,
we're gonna be fine.
I said when we were getting married,
"I'd love to start a family with you."
"That sounds wonderful.
I don't need pets."
She said, "I don't need pets either."
And she lied right to my face.
My wife and daughters went out
and got different animals
every single week.
I live in this weird Noah's ark.
You should see it.
Birds and fish and lizards.
We have a lizard.
It has a life expectancy of 50 years.
And it knows it. It knows it.
Just hangs out on his branch
and looks at me, like...
"We both know who's winning this race."
Two crazy dogs.
We have this pug named Frank.
The thing is hilarious.
It's like living with an alien.
It snores while it eats.
Who does that?
He's standing at his bowl, he's chewing
and he's swallowing. He's awake.
His eyes are closed.
He's snoring. He's asleep.
On Thanksgiving,
I went to move the cutting board,
after I carved the turkey,
and all the juice came
running down the bridges of it,
off the edge, right onto his face.
I never saw a dog laugh before.
He was so happy for half of the day.
Then the other half, he was miserable.
He smelled turkey
but didn't know where it was coming from.
And we've got this giant black lab,
who shits like a man.
Never seen anything like it.
And I have to scoop it up
and bring it back to the house,
like I'm bringing in wood for the storm.
And a cat, a psychotic serial killer cat,
who just kills for fun.
Doesn't eat any of it.
Just rips it to pieces and drops it off.
Here's a bird with no head.
"Oh!"
"Why would you do that?"
He looks at me like,
"Why would you ask me this question?"
"I give you a gift,
and this is how you treat me?"
It brings in live rats
and drops them in the laundry room.
Live rats! He goes to the yard, gets rats,
drags them in by their neck,
like the rat owes us money.
Of course my wife and I
aren't gonna like each other all the time.
We're now a rat-catching team.
This is how we spend our time.
I'm good with the magazine.
I can get it into the corner, you know?
I can pin it.
But then the three of us are looking
at each other. My wife, the rat, and I.
Someone's got to make a move.
Someone's got to grab this rat
by its ass and get it outside.
And I'll be honest with you.
I'm not doing it.
I didn't want these animals.
I'm not grabbing a rat trying to bite me.
I'm good at faking it.
Like I'm really trying, you know?
"They're so fast."
My wife does it.
She gets impatient.
She grabs it and looks at me. "You sissy."
And takes it outside.
I'll be honest with you.
That's why I don't like her sometimes.
Who does that?
Now I've got to compartmentalize
that I'm not married
to old "Rat Fingers" Johnson.
The love of my life
is now covered in rat fingers.
"Oh, you don't want to fool around?
Maybe I'll make you a cookie."
Thank you so much for coming.
You guys were great.
Thank you so much.
Take care of yourselves.
I'll see you next time around.
Comin' to ya
On a dusty road
Good lovin'
I got a truckload
And when you get it
You got something
Ladies and gentlemen,
please welcome
Tom Papa!
Good lovin'
I got a truckload
And when you get it
You got something
So don't worry
'Cause I'm coming
I'm a soul man
Wow.
Look at you.
Look at you.
DC, thank you so much for coming out.
So nice.
Love this town. It's hilarious here.
Keeps getting funnier every year.
I'm, uh, happy to be here.
I've been going through
some changes at my house.
We, uh, dropped off my last daughter,
my last child, my youngest,
off at college.
And they're all gone now,
and nobody tells you
how hard it's gonna be
pretending to be sad.
Not one tear. Not one tear.
I really thought
I was gonna cry. I feel so bad.
But I think I might be happier
than I've ever been.
And it's all right, you know.
We did all the things.
We did all the things.
Look, I love her to death.
I love both of them. I love 'em to death.
But, you know,
we had a good run. It's over.
They want me to be happy.
You don't want to think your dad's home,
in your empty room, crying his eyes out.
You want to think he's all right,
moving on with his life, microdosing,
and watching Rick and Morty by himself.
That's what I'm doing.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Because I have freedom now.
I never had freedom before.
When I was little, I don't know
if you're like me, but when I was a child,
they made me live with my parents.
And I couldn't drink stuff or smoke stuff
'cause they were always around.
And then when I got away from them,
I made my own family.
Nobody tells you, when you have kids,
your children become your new parents.
And you can't drink stuff or smoke stuff
because they're always around.
And they can't keep a secret.
But now, for the first time,
they're all gone,
and I'm doing all the stuff.
I can have martinis
in the middle of the afternoon.
Yes.
Because I know no one's
gonna call me out of the blue
and ask for a ride home from karate.
There were a lot of years
I did very questionable driving
at 4:00 in the afternoon.
"I got her. I'll get them."
I don't even wear clothes there anymore.
What's the point? My wife leaves for work
in the morning, pants off.
The dogs are so happy.
They're like, "You're one of us now."
"Ah!"
Rolling around in the backyard,
my dog's just looking at me.
"Rub your ass on this tree. It's amazing."
And she's right. It is.
It's a special tree.
But I'll be honest with you, folks.
I'll be honest. It almost killed us.
It almost killed us.
Raising kids is no joke. It's no joke.
If you don't have children, people
approach you all the time very flippantly.
"When are you gonna do it?
You should have kids."
"When are you gonna have kids?"
No. You should think long and hard
about whether you're gonna have kids.
You should have seen me
before this experiment.
I was skinny. I had long curly hair.
And I could see. I could see.
I used to have eyes like an eagle.
Now I have eyes like a crab.
My wife and I are just husks.
We're just brittle husks of what we were.
We'll be in the kitchen some days.
She'll be like, "We could fool around
right here. No one would ever know."
I'm like, "Yeah, we could."
"Or we could just lie down
on this cold floor for a while
and shut our eyes."
"It's really nice down here."
"We're not dying. We're just resting."
