[instrumental music playing]
[sighs]
- All right, Petunia.
- [dog panting]
Wish me luck out there.
[Petunia in French] You
will die on August 7th, 2037.
That's pretty good.
[growls softly]
All right.
[door closes]
[audience applauding and cheering]
Hello.
Hello, Chicago.
Nice to see you again.
Thank you. That was very nice. Thank you.
Look, now, you're a wonderful crowd,
but I need you to keep your
energy up the entire show, okay?
Because... No, no, no. Thank you.
Some crowds... some crowds, they
have big energy in the beginning
and then they run out of places to go.
So... I don't judge those
crowds, by the way, okay?
We've all gone too big too
fast and then run out of room.
- We've all made a "Happy Birthday" sign...
- [crowd chuckles]
Wait.
You get that poster board up, and you're like,
"I don't need to trace it.
I know how big letters should be.
To begin with, a big-ass 'H'. [laughs]
Followed by a big-ass 'A' and...
Oh, no! Oh, God!
Okay, all right. Real skinny 'P' with a high hump,
and then we'll put the second 'P'
below the hump of that first 'P',
sort of like a motorcycle sidecar situation.
And now I have no room for the 'Y', so
I'll do a kind of curled-up noodle 'Y'.
Block letters and cursive look good together."
And then you go to write "Birthday"
and you totally forget the lesson
you just learned with "Happy."
You're like, "Yeah, but the past is the past.
Big-ass 'B'.
Surely more letters will fit in the same space."
You're very friendly here in Chicago.
I mean, we're all violent
here, but you're very friendly.
No, really. And I don't like confrontation,
'cause I've never been in a fight before.
Though, maybe you could tell that from
the first moment I walked out on stage.
I don't give off that vibe. [chuckles]
Some people give off a vibe
of... Right away, they're like,
"Do not f*ck with me."
My vibe is more like,
"Hey, you could pour soup in my lap
and I'll probably apologize to you."
[audience laughing]
When I walk, for real, my feet go out like this.
I'm so open and vulnerable.
I look like a doll that you
point out molestation on.
[audience laughing]
"Show us on this white comedian
where the man touched you."
It's been a while since I've been home to Chicago.
- I got married since then.
- [audience cheering]
Thank you.
I married my wife.
I love saying "my wife." It sounds so adult.
"That's my wife." [laughs]
It's great, you sound like a person.
I said it even before we were married.
We were just dating, and we
were once getting on an airplane,
and Anna's ticket didn't say anything
and my ticket said "priority access."
It doesn't matter why.
But we were getting on and I said,
"Uh, can my wife board with me?"
And they were like, "Yes,
of course. Right this way."
And I was like, "Oh, that is so much
better than all those times I was like,
'Can my girlfriend come?'"
And, yeah, I shouldn't have
said it that way, but still.
"My wife" just has some kick-ass to it, you know?
"Get away from my wife! No one talk to my wife!"
Marriage is gonna be very magical.
"I didn't k*ll my wife!"
That's like, "Ooh, who's that fella?
I bet he did k*ll his wife."
Being married is so nice.
I never knew relationships were supposed
to make you feel better about yourself.
That's not really a joke,
that's just a little sweet thing I like to say.
'Cause I'd been in relationships where
I got cheated on, like, long ones.
I don't know if you've ever been in
a long relationship where you got cheated on,
but it changes your whole worldview.
'Cause when I was a kid, I used to
watch America's Most Wanted.
- You know how kids do.
- [audience laughing]
And I would always think to myself,
"How could another person k*ll someone?
How could a human being k*ll another human being?"
And then I got cheated on,
and I was like, "Oh, okay."
[audience laughing]
"I'm not gonna do it, but I totally get it."
And I don't mean in that way of,
like, "No one else can have you."
I don't care about that.
It's just creepy to have an ex out
there after things have ended badly.
They have a lot of information.
Anyone who's seen my d*ck and
met my parents needs to die.
I can't have them roaming around.
I talked to a lot of people
before I got engaged, you know.
And I heard this expression about
whether or not you should get married.
This is an old expression. People say this.
They say, "Why buy the cow when
you can get the milk for free?"
You ever heard that before?
It's a bananas insulting expression...
to an entire gender.
But also, it makes no sense.
"Why buy the cow when you
can get the milk for free?"
You're not allowed to milk
a cow that you don't own.
That's not even a situation.
Was that a problem at one point?
Like, in the dairy community?
Was that happening a hundred
years ago in some village?
Some Dutch prick was sneaking in at night
being like, "Ah-ha-ha, I take your milk."
And the farmer was like, "Well,
then, this is your cow now."
And he was like, "No, no proof of purchase."
And he ran off into the night.
That sounded Dutch, right?
You know what that... you know
what that expression means?
It means, "Why would you marry a woman
if she's already having sex with you?"
Which has nothing to do with what
relationships are even like anymore.
Now, it's like, "Why buy the cow?"
Uh, maybe because, every day,
the cow asks you when you're gonna buy it. And...
[audience laughing]
... you live in a really
small apartment with the cow,
so you can't avoid that question at all.
And also, the cow is way
better at arguing than you are.
And the cow grew up in a
family that knows how to argue.
"Why buy the cow?"
Uh, maybe because every
time another cow gets bought,
you have to go to the sale
and you have to sit next to your cow at the sale,
and your cow looks over at
you the entire time like...
[mooing angrily]
And does not enjoy the sale at all...
even though she's the one
that wanted to go to the sale.
And she's especially mad
because that farmer and cow met,
like, eight months after you guys met.
"Why buy the cow?" Well, let's be real here.
You're very lucky to have
the cow that you do have.
"Roping in cows and getting milk out of them
was never anything you were known for, John."
By the most liberal of estimates,
there have been about eight cows
total, several unmilked, and...
a lot of people think that you like
bulls, and if you just bought...
They assume it.
When you search your name, the
third thing to come up is like,
"John Mulaney bull?"
