Patton Oswalt: Tea & Scotch (2026) Movie Script
1
- Thank you.
Okay.
Thank you.
Thank you, Madison.
Thank you so much.
Yes.
Oh my God.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Oh, thank you guys so much.
Thank you, Madison, Wisconsin.
Oh my God.
Woo-hoo-hoo-hoo!
I'm in a good mood tonight.
I'm very happy to be here,
even though I'm a little shook.
My daughter said something to me
that no father wants to hear.
She called me dude.
Now listen, I understand
why she did it, all right?
She's not 6 years old anymore,
doesn't wanna say, "Daddy."
I don't want her calling me daddy, okay?
But dude, that was an overcorrection.
Like she went way too,
she could have stopped at dad,
but she went all the way to dude.
I didn't like how it felt.
It landed wrong.
How was school today, sweetie?
It was pretty good, dude.
No, listen, no, wait.
I'm not here to sell you weed, okay?
I'm still signing permission slips.
We're not working the line
together at Jersey Mike's.
So how about you call me dad
and then put your headphones back on
and let Phoebe Bridgers whisk you away
from this bland planet you're trying,
I don't wanna be here either.
Dude, ugh, still stings.
How was hanging out with
your friends today, sweetie?
It was pretty good, dude.
Well, that's awesome, bro.
You know what else was awesome?
When you thought "PAW
Patrol" was real 6 years ago.
Call me dude.
Now I have a cat, I have a cat.
Any cat owners in here?
Yeah, I love my cat.
I don't know if other cat
owners have experienced this.
Whenever I play with my cat,
in the middle of playing,
she'll stop and react to another presence
that's in the room
that she clearly sees and hears.
And then she'll follow it across the room.
And then at one point,
I assume it vanishes
'cause she goes back to playing with me
like nothing happened.
And it's fucking unnerving, all right?
Because I'm brushing up
against the netherworld.
I have friends who go, "I
wish my kitty could talk."
I don't, because if my cat could talk,
it would be three things,
annoying, and then terrifying,
and then annoying again.
That's all it would be all day.
"You know, I like that little
chicken treat you gave me.
I'll have another chicken treat.
If you have another chicken treat,
I'll eat another chicken treat.
Is that chicken?
Oh, demon.
Demon just came in the room.
It's walking across the room.
It has a coyote head.
Now the coyote head is splitting open.
It's two baby heads.
Now it's pointing at you.
Now it's gone.
Hey, you have another chicken treat?
Those are good.
No?"
So a couple of years ago,
it was dishwasher
stacking videos all night.
There are videos on YouTube
and Instagram of people
stacking dishes in dishwashers,
and I would watch them for hours, hours,
swiping one after the
other all frigging night.
And then I upgraded to
hoof cleaning videos.
I don't know, okay.
Yes, it's horse and cow
hooves being cleaned.
And I have dodged conversations,
I have not read books,
I have lost sleep lying on my side,
two in the morning with a
pillow, just vroom, next.
"You won't believe."
I will believe, show me.
Next, next.
Maybe we don't need writers.
I don't know.
I mean, I'm just watching
fucking hoof clean.
The people, they're working
too hard on "Yellowstone."
They could just show the
hooves being cleaned.
Why are they bothering
paying all these actors?
You could just laugh for,
previously on Yellowstone.
There you go.
Next week on Yellowstone.
Then I discovered house cleaning videos.
There's a woman
and she goes to like hoarder
houses and she power cleans it.
And again, hours,
hours swiping over and
over and over again.
But then I finally reached my final form.
Yard cleaning videos,
yard care and yard cleaning video.
There's a guy, yeah, we
all, he has fans obviously.
He's on YouTube and he goes
into sketchy neighborhoods
and he finds abandoned houses
and he swoops in and he tames
that lawn and it is my porn.
I can't, when he,
you get that edger and you show that curb.
You make that curb
street legal, goddammit.
You get around that mailbox
and give it a Brazilian.
When he finds a hidden walkway,
that's like a money shot for me.
I'm just like, "Oh my God,
that is a brick breezeway.
Give me some tissues and get out."
What's weird is in the
'80s when I was a teenager,
I did those chores.