I really can't see anymore.
Not all the time.
Just when I'm driving at night
with other cars around.
There's a lot coming at me.
It's like a fireworks display out there.
I'm like, "I guess I'll just aim
for the dark part in the middle."
Mistaking a lot of garbage cans
for people at night.
"Oh!"
"Why is everybody out tonight?"
"They're not. It's just recycle day.
You're all right."
You've just got to get smart with it.
You have to adapt.
I'm using the curbs now.
That's why they're there.
I just ricochet my way back to the house.
But it is a real treat. It is.
Like, I can go back to being
who I was before all of this. You know?
When you have kids,
you have to pretend you're Superman.
You have children looking for protection.
And you don't have new skills.
They just kicked you out of the hospital.
"Good luck." No instructions.
You know? And... and I wasn't Superman.
And now that they're older,
I can admit, I'm just a guy.
And they know now
that they're lucky to be alive.
A lot of times, when I was a young father,
I wanted to cry. But you can't, you know?
I didn't want my kids
coming home from school,
seeing me at the kitchen table,
just sobbing.
"Dad, what's wrong?"
"Everything! Everything!"
"I can't figure any of this out."
"I don't have any money.
Do you have money?"
"I saw a birthday card on the counter.
Don't lie to me."
You can't be honest with them
when they're little.
"Dad, are there really monsters?"
"I don't know. Probably."
"I feel it sometimes. Don't you feel it?"
"Sometimes I think I hear it."
"Do you ever hear them in the attic?
What is that?"
You can't say that.
When they come to breakfast,
"Thank God you're alive!
I didn't think you were gonna make it."
"I thought I heard chewing last night.
I thought it was you."
Now I can be honest. You know?
I don't like the dark. I tell them.
No, I don't like the dark.
I don't think anyone likes the dark.
You don't like the dark. No, it's scary.
In our utility room,
we have this door that's on a spring.
As soon as you get in off the garage,
where we store all the stuff.
And the door closes automatically
as soon as you get in there.
But the switch is on the opposite wall
in these shelves.
And it's too long. It's too far.
You can't...
I can't keep it open with my foot,
so you got to nail it.
And you go for it. Sometimes there's
an Easter basket, or... ah!
And it closes, and it's dark.
Oh!
Whatever has been chasing me
my whole life is like, "Gotcha!"
I couldn't admit that
when they were little.
I'd tuck in these two little girls,
these two beautiful angels.
"Good night, girls.
I'll see you in the morning."
"Good night, Dad."
"Can you keep the light on?
It's scary in the dark."
"No, no, no."
"Come on.
There's nothing to be afraid of."
"I'll see you in the morning."
Then I run to my room
and turn everything on.
'Cause it's scary in the dark,
and I knew it was scary,
because I could hear their whimpering
down the hallway.
For hours.
We did one of those DNA tests
before they left.
I highly recommend it.
I really do. I really do.
I know it's a little sketchy, 'cause you
gotta give your DNA away to a corporation.
And they're not gonna do
anything great with it, for sure.
No, they're definitely gonna
clone us in the future.
But who cares? We'll be dead.
I think it's kind of exciting.
Right? A bunch of us
fighting robots in the future.
That's exciting, right?
Six of you running through a wheat field,
with no private parts.
"Ah!"
Long hair like you never had.
"Ah!"
Learning karate and eating squirrel meat.
It's exciting!
But in the short-term,
not only do you find out
your family heritage, I expected that,
but you also find out
all your family secrets.
I wasn't expecting that.
That's very exciting.
All the secrets come out
when DNA shows up.
There's no hiding it.
DNA is like the drunk uncle
who comes to Christmas for the first time.
He's like, "Wait a minute.
You think that's your real dad?"
"Have I got a story for you!"
We knew, in my family,
we were gonna be mostly Italian,
and a little German
that we don't talk about.
When it came back, we were mostly Italian,
a little German, and a little French.
A little French thrown in.
I called my mother.
I said, "What's with the French?"
She said, "Oh, secret's out!"
"Your grandmother was a whore."
Whoo!
"I'm sorry. What did you call Nana?"
"Yep, she was a whore, all right.
Slept her way through Europe."
"That's why you have weird eyebrows
and your uncle's gay."
I don't think that's how it works.
No more secrets. No more secrets.
DNA and social media.
You know, I tour all over the country.
People do their research,
and they show up once in a while.
"I think we're related."
And I'll call my mother. "Who's Holly?"
"What do you know?"
"I know there's a middle-aged woman
in Tampa
who wants to come to Thanksgiving."
"And she looks a lot like Dad!"
"Oh, shit. She found us."
Families had secrets, for generations.
Long, deep secrets. Families kept secrets.
Anything that embarrassed them
in front of the neighbors,
anything they didn't understand,
that made them uncomfortable,
they would just lie about it
or stick it in the attic.
Just stick it in the attic.
Unwanted baby? Put it in the attic.
Undiagnosed ADHD? Get her in the attic.
"Is that your boy with a stutter?"
"What boy?" Put him in the attic.
All over America,
kids looking out of attic windows.
"Where's everybody g-g-g-g-going?"
"I want a b-b-backpack too!"
It's so sad.
And as a child, if you had an inkling
about a family secret,
and you asked the elders about it,
they'd lie right to your face.
"Who's that man living in the garage?"
"What man?"
"There's a man out there.
He's been there for quite some time."
"There's no man out there."
"Yes, there is." "Shut up!"
What a great time to be a parent,
by the way. Could you imagine?
There was a time you could tell
your kids to shut up, right to their face.
No long conversations.
No explanations.
Just "shut up!"
How much easier would that have been?
"Why is the sun hot?"
"I don't know. Why don't you shut up?"
"Well, that was uncalled-for."
Even easier to be a father back then.
