Mo Amer: Wild World (2025) Movie Script
1
Now that I've lost everything to you
You say you wanna start something new
And it's breakin' my heart
You're leavin'
Baby, I'm grievin'
But if you wanna leave, take good care
Hope you have
A lot of nice things to wear
But then a lot of nice things
Turn bad out there
Oh, baby, baby, it's a wild world
It's hard to get by just upon a smile
Oh, baby, baby, it's a wild world
Make some noise for my brother, Mo Amer!
Fuck DJ Khaled.
Yup.
Biteezak.
Biteezak.
Biteezak.
I really...
I did it in my previous special,
and it means "in your ass."
If you haven't seen it,
it means "in your ass."
I genuinely thought I would never
do it again, to be honest with you.
I never thought, because I get Biteezaked
on the street on a regular basis.
And it's always Mexicans,
it's always a Mexican guy.
I'll be walking down the street
and he'll be like, "Hey, Mo!"
I'll be like,
"Don't look back, Mo. Don't look back."
"Come on, bro."
"I'm your biggest fan, man!"
I look back, he's like,
"In your ass, bitch!"
I'm like, "Oh no!"
"Why, Jose, why?"
But DJ Khaled 100% deserves a Biteezak.
100% a Biteezak.
It's a bummer, because he's one of us.
He's Palestinian and he's not speaking up.
He's not even acknowledging it,
which makes it more agonizing.
And I still follow him on Instagram.
I still follow him on Instagram.
I do, and a lot of people message me,
"Why are you still following
DJ Khaled on Instagram?"
I was like, "I gotta see what he's doing."
"So I can make fun of his bitch-ass,
it's very important."
And I'm a hyper-self-aware human being,
I'm, like, hyper-self-aware.
But every time I see him on Instagram,
I'm like, "You fat piece of shit."
"Old fat-ass, punk-ass, fat-ass ho."
"Old fat-ass, bitch-ass,
punk-ass, fat-ass."
"Eating maqluba all the time,
fat-ass, bitch-ass."
"How do you have side titties?
Who the hell has side titties?"
"Old fat-ass, side-titty-having.
Look, there's another titty."
"Another one, another titty."
My friend goes, "Hey, bro, you're fat."
I was like,
"I'm athletic fat, it's very different."
"I bench 300 pounds,
he's bench-pressing sandwiches."
"Old punk-ass, bitch-ass, fat-ass."
Because you gotta say something.
You gotta say something,
you can't say nothing.
And what you say and when you say it
is everything, right?
When I was writing Season 2,
we came back from the strike October 1st.
Then October 7th happened
and all hell broke loose.
And I decided to come out to D.C.,
I joined a JVP rally.
It was Jewish Voice for Peace,
a bunch of young...
That's right.
It was really dope,
all these young Jewish people
and young Palestinians
trying to do the right thing.
And I came in front of Congress
and they're like, "Would you speak?"
I was like, "It's not really
the stages that I'm accustomed to,
to be honest with you."
I was like, "I'll go last."
You don't want to go up in the middle.
And then somebody follows you like,
"Fuck them, kill them all!"
Then it'll be in the paper the next day,
"Anti-Semitic, Semitic comedian last night
joins anti-Semitic,
Semitic rally in Washington, D.C."
But I wanted to use my art form.
Because I feel like stand-up
is the last free art form.
So I called up the D.C. Improv.
And I asked them,
"Listen, I want to use the venue
which I've sold out
a hundred times plus in my career."
And they denied me. I was like, "Oh shit."
I looked at my manager, I was like,
"I don't give a shit, find me any venue,
I don't care where."
And the irony of the whole situation,
the venue that let me do
what I needed to do
was a gay German beer bar.
They were like,
"Oh yeah, we love
Mo Amer, please, yeah, come here, yeah."
"Give me a hug, you're cuddly,
yeah, it's good, yeah."
He was like, "Use our basement
Monday and Tuesday."
"However, we're fully booked
on Wednesday, you know."
I was like, "I don't need to know
what's happening here on Wednesday."
But I did it, I filmed it,
I didn't put it out.
Because it was so angry and emotional.
And I decided to focus on the only
Palestinian-American show on television,
that's what I wanted to focus on.
Ever!
I put all my energy into that.
I put my heart and soul into that.
And in the meantime,
I was doing these pop-ups in Houston.
Very small shows, just to see
what my community was going through.
And to my surprise,
all these angry white people
were snatching up the tickets.
I showed up one night to my show,
before I even grabbed the microphone,
this lady goes, "You tell them, baby."
"You tell them exactly how you feel."
"They told me, do my research."
"I done did my research."
Israel fucked up so bad,
and now rednecks
are supporting Palestine? This is crazy.
I had to ask, like,
"Ma'am, what's your name?"
She goes, "Myrtle." I was like, "Myrtle?"
"Hot damn, Myrtle,
I'm gonna take you
to every single news interview I do
from now on for the rest of my life."
Especially with these interviews,
sometimes journalists
try to trip you up and shit.
Be sitting there, be like,
"Mo, before we discuss Season 2,
do you condemn Hamas?"
I'd be like, "One second. Myrtle, please?"
"I got you, Mohammed,
I got you, baby, yeah."
"You trying to trip up my man
Mohammed, that's all, yeah."
"Uh-huh, that's a damn gotcha question.
That's a lose-lose, as they call it."
"Uh-huh, well, let me
educate your dumb ass, okay?"
"You ever heard of the Nakba? Huh? No?"
"In 1948, they expelled
over 750,000 Palestinians."
"Eviscerated over 500 villages.
God knows how many they murdered."
"No, Mohammed,
let me cook, baby, let me cook."
"And I dug a little further,
did more research
and found out there's a half a million
Palestinians living in Santiago, Chile."
"I said, 'What the hell
they doing in Santiago, Chile?'"
"And then I dug further and found out
most of them is Christian. I was like,
'Hold on a second, Palestinian,
Christians, Bethlehem, Nazareth.'"
"Oh my God, Jesus is Palestinian.
Done blew my mind."
"Of course he was Palestinian,
no wonder the Jews wanted to kill him."
"Okay, take it easy. Time-out, Myrtle,
time-out. Oh shit, take it easy."
"Sometimes they go too far."
You know that there is four cities
in America named Palestine?
One of them happens to be in Texas.
I just imagine during this broadcast
there's two Texans
living in Palestine, Texas,
confused, you know what I mean?
They'd be like,
"What's going on in Palestine, Jebediah?"
"Everything's fine here."
"No, not this Palestine,
original Palestine, Palestine."
"Wait, there's another Palestine?"
"Yeah, where Jesus come from."
"Wait, Jesus from Texas?"
"Yeah, his name is Jess now.
His name is Jess."
Peace and blessings be upon him.
This may surprise you.
One of my dear friends, he helped me
on the show, he happens to be Jewish.
He calls himself a recovering Zionist,
which is hilarious.
I didn't realize while filming the show,
he was going through
his own set of emotions.
He'd come up to me like,
"Mo, I figured something out."
I'm like, "What?" He goes,
"I figured out what Israel is to me."
I was like, "What?"
He goes,
"Israel is like the baby that you have
that you love so much, and then
it grows up to be a school shooter."
I was like, "God damn."
I didn't say it, he said it,
you know what I mean?
See why I locked your phones up?
In all honesty, I'm actually
very jealous of Jewish people, okay?
I am, because you guys
work very well together.
All right?
If Jewish people own bagel shops,
they all come together
and they agree on one price.
They're like, "Okay, who owns the bagels?"
This is my bad Jewish impression.
"You got the bagels? You own
a bagel, bitty. You had the bagel."
"Okay, $5, we all agree it's $5?"
"Okay, it's $5."
Arabs, on the other hand,
we suck right now.
We suck! We suck it! We suck so bad!
And we didn't suck in history,
we don't suck, but we suck.
We've invented
many amazing things in history.
Universities, we have algebra, soap.
Yeah, bitch.
Soap, coffee, we've done all that.
But we can't work together.
If an Arab guy has a falafel shop
and another guy has a falafel shop
across the street,
he'd be like, "How much? $4.99?"
"Fuck you, $3.99."
"$3.99, fuck you, $2.99."
"$2.99, free, fuck you, free."
"I'll get the loan,
we go out of business and die."
"Thank God."
What are we doing?
What are we doing?
It's already hard enough out here.
And Season 2 was not easy to make.
It was not easy to make.
While I was making it and even after,
just listening to all the comments,
it's very fucking frustrating.
I had one comment I saw,
it said... Imagine this.
It said, "Mo, I saw Season 2, Episode 8."
"You're making the IDF look bad, Mo."
"You're making the IDF look bad."
I was like, "I'm making...
the Israeli occupation force look bad?
I'm the one who's doing this?"
"Not the fact that they're carpet-bombing
an entire civilian population?"
"Get the fuck out of my face, please."
It's so absurd.
You can't trust the government,
have to trust ourselves.
And clearly that's why
I chose this location.
To be across the street
from the fucking crazies, okay?
I wanted to tell them,
"We're not scared, we're here."
"I don't give a fuck what you do,
we're together."
Can't be scared.
Can't be scared.
The truth is the truth, man.
I can't trust the government.
I don't know what's going on.
There's weird relationships happening,
Elon Musk, they broke up.
I don't know... And Elon Musk
is a weird-ass dude, you gotta admit.
He's not even a real person,
I don't think.
His human skin suit
is failing on a regular basis.
He's not real, he has a chip in his brain.
That shit's restarting all the time.
Gaaah!
His son, I don't like to talk about kids.
His son's in the Oval Office talking about
"Shut your mouth, you shut your mouth.
You shut your whore mouth."
I don't know if he said "whore,"
but it felt like it, it was real ugly.
Whatever his name is, E equals MC squared,
I'm not good at math, unfortunately.
And his dad is on
the biggest stages in the world,
just out of his mind, on the biggest
stages in the world talking about...
I'm not going to do the full salute,
but you know what I'm talking about.
You know...
"Anti-Semitic, Semitic, white supremacist
comedian last night in Washington, D.C.
goes on a mini Nazi-salute rampage."
My picture in the paper.
He's not a real person. He's not.
I feel like if I ever see him again,
I'm going to try to remove his face.
I feel like if I remove his face,
there'll be that little guy
from Men in Black in there.
And he'll be like
"The secret of the universe
is on Epstein's list."
"What's on the list?" "Epstein's list."
"What's on the list?" "Epstein."
No!
We're never going to know.
Every time I dab my forehead
I feel like I'm Louis Armstrong,
I'm not gonna lie.
I see trees of green
Red roses too
I see them bloom
From me and you
And I think to myself
What a wonderful world
Hell yeah, man, that shit was fire.
Very cool.