I had to do the dishes.
I had to clean the house.
I mowed lawns to make money.
And while I did it,
I dreamed of some future
world that would never happen,
some crazy science fiction year, 2025.
And in that year, I'd have some magic box
in my pocket where I
could call down any movie
or piece of music or
book to entertain myself.
And now I live in the year 2025
and I have that magic science fiction box
and I'm using it to watch chores!
I'm watching the chores
that I did while I dreamed of that box!
What fucking monkey's paw did I wish on?
I don't know what happened.
And by, listen, I'm not one
of these people that goes,
"Oh, social media and cell phones
are gonna destroy humanity."
Humanity's track record was not great
before cell phones, okay?
We were not this elevated
species that got laid low
by social media.
You know what laid us low?
Sticks.
When we discovered sticks
to hit each other with,
that was the end.
It's all over.
Maybe if we'd had cell
phones back in the 1300s,
there would've been a
few less witch burnings.
I don't know, if people had hobbies
like Wordle or Candy Crush
instead of the one hobby
everyone had back then,
which was being afraid
of the woods at dusk.
Like it was this,
"Oh, the sun went down.
Let's put an old woman in the wicker man
so it comes up again."
That was the one app they had
back then, "The Wicker Man."
That was the one.
We've always, by the way,
we've always been on our cell phones.
Even before we had our cell phones,
we were on our cell phones.
And there's evidence of this.
Last year I read Jane Austen's
"Pride and Prejudice."
I read it.
I needed a cool down
between my MMA fights.
And in the middle,
in the middle of "Pride and Prejudice,"
which was written In 1813,
1813, all the main characters
go to a garden party together.
They go to a garden party
and they're all making eye contact
and they're having conversations
and they're connecting with
their fellow human beings,
not a cell phone in sight.
And then in the middle
of this garden party,
Mr. Darcy peels off and starts
reading a book by himself.
Two other women peel off,
start sewing by themselves.
Two other men peel off,
start playing cards by themselves.
And one woman, Mrs. Hurst,
and this is how it's
described in the novel,
stops talking to people
so she can look at her
rings and bracelets.
That is a room full of people
who would kill to have cell phones.
They're on their cell phones,
they just don't have them.
And do you know how boring you have to be
for someone to rather read a book in 1813
than talk to you?
That is a dagger through the soul.
I'd love to hear the
rest of this anecdote,
but I'm in the middle
of an 800-page book about a rabbit lost
in a patch of thistle,
and I cannot pull myself away.
And I can't get over Mrs.
Hurst stops talking to people
so she can look at her
rings and bracelets.
What is a better indication
that your society is failing?
"Hey man, next week we should,
shit, I'm getting a text,
let me check it.
Don't go anywhere, I'm
just gonna check it."
Or, "Next Sunday we should
have buttered scones,
and Walter, one moment."
Ee-hee-hee-hee-hee-hee!
Yeah, okay, I guess we're done.
We're done, right?
Mrs. Hurst stopped, she's
looking at her rings right now.
We're done, right?
All right.
Jews.
A few years ago,
when my daughter was 13,
every other weekend one of
her friends had a bar mitzvah
or a bat mitzvah,
and I took her to every
single one, and I loved it.
I love bar mitzvahs.
What I realized was,
even though I'm still an atheist,
as I get older, I really
love religious rituals.
I just love them.
It's so, because it's show business.
I'm in show biz.
I love show business.
It also means that even
the deepest, most esoteric,
searching cosmic religions all
had moments where they went,
"We have to give them something fun to do
or they're not gonna show up.
We gotta think of an activity, please.
Have you read this book?
It's just, it's lists.
All it is is lists.
Think of an activity or we're fucked."
At a bar mitzvah, at one point,
I don't know why they do this,
but they bring the Torah out
and they run it around the room.
It's like it's crowd surfing!
I love it so much!
"Let me touch a tassel!"
Muslims have to stop five times a day
and face Mecca and pray.
I don't know why.
I just know it's like improv everywhere.
You don't know when it's gonna happen.
Keeps you on your toes.
I don't know how these
traditions started, by the way.