You weren't even considered
one of the parents.
You just had to show up
and hit everyone once in a while.
My father would act like we were strangers
who just broke into the TV room.
"Where the hell did these kids come from?
Get them out of here!"
My mother would come.
"Leave your father alone. He works hard."
"We were just playing."
"Well, now you're just shutting up."
It was a different time.
We had an uncle
who couldn't take it anymore.
He just stood up in the middle of dinner
and just walked out the front door.
And didn't come back.
Just left my aunt and my cousins behind.
And just left.
We were like, "Where's Uncle Bob?"
And they lied right to our face.
They said he went to Siberia.
He wasn't in Siberia.
He went to his girlfriend's apartment
in the same town
and lived there for two years.
In the same town.
We'd see him around.
We'd be in the supermarket.
"Is that Uncle Bob?"
"No, that son of a bitch is in Siberia."
"Looks a lot like Uncle Bob."
"Looks like you're gonna
shut the hell up."
And then one day, he just walked back in,
sat down, and kept eating.
Like nothing ever happened.
We were like, "How was Siberia?"
He was like, "That wasn't her name."
Things are better now.
I think with the truth coming out,
things are better.
We're actually helping people,
not sticking things in the attic anymore.
We're dealing with mental health,
helping each other out.
It's a much nicer time.
Everyone's going to therapy.
Good for you.
If you need someone to talk to
and you go to therapy, good for you.
I'm not going, but good for you!
I'm not right.
There's a lot needs to be fixed.
But I'm having a good time.
And I know if I go to therapy,
they're gonna stop it.
I know what's wrong with me.
I eat too much, and I drink too much.
"Don't you want to find out why?"
I know why.
Life is hard, and that stuff's fun to do.
We all got stuff.
Everyone's dealing with stuff.
Everybody in here's got something.
I still shoplift.
I do.
You should do it too. It's fun.
You know when you're a kid and you steal?
I never got caught, and I'm still going.
Yeah, I'm undefeated.
Not big stuff. I'm not an ass.
Little stuff, like dental floss and candy.
Stuff like that.
Stuff we shouldn't have to pay for
in the first place.
You know what I mean?
Pens? I'm not paying for pens.
I'm not giving you money for pens.
I steal pens.
CVS, Walgreens...
You. If we're hanging out,
I would get your pen.
Try it. It's really fun.
Especially as an adult,
they don't really mess with you.
Some 16-year-old manager of a CVS
sees you sticking a Blow Pop
in your pocket.
"I don't have time for this shit!"
"Call the cops on my principal?
This is ridiculous."
The older I get,
the more I'm gonna steal, for sure.
Oh yeah, when I'm 80,
that's all I'm gonna do.
Wake up in the morning, have coffee,
go to Best Buy and roll that place.
"He's back! What's he got this time?
Looks like a PlayStation."
"Should we take it back?"
"No, follow him to his car."
"He falls asleep before he turns it on.
He'll be all right."
Oh.
Helping kids now, that's better, you know?
Helping kids out, that's a good thing.
When people have little problems,
great teachers are helping them out.
We didn't have that. When I was a kid,
we didn't have great teachers.
They were a hot mess.
They had no answers for us.
They just called me hyper.
That's what they would tell my parents.
Every back-to-school night.
"This kid's hyper."
"He talks all day
and makes friends in the middle of class."
Oh! We got to stop that shit immediately.
They would show up,
adjust their wigs,
do a shot of Jack Daniel's,
and throw shit at us.
They were always throwing stuff at us.
Erasers, chalk...
My best friend got hit in the head
with a dictionary.
Yeah, right in his head.
We didn't need Adderall. We were focused.
Our lives depended on it.
We had a Spanish teacher.
She used to come in so hungover,
there was a 50% chance
her boobs would pop out.
We were focused.
Muy bien! Muy bien!
If you do go to therapy,
just know, you're gonna go forever.
You gotta go forever.
Because we don't get fixed.
There's no fixing this.
I've never had a friend come up,
"Last day of therapy. I'm all better now."
It doesn't work like that.
We're not... We're physical beings.
We're constantly changing,
constantly changing,
evolving, and decaying.
That affects you physically,
and that affects your emotions,
minute to minute, second to second.
You can't pay
that much attention to yourself.
We're an ongoing project.
Sometimes I really think
my whole emotional makeup
is completely dependent
on what I ate that day.
Ever had one of those days?
"Cool Ranch Doritos?
I haven't had those in a while."
And a half hour later, I'm like,
"I think I'm gonna kill myself."
"Why are my eyes hot? I feel weird."
Always changing.
I don't know any of you,
but I know for a fact,
you're slightly different now
than when we started the show.
Right? The weed's wearing off.
The alcohol's kicking in.
Some of you didn't get a chance to eat
and you're all cranky.
Some ate too much. Now you're all gassy
and offending your neighbors.
Some of you are jammed in the middle.
You thought about peeing?
You really should have peed.
You really should have peed.
We're not supposed to be happy
all the time.
Don't put pressure on yourself.
Don't feel like you're less than
because you're not happy all the time.
That's a lie.
That's a social media construct.
We're not supposed
to be happy all the time.
Happy's like a coke spike.
It's like way up there.
You know? No one's happy all the time.
Clowns are happy all the time,
and they freak everybody out.
Walking around with permanent smiles.
'Cause they're killing things at night
and thinking about it during the day.
We're not supposed
to be happy all the time.
Happy's way up here.
Joyful, you should be joyful.
But that's down here. That's down here.
Joy is right down there.
And depressed, right under it.
Right there. Right there.
So close to joy, and all day long,
just "Zim, zam, zim, zam, zim."
"Zim, zam, zim."
There'd be no comedy
if we were happy all the time.
We wouldn't be here right now.
This is how it works.
You come in,
we laugh for a couple of hours.
