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