Well, my world
is forever changed because I had a baby.
Yeah.
I'm looking for a mom for him now, and...
Well, I'm Muslim,
I got three slots open, so...
She makes me do that joke,
my wife loves that joke.
I'm not even fucking around,
she loves that.
She absolutely loves that joke.
And we were in Doha,
I was doing a show for 5,000 people.
Before I go on stage she's like,
"You have to tell this joke,
you have to, it's going to kill."
I was like, "First of all, you don't know
shit about stand-up comedy, okay?"
"Second of all, geographically,
this is the worst location
I could do this joke in."
She was like, "Why?" I was like,
"Because all the wives are there. Yeah."
But I do it just to appease her.
And nothing, not a single laugh.
And all of a sudden I hear...
And I look over and it's my wife.
I was like "Oh, great."
"Thanks a lot honey, awesome."
It's wild, because she got pregnant
and I got all the symptoms, it's crazy.
It's a real thing,
it's called sympathy symptoms.
I had all of them.
She got pregnant, I got nausea,
I had diarrhea,
I was vomiting all the time.
She was perfectly fine, she was jogging,
doing fucking yoga and shit.
Perfectly fine,
every morning I'd be vomiting.
She'd walk up, "Are you okay?"
I was like, "Bitch, I'm pregnant,
have some sympathy."
"Are your titties sore?
Because I feel weird."
It was wild,
all my symptoms went away though
the moment I heard
my baby's heartbeat, it's true.
All of them. You say "aw." I was relieved,
I was like, "I can go back to smoking."
I was like, "Thank God."
I was like,
"You're pregnant, I'm not pregnant."
And then I locked in the doctor
and the hospital as you're supposed to,
and then she starts talking
to her rich white friend Denise.
And Denise was like,
"You need to get a doula and a midwife
and have a natural home birth, okay?"
I was like, "You can't trust Denise.
She wears shoes inside of the house
and no shoes outside of the house.
You can't trust this bitch."
I didn't want to alter anything,
"We're keeping the doctor."
We'll go meet this doula and midwife,
they were highly reputable.
However, we walked in and they go,
"Welcome to midwifery services."
Which the word midwifery, quite frankly,
is a little off-putting. You know?
It just feels like some sorcery
is involved or something. Midwifery!
I don't know, it's just weird. But then
also, they're wearing football jerseys
that say "number one home birther"
on the back of it.
Like, "This is what we're doing?"
"We're gonna have Tom Brady
delivering our baby? This is weird."
But we went along with it,
we hired them, but they didn't prep me.
They didn't say, "Hey, Mo, this is what
you do the moment the contraction hits."
Nothing. I just hear...
I think the home is possessed.
I start praying.
I seek God's protection.
There is no power except through God.
Lighting incense and sage.
I'm like, whatever works in this bitch.
And I walk in
and she's mid-contraction. She's...
And I ask the dumbest question possible.
"Is it time?"
She's like, "What the hell do you think?"
I was like, "Sorry."
I get on the phone, I was like,
"Hello, midwifery bitches, listen."
"She's having contractions,
I don't know what to do."
"Call back
when they're five minutes apart."
I said, "Fantastic." I hung up the phone.
I went back in the room,
she starts to have another contraction.
So I started to give advice.
I was like,
"Honey, spread those knees apart, okay?"
"Loosen up them hips,
spread those knees apart."
She goes, "You don't know
what the hell you're talking about!"
I was like, "You right."
"I don't know
what the hell I'm talking about,
but this is what you wanted."
"You wanted to have a natural home birth,
and now you have a comedian delivering
our baby. That's what's happening."
"Knock knock, who's there?"
"Mo Amer, that's who's here."
"I'm not trying to be an asshole. If your
knees touch, nothing's gonna come out!"
And then she has another contraction
and she does this odd
surfer-like motion, she goes...
So I just go, "That's right, baby,
ride it like a wave, like this."
She goes, "You don't know
what you're talking about!"
I'm like, "You right." I get on the phone,
I was like, "Midwifery bitches, listen."
"Put on your jerseys, it's game time."
Sure enough,
they show up with their jerseys on.
The doula and the midwife
walk into the bedroom.
Moments later,
my wife starts another contraction.
The doula goes, "Baby, you gotta spread
those knees apart. Loosen up them hips."
My wife goes, "Don't you say anything."
I was like, "I'm not saying anything,"
she does the surfer thing. Goes...
And the doula goes, "That's right, baby,
ride it like a wave, like this."
I couldn't help myself, I was like,
"I fucking told you!" And I walked out.
I started smoking a joint,
I'm not gonna lie, I went outside.
I was like,
"This is overwhelming, what are we doing?"
This poor woman, for 27 hours
with no epidural
stuck at six centimeters
the last seven hours.
Okay, she was twerking with no music on.
She's lost complete control of her legs.
I was like, "You keep twerking like that,
I'll get you pregnant again, sweetheart."
I didn't say it, but I thought it.
I called an audible, was like,
"Game over, midwifery bitches."
"I'm taking her to the hospital,
this is absurd."
I wheel her in, nurse sees me,
goes, "What's going on?"
I was like, "We've been in labor 27 hours,
she's stuck at six centimeters
the last 7 hours." She's like, "How do
you know?" I was like, "I'm the nurse."
She's like, "My God,
we have to get her in right away."
"We have to give her an epidural,
it needs to be sanitized."
"So you need to leave."
I was like, "Fantastic."
I went outside in front of the hospital,
lit another joint, I'm so stressed out.
And then she texted me from
the hospital bed. She goes, "Oh my God."
"I feel so much better."
"I'm having a contraction
as I'm texting you and I feel nothing."
And this part really pissed me off,
she goes, "Oh my God, we are so stupid."
I saw red, I was like, "We? How dare you
fucking lump me into this shit?"
"I tried to talk you out
of this midwifery shit."
"Delete."
It's not the move.
I was like, "Honey, I wanted to
support you in your home birth journey."
"But I knew it was a massive red flag
when they were wearing
fucking football jerseys!"
"Delete."
I was like, "Honey, I'm happy
you're happy." Send. That was the move.
I get up to the hospital room,
now we're both high, you know?
She's like, "Hey." I'm like, "Hey."
Then she does it again, she goes,
"So much better, we're so stupid."
I was like, "Yeah, we're so stupid."
This poor woman again,
stuck at six centimeters,
almost another seven hours go by.
Finally, our doctor shows up,
she goes, "We have to get the baby out."
I was like, "Yeah, no shit,
we have to get the baby out."
"Breaking news, we have to get the baby,
it's the whole purpose of this exercise
is to get the baby out."
She's like, "Calm down,
but we have to do a C-section."
It's like, "Whatever's best for my wife
and baby, that's all I care about."
And then she introduces another doctor.
And she goes, "He'll be assisting me in
the birth of your son and the procedure."
And I looked at him,
and he's wearing a yarmulke.
And I'm like,
"This is a setup, it's a setup!"
"Mossad's trying to take my Palestinian
baby is what's happening!"
I hate that I feel this way.
And then he walks up and he goes,
"Peace be upon you."
I was like, "That's exactly
what I would say if I was Mossad, yeah."
"And peace be unto you."
Then he walks over,
he starts to have
a conversation with my wife,
but he's really speaking to me.
I caught it, he goes,
"Listen, as a Moroccan Jew, I'm just here
to assist in the birth of your son."
"Again, as a Moroccan Jew
who believes in God,
I'm just here to assist
in the birth of your son."
I was like, "I see what you're doing."
"You walked in, you know I'm Palestinian,
can't have this political conversation."
"You said, 'Salaam alaikum, '
take the edge off, walked to my wife
said you're a Moroccan Jew,
let me know, 'I'm from North Africa.'
'I'm almost Arab, but I'm not Arab,
almost Arab, but I'm kind of Arab.'
'I am Jewish, but not Zionist,
is that cool?'"
I was like, "Fuck it, cool, but I'm
watching you, Dr. Mossad."
And then they give me
the one-size-fits-all scrubs.
Which is a lie,
it's not one-size-fits-all at all.
I'm just walking in like this
into the delivery room.
And I watched the entire
C-section like a psycho.
They said no one has ever done this
in the history of all the procedures.
Like I knew what they were doing.
I was like, "Is that a kidney?
She has two, move that out of the way."
"Good, just take it out of there."
They brought out my son,
and they're like, "Take a picture."
I was like, "I don't want to take
a picture." He's like, "Take a picture."
I was like, "Bro!"
"My Palestinian baby's been stuck
at this checkpoint last 40 hours."
"There's no time for photos."
So I cleaned him up,
and I brought him to his mom.
And she was in tears,
and I thought I would be overwhelmed.
And nothing. I felt nothing,
I was trying, I was like...
Nothing happened.
And apparently this is true.
For men, it happens much later.
Thankfully for me, it happened that night
when I did the skin-to-skin.
I put him on my chest, and I lost my shit.
I just completely lost it,
I was like, "Oh my God."
"Oh my God, it's a real baby."
"I got to get my 401K together,
habibi, I got to get it together."
"Baba's going to take care of you.
Don't you worry, habibi."
"I want to let you know
I named you after your great-grandfather."
"And your grandfather,
and your great-great-great-grandfather."
"And your great-great... You have,
like, seven Muslim names, habibi."
"It's going to be really hard for you
growing up in America."
"It's going to be so hard."
"But you're going to know
exactly where you come from, habibi."
And the nurse walks in, she goes,
"Are you okay?" I was like, "I'm fine."
"I'm fine, I just, you know,
in the beginning of the pregnancy,
I had all the symptoms. You know?"
"I had nausea, diarrhea, I had everything.
And I didn't feel anything."
"Until now, it's all hitting me
like a train all at one time."
"And I named him after
his great-great-grandfather."
"Praise God."
"He looks like his great-grandfather."
"You don't know what subhanallah means,
but I'll show you a picture later."
She's like, "No, he's sucking
on your titty." I was like, "Oh God."
"Let's get him some milk," I said. Yeah.
And that's how my son Ali was born, guys.
Little Alilushi.
And I did give him seven names.
I was very deliberate about this.
Because I want him to know
exactly where he comes from.
It's very important.
It's very, very important.
And that's why I put it
in the last episode of Season 2.
My teacher said,
"Name your great-grandfather
from your father's side."
And I couldn't name him. I had names,
but I couldn't exactly pinpoint it.
And he goes, "This is the lineage that you
come from. How easily are you erased?"
I was like, "Bars!"
So I made it my whole purpose
to understand where I come from.
I take it so seriously
that in Season 2 of the last episode
every cutaway that you see in Palestine
is our actual village of Burin.
It's where we come from.
Because...
Because it's like a historical archive.