As soon as it's done,
right back to Shitsville!
Yeah.
That's what I called your life.
Shitsville.
It's all right. I live there too.
Not supposed to be happy all the time.
Think about all the paintings
in all the great museums
of all the great people
who came before us, right?
Queen Elizabeth, Joan of Arc,
Washington, Jesus.
Not one smile. You ever notice that?
No one is smiling.
There's no paintings
of Lincoln and his bros, like...
One famous smile, the Mona Lisa,
and it's a shit smile.
That's the kind of smile
you give to someone
when they get on your elevator
at the last minute.
"Couldn't wait? Couldn't wait? Okay."
"Now you're pressing all the buttons.
Great. Nice to have you."
Sometimes you just need perspective,
to know that you're doing all right.
You know?
I go to shitty bars. You ever do that?
Every town's got one.
Do it. Do it.
You know the bar I'm talking about.
It's weird, no windows.
There's just one porthole on the door.
You never see anyone go in or out.
The door has padding on it,
for some reason.
Go in there. Go in there
in the middle of the afternoon
and buy drinks for the 80-year-old guy
sitting at that little crummy bar,
under the saddest Christmas lights
of all time.
They've been hanging there since 1937.
Buy that guy some drinks.
No one knows his name.
They call him Popeye,
but nobody really knows his name.
Listen to his stories.
How he fought in every war,
lost money in every recession,
has every STD known to man.
After an hour of that,
you come back out into the light.
You're like, "I think I can do this."
"I'm gonna be all right."
It's hard to feel good.
It's hard to feel good.
I don't feel that great right now.
Do you? I'm having a great time,
but I don't feel good.
Do you feel good? No.
Yeah. You feel fat. We all feel fat.
Yeah. Not fat, puffy, puffy.
Definitely puffy.
We could totally pee this out.
Don't you think?
We could totally pee it.
It's just water weight.
Water mixed with adult chicken fingers,
and mac and cheese bites,
and ice cream we eat standing up
in the kitchen when our family's asleep.
No, you don't need me calling you fat.
You know what's wrong with you.
Might not be fat, might not be fat,
but there's something.
There's something you don't like
about you. We all carry it.
I don't know what it is,
but you're thinking about it right now.
Maybe you got weird love handles.
Maybe a misshapen nipple.
I've seen a lot of those.
The one that keeps wandering off
to the right for no reason.
Everybody's looking this way,
and she keeps going over there.
A lot of feet. A lot of feet out there.
A lot of feet. It's feet season out there.
I see 'em at the airport.
A lot of bad feet out there.
A lot of middle-aged women
seem to be evolving right before our eyes,
growing extra toes in real time.
You ever see that? Next to the big toe,
there's a jut that comes out at the side.
Looks like it comes in handy at home,
you know, raking the leaves, and...
...returning emails, and talking
on the phone at the same time.
You're in public now.
How about some socks?
We torture ourselves. It's our brains.
I think our brain's main objective
is to collect insults hurled at us
throughout our life, store them,
and play them over and over
in a loop until we're dead.
And even then, I bet it doesn't stop.
I bet it doesn't stop.
I bet I'll be looking at myself
in the coffin at the end,
"Oh, I am disgusting. Look at me."
"Why'd they put me in that tracksuit?
I never wore that."
"How could I be dead
and still look sweaty? I'm the worst."
Most of these insults, by the way,
this weird, little, low self-esteem
you have every once in a while,
that's from insults long ago.
This isn't fresh stuff.
This is how long
your brain has held on to it.
No one insults you as an adult.
When's the last time in the supermarket,
someone rolls up, "Nice waddle, fat ass"?
Standing behind you at the register.
"You look poor."
"I'm shopping for my family."
It was when you were little,
when you first went to school all excited.
"So long, everyone.
I'm going to kindergarten."
And you walked into school all excited,
and the other kids came running up,
"You smell like ham."
"Why would you say that?
I'm here to color and make friends."
Thirty years later,
walking through your house,
"I'm not getting that promotion.
Everyone knows I smell like ham."
"They're gonna give it to Donna.
Everyone loves Donna."
"She smells like cookies."
Only our brains, by the way.
Only our brains.
Other animals don't have this problem.
Your dog doesn't have low self-esteem.
Your dog doesn't call himself
a piece of garbage,
even while he's eating out of the garbage.
He doesn't sit on the couch afterwards
and beat himself up.
"What is wrong with me?"
"I have got to get my act together."
"I told everyone on New Year's Eve,
'no more garbage'."
"I said it in front of a room
full of people."
"They left that door open a crack.
I lost my shit back there."
"I can't go for a walk looking like this."
No, your dog eats the garbage,
sits on the couch,
"Thank you. I see what you did for me."
"Thank you. I love you too."
"I ate it all. I ate it all."
"I even ate the bag. Yes, I did."
"Yes, I did. You know why?
Because I'm a good boy."
"Yes, I am. I'm a good..."
"Oh, I'm sorry."
"Oh God, I threw it up. I'm so sorry."
"Are you gonna clean that up? No, no, no."
"I'm gonna eat that too."
"You do for me, I do for you."
"I think there's an avocado pit
stuck in my ass."
"Don't worry. We'll deal with it
on Wednesday when you're late for work."
"Don't worry about it now."
Got to be more like your dog.
Treat yourself
like your dog treats themselves.
Really. Cut yourself some slack.
You know? Don't be so hard on yourself.
What's the objective here, friends?
What is it? To look amazing?
No, it's to stay alive. That's it.
Just stay alive. That's all you gotta do.
And you're here tonight, so you did it.
Congratulations.
Well...
I don't know if it really
necessitates applause, really.
It's a lot of momentum
at this point, isn't it?
Yeah.
It turns out
it's not that hard to stay alive.