I'm not gonna look 'em up on Wikipedia
for this dumb bit, but,
I feel like they didn't start that,
like they didn't start with,
running the Torah around the room.
Like, doesn't it?
It feels to me like the
Torah was on a table
and everybody went up and
they touched the Torah.
But then there was the one
religious lunatic in the family.
We all have one, who's like,
I'm going to touch the Torah
and I'm going to stand here
and recite the entire Torah.
And then everyone was
like, "Your fucking cousin.
You know, dude, I was,
I was being nice inviting him."
It's like, "I know, dude, he's,
listen, he means well.
Listen to me.
Let's run the Torah around the room.
We'll let him chase it.
It'll tucker him out.
All right?
I'm with you.
I just want some wine
and challah up in this
piece, motherfucker.
I'm with you."
Muslims facing Mecca five times a day.
My theory on that is that
started a guy who didn't know how
to get out of conversations at parties.
That's how that started.
He was a really nice guy.
Too nice for his own good, I think.
And he was at a party
and another guy was like,
"Can I tell you my 500
favorite chickpea recipes?"
And then he was like,
"I would love to hear that,
but I do a thing now where
I face Mecca and I pray.
It's like this thing I do."
And the guy wouldn't let it go.
He's like, "I can tell
you when you're done."
And then he panicked.
He was like, "I do it
like five times a day."
Like he just completely lied to the guy.
Didn't wanna hurt his feelings.
And that's why they gotta do that,
because of Abdul the chickpea nerd
fucked it up for everybody.
Nobody does rituals like
the Catholics, though.
Oh, boy.
Oh, goodness gracious.
Have you, has anyone here
been to a Catholic Mass?
Yeah?
All right.
That's it?
Guys, go on StubHub and get a ticket.
It is amazing!
It is the campiest, most
metal Rocky Horror shit
you've ever seen.
At one point, a guy in a dress comes out,
and he has a chain and
there's a big metal ball
at the end with smoke coming out
and he just fucking whips it around.
What the fuck is that?
I'll tell you what it is, it's awesome!
There are Swedish death
metal bands watching that go,
"We are stealing that.
Guys, did you see this?"
They give you snacks.
In the middle of a Catholic mass,
"Anyone want a cracker?"
You're like, "Yes, oh, thank you."
But here, I don't wanna spoil anything,
but it's a prank, all right?
It's a nice, they're not mean about it,
but when you bite it, they go, "Sike,
that's a magic zombie in your mouth."
You're like, "Ow, come on."
And then they'll say,
"You know, we feel bad.
You want some wine to wash that down?"
And you go, "I would."
And then you sip it and they go,
"Psych, that's magic zombie blood!
Twice, we got you twice!
Ha ha!"
It's fun.
I don't know why,
why do they stop with
the body and the blood?
They should just keep going.
Bring out a big bowl of grapes.
"These are Jesus's eyeballs."
Just haunted house the
shit out of it, man.
I'll be there every Sunday.
Bring out some cold spaghetti.
"Who wants to touch the Savior's brain?"
Woo, spooky!
And if you get bored,
you can play, "Which priest
is fucking the kids?"
It's like a big perverted game
of Clue all of a sudden, like ooh.
I think it's the guy from
Ohio, they transferred him.
I have a feeling.
All right, I'm gonna guess.
I'm not gonna open the
envelope, but I'm gonna guess.
I think I know who it is.
All right, Father Just
with his penis
in Timmy.
That's my guess.
I'm gonna open the
envelope now, here we go.
Feeling pretty good.
Father Just, all right.
Timmy.
Guys, I think I won.
Feeling pretty good.
Oh God.
Lead pipe.
Man, I,
I thought you had,
you didn't have, what did you have?
Candlestick.
All right.
So, okay, last year I took a
flight on Southwest Airlines.
I flew from Burbank to Vegas.
It's a 40-minute flight.
It's so easy, it's so chill.
I love taking it.
We all get on the plane.
We have not taken off yet.
We're still on the runway.
And before we take off,
one of the attendants
comes back and asks a guy,
"Would you mind moving?
This woman wanted to
sit next to her husband.
There's no free seats.
Would you be okay with that?"
He was so cool.
"Absolutely."