No matter what happens,
my son can look at that and say,
"This is where I come from."
You understand?
It's very important.
Yes.
And I've always been myself.
I started stand-up as a 14-year-old kid
in the South, okay?
Most places I went to
have never even seen an Arab person.
And I've always been myself.
And very early on in my career,
I was encouraged to change my name.
And go to LA,
and don't tell them you're Palestinian.
That was a big thing. I was like, I could
never do that, I would lose myself.
However, after 9/11, I was Italian
for a solid two months, okay?
It was just for a couple of months.
Because I've always felt
like a fish out of water.
I'm sure a lot of you
can relate, you know?
I was born in Kuwait,
I went to a New English School.
Which is a British English school.
And I spoke with a British accent.
Which means I got to America
and I got my ass kicked immediately,
you understand?
I showed up to school, "Hello!"
You know what I mean? It was that.
I had no concept of cool,
wear this and don't wear that.
I had nothing, okay?
And I'm so blessed that I met
these two friends that put me on the game.
It was Bruce, who was Black,
and Jose, who was Mexican.
And Bruce, I found out very quickly
about Black people
that if there's a truth
that needs to be told,
if you're fucking up with your attire,
you will get scolded
in front of the entire school, okay?
I didn't know this, I would show up
to school with the wrong shoes
and Bruce would be like, "Oh shit!"
"Everybody gather around."
"Jose, come see your boy."
"Moe's wearing Pro Wings, they're from
Payless. They're 13.99, he's poor."
I was like, "Oh."
I was like, "Oh, I'm poor?"
You know what I mean?
But Jose was a little bit more tender.
He was a little bit nicer
when I was fucking up.
I'd be wearing the wrong thing,
and Jose would walk up like,
"Bro, like,
you look like a bitch, bro."
"Who the hell dressed you, bro?"
"I'm not gonna lie, I wanna
slap the shit out of you right now, bro."
"Listen, we can't play today, okay?"
"But maybe tomorrow, okay?
Maybe tomorrow."
"Listen, I'm gonna walk away,
don't fist bump me, okay?"
It was like that.
And I didn't realize that British English
was very different from American English.
So I would really fuck myself
pretty regularly, right?
My brother got me a little kitten
to help with, like, PTSD.
Well, the issue is that
I spoke British English.
At home, I would never say "cat,"
I would say "Here, pussy. Here, pussy."
And no one corrected me at home.
I was just, "Here, pussy."
So I decide, at recess,
to disclose this new information
to my friend Bruce.
I walk up to him, I was like,
"Bruce, guess what."
And Bruce was like, "What?"
"I have a pussy, isn't it fantastic?"
He was like, "What? What'd you say, man?"
"I don't think I heard you correctly."
"I have a pussy,
it's small and fluffy, you wanna see it?"
Bruce, immediately,
"Everybody gather around."
"Jose, come see your boy."
In front of the whole school,
he was like, "Mo, do you have a pussy?"
I was like,
"Yes, I have a pussy, isn't it fantastic?"
And Jose lost his mind,
he was like, "What, bro?"
"Are you serious? You have a vagina?"
"For real, bro? Like..."
"You've been my friend
and I didn't know you had a vagina?"
"Is that for real, bro?"
"You kidding me?"
Then he paused and he goes,
"Can I see it, bro?"
I'm so innocent, I didn't know better.
"You have to come to
my house if you want to see my pussy."
Horribly traumatizing.
I started stand-up at a very young age.
And I toured all throughout the South.
And I'm dead serious, I was
their first interaction of an Arab person
most of the time,
like a high percentage of the time.
To the point where people
were shocked in the South.
They'd walk up and be like,
"You sure you're Arab?"
"You don't look Arab."
Should I have
a camel with me all the time?
Is that one of the main markers
of being an Arab?
You have a camel just, "Excuse me,
coming through with my camel,
just being Arab."
"Don't pet him, he bites."
You know what I mean? Like, what the fuck?
It's so odd, all right?
And I was doing shows pre-9/11
and then post-9/11, around 2003,
I get a call to go to Houma, Louisiana.
Which is just shy of New Orleans.
Straight-up Cajun hick country.
This guy calls me up, he goes, "Hello!"
"Is this Mo Amer?"
I said, "Yes, this is Mo..."
"Boy, I done heard
a lot of good things about you, baby."
"Uh-huh."
"Liten here."
This guy didn't say one S
the entire conversation.
He was like, "Liten here, I own a club
here called the Lanya Muted Cafe."
I was like, "Music?"
He go, "That right, Muted Cafe."
"We gonna do comedy here on Wenday night."
I was like, "Wednesday night?"
He go, "That right, Wenday night."
He go, "You come on down."
"I only got one hotel room, though,
with two beds."
"So you can bring your own opening act."
I was like,
"Okay, how much you gonna pay?"
He goes, "I'm gonna pay you about $1,000."
I was like, "Shit, baby,
I'm on my way, uh-huh."
"Me and my camel heading out east."
I was very excited, you know.
2003, make 1,000 bucks in one night.
So I called up my friend Gary Bell.
He's a comedian who lives
right on the border of Texas, Louisiana.
And he also "Talk like this, yeah."
And I booked him,
not because he's funny, he's not.
He's a horrible comedian, never gonna
make it, never had a chance of making it.
This is the most famous he'll get,
is me talking shit about him on stage.
But I brought him
as a layer of protection, you know.
Just in case some shit goes down, he could
be like, "Nah, y'all leave him alone."
"He a regular Mohammed here."
You know, that's
the only reason I booked him,
and he knew that.
We get there, we check into the hotel,
we go to the Lanyard Muted Cafe.
Gary Bell goes on stage
and they immediately hate him.
One guy goes,
"Who booked him, motherfucker?" Like this.
Gary starts to freak out,
he wants to be more relatable.
He goes, "Y'all ever been hunting?"
A guy goes, "I'm gonna kill you
off this stage right now."
I had to go on the stage
and take the mic from Gary.
The only time
I've ever done this in my entire career.
I do my set, I'm killing.
I was like, "It's definitely you, Gary,
not the crowd."
I walk off stage,
the club owner gives me $1,000.
I'm like, "I am rich."
Then I turn around, and I see a detective
and a police officer standing there.
And the detective goes, "Come here, boy."
And historically, nothing good
comes after, "Come here, boy."
And this scenario was no different, right?
He goes,
"Can I have your driver's license?"
I was like, "Yeah, here you go,
here's my driver's license."
And he calls it in, he goes,
"Driver's license number one, two, seven,
nine, seven, six, two, seven." Like this.
And the lady immediately called back,
"Yep, that him."
I was like, "That him?"
"Yep, that you." I was like, "That me?"
"Yep, that you." "You sure it's me?"
I was like, "Yeah, that you." I was like,
"Who is me, who is you, who is we?"
"We all one." Right?
He was like, "Nah, baby, just you."
I was like, "Oh shit."
And he takes me outside and there's, like,
a dozen police officers waiting for me.
There's six squad cars,
all their lights are on.
The crowd's now starting
to gather from the show.
Another cop pulls up and rolls down
the window, he goes, "Is that him?"
I'm like, "Is that you, Jebediah?"
What the fuck is going on, right?
Now another detective
walks up to me, he goes,
"What are you doing here
In Houma, Louisiana?"
And I'm standing there
next to the marquee that says
"Now appearing, Mo Amer, at 8 p.m."
And it has my picture, I'm like,
"Bro, I don't know about
your previous investigations, but...
this is the worst detective job
you've ever done, all right?"
Now the crowd's chiming in,
"Leave him alone, he was funny."
One guy said.
Then another guy goes,
"If you're gonna arrest anybody,
you need to arrest
that motherfucker Gary Bell."
"For impersonating a comedian."
And then I was like,
"Where the hell is Gary?"
"This is precisely the scenario
I brought his bitch ass for."
"And he's nowhere to be found." Right?
It's crazy, then the cop goes,
"What were you doing in Japan and Korea?"
I was like, "Wait, time-out."
"How the fuck do you know
I even went to Japan and Korea?"
He goes,
"Well, we done searched your room."
I was like,
"Oh man, you searched my room."
"Wow, this is going to
blow your mind, okay?"
"Because outside of Houma,
there's a whole another world out there."
"I had a dream as a kid to be a comedian."
"And that dream has already
taken me to Japan and Korea."
"And most of those shows
were actually for U.S. troops."
"Because I said to myself, after 9/11,
I was so scared to be myself."
"If I could be myself in front of them,
I could be myself in front of anybody.
That's what I was doing."
His brain melted.
I was like, "I know what you think."
"You think I'm a terrorist."
"You think I came to Houma, Louisiana...
of all the targets in America."
"Listen, man, if I was a terrorist
and I showed up with a bomb
to Houma, Louisiana,
I would be confused on what
to blow up in this sumbitch, okay?"
"I got to be real with you,
this place looks like it's pre-blown up."
"If I were to blow up a bomb here,
I'd just be redecorating the place."
"And I would resolve
your crack problem that's clearly here."
And the cop sincerely goes,
"Yeah, we sure do got a crack problem."
He gave me a trash bag
full of my belongings
and instructed me
to go to this other officer.
And he was going to escort me
back to the hotel.
As we're walking off, Gary pops out
of the bushes behind the club.
I was like,
"Gary, where the hell you been?"
And he very sincerely goes,
"They're trying to kill me."
I was like, "I'm gonna kill you,
get your ass in the car."
And weirdly, I felt worse for him
than I did for myself.
We get in the cop car,
he takes us to the hotel.
As we pull up, the cop apologizes to me.
He goes, "Man, I am so sorry
this happened to you, sincerely."
"But it wasn't us, okay?"
"It was the hotel
who called the police on you."
I was like, "Oh my God, officer,
Gary, we're going in this hotel."
"We're going to confront
the security guard."
And I walk in very aggressively,
"Who was it? Who called the cops on me?"
And this lady comes out from the back.
And she's wearing a security jacket
and she's missing most of her front teeth.
And every time she spoke, she either
blew wind or whistled the entire time.
I was like,
"Why'd you call the cops on me?"
She goes, "Hold on a second."
"Hold on a second now."
I was like,
"Are you watching a basketball game?"
"What the fuck is going on?"
"It sounds like sneakers on a hardwood
floor, I don't know what's happening."
"Hold on a sec."
All these stray dogs were showing up,
I'm like, "Whose dogs are these?"
I was like,
"Why did you call the cops on me?"
She goes, "Well,
I've seen the name Mohammed,
and I was like, 'Hey, we've got
a terrorist situation here.'"
I was like, "That's all it took?
You just saw the name Mohammed
and we've got a terrorist situation here?"
And then she goes,
"Who's whistling?" I was like...
I was like, "Okay."