All these close calls you've had
in your life, and you're still going.
You're still going.
Constantly. Just constant close calls.
And every time there is a close call,
everyone else thinks
it's hilarious, don't they?
"Dude, that bus was this close!"
"Dude, how long were you under the raft
at the pool party? Oh my God!"
Constantly choking on stuff.
I once got a Pachinko ball
stuck in my brain.
Know what Pachinko is? It's like pinball,
but with these little ball bearings.
And when I was a kid, I realized
the ball bearing fit perfectly in my nose.
I thought, "This will be hilarious.
I'll put one in this nostril."
"Then I'll close this nostril
and shoot it at my friend's face."
Good joke.
I got it all set up, and then I realized
how funny it was gonna be,
and I inhaled.
I don't know where it went.
It was a weird trip to the emergency room.
"Get it out!" It was so embarrassing.
"He thinks he's funny.
Tell him what you did."
"Tell him what you did."
"Just get it out."
A lot of close calls. We're always
electrocuting ourselves. Constantly.
How many times have you, like,
"bzz, bzz." Everywhere you go.
Why is it we all know
what batteries taste like?
Because we're stupid,
and we're lucky to be here.
I had a college roommate.
This guy used to drink
grain alcohol straight,
and then he'd light his farts
in front of everybody.
Nightly. Nightly.
Even that guy is still alive.
He is.
He's a lawyer in Phoenix.
People come to him with their problems.
They have no idea
he's just a twitchy brain stem in a suit.
I'm surprised we're alive
from all the food we eat in this country.
Oh my God!
We have a good time,
but we don't eat well.
We're the only country that has
a nationwide hot-dog-eating contest.
Hot-dog-eating contest.
A hot dog is the worst thing
you can put in the human body.
They've done studies
that every hot dog you eat
takes 30 minutes off of your life.
That should be a national emergency.
Does it stop us? Hell no!
Instead, we have a contest
and put it on ESPN on the 4th July,
to shine a light
on the best and brightest of us all.
We feed them to our children
at the barbecue.
We yell, "You get off that trampoline,
put out your cigarette,
and eat this hot dog."
"Show some respect."
But who cares, right?
Thirty minutes off your life.
It's not like it comes off tonight.
It's not like you eat the hot dog today
and lose it this evening.
No, it's at the end,
when it's weird and scary.
So you're telling me,
with every hot dog I eat,
I have 30 minutes less
of staring at a wall in a nursing home.
Waiting for a stranger to change me.
Sounds to me
like hot dogs are a superfood.
Seems like we should be eating hot dogs
with every meal.
They should redo
that food pyramid
and put a hot dog on top.
I know there's pressure.
I know there's pressure.
There's always a lot of pressure.
I don't want to make you
feel bad about yourself,
or add to your feelings
of low self-esteem.
You're beautiful. You're all beautiful.
You really are. You're miracles.
This is insane
that we're here in this moment at all.
That somehow, all this stardust
in this vast, crazy universe
somehow came together
and cobbled together you!
You're a miracle, and you're sitting
next to another miracle.
We're all miracles.
I know it's hard to think that sometimes.
When you stop at 7-Eleven
around midnight on your way home.
Not exactly crawling with miracles.
It looks like a lot of mistakes.
That's okay.
They're miracles too. They're just
making weird choices, that's all.
No, you're all beautiful.
I'm attracted to all of you right now.
Mostly 'cause you're covered up.
Let's be honest, right?
Everyone's got their own style.
Everyone looks great.
A couple hours from now,
we peel these layers off...
Oy-he-he-he.
Different story.
A lot of weird dangly bits.
Strange Jack and the Beanstalk hairs
coming out of your ass.
Things growing on your body
you didn't think grew on a human.
"Is that a barnacle? What am I?"
"What am I, a boat?"
I don't like seeing
myself naked, honestly.
I come out the shower.
I'm the only one in the bathroom.
I catch myself in the mirror. "Oh!"
I towel up immediately,
like a fancy lady, from tits to thighs.
Like a pig in a blanket,
with one soft serve towel on top.
My nipples used to be up here.
They were here. I saw a picture of me
in high school. They were here.
They're here now. They're here.
Really, they were here. They're now down...
I'm touching them right now. They're here.
It's like they quit
and walked off the job.
No two weeks' notice.
Just flipped over the desk,
gave me the finger, and made a run for it.
And they're still on the move.
They're still on the move.
I never catch 'em, but they're moving.
They're like two ex-cons in a wheat field.
When I'm 80,
they're gonna be in my pockets.
It's hard to feel good about yourself,
especially with social media.
Every time you open up your phone,
there's some people that look great.
They're always calling you a loser,
because you don't live like them, right?
You get all these cold plunge people
on your feeds.
You get these jackasses.
Act like you're a loser
if you don't start off at 6:00 a.m.
in a bucket of ice water.
Shut the hell up.
Get off of my phone.
I'm gonna do a video
about the benefits of a long hot shower.
That's a winner, where you just keep
making it hotter and hotter and hotter,
and then you stay an extra 15 minutes,
and you come out like a wet noodle,
and cancel all your appointments
for the day.
That's a winner.
All these guys
always showing me their abs.
They've always got their shirt off
where it should be on.
Like at a school or a bus stop.
"You want abs like these?"
"No, honestly."
What am I gonna do
with those abs? Nothing.
They're not gonna help my life at all.
I'm not impressed by those guys.
I feel bad for those guys.
I know they're alone.
They have to be alone.
You can't live with another person
and have abs like that,
doing crunches under the coffee table
24 hours a day.
When they're trying to watch their shows.
No one's gonna stand for that.
No, they live alone
in a one-bedroom apartment
with a pull-up bar,
eating protein shakes,
and shitting like a goat.
They don't impress me. You impress me.