And if you just bought the cow,
nobody would say that anymore.
They'll still say it.
'Cause there are those guys who, they buy a cow,
and then on the side, total matador, but...
[audience laughing]
But, for real, Chicago, why buy the cow?
Let's be real. Why buy the cow?
Because you love her. You really do.
- And, yeah, yeah...
- [audience cheering]
Sure, she's a bossy little Jew, but...
[audience laughing]
... she takes care of you.
And you don't wanna be some
old man stumbling around, like,
"Hey, you seen any loose milk?"
[audience laughing]
My wife is Jewish. She's a New York Jew. I did it!
Now, I was raised Catholic.
I don't know if you can tell
that from the everything about me.
[audience laughing]
My wife is Jewish, I grew up Catholic,
so we got married by a friend. [laughs]
Being married by a friend is a beautiful ceremony
that alienates both families' religions,
while confusing the elderly people at the wedding.
"What's the name of the bishop?"
"That's actually stand-up comedian Dan Levy.
He was the host of MTV's
Your Face or Mine?"
I saw a lot of Catholic weddings,
though, because I was an altar boy...
And a hush falls over the room.
Isn't it weird how that became a scandalous thing?
That was just some boring
shit I had to do on weekends.
But now, it's like saying, "I was
a French maid for a period of time.
I was treated well in my day.
I worked for a variety of sirs."
[laughs]
No, being an altar boy was
just a boring gig, you know?
You'd serve Mass and then
you'd serve weddings sometimes.
My brother was once an altar boy at a wedding,
and he was standing there with another altar boy
in this big, packed church
in Chicago where we grew up.
And the bride was coming down the
aisle, and the organ was playing,
and all the pews were filled,
and the bride got all the way to the altar,
and the groom lifted the veil off of the bride,
and right at that moment the other altar boy said,
"Aw, she's ugly."
And then they looked,
and they were right next to the video camera.
[audience laughing]
And I know that's awful,
but wouldn't you give a million
dollars to see that wedding video?
It was the best moment of
this stupid woman's life,
and she's walking down the
aisle, and the organ's like...
[vocalizing]
And she gets all the way to
the altar to her betrothed,
and he unveils her to the
world and to the eyes of God.
And right at that second, for no reason at all,
some Cheeto-fingered, rat-mustached,
"Aw, she's ugly!"
Hopefully the videographer knew some sound editing
so he could fix it to be
like, "Aw, she's beautiful.
She's enchanting."
I grew up Catholic. I don't go to church anymore.
But I went on Christmas Eve with my parents,
'cause you know how you lie to your parents. So...
we go into the church and I was
like, "I got this under control."
And then I got schooled because
they introduced a bunch of new shit.
No, I was going through Mass
and I was batting, like, .400.
And then in the middle of Mass, the priest said,
"Peace be with you."
And everyone said, "And with your spirit."
And I was the one pre-Y2K
assh*le going, "And also with you.
What? Huh? What? Huh?
What? When? When?"
For those of you that aren't
Catholic, I don't mean to exclude you,
even though we love to exclude you, but...
There's a part in church where the priest says,
"Peace be with you."
And for many, many years, we all said...
- [audience] "And also with you."
- Very good.
But they changed it to "And with your spirit."
Because that's what needed
revamping in the Catholic Church.
That was the squeaky wheel that needed the grease.
In Rome, they were like,
[imitating Italian accent] "Let's
see. What problems can we solve?
Problem one. No."
I'm actually glad they changed that, though.
I never liked "And also with you."
I always found that clunky.
"And also with you." That's not how you talk.
- "Have a nice day."
- "And also you having one."
It's just a little bit wrong, isn't it?
It's just a little off.
Like, when someone's like, "How are
you?" And you're like, "Nothing much."
And it sort of makes sense.
Never begin a sentence with "And also."
You just immediately sound caught off-guard.
It sounds like if at the first church ever,
like, they weren't expecting it.
Like, the priest was like,
"Hey, this is the first
time we've ever had church.
I just wanna say, 'Peace be with you.'"
And they were like... [mumbling]
"What? Oh. Uh, yeah. And
also you should have some."
[audience laughing]
"Hey, that's good. Let's
keep that for 2,000 years.
And then change it to trick John."
My wife and I don't have
any children, we have a dog.
We have a little puppy named Petunia.
[audience cheering]
She's a tiny little French bulldog puppy.
I like having a puppy that's a bulldog,
'cause it's like having a
baby that is also a grandma.
Her body is young, her face is as old as time.
She definitely saw the Nazis march into Paris.
She always gives me this look of like,
[imitating French accent] "Oh, the
things I have seen, you cocksucker.
You have no idea.
The Gestapo threw my printing press into a river.
But, go, tell your f*cking jokes.
Bring me my dish."
She said that. Petunia...
Petunia is my best friend in the world.
I give her a million kisses a day.
She does not like me,
and barks at me and bites me all day long.
We had to get a dog trainer into the apartment
because Petunia is a bad dog.
We tell her that every day. We go,
"Hey, you're bad at being a dog."
So, the trainer came into the apartment.
Sorry, didn't even walk into the apartment,
walked into the threshold and went,
"Oh, okay."
[laughs] Like she was an exorcist or something.
She said, "I see what the problem is."
She said, "Petunia has become
the alpha of the house."
And then she pointed at me, she said,
"You are no longer the alpha of the house."
And in the back of my head, I was like,
"I was never the alpha of the house."
I turned to my wife, I was like,
"Let's pretend. It'll be fun.
Yes... My title of alpha, which
I once had, how can I reclaim it?
Because that was a thing
that existed at one time."
She said, "You need to show
dominance over your puppy."
These are things people say to me.
I said, "How do I do that?"
She said, "Well, let me ask you this.
Who eats dinner first, you or Petunia?"
I was like, "Petunia eats dinner
first. She eats dinner at 5:00 p.m.,
'cause she's a foot long and two years old."