Got up, got up out of his aisle seat,
sat in a center seat so
this woman could sit.
Really nice guy.
And then we took off.
Now we're in the air.
And once we're airborne,
the attendant comes
back with the drink cart
and she goes directly to
the guy that moved and said,
"Sir, that was so considerate of you.
May I offer you a free
beverage of your choice,
including an alcoholic beverage?"
Booze costs money on Southwest.
And he goes, "Yeah,
I'll get a can of beer."
And she gives him a free can of beer.
And for the next 40 minutes,
he would not shut the fuck up
about his free can of beer.
For 40 minutes.
And I mean nonstop.
"I mean, I haven't even landed yet,
I feel like I'm in a
goddamn VIP, you know?
I mean, I don't know
if there's gonna be a red
carpet when I get there,
but I'm going right to the roulette table,
feels like Lady Luck's already on my side.
This must be how like rock stars are.
You go in here and they
just give you free booze.
But anyway, it feels
like I'm already winning.
I haven't even gotten to Vegas yet.
This isn't even my favorite brand,
but nothing beats a free
can of beer, am I right?
Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang!"
40 minutes.
You know what was worse?
The 11 people around him
who didn't get a free can
of beer would not shut the fuck up
about not getting a free can of beer.
40, same thing.
"This is bullshit.
She should have asked for a show of hands,
who's willing to move?
And then we think of a
number between 1 and 20.
But no, this airline sucks,
and life sucks, and it's all
bullshit and God is dead."
Non-fucking-stop.
I've never wanted a plane
to crash more in my life.
Not only did I want it to
crash, I wanted, as it crashed,
I wanted to look at everyone and go,
"I'm making this happen!
I manifested this!
Taking you all off the genetic chessboard.
I called in a karmic airstrike
on my own position to take you out!
They'll name high schools after me!"
But no, we landed safely.
I had to sit and watch
these 12 people go off
and continue their lives,
powerless to stop them.
12 supervillain origin stories.
They're gonna ruin every Thanksgiving
and Christmas they go to.
Every single one.
The guy that got the free can
of beer, every Thanksgiving.
"You know, we have some good news.
Millicent worked with a tutor all semester
and got a perfect score on her SAT."
"Well, you know, when you do good things,
good things happen for you.
I was on a flight to
Vegas a few years ago.
I don't know if I told you this story,
but they asked me to move and I moved,
they gave me a free can of beer.
When you put in the work,
good stuff happens for you."
"Oh my God, Kevin, shut the fuck up!
You did not work with a tutor
to get a free can of beer.
Finish your pie,
go sit in your car, and
will your organs to fail."
And the people who didn't get the beer
are gonna be just as bad.
Every Christmas,
"Remember last year I
told you about my coworker
that's going through that divorce?
Well, it turns out she also has cancer."
"Well, life fucks you, man.
I was on a flight to Vegas a few years ago
and they gave this guy a free can of beer
and I didn't get nothing.
You know, that's what life does to you.
It either gives you cancer
or you don't get a free can of beer.
They both have the word can in it.
Think about it."
I'm celebrating 30 years on
Prozac, ladies and gentlemen.
Hell yeah, Prozac!
I accept it now.
When I first started doing it,
I was still this snotty little,
I was like, "Man, Prozac,
I don't need my emotions dampened.
I need my creativity to be real,
even if it's dark and twisted!"
Called up my dad.
"Dad, I got to go on Prozac."
"Good, it'll probably help you."
"No, it won't.
Lou Reed didn't take Prozac.
Humphrey Bogart never took Prozac."
And then my dad said,
"Yeah, Bogart never took Prozac.
He also smoked a carton
of cigarettes a day.
Okay?
So take your crazy pills
so you don't die of lung
cancer when you're 57."
And now it's 30 years on,
it's like has this cool
retro vintage feel.
It's like has this Rat Pack
kind of vibe to it now.
"What's that new stuff you're taking?"
"I'm Prozac, baby.
That's right.
I got suicidal ideation, ring-a-ding-ding.
Let's go to Reno and
put it all on black 17,
'cause it's all black, isn't it?"
Oh, my daughter inherited
one thing from me,
not my depression.