People who live with other people
in a family. That's impressive.
You think abs can do what you do?
Get a whole family ready for school
on a Tuesday morning in the dark?
Making individual breakfasts
for every needy bastard in your house?
'Cause God forbid they eat the same thing
on the same damn day. They never do that.
And then feed all the animals
at the same time?
And clean what pops out
the other side of them almost immediately?
Then drop them all off at school.
Then pick them up at the end of the day,
20 minutes later.
Then drive them around
like you're their Uber driver
the rest of the afternoon,
taking them to all their dumb activities
they can't even do.
No way. You think abs is gonna sit
in a little chair at a dentist's office?
Flipping through a sticky magazine,
just waiting for the dentist to come out
and give you a $5,000 bill?
A $5,000 bill, because the little bastard
stopped brushing his teeth.
And you knew it. You knew it.
You knew he wasn't brushing his teeth.
But you stopped asking,
because you didn't want
to ruin bedtime every night.
You got tired of being the bad guy.
You checked the brush,
you checked the brush,
and it was wet, but that was a lie.
That was a lie.
That was a con job.
He was wetting his brush,
sitting on the toilet,
probably looking at porn on his phone.
And now you have a $5,000 bill.
But as crazy as that house is,
you know, and costly,
I would much rather live
with all those heartbeats,
all those needy heartbeats,
than live alone with my abs.
You know? 'Cause on some level,
your family has to be grateful.
They'll never say thank you.
They'll never say,
"Thanks for keeping us alive."
But that's literally what you're doing.
You're literally keeping them alive.
Without you, they're dead. They're dead.
I could leave my daughters
with a can and a can opener,
come back 24 hours later, dead!
Dead.
They'll never say thank you, so don't wait
for it. Gotta draw it out of 'em.
When you see them tomorrow, "My friend
last night told me to remind you,
without me, you're dead!"
"Or worse, no teeth. You'd have no teeth."
"Like a jack-o'-lantern in December."
"Going to school with a smushed-in face..."
"...wishing you were dead."
"So you're welcome."
No, so I block all those people
on Instagram.
I don't have those guys
on my Instagram feed.
The only thing on my feed are bakers.
That's it. Just bakers.
I love baking bread. I can't stop baking.
I love it.
My whole algorithm is nothing but bread.
Bread and babies. That's all I got.
My favorite guy... Oh, you'd love him.
He's two feet tall. He's five feet wide.
He's just a French baker.
He's just one ab. He's just...
He's just one buttery ab.
And he bakes croissants.
That's all he does. He bakes croissants.
He puts them in the oven, bakes them,
breaks them out, cracks them open.
Steam comes out.
Then he eats them on camera,
and I get aroused.
Food is my love language,
or my family's love language.
That's how we all communicate,
through food.
My mom would make salami sandwiches
for me every day for school.
That's how I could tell
how much she loved me at the moment.
If I got one salami sandwich,
not that great.
If I got three, I was a good boy.
They used to call me Tommy Salami.
That's how many salami sandwiches I'd eat.
They just visited me, my parents.
Oh my God. I love 'em to death.
But two weeks, they came to my house.
No hotel, two weeks.
Didn't ask, just showed up.
Two weeks! That's not a visit.
That's an insurrection.
Man. My father is so cheap.
He picked the date they had to be there,
and the one before and after it,
until it was cheap enough,
and then he bought the tickets.
I would have paid. I would have paid.
I would have paid for the flight,
or a hotel, or a sniper.
I love 'em to death.
Don't get me wrong. I love 'em to death.
It's a blessing to have your parents.
It really is.
But, oh my God, it's a lot.
My mother was, like... She was so cute.
She's like, "Don't worry."
"We're not gonna be a bother.
We're just gonna hang around."
"It's not even gonna be like we're there.
You don't have to entertain us."
"We just want to be around." "All right."
Yeah, right.
I'd try to sneak into the kitchen,
early in the morning,
get one cup of coffee
before it all starts.
They're just sitting there at the counter,
like two lonely sea lions.
They've been waiting
since 4:00 in the morning.
"We didn't know
when you were gonna get up."
When people stay with you,
there's no activity
that eats up enough hours of the day.
You take them to the beach.
"There's the ocean."
"All right, back to the house."
"Twelve more hours till bedtime."
The problem is, they have no activities,
they have no hobbies.
They don't crossword-puzzle,
they don't pickleball, Sudoku, nothing.
They're just two Italian parents who eat.
They just eat and then talk about
what they ate last night.
And they talk about
what they're gonna eat tonight,
and is there time to eat in between?
They're like two retired raccoons
just going through my kitchen.
My mother was dumpster diving
under the kitchen sink,
looking for scraps.
"There's still meat on this chicken bone."
"I don't know why you threw that out,
Mr. Big Shot."
My father was talking to me,
eating a cookie.
He dropped it by mistake, stepped on it,
peeled it off the bottom of his shoe,
and ate it!
Right in front of me!
I was like, "What are you doing?"
He looked at me like a toddler who knows
he's in trouble but doesn't know why.
I'm like, "No shoe cookies!
No shoe cookies!"
"Why are you eating
a shoe cookie right now?"
He's like, "That? No, come on.
I beat it. Five-second rule. I beat it."
It's not how it works.
If you drop a cookie in the toilet,
you don't get to eat it if you're quick.
I love 'em to death.
Look, I know
it's a complicated relationship.
If you're lucky enough to still have
your parents around, it's a blessing.
But I know you feel guilty
a lot of the times.
Because sometimes they call,
you don't pick up.
Then when you do pick up,
you get impatient,
because they can't use the phone.
You say something mean before you hang up.
I know you feel guilty a lot of the times.
But don't, don't,
because I got news for you.
They're not saying great things
about you either.