I was like, "Yeah."
I was like, "I'm so sorry,
but you can't call the cops on somebody
just because of their name."
"You have to have real evidence."
"And I'm so sorry our country's failed you
and you believe everything
they're spewing at you
through this television screen."
"That's what they want."
"They want us to be divided so they can
conquer all of us, don't you get that?"
And unfortunately she heard none of it.
She goes, "Well, hold on a second,
I've seen the name Mohammed
and I was like, 'Hey, we've
got a terrorist situation here.'"
I looked at the officer,
"You definitely have a crack problem here,
I'm not gonna lie."
And the cop looks at me and goes,
"I figured out something."
I was like, "What?
What else could there possibly be?"
He goes, "We searched your room."
I was like, "You said that."
He goes, "It was bothering me,
I think I figured it out."
And he looks at Gary, he goes,
"Gary, the porn magazines
are yours, aren't they?"
I looked at Gary, I was like,
"You brought porn magazines?"
I was like, "We're sharing a room, bro.
Like, how gross are you?"
And I walk into the room
and the whole room is in shambles
except Gary's bed, it's perfectly made.
And they left all the porn magazines out
just to let us know
"We know what y'all queers doing in here."
And I looked down and I counted,
I was like, "Twelve?"
"You brought a dozen porn magazines?"
"Bro, how much jerking off
were you going to do tonight?"
I was like,
"Thank God she called the cops."
I was like, "She stopped the other
terrorist plot from happening that night."
But I was always,
I was always a suspected terrorist.
Until I got my TSA PreCheck.
If you don't know what TSA PreCheck is,
you go into the airport security office,
you give them $100,
and you fill out the paperwork,
you're no longer a suspected terrorist.
It's widely known
that terrorists hate paperwork.
And I'm so relieved because TSA agents
are very aggressive, bro.
I don't know what they're mad about,
but they're like, "Take out your laptop!"
"Put it in a thing! Put it in its own
separate compartment, okay?"
"And you push it in.
I'm not pushing it in, you push it in."
"See it all the way through,
take off your shoes."
God forbid you bring water.
Holy shit, okay.
You bring water, they're like, "Aaah!"
I'm like, "Acqua Panna?
What's wrong with Acqua Panna?"
Like, "You can't bring this."
They fuck your head up,
they'll walk three feet
and they go, "You can't drink this here,
but you can drink it here if you like."
And you don't want to be wasteful,
so you're waterboarding yourself. "God."
"Sorry, guys, I brought a liter.
Just come on, just go ahead of me."
So fru... I saw them berating
this old white woman in a wheelchair.
She had apple juice
and they're just going off on her.
And they're like, "You can't bring this!"
And she's like, "But...
I need it for my diabetes."
I was like,
"Hold on a second, what the fuck?"
They threw it away
in the trash aggressively.
Like, "Shut up, whore!
Not today, Al-Qaeda!"
"Not today, Osama!" I'm like, "Relax, bro,
she needs apple juice,
just give her the fucking apple juice."
Similar scenario,
older man, he's in a wheelchair.
It seems like he's had
some sort of stroke.
Because he's struggling to walk
and they're making him
go through the X-ray machine.
And he's walking in like this,
and they go, "Put your arms up!"
Guy can't lift his right arm,
so he grabs it with his left hand.
He lifts it up,
and the guy goes, "Stay still!"
"Stay still!"
I was like, "Fuck it,
I'm going to shoot everybody."
"I'm going to shoot everybody. TSA
has radicalized me, that's it, it's over."
What is this infatuation
about 3.4 ounces? I need to know, okay?
They're just like...
"What's wrong?"
"It says 4.2 ounces, that's what's wrong."
"Well, 80% of the liquid is gone,
what's the problem?"
"It doesn't matter,
the bottle is 4.2 ounces."
Like, is this fluid that can be made
into a bomb or something?
Is that what the issue is?
Where there's no restrictions
on how many 3.4 ounces
you could bring. I mean,
technically, you could just
mix them shits later.
Please God, nobody do this. Please, God.
Please God, nobody do this.
"Anti-Semitic, Semitic, white supremacist,
terrorist comedian
last night in Washington, D.C.
promotes making some kind of liquid bombs
at the Warner Theatre."
"Mo, do you have any comments?"
"Hold on a second. Myrtle, please."
"Hold on a second, son of a bitch."
She's like, "What goes around
comes around, son of a bitch."
Maybe it's true,
what goes around comes around.
Maybe that's why the heightened
racism is happening right now.
Maybe that's what
white people are so afraid of.
Not the white people here, don't worry.
Hug a white person.
Hug a white person if they're next to you.
I'm not talking about you.
But genuinely, is that what the fear is?
Because we know what happened,
we know what happened
with the Indigenous population in America,
African Americans with slavery,
the Chinese with the railroad.
Mexicans, what were Mexicans doing?
They were just coming back. This is where
they come from, they're just coming back.
And they say that DNA...
They say DNA carries traumatic memories.
So they don't know
why they're coming back.
They're just like,
"I don't know, bro, pero, like..."
"I don't know where I'm going,
pero, like, necesito, bro, like..."
"I just gotta go, bro."
"I didn't do nothing, my great-grandfather
forgot something, vato, that's all, bro."
We have Muslims,
all shapes and sizes and colors
dealing with discrimination.
I mean, who's next? White people.
Maybe that's the fear,
it's going to come back to them.
Maybe they have a scenario in their head
where there's a white guy
walking into a house of pies
and there's a Black guy
working behind the counter.
And he walks in, he's like, "Excuse me."
"Can I get a slice
of that pecan pie, please?"
And the Black guy
behind the counter is like, "Sorry."
"We don't serve your kind
around here, cracker." You know?
"Oh, you want to speak to the manager?
Say, Jose!"
And Jose's like,
"What are you doing here, gringo?"
"Like, come on, bro,
you can't be sitting here."
"We got real customers coming in, bro."
"Like..."
"Ew, man..."
"Come on, bro."
"You want to speak to the owner?
He Chinese, bro."
"They own everything now."
And the white guy was like, "Well,
fuck you guys." And he just walks out.
No one is better than anybody else.
Nobody.
Nobody.
Bro, it seems like history
repeats itself time and time again.
My mother said to me fairly recently,
and this really jarred me.
She goes, "I feel like I'm living
the same life as my grandmothers."
And that really hit hard.
And time
is undefeated.
Time is fleeting, and time flies.
And you can't go back in time.
Some people are like,
"I'll just make up time."
You can't make up time.
You can make time,
but there's never enough time.
My friend doesn't give a shit about time.
He's like, "I'm going to go kill time."
"You're going to go kill time?
There's no time to kill."
He's like,
"I'm going to watch Love Island."
Love Island?
Next thing you know, I got sucked in,
"Huda, why are you doing this, Huda?"
"Oh, Huda, why?"
"Don't be jealous,
you just unloaded on Jeremiah."
"And he's just juggling his feelings.
Everybody's kissing everybody,
and Chelley and Ace
are not even a real relationship,
they're just in it for the fucking money."
I was like, "Oh my God, 40 episodes,
40 hours, what a waste of time."
Whatever it is,
you don't want to be ahead of your time.
If you're ahead of your time,
you're probably dead.
Everybody who dies young,
it's always like,
"Oh, he was ahead of his time."
"He was so far ahead of his time."
"So far in the future,
he just died, yeah."
Jimi Hendrix, Bob Marley,
Amy Winehouse, Chris Farley.
All ahead of their time.
Jeffrey Epstein.
Well, he was doing hard time
in the wrong place at the wrong time.
That whole situation
is a ticking time bomb.
It seems like terrible people
take forever to die.
And when they do die,
everyone's like, "It's about damn time."
"I thought that son of a bitch
was never going to die."
"I thought he had
all the time in the world."
"Yeah, it was all in due time.
You can never run away from time. Yeah."
Some people say,
"Mo, you're so ahead of your time."
"You're the first Arab-American comedian
to have a stand-up special."
"You wore a keffiyeh
in the first stand-up special."
"You made the first
Palestinian-American television show."
No, I said, "Fuck that, I don't
want to be ahead of my time."
I want to be right on time. I wanna
be in the right place at the right time.
I wanna be timely, I wanna be timeless.
I want to make it in the nick of time,
with plenty of time to spare.
So I can spend quality time
with those who really care.
The people who will be there for me
at any moment in time.
So I don't have to go back in time,
I don't have to make up time.
I can just be present
in this moment in time.
So if you really care, you should
check in on each other from time to time.
My mom always says this to me,
"If you love me, show me."
And that's why I'm so utterly frustrated
with DJ Khaled, genuinely.
No, I'm serious, he's Palestinian.
In the end, he's one of us.
And in these unprecedented times,
instead of being with the times
he's behind the times.
And for this guy, it's always dinner time.
I know, it's a fat-on-fat crime.
I didn't want to say this,
who put it in my heart? God did!
But he's not the only one
behind the times.
There's many other ones.
I'm not going to name names. Seinfeld.
I believe he said,
"I don't care about Palestine."
Well, Jerry, I care about everyone.
And it's better to kill time
than kill with your time.
Festivus for the rest of us.
I used to watch that show
in much simpler times.
What does it say about these times
that the world trusts Ms. Rachel
more than The New York Times?
Welcome to Real Time with Mo Amer. Yes.
I hate to break it to you,
but we're all going to die.
We're all going to die. You could say
we're here for a limited time only.
And time is of the essence.
I could go on and on.
Unfortunately, I'm almost out of time.
Because it's prime time
and the clock's ticking.
We're on borrowed time and every second
counts. We're down to the wire.
And in this life, there's no overtime.
And you have to remember the one
who transcends space and time.
The next thing you know, there's no time.
We thought we were big-time,
we're actually small-time.
And now we're pressed for time.
It's a race against time.
It's high time, it's crunch time,
it's go time, it's the end of times.
Until next time. Myrtle?
"Free Palestine!"
Thank you so much, Washington, D.C.
I love you from the bottom of my heart.
Thank you so much for coming out tonight.
Now I've been happy lately
Thank you.
Thinking about the good things to come
And I believe it could be
Something good has begun
Oh I've been smiling lately
Dreaming about the world as one
And I believe it could be
Some day it's going to come
'Cause out on the edge of darkness
There rides a peace train
Oh peace train take this country
Come take me home again
I love you so much, it means
the absolute world to me, thank you.
How are you? Jeez, it's great to be here.
People always say that shit, don't they?
People always say that shit,
but they don't mean it. I mean it.