She said, "No, you need to eat dinner first.
Because the king eats before anyone else eats."
Oh, yes, and what a mighty king I will be,
eating dinner at 4:45 in the afternoon.
[laughs]
"Look upon your sovereign, Petunia, and tremble.
My lands stretch across this entire one bedroom,
and I eat dinner whenever I choose,
as long as it works for the schedule of a dog."
She said, "Now, you don't actually
have to eat dinner before Petunia.
You just have to convince Petunia
that you've already eaten."
So... for the past month, I shit you not...
before my wife and I give Petunia her dish,
we take down empty bowls and spoons,
and in front of her, we go,
"Mmm, dinner. Mmm, good dinner."
Like we're space aliens in
a play about human beings
that they wrote, but they
didn't work that hard on.
"Mmm, we're eating dinner."
Meanwhile, Petunia's just staring at
us with her Paul Giamatti face, like...
[imitating French accent] "You're
not eating dinner, cocksucker.
Dish, now."
I have a wife and a dog,
and we just bought a house.
We have a new house.
It was built in the '20s,
but it was flipped in 2014.
Which means it's haunted, but it
has a lovely kitchen backsplash.
Actually, we didn't buy a
house. A bank bought a house,
and I'm allowed to keep my shirts and pants there
while I pay it off for 30 years.
The woman from the bank came over
and she showed me my mortgage broken
down month by month for 30 years.
And she said, "So, for instance, this
is what you'll pay in July of 2029."
And I burst out laughing. I was like,
"2029? That's not a real year.
By 2029, I'll be drinking moon juice
with President Jonathan Taylor Thomas.
I'm not gonna be writing you a paper check."
I like having a house, but
I loved looking for a house,
'cause I love real estate agents.
I mean, they are the true heroes.
They really are. Have you ever watched HGTV?
- [audience cheering]
- Real estate agents have to deal with
the dumbest people in the world
making the biggest decisions of their lives.
Every episode of HGTV is like,
"Craig and Stacia are looking
for a two-story A-frame
that's near Craig's job in the downtown,
but also satisfies Stacia's
need to be near the beach
which is nowhere near Craig's job.
With three children and nine on the way,
and a max budget of $7...
let's see what Lori Jo can do
on this week's episode of You
Don't Deserve A Beach House."
I loved our real estate agent. It
was so fun to hang out with her.
It was like hanging out with my mom.
'Cause, you know, real estate
agents always look like your mom.
And they have various Chico's accoutrements.
They always have kind of fun mom energy.
And they're always, "So excited to see you two."
We would have little conferences
before we walked into a house.
She'd go, "Let's talk.
Let's talk before we go in."
We're, like, two feet from the door.
"So, there's no toilets.
And I know that was on your list.
But I think I can get him to budge. Let's go."
So, we'd have a real estate agent,
and then, like, the house
would have a real estate agent
who's just some guy sitting in a big chair.
And these two always hated each other.
They'd be like, "Hi, Tony." "Hi, Kim."
It's like, "Jesus Christ! What,
were you two in the Eagles together?
What is the animosity about?"
Our real estate agent wanted us to have a baby
more than anyone else in our lives,
more than anyone in our family.
She hinted about it constantly.
Every room she walked into, she'd be like,
"So, this could be an office."
[audience laughing]
"Or maybe a nursery."
"Yeah. No, like we said, we don't
know if we're gonna have... "
"No, no. I know, I know, you know.
You don't know if you're
gonna have 'em, but you know.
You know, you never know.
Sometimes you don't know
what's gonna happen, and then...
you know, something happens."
"Well, yeah, that's how all of life works."
"Okay, all right. Okay.
Uh-huh. Mmm.
This is an on-fire garbage can.
Could be a nursery."
[audience laughing]
She showed me a backyard once.
She goes, "I don't even
like this backyard for you."
I was like, "Oh, do tell."
She said, "It's all pavement.
I think you should have some grass out there.
You know, in case you have
a couple... little guys...
running around in the grass."
And I got offended on behalf of my imaginary kids.
I was like, "Hey, lady.
I went outside about as much as
Powder from the movie Powder.
My children are not gonna be playing out on grass.
They will be up in their rooms
playing violent video games
and catfishing pedophiles. These are my children.
And that's my wife!"
[audience cheering]
I didn't mean to make it sound
like we don't want children.
We don't, but I didn't mean
to make it sound like that.
See, I just don't think babies like me very much.
Sometimes babies will point at me,
and I don't care for that shit at all.
Like, I'll be on an elevator,
and a baby will be there in its
big, like, stroller activity tray,
just, like, working on one Cheerio
with Bobby Fischer-like intensity.
And it'll look up at me and go...
I like to lean in and go,
"Stop snitchin', m*therf*cker." And then walk off.
'Cause you're never too young to
learn our national no-snitching policy.
My friends have babies and
I don't do so well with them.
I had a run-in with a two-year-old girl.
I know there are better ways
to start that story, but...
My friend, Jeremy, has this
two-year-old girl, and I really like her.
She's a sweet kid. I really
like his daughter a lot.
But I was over at his family's
house for the Fourth of July,
and he had his daughter on his knee.
And it was a very lovely day. His
whole extended family was there.
And he was bouncing his
two-year-old up and down,
and he pointed at me and
he said to his two-year-old,
"Do you know who that is? That's your Uncle John."
And I was like, "Oh, my God. That's
so sweet. I'm her Uncle John."
And then the baby pointed at me and said,
"Uncle John has a penis."
[audience laughing]
I thank you for laughing,
because no one did that day!
Fell deadly silent, is what they all did.
Hey, do you know what you're supposed to say
when a baby points at you and
knowingly says, "He has a penis"?
No, I'm asking, 'cause I don't
know what to say in that situation.
Here's what I went with that day.
I said, "Oh, come on!" [laughs]
I don't know. I thought that'd be good.