I guarantee you my father
was in the guest room at night,
"We've gotta get the hell out of here."
"Mr. Big Shot won't let me
eat shoe cookies."
"Who the hell does he think he is?"
"I got you one, by the way, if you want."
"A little nightcap."
And now it's putting family
in perspective for me.
Now that my kids are leaving,
I'm gonna be them. I'm gonna be them.
You know?
I'm gonna wanna just hang around.
I'm gonna want my kids to like me,
and all that kind of stuff.
I love family. It's a great thing.
I come from a big family. I love family.
But it's a heartbreaker at the same time.
You're gonna get your feelings hurt.
You can't have that much love
without getting your heart broken.
It's the same as
when people buy those big dogs.
I never understand these people.
They get these giant dogs.
They're all filled with fur and love.
And they take over the whole house.
And everyone falls in love with them.
And they're dead in three months.
I couldn't take that heartbreak.
I need something small and shitty
that's just gonna twitch and pee on itself
for 25 years.
Losing limbs, one at a time.
Eyes popping out.
"I'm still with you, Tommy.
I'm still with you."
I have a friend
that just got a Great Dane.
Are you high?
A Great Dane?
That dog should come with a shovel.
Couldn't handle it.
It's the same with the kids.
They take up the whole house.
And then, before you know it,
they're on their way out.
They don't remember the first five years
you did that stuff for them.
They have no memory of it.
Then the last four years,
they're trying to get away.
So you get, what,
eight years in the middle?
I'm not sure it's worth it.
I told my daughter before she left,
"Just so you know,
I did all of this for you."
"I did all of this for you."
"I didn't want this house.
I didn't want to live in this town."
"I didn't want any of these animals."
"I don't even have friends anymore.
All my friends are your friends' parents."
"I did this all for you,
and now you're gonna go?"
"I should go."
"You can have it all."
"Just give me a backpack
with a Van Halen CD and some weed."
"And I'll go back to living the life
I was living before I met you."
Oh, but I love 'em so much.
So funny.
You don't really plan your life, do you?
It just kind of unfolds.
It just kind of happens.
You have a couple of ideas,
but it just kind of happens.
I didn't know
I'd be at this point in my life,
talking about this family.
It just happened.
I just got tired
of eating pizza by myself.
I was eating pizza by myself all the time.
"This is getting depressing."
I was eating pizza by myself
when I saw a pretty girl.
I was like,
"You want to eat pizza with me?"
She was like,
"Yeah. I'm always eating pizza by myself."
"Me too. Let's eat pizza together."
"Okay."
Then five years later, we're going
through the airport, through security,
with a naked toddler and a cat carrier,
breaking down a stroller
with our feet at 6:00 a.m.,
sweating our asses off.
And our life was over. It was over.
All because I couldn't eat pizza
by myself.
And I can't tell you
what you should do with your life.
I don't know.
Have kids, not have kids. Who knows?
Get married, not get married. You know?
But for me, it was worth it.
For me, this whole thing was worth it,
because now I know, at the end,
there'll be someone
to pick up the phone. You know?
At the end, there'll be someone there
to pick up the phone when the police call...
...and say they found me swimming
in the fountain at the mall again.
"Come on down.
No, he's having a good time. No rush."
"No, his pants are on this time.
He's actually having a good time."
"Kids are throwing pennies at him.
He doesn't even feel it."
"He might have stolen a PlayStation.
We'll talk about it when you get here."
We're all going the same way, though.
Whatever you choose,
we're all going off the same brochure.
We're all headed the same way. You know?
If you're young here tonight,
and you see an old person,
I know you don't think
that that's you in the future.
You look at an old person,
that's not you in the future.
That's like looking at a sequoia tree
or a unicorn.
But it is going to be you one day,
before you know it.
If you're older and look at a young person
and think, "I still look like that,"
you don't. You don't.
You don't.
I know it's a clich,
but I'm turning into my father.
It's happening. I'm not planning it.
I just bought a three-pack
of silicone spray the other day.
I don't even know what it is.
I don't know what people use it for,
but I knew it was a deal, so I bought it.
Just like my father would.
And now I'm gonna give one away
to the mailman for no reason.
Just like my father.
We all think we're young,
and strong, and healthy,
and you all look beautiful tonight.
But before you know it,
you're gonna be in line
at the airport, at the gate,
you're gonna be wearing a neck pillow,
thinking it's cool.
And you're gonna break into
old people exercises, out of nowhere.
Just gonna start doing some of these.
We're gonna be those old people
who start coughing, out of nowhere.
Not eating anything,
not drinking anything,
and they just explode!
Turning purple. The eyes popping out.
And then they just stop
and continue with the conversation.
"Are we gonna talk
about what just happened?"
"You literally almost died a second ago."
"No? All right. Continue with the story
I've heard a thousand times."
"This is great."
It's hard to be an old person
nowadays, though. It's hard.
Can't even retire anymore.
They keep raising the retirement age.
That's not cool.
That's not nice to the old people.
That's not nice to the young people
who have to work
with old people that long.
Do you...
Do you really want
an 80-year-old pilot? Really?
"Buckle up. We're going to Dayton!
I mean Denver. You know what I mean."
"I'm so tired."
"I should have retired a while ago,
but they won't let me."
"I'm close to death, and so are you!"
If we're gonna make old people work,
let's have fun with them. Rent 'em out.
Rent them out to people
who want to take the carpool lane.
Tell them they're going to work.
You get to the office, drop 'em off,
someone takes them the other way.
"Are we almost there?"
"You were already there." "I was?"
"Didn't even eat my lunch."
Rent them out to people
who do those haunted hayrides.
Just drop six old people
in the woods along the path.
I don't mean to mock old people.
I really don't.
I want to be old people.
I want you all to be old people.
That would be a blessing, you know?
It'll be great. I'll still be on tour.