Glide on the peace train
Come on now peace train
Yes, peace train holy roller
Everyone jump upon the peace train
Come on the peace train
Get your bags together
Go bring your good friends too
'Cause it's getting nearer
It soon will be with you
Now come and join the living
Now that I've lost everything to you
You say you wanna start something new
And it's breakin' my heart
You're leavin'
Baby, I'm grievin'
But if you wanna leave, take good care
Hope you have
A lot of nice things to wear
But then a lot of nice things
Turn bad out there
Oh, baby, baby, it's a wild world
It's hard to get by just upon a smile
Oh, baby, baby, it's a wild world
Make some noise for my brother, Mo Amer!
Fuck DJ Khaled.
Yup.
Biteezak.
Biteezak.
Biteezak.
I really...
I did it in my previous special,
and it means "in your ass."
If you haven't seen it,
it means "in your ass."
I genuinely thought I would never
do it again, to be honest with you.
I never thought, because I get Biteezaked
on the street on a regular basis.
And it's always Mexicans,
it's always a Mexican guy.
I'll be walking down the street
and he'll be like, "Hey, Mo!"
I'll be like,
"Don't look back, Mo. Don't look back."
"Come on, bro."
"I'm your biggest fan, man!"
I look back, he's like,
"In your ass, bitch!"
I'm like, "Oh no!"
"Why, Jose, why?"
But DJ Khaled 100% deserves a Biteezak.
100% a Biteezak.
It's a bummer, because he's one of us.
He's Palestinian and he's not speaking up.
He's not even acknowledging it,
which makes it more agonizing.
And I still follow him on Instagram.
I still follow him on Instagram.
I do, and a lot of people message me,
"Why are you still following
DJ Khaled on Instagram?"
I was like, "I gotta see what he's doing."
"So I can make fun of his bitch-ass,
it's very important."
And I'm a hyper-self-aware human being,
I'm, like, hyper-self-aware.
But every time I see him on Instagram,
I'm like, "You fat piece of shit."
"Old fat-ass, punk-ass, fat-ass ho."
"Old fat-ass, bitch-ass,
punk-ass, fat-ass."
"Eating maqluba all the time,
fat-ass, bitch-ass."
"How do you have side titties?
Who the hell has side titties?"
"Old fat-ass, side-titty-having.
Look, there's another titty."
"Another one, another titty."
My friend goes, "Hey, bro, you're fat."
I was like,
"I'm athletic fat, it's very different."
"I bench 300 pounds,
he's bench-pressing sandwiches."
"Old punk-ass, bitch-ass, fat-ass."
Because you gotta say something.
You gotta say something,
you can't say nothing.
And what you say and when you say it
is everything, right?
When I was writing Season 2,
we came back from the strike October 1st.
Then October 7th happened
and all hell broke loose.
And I decided to come out to D.C.,
I joined a JVP rally.
It was Jewish Voice for Peace,
a bunch of young...
That's right.
It was really dope,
all these young Jewish people
and young Palestinians
trying to do the right thing.
And I came in front of Congress
and they're like, "Would you speak?"
I was like, "It's not really
the stages that I'm accustomed to,
to be honest with you."
I was like, "I'll go last."
You don't want to go up in the middle.
And then somebody follows you like,
"Fuck them, kill them all!"
Then it'll be in the paper the next day,
"Anti-Semitic, Semitic comedian last night
joins anti-Semitic,
Semitic rally in Washington, D.C."
But I wanted to use my art form.
Because I feel like stand-up
is the last free art form.
So I called up the D.C. Improv.
And I asked them,
"Listen, I want to use the venue
which I've sold out
a hundred times plus in my career."
And they denied me. I was like, "Oh shit."
I looked at my manager, I was like,
"I don't give a shit, find me any venue,
I don't care where."
And the irony of the whole situation,
the venue that let me do
what I needed to do
was a gay German beer bar.
They were like,
"Oh yeah, we love
Mo Amer, please, yeah, come here, yeah."
"Give me a hug, you're cuddly,
yeah, it's good, yeah."
He was like, "Use our basement
Monday and Tuesday."
"However, we're fully booked
on Wednesday, you know."
I was like, "I don't need to know
what's happening here on Wednesday."
But I did it, I filmed it,
I didn't put it out.
Because it was so angry and emotional.
And I decided to focus on the only
Palestinian-American show on television,
that's what I wanted to focus on.
Ever!
I put all my energy into that.
I put my heart and soul into that.
And in the meantime,
I was doing these pop-ups in Houston.
Very small shows, just to see
what my community was going through.
And to my surprise,
all these angry white people
were snatching up the tickets.
I showed up one night to my show,
before I even grabbed the microphone,
this lady goes, "You tell them, baby."
"You tell them exactly how you feel."
"They told me, do my research."
"I done did my research."
Israel fucked up so bad,
and now rednecks
are supporting Palestine? This is crazy.
I had to ask, like,
"Ma'am, what's your name?"
She goes, "Myrtle." I was like, "Myrtle?"
"Hot damn, Myrtle,
I'm gonna take you
to every single news interview I do
from now on for the rest of my life."
Especially with these interviews,
sometimes journalists
try to trip you up and shit.
Be sitting there, be like,
"Mo, before we discuss Season 2,
do you condemn Hamas?"
I'd be like, "One second. Myrtle, please?"
"I got you, Mohammed,
I got you, baby, yeah."
"You trying to trip up my man
Mohammed, that's all, yeah."
"Uh-huh, that's a damn gotcha question.
That's a lose-lose, as they call it."
"Uh-huh, well, let me
educate your dumb ass, okay?"
"You ever heard of the Nakba? Huh? No?"
"In 1948, they expelled
over 750,000 Palestinians."
"Eviscerated over 500 villages.
God knows how many they murdered."
"No, Mohammed,
let me cook, baby, let me cook."
"And I dug a little further,
did more research
and found out there's a half a million
Palestinians living in Santiago, Chile."
"I said, 'What the hell
they doing in Santiago, Chile?'"
"And then I dug further and found out
most of them is Christian. I was like,
'Hold on a second, Palestinian,
Christians, Bethlehem, Nazareth.'"
"Oh my God, Jesus is Palestinian.
Done blew my mind."
"Of course he was Palestinian,
no wonder the Jews wanted to kill him."
"Okay, take it easy. Time-out, Myrtle,
time-out. Oh shit, take it easy."
"Sometimes they go too far."
You know that there is four cities
in America named Palestine?
One of them happens to be in Texas.
I just imagine during this broadcast
there's two Texans
living in Palestine, Texas,
confused, you know what I mean?
They'd be like,
"What's going on in Palestine, Jebediah?"
"Everything's fine here."
"No, not this Palestine,
original Palestine, Palestine."
"Wait, there's another Palestine?"
"Yeah, where Jesus come from."
"Wait, Jesus from Texas?"
"Yeah, his name is Jess now.
His name is Jess."
Peace and blessings be upon him.
This may surprise you.
One of my dear friends, he helped me
on the show, he happens to be Jewish.
He calls himself a recovering Zionist,
which is hilarious.
I didn't realize while filming the show,
he was going through
his own set of emotions.
He'd come up to me like,
"Mo, I figured something out."
I'm like, "What?" He goes,
"I figured out what Israel is to me."
I was like, "What?"
He goes,
"Israel is like the baby that you have
that you love so much, and then
it grows up to be a school shooter."
I was like, "God damn."
I didn't say it, he said it,
you know what I mean?
See why I locked your phones up?
In all honesty, I'm actually
very jealous of Jewish people, okay?
I am, because you guys
work very well together.
All right?
If Jewish people own bagel shops,
they all come together
and they agree on one price.
They're like, "Okay, who owns the bagels?"
This is my bad Jewish impression.
"You got the bagels? You own
a bagel, bitty. You had the bagel."
"Okay, $5, we all agree it's $5?"
"Okay, it's $5."
Arabs, on the other hand,
we suck right now.
We suck! We suck it! We suck so bad!
And we didn't suck in history,
we don't suck, but we suck.
We've invented
many amazing things in history.
Universities, we have algebra, soap.
Yeah, bitch.
Soap, coffee, we've done all that.
But we can't work together.
If an Arab guy has a falafel shop
and another guy has a falafel shop
across the street,
he'd be like, "How much? $4.99?"
"Fuck you, $3.99."
"$3.99, fuck you, $2.99."
"$2.99, free, fuck you, free."
"I'll get the loan,
we go out of business and die."
"Thank God."
What are we doing?
What are we doing?
It's already hard enough out here.
And Season 2 was not easy to make.
It was not easy to make.
While I was making it and even after,
just listening to all the comments,
it's very fucking frustrating.
I had one comment I saw,
it said... Imagine this.
It said, "Mo, I saw Season 2, Episode 8."
"You're making the IDF look bad, Mo."
"You're making the IDF look bad."
I was like, "I'm making...
the Israeli occupation force look bad?
I'm the one who's doing this?"
"Not the fact that they're carpet-bombing
an entire civilian population?"
"Get the fuck out of my face, please."
It's so absurd.
You can't trust the government,
have to trust ourselves.
And clearly that's why
I chose this location.
To be across the street
from the fucking crazies, okay?
I wanted to tell them,
"We're not scared, we're here."
"I don't give a fuck what you do,
we're together."
Can't be scared.
Can't be scared.
The truth is the truth, man.
I can't trust the government.
I don't know what's going on.
There's weird relationships happening,
Elon Musk, they broke up.
I don't know... And Elon Musk
is a weird-ass dude, you gotta admit.
He's not even a real person,
I don't think.
His human skin suit
is failing on a regular basis.
He's not real, he has a chip in his brain.
That shit's restarting all the time.
Gaaah!
His son, I don't like to talk about kids.
His son's in the Oval Office talking about
"Shut your mouth, you shut your mouth.
You shut your whore mouth."
I don't know if he said "whore,"
but it felt like it, it was real ugly.
Whatever his name is, E equals MC squared,
I'm not good at math, unfortunately.
And his dad is on
the biggest stages in the world,
just out of his mind, on the biggest
stages in the world talking about...
I'm not going to do the full salute,
but you know what I'm talking about.
You know...
"Anti-Semitic, Semitic, white supremacist
comedian last night in Washington, D.C.
goes on a mini Nazi-salute rampage."
My picture in the paper.
He's not a real person. He's not.
I feel like if I ever see him again,
I'm going to try to remove his face.
I feel like if I remove his face,
there'll be that little guy
from Men in Black in there.
And he'll be like
"The secret of the universe
is on Epstein's list."
"What's on the list?" "Epstein's list."
"What's on the list?" "Epstein."
No!
We're never going to know.
Every time I dab my forehead
I feel like I'm Louis Armstrong,
I'm not gonna lie.
I see trees of green
Red roses too
I see them bloom
From me and you
And I think to myself
What a wonderful world
Hell yeah, man, that shit was fire.
Very cool.