But then it just made it worse,
'cause it sounded like the baby and I
had an arrangement not to talk about it,
and she had violated my trust.
Like, the baby had been
like, "Do you have a penis?"
And I was like, "Yes, I do, but
you're a baby, so discretion is key."
And then the next day she goes,
"He has a penis," and I go,
"Oh, come on! Someone can't keep a secret!"
Luckily, Jeremy's wife saved the
day. The baby's mom saved the day.
She came in and she picked
up the baby, and she was like,
"It's okay.
She's just going through that phase
where she says penis and vag*na a lot."
Aren't we all?
[audience laughing]
And, by the way, it would've been
a totally different situation
if the baby had said vag*na.
Like, if a grown woman had walked in the room,
and the baby had been like, "She has a vag*na,"
the woman could be like, "Yes,
I do, and it's magnificent."
And we would all be like, "Hooray! You are brave!"
No one wants to applaud the
penis of a 32-year-old weirdo.
It's fun to be married.
I've never been supervised before.
I'm supervised. She studies what I do.
Like an anthropologist.
She'll be like, "Sometimes,
he will watch a movie on TV
even though he already owns that movie on DVD.
Pointing this out to him confuses and upsets him."
[audience laughing]
I had no supervision when I was a kid.
We were free to do what we wanted.
But also, with that, no one cared about kids.
I grew up before children were special.
I did. Very early '80s, right
before children became special.
Like, I remember when milk
carton kids became a thing.
When they were like, "Hey, we should
start looking for some of these guys.
I don't think they're just blowing off steam."
No one cared about my opinion
when I was a little kid.
No one cared what I thought.
Sometimes, people would say,
"What do you think you're doing?"
But that just meant "Stop."
They didn't actually wanna
know my thought process.
They didn't want me to be like,
"Well, I was gonna put this bottle
rocket into this carton of eggs,
so that when I lit off the bottle rocket,
the eggs would explode everywhere."
"Oh, well, that's very interesting. And
what brought you to this experiment?"
"Oh, well, thank you for asking. Well...
you know how I'm filled with rage?
I'm so horny and angry all the time...
and I have no outlet for it.
So...
eggs."
Your opinion doesn't matter
in elementary school either.
It matters in college.
College is just your opinion.
Just you raising your hand and being like,
"I think Emily Dickinson's a lesbian."
And they're like, "Partial
credit." And that's a whole thing.
[audience laughing and applauding]
But in elementary school, it
doesn't matter what you think,
it just matters what you know. You
have to have answers to questions.
And if you say, "I don't know,"
you get an X on your test,
and you get it wrong and that's not fair,
'cause your brain has never been smaller.
Also, that's not how life works.
I'm in my 30s now. If you came
to me now and you were like,
"Hey, John, name three things that
the Stamp Act of 1775 accomplished."
I'd go, "I don't know. Get
out of my apartment," you know?
But when you're a little kid,
you can't say, "I don't know."
You should be able to.
That should be an acceptable answer on a test.
You should be able to write in, "I don't know.
I know you told me.
But I have had a very long day.
I am very small.
And I have no money.
So you can imagine the kind
of stress that I am under."
Or if it's one of those true or false questions,
you should be able to add a third option which is,
"Who's to say?"
Kids are much more supervised now,
but also, they have a lot of rights.
Like, that's the biggest civil rights increase
I've seen in my lifetime.
The rights of children have gone through the roof.
I had no rights when I was a little kid.
I remember, one time, I walked
into a supermarket by myself,
and I walked in through the double doors,
and the woman behind the register
just looked at me and she went,
"No!"
And I went, "All right."
And I turned around and left.
That's how broken I was.
And there weren't special things
for kids the way there are now.
Like, we would just go see movies. Any movie.
Like Back to the Future.
That was a movie everyone could
see. Kids could kinda see it.
Great movie, right?
I rewatched it recently.
It's a very weird movie.
Marty McFly is a 17-year-old
high school student
whose best friend is a
disgraced nuclear physicist.
And, I shit you not,
they never explain how they became friends.
They never explain it.
Not even in a lazy way, like,
"Hey, remember when we met
in the science building?"
They don't even do that.
And we were all fine with it.
We were just like, "What, who's his best friend?
A disgraced nuclear
physicist? All right, proceed."
What a strange movie to sell to be a family movie.
Two guys had to go in and do that.
They had to be like, "Okay... we got an idea...
for the next big family-action-comedy.
All right, it's about a guy
named Marty, and he's very lazy.
He's always sleeping late."
"Okay. Is he cool like Ferris Bueller?"
"No.
But he does have this best friend
who's, you know, a
disgraced... nuclear physicist."
"I'm confused here. This best
friend, this is another student?"
"No, no, no.
No, this guy's either, like, 40 or 80.
Even we don't know how old
this guy's supposed to be.
But one day, the boy and the scientist,
they go back in time and
they build a time machine.
Whoa!"
"Okay. I think I see where you're going here.
They build a time machine,
and they go back in time,
and they stop the Kennedy assassination."
"Ah!
Oh, wow, that's a really good idea,
I mean, we didn't even think of that."
"All right, well, what do
they do with the time machine?"
"Well, now I'm embarrassed to say.
Ah, well, all right, all right, all right.
We thought... We thought
it would be funny, you know,
if the boy, if he went back in time and, you know,
he tried to f*ck his mom."
[audience laughing]
"I don't know. We thought
that'd be fun for people.
But, no, good point.
No, he doesn't get to, he doesn't get to.
'Cause this family friend named Biff,
he comes in and he tries to
r*pe the mom in front of the son.
The dad's gotta beat the r*pist off of her.
And also, we're gonna imply that a
white man wrote 'Johnny B. Goode.'
So, we're gonna take that away from 'em."
[audience laughing]
"Well, this is the best movie
idea I have ever heard in my life.
We're gonna make three of them.
Now, you say they go to the past. How
about we call it Back to the Past?"
"No, no, no.
Back to the Future."