I'll come to your nursing home.
I'll tell jokes.
You won't be able to laugh.
You'll just blink and fart at me.
I want to live till I'm one of those guys
that starts dressing like a sea captain
for no reason.
You ever see these guys?
They don't have a boat,
they don't live near the ocean.
They just show up
like Captain Crunch one day.
"Toot, toot!"
Got the hat, the buttons, the whole thing.
And we just have to go along with it.
I hope you have a good rest of your year.
I do. You know, enjoy yourself.
I don't think
it's gonna be a great year.
Uh...
Seems like it's gonna be pretty annoying.
I'd say turn off the news once in a while,
but it's getting tougher to do.
Everyone's got dumb phones in your pocket.
Every time you open them, "Ah!"
Another jackass yelling at you, right?
"I just want to find a coffee place."
"Oh! Ah!"
Terrifying, these phones.
I had to describe
to my nephew the other day
what "nuclear Armageddon" was.
Yeah. Thanks for that, TikTok.
The kid had no idea what it was.
He's 17 years old, by the way. Yeah.
I was like, "Maybe there's an advantage
to being a C-student. Good for you."
Everyone's yelling at him to read more.
He was happy until a week ago.
I was like, "Yeah, look. Yeah, look,
we're all gonna die one day,
and there's a way
we could all die on the same day."
So don't worry about it.
You can know too much in this world.
You can know too much.
You don't need all this information.
Just because it's feeding us all the time,
doesn't mean you need it.
You don't need it all. You know?
Sure, you can die in a nuclear attack.
You could also die in a squirrel attack.
I saw that on YouTube.
It's a horrible death.
They gouge out your eyes
and fill you with nuts.
You can know too much in this world,
my friends.
If someone gives you
a chocolate chip cookie,
you don't think about
what's in that cookie.
You don't think about all the butter,
and the fat, and the sugar, and salt.
Made with someone's hands.
Someone's hands!
They say it like it's a good thing.
"Here's a handmade cookie."
Don't think about that.
Someone gives you a cookie,
"Thank you!"
Do you want to know
all your friends' political views?
Not if you want friends, you don't!
Don't ask those questions.
You can know too much.
I'll be honest with you.
I don't want to know what my wife
is thinking about most things
most of the time.
We've been happily married for 24 years.
You know why? We don't ask dumb questions.
"Are you happy right now?"
"Is there anything
I should change about myself?"
We don't ask those questions.
You want to be happily married?
Shut up and keep going.
Couples therapy? Are you high?
Pay a stranger
to pick at your old fights? Hell no!
I tell my wife every night,
"Look, you're a mess. I'm a mess."
"Let's watch a show."
I'll be honest with you.
She doesn't like me right now.
She hasn't for, like, two months.
I have no idea why.
And I'm not gonna find out.
She'll come back. She'll come back.
Twenty-four years.
She'll forget. She'll come back.
No, I love her to death. We're so solid.
If we didn't get divorced
from all the animals we live with,
we're gonna be fine.
I said when we were getting married,
"I'd love to start a family with you."
"That sounds wonderful.
I don't need pets."
She said, "I don't need pets either."
And she lied right to my face.
My wife and daughters went out
and got different animals
every single week.
I live in this weird Noah's ark.
You should see it.
Birds and fish and lizards.
We have a lizard.
It has a life expectancy of 50 years.
And it knows it. It knows it.
Just hangs out on his branch
and looks at me, like...
"We both know who's winning this race."
Two crazy dogs.
We have this pug named Frank.
The thing is hilarious.
It's like living with an alien.
It snores while it eats.
Who does that?
He's standing at his bowl, he's chewing
and he's swallowing. He's awake.
His eyes are closed.
He's snoring. He's asleep.
On Thanksgiving,
I went to move the cutting board,
after I carved the turkey,
and all the juice came
running down the bridges of it,
off the edge, right onto his face.
I never saw a dog laugh before.
He was so happy for half of the day.
Then the other half, he was miserable.
He smelled turkey
but didn't know where it was coming from.
And we've got this giant black lab,
who shits like a man.
Never seen anything like it.
And I have to scoop it up
and bring it back to the house,
like I'm bringing in wood for the storm.
And a cat, a psychotic serial killer cat,
who just kills for fun.
Doesn't eat any of it.
Just rips it to pieces and drops it off.
Here's a bird with no head.
"Oh!"
"Why would you do that?"
He looks at me like,
"Why would you ask me this question?"
"I give you a gift,
and this is how you treat me?"
It brings in live rats
and drops them in the laundry room.
Live rats! He goes to the yard, gets rats,
drags them in by their neck,
like the rat owes us money.
Of course my wife and I
aren't gonna like each other all the time.
We're now a rat-catching team.
This is how we spend our time.
I'm good with the magazine.
I can get it into the corner, you know?
I can pin it.
But then the three of us are looking
at each other. My wife, the rat, and I.
Someone's got to make a move.
Someone's got to grab this rat
by its ass and get it outside.
And I'll be honest with you.
I'm not doing it.
I didn't want these animals.
I'm not grabbing a rat trying to bite me.
I'm good at faking it.
Like I'm really trying, you know?
"They're so fast."
My wife does it.
She gets impatient.
She grabs it and looks at me. "You sissy."
And takes it outside.
I'll be honest with you.
That's why I don't like her sometimes.
Who does that?
Now I've got to compartmentalize
that I'm not married
to old "Rat Fingers" Johnson.
The love of my life
is now covered in rat fingers.
"Oh, you don't want to fool around?
Maybe I'll make you a cookie."
Thank you so much for coming.
You guys were great.
Thank you so much.
Take care of yourselves.
I'll see you next time around.
Comin' to ya
On a dusty road
Good lovin'
I got a truckload
And when you get it
You got something