Well, my world
is forever changed because I had a baby.
Yeah.
I'm looking for a mom for him now, and...
Well, I'm Muslim,
I got three slots open, so...
She makes me do that joke,
my wife loves that joke.
I'm not even fucking around,
she loves that.
She absolutely loves that joke.
And we were in Doha,
I was doing a show for 5,000 people.
Before I go on stage she's like,
"You have to tell this joke,
you have to, it's going to kill."
I was like, "First of all, you don't know
shit about stand-up comedy, okay?"
"Second of all, geographically,
this is the worst location
I could do this joke in."
She was like, "Why?" I was like,
"Because all the wives are there. Yeah."
But I do it just to appease her.
And nothing, not a single laugh.
And all of a sudden I hear...
And I look over and it's my wife.
I was like "Oh, great."
"Thanks a lot honey, awesome."
It's wild, because she got pregnant
and I got all the symptoms, it's crazy.
It's a real thing,
it's called sympathy symptoms.
I had all of them.
She got pregnant, I got nausea,
I had diarrhea,
I was vomiting all the time.
She was perfectly fine, she was jogging,
doing fucking yoga and shit.
Perfectly fine,
every morning I'd be vomiting.
She'd walk up, "Are you okay?"
I was like, "Bitch, I'm pregnant,
have some sympathy."
"Are your titties sore?
Because I feel weird."
It was wild,
all my symptoms went away though
the moment I heard
my baby's heartbeat, it's true.
All of them. You say "aw." I was relieved,
I was like, "I can go back to smoking."
I was like, "Thank God."
I was like,
"You're pregnant, I'm not pregnant."
And then I locked in the doctor
and the hospital as you're supposed to,
and then she starts talking
to her rich white friend Denise.
And Denise was like,
"You need to get a doula and a midwife
and have a natural home birth, okay?"
I was like, "You can't trust Denise.
She wears shoes inside of the house
and no shoes outside of the house.
You can't trust this bitch."
I didn't want to alter anything,
"We're keeping the doctor."
We'll go meet this doula and midwife,
they were highly reputable.
However, we walked in and they go,
"Welcome to midwifery services."
Which the word midwifery, quite frankly,
is a little off-putting. You know?
It just feels like some sorcery
is involved or something. Midwifery!
I don't know, it's just weird. But then
also, they're wearing football jerseys
that say "number one home birther"
on the back of it.
Like, "This is what we're doing?"
"We're gonna have Tom Brady
delivering our baby? This is weird."
But we went along with it,
we hired them, but they didn't prep me.
They didn't say, "Hey, Mo, this is what
you do the moment the contraction hits."
Nothing. I just hear...
I think the home is possessed.
I start praying.
I seek God's protection.
There is no power except through God.
Lighting incense and sage.
I'm like, whatever works in this bitch.
And I walk in
and she's mid-contraction. She's...
And I ask the dumbest question possible.
"Is it time?"
She's like, "What the hell do you think?"
I was like, "Sorry."
I get on the phone, I was like,
"Hello, midwifery bitches, listen."
"She's having contractions,
I don't know what to do."
"Call back
when they're five minutes apart."
I said, "Fantastic." I hung up the phone.
I went back in the room,
she starts to have another contraction.
So I started to give advice.
I was like,
"Honey, spread those knees apart, okay?"
"Loosen up them hips,
spread those knees apart."
She goes, "You don't know
what the hell you're talking about!"
I was like, "You right."
"I don't know
what the hell I'm talking about,
but this is what you wanted."
"You wanted to have a natural home birth,
and now you have a comedian delivering
our baby. That's what's happening."
"Knock knock, who's there?"
"Mo Amer, that's who's here."
"I'm not trying to be an asshole. If your
knees touch, nothing's gonna come out!"
And then she has another contraction
and she does this odd
surfer-like motion, she goes...
So I just go, "That's right, baby,
ride it like a wave, like this."
She goes, "You don't know
what you're talking about!"
I'm like, "You right." I get on the phone,
I was like, "Midwifery bitches, listen."
"Put on your jerseys, it's game time."
Sure enough,
they show up with their jerseys on.
The doula and the midwife
walk into the bedroom.
Moments later,
my wife starts another contraction.
The doula goes, "Baby, you gotta spread
those knees apart. Loosen up them hips."
My wife goes, "Don't you say anything."
I was like, "I'm not saying anything,"
she does the surfer thing. Goes...
And the doula goes, "That's right, baby,
ride it like a wave, like this."
I couldn't help myself, I was like,
"I fucking told you!" And I walked out.
I started smoking a joint,
I'm not gonna lie, I went outside.
I was like,
"This is overwhelming, what are we doing?"
This poor woman, for 27 hours
with no epidural
stuck at six centimeters
the last seven hours.
Okay, she was twerking with no music on.
She's lost complete control of her legs.
I was like, "You keep twerking like that,
I'll get you pregnant again, sweetheart."
I didn't say it, but I thought it.
I called an audible, was like,
"Game over, midwifery bitches."
"I'm taking her to the hospital,
this is absurd."
I wheel her in, nurse sees me,
goes, "What's going on?"
I was like, "We've been in labor 27 hours,
she's stuck at six centimeters
the last 7 hours." She's like, "How do
you know?" I was like, "I'm the nurse."
She's like, "My God,
we have to get her in right away."
"We have to give her an epidural,
it needs to be sanitized."
"So you need to leave."
I was like, "Fantastic."
I went outside in front of the hospital,
lit another joint, I'm so stressed out.
And then she texted me from
the hospital bed. She goes, "Oh my God."
"I feel so much better."
"I'm having a contraction
as I'm texting you and I feel nothing."
And this part really pissed me off,
she goes, "Oh my God, we are so stupid."
I saw red, I was like, "We? How dare you
fucking lump me into this shit?"
"I tried to talk you out
of this midwifery shit."
"Delete."
It's not the move.
I was like, "Honey, I wanted to
support you in your home birth journey."
"But I knew it was a massive red flag
when they were wearing
fucking football jerseys!"
"Delete."
I was like, "Honey, I'm happy
you're happy." Send. That was the move.
I get up to the hospital room,
now we're both high, you know?
She's like, "Hey." I'm like, "Hey."
Then she does it again, she goes,
"So much better, we're so stupid."
I was like, "Yeah, we're so stupid."
This poor woman again,
stuck at six centimeters,
almost another seven hours go by.
Finally, our doctor shows up,
she goes, "We have to get the baby out."
I was like, "Yeah, no shit,
we have to get the baby out."
"Breaking news, we have to get the baby,
it's the whole purpose of this exercise
is to get the baby out."
She's like, "Calm down,
but we have to do a C-section."
It's like, "Whatever's best for my wife
and baby, that's all I care about."
And then she introduces another doctor.
And she goes, "He'll be assisting me in
the birth of your son and the procedure."
And I looked at him,
and he's wearing a yarmulke.
And I'm like,
"This is a setup, it's a setup!"
"Mossad's trying to take my Palestinian
baby is what's happening!"
I hate that I feel this way.
And then he walks up and he goes,
"Peace be upon you."
I was like, "That's exactly
what I would say if I was Mossad, yeah."
"And peace be unto you."
Then he walks over,
he starts to have
a conversation with my wife,
but he's really speaking to me.
I caught it, he goes,
"Listen, as a Moroccan Jew, I'm just here
to assist in the birth of your son."
"Again, as a Moroccan Jew
who believes in God,
I'm just here to assist
in the birth of your son."
I was like, "I see what you're doing."
"You walked in, you know I'm Palestinian,
can't have this political conversation."
"You said, 'Salaam alaikum, '
take the edge off, walked to my wife
said you're a Moroccan Jew,
let me know, 'I'm from North Africa.'
'I'm almost Arab, but I'm not Arab,
almost Arab, but I'm kind of Arab.'
'I am Jewish, but not Zionist,
is that cool?'"
I was like, "Fuck it, cool, but I'm
watching you, Dr. Mossad."
And then they give me
the one-size-fits-all scrubs.
Which is a lie,
it's not one-size-fits-all at all.
I'm just walking in like this
into the delivery room.
And I watched the entire
C-section like a psycho.
They said no one has ever done this
in the history of all the procedures.
Like I knew what they were doing.
I was like, "Is that a kidney?
She has two, move that out of the way."
"Good, just take it out of there."
They brought out my son,
and they're like, "Take a picture."
I was like, "I don't want to take
a picture." He's like, "Take a picture."
I was like, "Bro!"
"My Palestinian baby's been stuck
at this checkpoint last 40 hours."
"There's no time for photos."
So I cleaned him up,
and I brought him to his mom.
And she was in tears,
and I thought I would be overwhelmed.
And nothing. I felt nothing,
I was trying, I was like...
Nothing happened.
And apparently this is true.
For men, it happens much later.
Thankfully for me, it happened that night
when I did the skin-to-skin.
I put him on my chest, and I lost my shit.
I just completely lost it,
I was like, "Oh my God."
"Oh my God, it's a real baby."
"I got to get my 401K together,
habibi, I got to get it together."
"Baba's going to take care of you.
Don't you worry, habibi."
"I want to let you know
I named you after your great-grandfather."
"And your grandfather,
and your great-great-great-grandfather."
"And your great-great... You have,
like, seven Muslim names, habibi."
"It's going to be really hard for you
growing up in America."
"It's going to be so hard."
"But you're going to know
exactly where you come from, habibi."
And the nurse walks in, she goes,
"Are you okay?" I was like, "I'm fine."
"I'm fine, I just, you know,
in the beginning of the pregnancy,
I had all the symptoms. You know?"
"I had nausea, diarrhea, I had everything.
And I didn't feel anything."
"Until now, it's all hitting me
like a train all at one time."
"And I named him after
his great-great-grandfather."
"Praise God."
"He looks like his great-grandfather."
"You don't know what subhanallah means,
but I'll show you a picture later."
She's like, "No, he's sucking
on your titty." I was like, "Oh God."
"Let's get him some milk," I said. Yeah.
And that's how my son Ali was born, guys.
Little Alilushi.
And I did give him seven names.
I was very deliberate about this.
Because I want him to know
exactly where he comes from.
It's very important.
It's very, very important.
And that's why I put it
in the last episode of Season 2.
My teacher said,
"Name your great-grandfather
from your father's side."
And I couldn't name him. I had names,
but I couldn't exactly pinpoint it.
And he goes, "This is the lineage that you
come from. How easily are you erased?"
I was like, "Bars!"
So I made it my whole purpose
to understand where I come from.
I take it so seriously
that in Season 2 of the last episode
every cutaway that you see in Palestine
is our actual village of Burin.
It's where we come from.
Because...
Because it's like a historical archive.
No matter what happens,
my son can look at that and say,
"This is where I come from."