"Right, but they go to the past."
"Yeah."
Kids have it very good now.
My friend's a teacher. She told me that, uh...
the parents will take the
kids' side over the teacher now.
That's insane. That never happened.
My parents trusted every grown-up...
more than they trusted me.
I don't mean coaches and teachers.
Any human adult's word... was better than mine.
Any hobo or drifter
could have taken me by the ear
up to my front door and been like,
"Excuse me! Your kid bit my d*ck."
And my mom would be like,
"John Edmund Mulaney,
did you bite this nice man's d*ck?"
And I would be the only one who's like,
"Hey, doesn't anyone wanna know why...
his d*ck was near my biters... in the first place?
Isn't anyone curious...
as to how I had access?"
Don't get me wrong, my parents
love us. They just didn't like us.
We weren't friends.
People are now like, "My mom's my best friend."
I was like, "Oh, is she a super bad mom?" [laughs]
My parents didn't trust us, and
they shouldn't have trusted us.
We were little goblins. We were terrible.
I remember, one time, we were
going to this resort for a vacation
when we were little kids.
Three weeks before we went to the
resort, my dad sat us down and he said,
"All right, we're going to a resort,
and I've just been informed that the man
who owns the resort only has one arm."
And we were like, "Oh, yes!
Yay! Yes!"
"Now, I'm telling you three weeks in advance,
so that you will not freak out when
you see that he only has one arm."
"Oh, we're gonna freak out so bad!"
"Yes, John, you have a question?"
"How did he lose his arm?"
"That's exactly what you won't ask."
And then I did ask.
I went into the kitchen one day, and I was like,
"So, how'd you lose your arm?"
And he was like, "Well, I
was born with only one arm."
And I was like, [clicks tongue] "Nah."
[audience laughing]
No, my parents loved us.
It's just, like, they were the cops, you know?
And we were criminals.
So, we didn't get along.
We only got along in that way that, like,
cops will sometimes be chummy with criminals.
Like, when my dad and I would talk, it was
like that scene in the movie Heat,
when Robert De Niro and Al
Pacino sit down in that diner.
We kind of had that rapport of, like,
"Hmm, we're not so different, you and I.
You have your law practice, and me,
I have all these f*cking markers."
[audience laughing]
"I guess we both have responsibilities
when you look at it that way."
My dad would respect it if I could
get away with breaking a rule.
We had a rule in our house,
you were not allowed to
watch TV on a school night.
So, every school night, I
would 100% be watching TV.
And I would hear my dad coming, I
would immediately turn the TV off
and grab any book, magazine, periodical, anything.
And I'd open it and pretend to be doing homework.
My dad would walk in the room and he would go,
"What are you doing? Are you watching TV?"
And I'd go, "No, man. I'm not watching TV."
And the TV wouldn't even be dark yet.
It would still have, like,
a neon green halo around it.
It'd be sizzling like a glass of Pepsi.
And I would look my dad in the eyes and go,
"No, I'm just reading this Yellow Pages."
My dad loved us.
He just didn't care about our
general happiness or self-esteem.
I remember, one time, we were really little kids.
I have two sisters and a brother,
and all four of us were in our family car ride
for three hours going to Wisconsin.
My dad was driving, going down the highway
in our white van with wood around the side.
'Cause you remember when you
wanted your car to be made of wood?
You remember that era?
Where we were like, "How much
wood can we get on this car...
without it catching on fire?"
But then the big announcement.
"We here at Plymouth-Chrysler
can put a saucy stripe of wood
safely on the outside of your car,
for all those times you've looked
at your minivan and thought,
'Huh! It needs a belt.'"
[audience laughing]
So, we're going on the highway. We've
been on the road for three hours.
And in the distance, we see a McDonald's.
We see the golden arches.
And we got so excited.
We started chanting, "McDonald's!
McDonald's! McDonald's! McDonald's!"
And my dad pulled into the
drive-thru, and we started cheering.
And then, he ordered one black coffee for himself.
[audience laughing]
And kept driving.
And, you know, as mad as that made
me as a little kid, in retrospect,
that is the funniest thing I
have ever seen in my entire life.
How perfect is that?
He had a vanload of little
kids, and he got black coffee.
The one thing from McDonald's
no child could enjoy.
My dad is cold-blooded.
He once shushed a kid during
Lion King on Broadway.
That actually happened.
We were at Lion King on Broadway,
and there was a
five-year-old behind us going,
"Look, it's Pumbaa! Look, it's Timon!"
And my dad turned around and said,
"Are you going to talk the entire time?"
[audience laughing]
He's my hero.
The weirdest thing when I was a kid
was how much they scared us about smoking weed.
They scared us about it constantly.
And I've been on tour this year...
Marijuana is legal in 18 or 19
states in some form or another.
- It's insane. Yeah, well...
- [audience cheers]
All right, don't "whoo" if you're white.
It's always been legal for us. Come on, sir.
[audience applauding]
We don't go to jail for
marijuana, you silly billy.
When I was arrested with a
one-hitter at a Rusted Root concert,
I did not serve hard time.
I think I got an award.
Eighteen or 19 states.
And, by the way, I agree, it's a very good thing.
But it's also a really weird thing,
because this is the first time
I've ever seen a law change
because the government is just like,
[sighs] "Fine." You know?
I've never seen it before.
Like, gay marriage and healthcare,
we have to battle it out in the Supreme Court,
and be like, "Gay people are humans."
And they're like, "We'll think about it."
But with weed, it was just
something we wanted really badly,
and we kept asking them for 40 years, like,
"Excuse me."
And then suddenly the government
became like cool parents,
and they're just like,
"Okay, here. Take a little.
We'd rather you do it in the
house than go somewhere else...
blah, blah, blah, blah, blah."
[audience cheering]
Those stupid parents. [laughs]
And that's a big deal because they
scared us about weed constantly.
It would be on our sitcoms.