She is very upbeat and goofy,
but she did inherit my
love of horror movies.
She loves horror movies.
Oh my God!
Oh my God!
But she always punches above her weight.
She wants to see the
gnarliest shit out there.
Even when she was young, "I
wanna see 'The Exorcist.'"
"No, I'd like you to have a childhood.
I saw it way too young,
neglectful '80s suburban VCR parenting.
I'm not going to do that to you."
But she didn't go.
She said, "I wanna see 'The Shining.'"
"No."
But this last Halloween,
she did a full-court press on me.
She was like, "I wanna see the
original 1978 'Halloween.'"
I was like, "Sweetie,
that's a great movie.
I don't think it's
appropriate for you now.
You can see it someday, just not now."
And then she said, "All
my friends have seen it."
"That's their parents,
that's their business."
She goes, "Kids younger
than me have seen it."
Again, "That's their parents,
that's their business."
Then she says, "It's
gonna get ruined for me."
"That landed.
Nicely done."
I went, "Okay, I'm gonna
make a deal with you.
I am going to sit
and watch the original
'Halloween' by myself,
and if I decide it's
appropriate for you to watch,
we will watch it together
so I can talk to you about it afterward.
Is that acceptable?"
And she said, "Sure, dude."
So then I,
so I sat and I watched John Carpenter's
original 1978 masterpiece, "Halloween."
Has anyone seen that movie recently?
Yeah?
It's a great movie.
It's really scary.
It would barely get a PG-13 today.
All right?
It's scary, but it's not violent.
It's not gory.
All the kills are very
stylized, very Hitchcockian.
John Carpenter knew where
to put a camera lens, man.
And there's one bare
boob for half a second,
and it's PJ Soles' boob,
and every child should see that.
So,
I said, "Okay, Alice,
we are gonna watch 'Halloween' together.
I've decided it's okay for you to watch."
And she goes, "Yay!"
And we sat, and before I hit play,
I said, "Now listen.
This movie really messed me up.
I saw it at your age.
This is a very intense movie.
There is no shame in you asking
me to turn this thing off
and we'll go do something else, okay?
It is a very scary movie."
And she said, "I think I'll be okay."
Like, "Okay, but you wanted
this, and I'm just warning you."
She goes, "Okay, all right."
And I hit play,
and she and I watched the
original 1978 "Halloween."
The original 1978 "Halloween"
is the funniest movie
my daughter's ever seen.
She was either laughing her ass off
or disgusted with how stupid
everybody in the movie was.
And I mean scenes that freaked me out.
Remember at the beginning,
Michael Myers is just standing
in Jamie Lee Curtis'
backyard in broad daylight
in between all the laundry,
looking up at her window.
It's so friggin' creepy.
And my daughter's reaction was,
"Call the cops, he's right there!
What, this movie could
be five minutes long!
What is she doing?
Or forget the cops, just open the window."
"Hey asshole, we all see you!
It's three o'clock in the afternoon!"
There's, okay, there's one scene.
This was not meant to be a comedy scene,
but when you watch it through
2024 goggles, it is hilarious.
All right, so the scene
starts off, Jamie Lee Curtis
and Nancy Loomis are in a Camaro,
and they're driving along
and they're smoking weed
and they're listening to
"Don't Fear the Reaper."
When that scene happened, I
wanted to pause it and go,
"Alice, the entire 1970s.
That's all you need to know.
That's the whole decade.
You ever have to do a history report,
submit this screenshot, you'll get an A+."
The girls pull up to the hardware store,
which has been broken
into on Halloween Day.
And the sheriff is standing out
front and the two girls say,
"What happened, Sheriff?"
And the sheriff says,
"Someone broke into the hardware store."
And the two girls go, "Oh my God!"
And then the sheriff says,
and this is a line of
dialogue in the movie,
"Oh, it's probably a couple of teens.
They just stole a rubber
mask, some rope, some knives."
My daughter exploded laughing.
She was like, "Sure, dude.
Someone stole a murder kit on Halloween.
I'm sure this will work
out perfectly fine."
You know what else she liked doing
while watching the original "Halloween"
set in Haddonfield, Illinois?