You understand?
It's very important.
Yes.
And I've always been myself.
I started stand-up as a 14-year-old kid
in the South, okay?
Most places I went to
have never even seen an Arab person.
And I've always been myself.
And very early on in my career,
I was encouraged to change my name.
And go to LA,
and don't tell them you're Palestinian.
That was a big thing. I was like, I could
never do that, I would lose myself.
However, after 9/11, I was Italian
for a solid two months, okay?
It was just for a couple of months.
Because I've always felt
like a fish out of water.
I'm sure a lot of you
can relate, you know?
I was born in Kuwait,
I went to a New English School.
Which is a British English school.
And I spoke with a British accent.
Which means I got to America
and I got my ass kicked immediately,
you understand?
I showed up to school, "Hello!"
You know what I mean? It was that.
I had no concept of cool,
wear this and don't wear that.
I had nothing, okay?
And I'm so blessed that I met
these two friends that put me on the game.
It was Bruce, who was Black,
and Jose, who was Mexican.
And Bruce, I found out very quickly
about Black people
that if there's a truth
that needs to be told,
if you're fucking up with your attire,
you will get scolded
in front of the entire school, okay?
I didn't know this, I would show up
to school with the wrong shoes
and Bruce would be like, "Oh shit!"
"Everybody gather around."
"Jose, come see your boy."
"Moe's wearing Pro Wings, they're from
Payless. They're 13.99, he's poor."
I was like, "Oh."
I was like, "Oh, I'm poor?"
You know what I mean?
But Jose was a little bit more tender.
He was a little bit nicer
when I was fucking up.
I'd be wearing the wrong thing,
and Jose would walk up like,
"Bro, like,
you look like a bitch, bro."
"Who the hell dressed you, bro?"
"I'm not gonna lie, I wanna
slap the shit out of you right now, bro."
"Listen, we can't play today, okay?"
"But maybe tomorrow, okay?
Maybe tomorrow."
"Listen, I'm gonna walk away,
don't fist bump me, okay?"
It was like that.
And I didn't realize that British English
was very different from American English.
So I would really fuck myself
pretty regularly, right?
My brother got me a little kitten
to help with, like, PTSD.
Well, the issue is that
I spoke British English.
At home, I would never say "cat,"
I would say "Here, pussy. Here, pussy."
And no one corrected me at home.
I was just, "Here, pussy."
So I decide, at recess,
to disclose this new information
to my friend Bruce.
I walk up to him, I was like,
"Bruce, guess what."
And Bruce was like, "What?"
"I have a pussy, isn't it fantastic?"
He was like, "What? What'd you say, man?"
"I don't think I heard you correctly."
"I have a pussy,
it's small and fluffy, you wanna see it?"
Bruce, immediately,
"Everybody gather around."
"Jose, come see your boy."
In front of the whole school,
he was like, "Mo, do you have a pussy?"
I was like,
"Yes, I have a pussy, isn't it fantastic?"
And Jose lost his mind,
he was like, "What, bro?"
"Are you serious? You have a vagina?"
"For real, bro? Like..."
"You've been my friend
and I didn't know you had a vagina?"
"Is that for real, bro?"
"You kidding me?"
Then he paused and he goes,
"Can I see it, bro?"
I'm so innocent, I didn't know better.
"You have to come to
my house if you want to see my pussy."
Horribly traumatizing.
I started stand-up at a very young age.
And I toured all throughout the South.
And I'm dead serious, I was
their first interaction of an Arab person
most of the time,
like a high percentage of the time.
To the point where people
were shocked in the South.
They'd walk up and be like,
"You sure you're Arab?"
"You don't look Arab."
Should I have
a camel with me all the time?
Is that one of the main markers
of being an Arab?
You have a camel just, "Excuse me,
coming through with my camel,
just being Arab."
"Don't pet him, he bites."
You know what I mean? Like, what the fuck?
It's so odd, all right?
And I was doing shows pre-9/11
and then post-9/11, around 2003,
I get a call to go to Houma, Louisiana.
Which is just shy of New Orleans.
Straight-up Cajun hick country.
This guy calls me up, he goes, "Hello!"
"Is this Mo Amer?"
I said, "Yes, this is Mo..."
"Boy, I done heard
a lot of good things about you, baby."
"Uh-huh."
"Liten here."
This guy didn't say one S
the entire conversation.
He was like, "Liten here, I own a club
here called the Lanya Muted Cafe."
I was like, "Music?"
He go, "That right, Muted Cafe."
"We gonna do comedy here on Wenday night."
I was like, "Wednesday night?"
He go, "That right, Wenday night."
He go, "You come on down."
"I only got one hotel room, though,
with two beds."
"So you can bring your own opening act."
I was like,
"Okay, how much you gonna pay?"
He goes, "I'm gonna pay you about $1,000."
I was like, "Shit, baby,
I'm on my way, uh-huh."
"Me and my camel heading out east."
I was very excited, you know.
2003, make 1,000 bucks in one night.
So I called up my friend Gary Bell.
He's a comedian who lives
right on the border of Texas, Louisiana.
And he also "Talk like this, yeah."
And I booked him,
not because he's funny, he's not.
He's a horrible comedian, never gonna
make it, never had a chance of making it.
This is the most famous he'll get,
is me talking shit about him on stage.
But I brought him
as a layer of protection, you know.
Just in case some shit goes down, he could
be like, "Nah, y'all leave him alone."
"He a regular Mohammed here."
You know, that's
the only reason I booked him,
and he knew that.
We get there, we check into the hotel,
we go to the Lanyard Muted Cafe.
Gary Bell goes on stage
and they immediately hate him.
One guy goes,
"Who booked him, motherfucker?" Like this.
Gary starts to freak out,
he wants to be more relatable.
He goes, "Y'all ever been hunting?"
A guy goes, "I'm gonna kill you
off this stage right now."
I had to go on the stage
and take the mic from Gary.
The only time
I've ever done this in my entire career.
I do my set, I'm killing.
I was like, "It's definitely you, Gary,
not the crowd."
I walk off stage,
the club owner gives me $1,000.
I'm like, "I am rich."
Then I turn around, and I see a detective
and a police officer standing there.
And the detective goes, "Come here, boy."
And historically, nothing good
comes after, "Come here, boy."
And this scenario was no different, right?
He goes,
"Can I have your driver's license?"
I was like, "Yeah, here you go,
here's my driver's license."
And he calls it in, he goes,
"Driver's license number one, two, seven,
nine, seven, six, two, seven." Like this.
And the lady immediately called back,
"Yep, that him."
I was like, "That him?"
"Yep, that you." I was like, "That me?"
"Yep, that you." "You sure it's me?"
I was like, "Yeah, that you." I was like,
"Who is me, who is you, who is we?"
"We all one." Right?
He was like, "Nah, baby, just you."
I was like, "Oh shit."
And he takes me outside and there's, like,
a dozen police officers waiting for me.
There's six squad cars,
all their lights are on.
The crowd's now starting
to gather from the show.
Another cop pulls up and rolls down
the window, he goes, "Is that him?"
I'm like, "Is that you, Jebediah?"
What the fuck is going on, right?
Now another detective
walks up to me, he goes,
"What are you doing here
In Houma, Louisiana?"
And I'm standing there
next to the marquee that says
"Now appearing, Mo Amer, at 8 p.m."
And it has my picture, I'm like,
"Bro, I don't know about
your previous investigations, but...
this is the worst detective job
you've ever done, all right?"
Now the crowd's chiming in,
"Leave him alone, he was funny."
One guy said.
Then another guy goes,
"If you're gonna arrest anybody,
you need to arrest
that motherfucker Gary Bell."
"For impersonating a comedian."
And then I was like,
"Where the hell is Gary?"
"This is precisely the scenario
I brought his bitch ass for."
"And he's nowhere to be found." Right?
It's crazy, then the cop goes,
"What were you doing in Japan and Korea?"
I was like, "Wait, time-out."
"How the fuck do you know
I even went to Japan and Korea?"
He goes,
"Well, we done searched your room."
I was like,
"Oh man, you searched my room."
"Wow, this is going to
blow your mind, okay?"
"Because outside of Houma,
there's a whole another world out there."
"I had a dream as a kid to be a comedian."
"And that dream has already
taken me to Japan and Korea."
"And most of those shows
were actually for U.S. troops."
"Because I said to myself, after 9/11,
I was so scared to be myself."
"If I could be myself in front of them,
I could be myself in front of anybody.
That's what I was doing."
His brain melted.
I was like, "I know what you think."
"You think I'm a terrorist."
"You think I came to Houma, Louisiana...
of all the targets in America."
"Listen, man, if I was a terrorist
and I showed up with a bomb
to Houma, Louisiana,
I would be confused on what
to blow up in this sumbitch, okay?"
"I got to be real with you,
this place looks like it's pre-blown up."
"If I were to blow up a bomb here,
I'd just be redecorating the place."
"And I would resolve
your crack problem that's clearly here."
And the cop sincerely goes,
"Yeah, we sure do got a crack problem."
He gave me a trash bag
full of my belongings
and instructed me
to go to this other officer.
And he was going to escort me
back to the hotel.
As we're walking off, Gary pops out
of the bushes behind the club.
I was like,
"Gary, where the hell you been?"
And he very sincerely goes,
"They're trying to kill me."
I was like, "I'm gonna kill you,
get your ass in the car."
And weirdly, I felt worse for him
than I did for myself.
We get in the cop car,
he takes us to the hotel.
As we pull up, the cop apologizes to me.
He goes, "Man, I am so sorry
this happened to you, sincerely."
"But it wasn't us, okay?"
"It was the hotel
who called the police on you."
I was like, "Oh my God, officer,
Gary, we're going in this hotel."
"We're going to confront
the security guard."
And I walk in very aggressively,
"Who was it? Who called the cops on me?"
And this lady comes out from the back.
And she's wearing a security jacket
and she's missing most of her front teeth.
And every time she spoke, she either
blew wind or whistled the entire time.
I was like,
"Why'd you call the cops on me?"
She goes, "Hold on a second."
"Hold on a second now."
I was like,
"Are you watching a basketball game?"
"What the fuck is going on?"
"It sounds like sneakers on a hardwood
floor, I don't know what's happening."
"Hold on a sec."
All these stray dogs were showing up,
I'm like, "Whose dogs are these?"
I was like,
"Why did you call the cops on me?"
She goes, "Well,
I've seen the name Mohammed,
and I was like, 'Hey, we've got
a terrorist situation here.'"
I was like, "That's all it took?
You just saw the name Mohammed
and we've got a terrorist situation here?"
And then she goes,
"Who's whistling?" I was like...
I was like, "Okay."
I was like, "Yeah."