We'd be watching Saved by the
Bell, we'd be having a great old time.
And then, suddenly, a
character we had not seen before
would show up with some weed and the
episode would stop cold in its tracks.
And they'd always hold the joint...
The bad guy would hold the
joint in a villainous way.
They'd always offer the joint in a
way that no one ever holds a joint.
Like it's a skull in a Shakespeare play.
And now it's legal, and that is great news.
Unless you're a weed dealer,
and then it is terrible news.
And I don't just mean because they're
about to lose out to Amazon.com.
I more feel bad for weed dealers
'cause they're about to find out that
we only showed them a certain amount of politeness
because they had an illegal product.
And we don't show that same politeness
to people who deliver legal products.
Like, when the Chinese food delivery guy comes,
we don't let him hang out after
he's delivered the Chinese food.
And we don't look the other way
when he says weird shit to the
girls we're hanging out with...
to try to preserve the relationship.
And we definitely don't give
him some of the Chinese food.
He's never like, "Hey, can
I get in on those dumplings?"
And we're like, "Yeah, we're all friends."
What are you, on your phone? Hey, V-neck. Hey!
- What's your name?
- [man] Sam.
Sam?
- Cool!
- [audience laughing]
What do you do to afford V-necks, Sam?
[Sam speaking indistinctly]
Typing numbers. Ah...
numbers, the letters of math.
I'm sorry to bother you. I
don't mean to single you out.
I hate when people get pulled out of the audience.
Like, are you familiar with
the Cirque du Soleil, Sam?
They're a group of French assholes
that are slowly taking over America
by humiliating audience members one by one.
We once went to see Cirque du
Soleil at Navy Pier when I was a kid,
and my brother came, and he was 12 years old.
You remember being 12, when you're like,
"No one look at me or I'll k*ll myself."
And these French bastards
come into the crowd, being
like, "Le volunteer!"
[speaking gibberish]
And they pulled my brother
up on stage, and I was like,
"No!"
And they brought him up, and
they reached into his sweatshirt,
and they were like... [speaking gibberish]
And they had planted a bra,
and they pulled out a bra and they
were like... [speaking gibberish]
And everyone at Navy Pier
was like "Ah, ha, ha, ha, ha!"
And my brother was like, "That's
great!" [imitates g*nsh*t]
I have had other jobs besides comedy.
I was an office temp for a while.
I really miss that.
I loved being a temp,
because I would just go from office to office
and be terrible at a different job for a week.
And then you just get to retire like Lou Gehrig.
You're like, "Thank you. No
one will ever see me again."
And they're like, "Goodbye!"
I worked at an office once on
I was there for a couple weeks.
I was in a cubicle next to this other cubicle.
This woman named Mischa sat in the other cubicle.
I want to get the number right.
I think Mischa had...
about 900,000 photos of her
daughter up in her cubicle.
Almost like she was trying to solve
a conspiracy about her daughter,
A Beautiful Mind-style.
I think about Mischa two times a week...
because of a phone call
she had next to me one day.
It was one of my first days,
and I was sitting next to her.
And her phone rang, and this
was her call, and I'm quoting.
Her phone rang and she said,
"Hello? Hush!" And then she hung up.
[audience laughing]
Think about that two times a week.
And I didn't know her well
enough by then to be like,
"Hey, what kind of a person are you?" You know?
Who could she have been talking to?
"Hello? Hush!" This was a place of business.
My only thought was that it was
the CEO of the company being like,
"Mischa, help. I'm doing a crossword puzzle.
I need a four-letter word
for 'be quiet' right now."
- "Hush!"
- "You're promoted."
I temped at a little web company
on 25th Street in New York City.
It was a small web company
owned by this old man who was
old, old, old money New York.
His name was Henry J. Finch IV.
Like old, old, old money.
Like, his money was in molasses or something.
He owned this web company.
I have no idea why he owned this web company.
I think he won it in a rich man's game of
dice and small binoculars, or something.
Mr. Finch wore linen suits.
He had suspenders, he had a bow tie, he had a hat,
he had a cane with an ivory handle.
I'm giving you more description than you need,
'cause I need you to believe me.
This was a real person I knew in the 21st century.
Mr. Finch was in his 70s.
He had an assistant named Mary.
She was in her 50s, she was Korean.
I don't know why he had an
assistant. He did not need one.
Unless he needed someone to be like,
"Remember, Mr. Finch, at five o'clock,
you need to keep looking like a hard-boiled egg."
[audience laughing]
One day, Mr. Finch came into the office.
It had been raining.
Everything I'm about to say to you was
said in front of me on that afternoon.
Mr. Finch walked into the office,
and he was wearing a raincoat,
he was wearing a rain hat, and he had his cane.
And he walked in and he said, and I'm quoting,
"Ah!
One feels like a duck splashing
around in all this wet!
And when one feels like a duck, one is happy!"
And then Mary yelled, "Ooh, ducklings!"
To which Mr. Finch replied,
"Too old to be a duckling. Quack,
quack." And then walked into his office.
I think about that every g*dd*mn day.
I mean, imagine you're me.
You're a 22-year-old temp,
and you're so hungover,
and you just wanna die every day.
And then that happens in front of
you, and I don't know, gives you hope?
And I did that a little fast.
Let me break that conversation down for you.
Mr. Finch walked in,
and he began a conversation the way anyone would.
- "Ah!"
- [laughter]
"One feels like a duck splashing
around in all this wet!"
The rain.
"And when one feels like a duck, one is happy!"
Now, that's debatable.
But rather than debate that point,
Mary brought up a new, separate,
but interesting point...
which was, "Ducklings!"
But Mr. Finch, ever the realist
about his own age and mortality...
said, "Ah, too old to be a duckling!"
As if to say, "My duckling days are behind me.
Mary, don't you see?
I'm a duck now.
And to prove it...
Well, I'll say just about the most
famous catchphrase a duck has...
'Quack, quack.'"