Pointing out all the palm
trees in the background.
Oh my God,
did she love doing that.
There's a palm tree, there's two.
"My friend lives here!"
The end of the movie is where
she lost her mind though.
She couldn't take it anymore.
That's where Jamie Lee
Curtis stabs Michael Myers
with a knitting needle and he
drops behind the couch dead.
And she sits in front of the couch,
"Oh, the danger is past, I'm safe."
And my daughter's next to
me going, "Stab him again!"
"Cut his head off!"
Then Donald Pleasence shows up,
pumps six bullets into Michael Myers.
He goes over the railing, blam!
Falls on the front lawn dead.
Donald Pleasence begins
walking toward the railing.
And as he's walking toward the railing,
my daughter next to me starts going,
"He won't be there.
He'll be gone, watch, he'll be gone."
And as he reaches the railing,
in perfect sync with him
leaning forward, she goes,
"And he's not there."
I was seething.
I've never been angrier at her.
You do not make fun of a movie
that made me shit my pants!
Now I want her to see "The
Texas Chainsaw Massacre."
I wanna, that's my mission now.
Like, oh yeah, I'm gonna,
"Mommy and I are gonna go out to dinner.
We might get a hotel and stay overnight.
Let's keep all these lights out.
We're a greenhouse.
Okay, bye-bye, have fun!
Scary movies are silly, bye!"
I'm that petty.
So,
there's a place outside of LA,
and it's my favorite place
on the planet right now.
It's up in the mountains of Palmdale
and it's a place called Wolf Connection.
And it is a wolf rescue
and rehabilitation center.
It's really beautiful.
What they do is they rescue
and rehabilitate wolves.
What happens is people
buy wolf cubs as pets
because they're adorable.
And then a year goes by and they go,
"Oh, there's a fucking wolf in my house.
I did not,
I did not think this through at all.
Didn't we have three kids?"
All right, so they abandon these animals
and then Wolf Connection comes
and picks 'em up and resocializes them.
And you can go visit the wolves.
And when I say visit the wolves,
you don't go look at 'em in cages.
You go into their habitat
and sit and the wolves come up to you
and you can encounter them.
And it's very moving
and very transcendent.
But the last time I went there,
I made the mistake of
asking everyone that works
at Wolf Connection,
what brought you here to Wolf Connection?
And they all had a variation
on the same story, which was,
"I was kind of working
as a comedian in LA,"
or, "I was sort of working as an actor,
and I came up here one weekend
and I just never went back."
I don't need that in my head right now.
I do not need to know there's
a magic mountain covered
in wolves that I can just go live at.
All right?
I'm hanging on by my fingernails as it is.
I love doing comedy, but
listen, in a few years,
might not see me doing this anymore.
"What happened to that guy?"
"He found his pack.
He's in the mountains.
He's happy.
He's happy.
When the moon is just right,
you can hear them howling.
You can hear the rat from 'Ratatouille.'
They're all there watching.
They're protecting the city.
He's happy.
He's very happy."
And I also realize that's been
a recurring thing in my life,
is just wanting to vanish
from society and civilization.
It doesn't happen a
lot, but it does happen.
And when it does happen,
it always lands hard.
And the last time it
really hit me was in 2020.
I did phone banking for the 2020 election.
Has anyone here ever phone
banked for an election?
You call people up and say,
"Hey, are you planing on voting?"
Okay, I got addicted to
it because when you do it,
you get a core sample
of just pure insanity.
You are, you're on the
phone and it's nothing but,
"Fuck Biden and fuck Trump
and the fucking black helicopters
and the fucking 5G towers
are making us sterile!"
It is,
it is the best podcast
you will ever listen to.
And you're the host, so.
One day we did phone banking
in Nevada, not Las Vegas,
the desert, the fucking desert dwellers.
And of course it's
everything I wanted it to be,
just on the phone, "Fuck everybody
and the fucking fluoride in the water
and the fucking Illuminati!"
I'm like, "Oh, tell me
about the skin shifters!"
So,
I get one guy on the phone.
I should have hung up with
him way earlier than I did.
This is my fault, okay?
I get him on the phone.
"Hi, I'm calling to see
if you're planning to vote
in the 2020 election."