I was like, "I'm so sorry,
but you can't call the cops on somebody
just because of their name."
"You have to have real evidence."
"And I'm so sorry our country's failed you
and you believe everything
they're spewing at you
through this television screen."
"That's what they want."
"They want us to be divided so they can
conquer all of us, don't you get that?"
And unfortunately she heard none of it.
She goes, "Well, hold on a second,
I've seen the name Mohammed
and I was like, 'Hey, we've
got a terrorist situation here.'"
I looked at the officer,
"You definitely have a crack problem here,
I'm not gonna lie."
And the cop looks at me and goes,
"I figured out something."
I was like, "What?
What else could there possibly be?"
He goes, "We searched your room."
I was like, "You said that."
He goes, "It was bothering me,
I think I figured it out."
And he looks at Gary, he goes,
"Gary, the porn magazines
are yours, aren't they?"
I looked at Gary, I was like,
"You brought porn magazines?"
I was like, "We're sharing a room, bro.
Like, how gross are you?"
And I walk into the room
and the whole room is in shambles
except Gary's bed, it's perfectly made.
And they left all the porn magazines out
just to let us know
"We know what y'all queers doing in here."
And I looked down and I counted,
I was like, "Twelve?"
"You brought a dozen porn magazines?"
"Bro, how much jerking off
were you going to do tonight?"
I was like,
"Thank God she called the cops."
I was like, "She stopped the other
terrorist plot from happening that night."
But I was always,
I was always a suspected terrorist.
Until I got my TSA PreCheck.
If you don't know what TSA PreCheck is,
you go into the airport security office,
you give them $100,
and you fill out the paperwork,
you're no longer a suspected terrorist.
It's widely known
that terrorists hate paperwork.
And I'm so relieved because TSA agents
are very aggressive, bro.
I don't know what they're mad about,
but they're like, "Take out your laptop!"
"Put it in a thing! Put it in its own
separate compartment, okay?"
"And you push it in.
I'm not pushing it in, you push it in."
"See it all the way through,
take off your shoes."
God forbid you bring water.
Holy shit, okay.
You bring water, they're like, "Aaah!"
I'm like, "Acqua Panna?
What's wrong with Acqua Panna?"
Like, "You can't bring this."
They fuck your head up,
they'll walk three feet
and they go, "You can't drink this here,
but you can drink it here if you like."
And you don't want to be wasteful,
so you're waterboarding yourself. "God."
"Sorry, guys, I brought a liter.
Just come on, just go ahead of me."
So fru... I saw them berating
this old white woman in a wheelchair.
She had apple juice
and they're just going off on her.
And they're like, "You can't bring this!"
And she's like, "But...
I need it for my diabetes."
I was like,
"Hold on a second, what the fuck?"
They threw it away
in the trash aggressively.
Like, "Shut up, whore!
Not today, Al-Qaeda!"
"Not today, Osama!" I'm like, "Relax, bro,
she needs apple juice,
just give her the fucking apple juice."
Similar scenario,
older man, he's in a wheelchair.
It seems like he's had
some sort of stroke.
Because he's struggling to walk
and they're making him
go through the X-ray machine.
And he's walking in like this,
and they go, "Put your arms up!"
Guy can't lift his right arm,
so he grabs it with his left hand.
He lifts it up,
and the guy goes, "Stay still!"
"Stay still!"
I was like, "Fuck it,
I'm going to shoot everybody."
"I'm going to shoot everybody. TSA
has radicalized me, that's it, it's over."
What is this infatuation
about 3.4 ounces? I need to know, okay?
They're just like...
"What's wrong?"
"It says 4.2 ounces, that's what's wrong."
"Well, 80% of the liquid is gone,
what's the problem?"
"It doesn't matter,
the bottle is 4.2 ounces."
Like, is this fluid that can be made
into a bomb or something?
Is that what the issue is?
Where there's no restrictions
on how many 3.4 ounces
you could bring. I mean,
technically, you could just
mix them shits later.
Please God, nobody do this. Please, God.
Please God, nobody do this.
"Anti-Semitic, Semitic, white supremacist,
terrorist comedian
last night in Washington, D.C.
promotes making some kind of liquid bombs
at the Warner Theatre."
"Mo, do you have any comments?"
"Hold on a second. Myrtle, please."
"Hold on a second, son of a bitch."
She's like, "What goes around
comes around, son of a bitch."
Maybe it's true,
what goes around comes around.
Maybe that's why the heightened
racism is happening right now.
Maybe that's what
white people are so afraid of.
Not the white people here, don't worry.
Hug a white person.
Hug a white person if they're next to you.
I'm not talking about you.
But genuinely, is that what the fear is?
Because we know what happened,
we know what happened
with the Indigenous population in America,
African Americans with slavery,
the Chinese with the railroad.
Mexicans, what were Mexicans doing?
They were just coming back. This is where
they come from, they're just coming back.
And they say that DNA...
They say DNA carries traumatic memories.
So they don't know
why they're coming back.
They're just like,
"I don't know, bro, pero, like..."
"I don't know where I'm going,
pero, like, necesito, bro, like..."
"I just gotta go, bro."
"I didn't do nothing, my great-grandfather
forgot something, vato, that's all, bro."
We have Muslims,
all shapes and sizes and colors
dealing with discrimination.
I mean, who's next? White people.
Maybe that's the fear,
it's going to come back to them.
Maybe they have a scenario in their head
where there's a white guy
walking into a house of pies
and there's a Black guy
working behind the counter.
And he walks in, he's like, "Excuse me."
"Can I get a slice
of that pecan pie, please?"
And the Black guy
behind the counter is like, "Sorry."
"We don't serve your kind
around here, cracker." You know?
"Oh, you want to speak to the manager?
Say, Jose!"
And Jose's like,
"What are you doing here, gringo?"
"Like, come on, bro,
you can't be sitting here."
"We got real customers coming in, bro."
"Like..."
"Ew, man..."
"Come on, bro."
"You want to speak to the owner?
He Chinese, bro."
"They own everything now."
And the white guy was like, "Well,
fuck you guys." And he just walks out.
No one is better than anybody else.
Nobody.
Nobody.
Bro, it seems like history
repeats itself time and time again.
My mother said to me fairly recently,
and this really jarred me.
She goes, "I feel like I'm living
the same life as my grandmothers."
And that really hit hard.
And time
is undefeated.
Time is fleeting, and time flies.
And you can't go back in time.
Some people are like,
"I'll just make up time."
You can't make up time.
You can make time,
but there's never enough time.
My friend doesn't give a shit about time.
He's like, "I'm going to go kill time."
"You're going to go kill time?
There's no time to kill."
He's like,
"I'm going to watch Love Island."
Love Island?
Next thing you know, I got sucked in,
"Huda, why are you doing this, Huda?"
"Oh, Huda, why?"
"Don't be jealous,
you just unloaded on Jeremiah."
"And he's just juggling his feelings.
Everybody's kissing everybody,
and Chelley and Ace
are not even a real relationship,
they're just in it for the fucking money."
I was like, "Oh my God, 40 episodes,
40 hours, what a waste of time."
Whatever it is,
you don't want to be ahead of your time.
If you're ahead of your time,
you're probably dead.
Everybody who dies young,
it's always like,
"Oh, he was ahead of his time."
"He was so far ahead of his time."
"So far in the future,
he just died, yeah."
Jimi Hendrix, Bob Marley,
Amy Winehouse, Chris Farley.
All ahead of their time.
Jeffrey Epstein.
Well, he was doing hard time
in the wrong place at the wrong time.
That whole situation
is a ticking time bomb.
It seems like terrible people
take forever to die.
And when they do die,
everyone's like, "It's about damn time."
"I thought that son of a bitch
was never going to die."
"I thought he had
all the time in the world."
"Yeah, it was all in due time.
You can never run away from time. Yeah."
Some people say,
"Mo, you're so ahead of your time."
"You're the first Arab-American comedian
to have a stand-up special."
"You wore a keffiyeh
in the first stand-up special."
"You made the first
Palestinian-American television show."
No, I said, "Fuck that, I don't
want to be ahead of my time."
I want to be right on time. I wanna
be in the right place at the right time.
I wanna be timely, I wanna be timeless.
I want to make it in the nick of time,
with plenty of time to spare.
So I can spend quality time
with those who really care.
The people who will be there for me
at any moment in time.
So I don't have to go back in time,
I don't have to make up time.
I can just be present
in this moment in time.
So if you really care, you should
check in on each other from time to time.
My mom always says this to me,
"If you love me, show me."
And that's why I'm so utterly frustrated
with DJ Khaled, genuinely.
No, I'm serious, he's Palestinian.
In the end, he's one of us.
And in these unprecedented times,
instead of being with the times
he's behind the times.
And for this guy, it's always dinner time.
I know, it's a fat-on-fat crime.
I didn't want to say this,
who put it in my heart? God did!
But he's not the only one
behind the times.
There's many other ones.
I'm not going to name names. Seinfeld.
I believe he said,
"I don't care about Palestine."
Well, Jerry, I care about everyone.
And it's better to kill time
than kill with your time.
Festivus for the rest of us.
I used to watch that show
in much simpler times.
What does it say about these times
that the world trusts Ms. Rachel
more than The New York Times?
Welcome to Real Time with Mo Amer. Yes.
I hate to break it to you,
but we're all going to die.
We're all going to die. You could say
we're here for a limited time only.
And time is of the essence.
I could go on and on.
Unfortunately, I'm almost out of time.
Because it's prime time
and the clock's ticking.
We're on borrowed time and every second
counts. We're down to the wire.
And in this life, there's no overtime.
And you have to remember the one
who transcends space and time.
The next thing you know, there's no time.
We thought we were big-time,
we're actually small-time.
And now we're pressed for time.
It's a race against time.
It's high time, it's crunch time,
it's go time, it's the end of times.
Until next time. Myrtle?
"Free Palestine!"
Thank you so much, Washington, D.C.
I love you from the bottom of my heart.
Thank you so much for coming out tonight.
Now I've been happy lately
Thank you.
Thinking about the good things to come
And I believe it could be
Something good has begun
Oh I've been smiling lately
Dreaming about the world as one
And I believe it could be
Some day it's going to come
'Cause out on the edge of darkness
There rides a peace train
Oh peace train take this country
Come take me home again
I love you so much, it means
the absolute world to me, thank you.
How are you? Jeez, it's great to be here.
People always say that shit, don't they?
People always say that shit,
but they don't mean it. I mean it.
Glide on the peace train
Come on now peace train
Yes, peace train holy roller
Everyone jump upon the peace train
Come on the peace train
Get your bags together
Go bring your good friends too
'Cause it's getting nearer
It soon will be with you
Now come and join the living