And I knew right at that moment, by the way,
that it meant nothing to
Mr. Finch, what he had said.
Crazy people are like that. They
have unlimited crazy currency.
Like, if I had gone into his office
a couple weeks later and been like,
"Hey, Finch, you remember that time you were like,
'Too old to be a duckling. Quack, quack'?"
He would just be like, "Ah, perhaps I did quack!
But such is life for an
old knickerbocker like me."
Like, he'd say something else crazy.
That's the wonderful thing
about crazy people, you know?
Is that they just have unlimited currency.
The things they say mean nothing to
them, but they mean everything to me.
I was once walking into Penn Station in New York.
I was walking down 31st
Street towards Eighth Avenue.
I'm walking down 31st,
there's this woman standing at Eighth and 31st.
I have my little roller
suitcase. You can all imagine.
I'm walking towards her.
She's smoking a cigarette that is not lit anymore.
She's watching me walk, kind
of scanning me up and down,
as if she had Terminator vision...
where she could see little bits of data, like,
[imitates beeping] "Little h*nky ass,"
and could read information.
As I walked past her, she said this to me.
I walked past her and she said, and I'm quoting,
"Eat ass, suck a d*ck and sell dr*gs."
[audience laughing]
Very dirty, yes?
A very upsetting thing to hear, yes?
I'm sorry you all had to hear that,
but at least you all got to hear it as a group.
I was alone out there that afternoon.
And she said this totally unprompted.
"Eat ass, suck a d*ck and sell dr*gs."
It wasn't like I had paused
in front of her and been like,
"What should I do with my life?"
So, I walk away from her with this to-do list.
And I like structure, I like a to-do list.
It did dawn on me that that list of
things does get better as it goes along,
when you really think about it.
'Cause it starts in a pretty rough place.
It starts with just about the worst
task a to-do list can start with.
But by the end, you have your own small business.
And isn't that the American
dream when all's said and done?
[audience cheering]
That if you eat enough ass and suck enough d*ck,
one day you can sell dr*gs.
Imagine you did all that to sell
dr*gs and then they legalize dr*gs,
and you were like, "But I... [sighs]"
[audience laughing and applauding]
This has been a real thrill
to perform here, by the way.
I just wanna say that in all
sincerity. Thanks for coming to this.
[audience cheering]
Really, really appreciate it.
I wanna tell you one more
story before I get out of here,
about the night I met a guy named Bill Clinton.
Now, I don't... Some of you know who that is?
[chuckling] For those of you that don't,
he was President of the United
States from 1993 until 2001,
and he is a smooth and fantastic hillbilly
who should be declared Emperor
of the United States of America.
Now, I know you know who Bill Clinton is.
But I was doing a show at a college,
and I mentioned Bill Clinton,
and, like, they kind of didn't know who he was.
Like, sorry, they knew the name, right?
But they only knew this 2015 Bill Clinton,
who's a very different Bill Clinton.
Have you seen his ass lately?
What the hell is he trying to pull?
He's all thin now, and he
wears these little tight suits,
and he's got these grandpa reading glasses, like,
[imitating Clinton] "Hey, I can't
do nothing to nobody no more."
[audience laughing]
"Oh, me? I'm just an old, old man. I
don't have the appetites." You know?
And he's always flying around the world
with Bill Gates trying to cure AIDS.
[laughs] That is not the Bill Clinton
that we all signed up for 20 years ago.
Our Bill Clinton was like a big, fat
Buddy Garrity from Friday
Night Lights-looking guy,
who played the saxophone on Arsenio,
and his work in the STD community was
not in curing anything at that time.
That was the man we all elected president.
That was the Bill Clinton that I met.
I got to meet Bill Clinton when
he was Governor Clinton in 1992,
when he was first running for president.
And I got to meet Bill Clinton
because my parents had gone to
the same college as Bill Clinton.
They're a little younger, but
they went to the same college.
So, when he was first running for president,
he would have all these big,
like, alumni fundraisers,
and everyone who went was invited to go.
Now, this was really cool for a couple reasons.
One, I got to meet Bill Clinton.
But two, I got to watch my parents
watch someone they went to school with
become the president.
And that is super funny to see,
'cause think about some of the
people you went to school with.
Now imagine they're becoming the president.
Imagine Sam was becoming the president.
It would stir up strong emotions.
And my parents had very different
opinions on Bill Clinton.
My mom loved Bill Clinton,
'cause Bill Clinton was always a
really charismatic, handsome guy.
I mean, think about how many
women he got in the 1990s
when he looked like Frank
Caliendo doing John Madden.
Now... imagine him as a college student.
And my mom tells me that there was this sort of
chivalrous policy on campus back then,
where, late at night,
if female students were leaving
the library unaccompanied,
male students were encouraged to wait
out in front and offer to walk them home.
That sounds good, right? [chuckles]
So, my mom tells me that Bill Clinton
would be out in front of the library
every single night... just being like,
[imitating Clinton] "Hey, can I walk ya home?
Hey, can I walk ya home? Hey, can I walk ya home?
Hey, can I walk ya home?"
And one night, my mom was leaving the library,
and Bill Clinton was like,
"Hey, can I walk ya home?"
And my mom was like, "Hell, yes."
So... This is absolutely true.
My mom, little Ellen Stanton,
walked arm-in-arm with Bill Clinton
to her dorm. And she was like,
"You know, I wanted to invite him up for a beer."
And I was like, "Thanks, I'm nine." But...
her roommate was upstairs, so she
lost her chance with Bill Clinton.
Now, my dad, on the other
hand, hated Bill Clinton,
because my parents were dating during this time.
And also, my dad's a much more morally-upright,
conservative kind of guy.
He always told me that he hated it in college
that Bill Clinton could,
quote, "Get away with anything."
Can you imagine how he felt later?
So, one day, this invitation arrives
for a fundraiser where you
could meet Bill Clinton.
My mom opens it first and she goes,
"Oh, we have to go. We have to go see Bill."
And without looking up at her, my dad just says,
"Why?
It's not like he's gonna remember you."
[audience murmuring]
One black coffee.
[audience laughing and applauding]
Same m*therf*cker.
So, my mom says,
"Fine! I'll go and I'll take
John." And I was like, "Hell, yeah."
And I slid in the room in my
First Communion suit, ready to go.
'Cause I loved Bill Clinton. I was ten years old.
If you were a kid when Bill
Clinton was first released,
it was the most exciting thing ever.
We'd never seen a cool politician before.
And he would go on MTV,
and he'd have cool answers to kids' questions.
They'd be like, "Governor,
what's your favorite food?"
And he'd be like, "I don't know, fries?"
And we'd be like, "Yay, we eat fries!"
I learned to play his campaign song on the piano.
It was "Don't Stop" by Fleetwood Mac...
from Rumours,
an album written by and for
people cheating on each other.
He let us know who he was right away.
So, I went with my mom, as her date...
to reconnect with Governor Bill Clinton.
We walked into the ballroom.
It was a big hotel ballroom.
It was the Palmer House Hilton,
big Hilton hotel ballroom.
Walked into the ballroom,
it was packed with people.
It's actually the ballroom from the end
of the movie The Fugitive, remember?
So, that ballroom.
So, my mom and I walk in,
it's packed with people, the...
Sorry, the end where Harrison
Ford, as Dr. Richard Kimble,
bursts in to confront Dr.
Charles Nichols, right? Okay.
So, that ballroom.
So, my mom and I walk in, it's packed with people.
Why does Kimble confront Nichols?
Well, I know we all know this,
but... No, no. But, but, but...
Kimble, he found out that Nichols,
along with Devlin MacGregor and Lentz,
who has mysteriously died,
they had hired Frederick Sykes,
the one-armed man, to k*ll Kimble.
Kimble's wife wasn't even the
target. I know we all know this.
But they were gonna k*ll Kimble
because he wasn't gonna approve
certain liver samples to pass RUD-90.
So, Kimble finds out about all of
this, and, of course, he's furious.
And he bursts into the ballroom and he goes,
[imitating Kimble] "You switched the samples!"
And Dr. Nichols is like,
[in foreign accent] "Ladies and
gentlemen, my friend, Dr. Richard Kimble."
What accent did that guy have, by the way?
He goes, "You switched the samples!
And you doctored your research!
So that you could have Provasic!"
Anyway, so it's that ballroom.
So, we walk into that ballroom.
It was packed with people.
It was packed with people. A real
Who's Not of Chicago celebrities.
Walter Jacobson was there.
Walter Jacobson was the local Fox anchor.
He'd do fun things where he'd go
undercover as a homeless person.
And he'd be like, "Oh, what time is the soup?"
And they'd be like, "Man, you're Walter Jacobson."
He was there.
[laughs]
Everybody.
And on the far side of the
ballroom, under a spotlight,
we saw a little bit of silver hair.
And it was him... Bill Clinton.
The Comeback Kid.
But he was surrounded by reporters,
and photographers, and Secret Service.
So, what are you gonna do?
Well, if you're my mom, you ball
up the back of my sport coat,
and you push me forward like a human shield.
And then you start jogging while yelling,
"This ten-year-old boy has to meet the
next president of the United States!"
Kind of implying that I might be dying.
My feet were not on the ground.
She was swinging me like a snowplow.
I was just mowing down fat Chicago Democrats.
I pushed past all the reporters, I
pushed past all the photographers.
We pushed past all the Secret Service.
We land at Bill Clinton's feet.
Bill Clinton turns, looks at my mom and says,
"Hey, Ellen,"
'cause he never forgets a bitch, ever.
[audience cheering]
My mom melts. She goes, "Hi, Bill."
Then it is revealed that she has no plan.
So... she pushes me towards Clinton and she goes,
"This is my son, John, and he's
also going to be president."
And I was like, "What the
hell are you talking about?
I'm not gonna be president."
And I know now that I'm definitely
never gonna be president.
Not unless everyone gets real cool
about a bunch of stuff really quickly.
Based on my ten-year-old memory,
Bill Clinton is about 13 feet tall.
And he leaned down, because,
well, I was wearing this button
that I bought outside the fundraiser.
It was a cartoon button of George H. W. Bush,
and it had a quail flying over his
head, and it was sh1tting on his head.
And it said, "Bird-brained."
And I thought it was very funny.
And Bill Clinton leaned down so
that only I could hear and he said,
[imitating Clinton] "Hey,
man, I like your button."
[audience laughing]
And I said, "You can do
whatever you want forever."
And he took my advice.
And...
it was the best night of my entire life.
And I got home that night...
I got home that night, and my dad was still awake,
like, reading angry under one
lamp, just like... [grunts]
And I went up to him and I went, "Hey!
I'm gonna be a Democrat."
[audience laughing]
"And I'm gonna vote for Bill Clinton."
And without looking up at me, my dad just said,
"You have the moral backbone
of a chocolate éclair."
You know, how you talk to a child.
So, here's the end of that story.
That was 1992. Let's flash
forward five years to 1997.
It is now 1997. I am a sophomore in high school,
Bill Clinton is in his second term as president.
And on the morning that the
Monica Lewinsky scandal breaks
on the cover of The New York Times.
It had been on the Drudge Report,
and then it was on the cover
of The New York Times.
That morning, I wake up to the
newspaper hitting me in the face.
I am a teenager asleep in bed, and
the newspaper hits me in the face
and falls open on my stomach.
And I open my eyes to see my dad
standing there dressed for work,
and he says,
"The other shoe just dropped."
[audience laughing and applauding]
And then my dad went in to work
to find out that his law firm had been hired
to defend Bill Clinton.
[audience cheering]
Good night, Chicago.
[audience cheering]
[instrumental music playing]
John Mulaney: The Comeback Kid (2015)
Moderator: Maskath3