And he immediately, "Ah, fuck that.
They're all assholes.
I'm not gonna vote for any of that shit."
You gotta keep 'em on the phone
and get demographic information.
You know, how old are you?
What do you do for a living?
"What do you do for a living, sir?"
He was like, "I don't work."
I said, "Oh, do you live
in an apartment or house?"
And he goes, "I have a house."
I said, "Oh, what is the house worth?"
And he's like, "It's not worth anything.
They were building a suburb up here
and they quit halfway through.
And a bunch of us came up here
and just grabbed the half-built houses.
I just have a, I threw
a tarp over the roof.
I'm good."
I was like, "Well, you're
talking on a phone.
Do you have electricity?"
He goes, "I built a windmill outside.
I got a little generator.
You know, I got a little hot pot.
I can make noodles and coffee.
I got a fireplace at night.
It's good."
I go, "So what else do you do for food?"
And he said, "Well,
a bunch of hippies moved up
here trying to start a commune.
They brought all this livestock with them,
but then they named the fucking things.
They don't want to kill them.
I'll kill a pig.
I don't care what its
name is, man, you know.
You can write whatever you want
in that spider web over top.
I want some bacon, you know.
I go around every few months,
I kill their animals.
They give me some eggs and ham."
I was like, "Well, do you get your news
from like television?"
And he goes, "I don't watch TV.
You ever looked at a fire?"
And that stopped me short.
I have looked at a fire.
Fire's fucking awesome.
TV right now is great.
It's not as good as a fire.
It isn't even close.
But the last question is what broke me.
The last question broke me, 'cause I said,
"Well, what else do you do
for entertainment, sir?"
And he said, "Well, I have
a dirt bike and a shotgun,
and in the evenings I
ride out into the desert
and I shoot at rabbits."
And I said, "Are the
rabbits a source of food?"
And he said, "You can't
hit a rabbit with a shotgun
from the back of a dirt bike, you idiot!"
"I shoot at them!
I'm not gonna hit 'em!
They know I'm not gonna hit 'em.
They all line up and wait for me.
We ride around in a circle for an hour.
I come back, I look at my fire."
I'm like, "Fuck my life!
What am I doing?
I'm doing everything wrong!"
I wrote that guy in for president.
I mean, that's the guy.
That's our leader.
I'm sorry.
We need him.
We need him on his dirt bike, goddamn it.
And I know things seem dire
right now and very grim,
but just trust me,
it's gonna get so much worse.
So just save,
you gotta pace yourself.
I'm trying to find a
silver lining in all this.
This is the only silver
lining that I could think of,
'cause I wanted Kamala to win.
I voted for Kamala.
I wanted her to fucking, well,
you might not like where this goes.
Yes, I wanted her to win.
But please keep in mind,
as sad as a lot of us are,
two terms of Barack Obama, Black man,
the reaction was Trump.
So a term or two of Kamala Harris,
Black woman,
God knows what that reaction
would've been, all right?
If she'd won, they'd be growing that thing
in an underground lab right now.
There would be an aquarium
full of Alex Jones' urine
and there'd be 10 incels
jerking off into it.
God knows what they'd be trying to grow.
I don't know, but it would not be good.
Let's fight the Godzilla we know.
I get too,
look, I get snotty and
wrapped up in myself.
I'm just as much to blame.
I get all elitist and full of myself,
and I gotta keep checking myself.
Luckily life will always check,
when you get all blown up and puffed up,
life will fucking check you,
which I think is beautiful, all right?
Happened to me a few years ago.
I was doing a gig in
Montclair, New Jersey.
And no.
And,
so I go to New York
a couple days early 'cause
I'm hanging out in Manhattan
and I'm taking selfies.
"Hey, I'll see you in
Montclair Saturday night,
having a good time!"
So the night before the gig, Friday night,
I go to sleep, and I check my Instagram
and there is an Instagram message
from the official blue
check mark Instagram account
of the Planters NUTmobile.
Planters Peanuts has a car
shaped like a giant peanut
and it has an Instagram account
and it sent me a message
and the message read,
"Word on the salty streets."
That's literally what it said.
That is a failed MFA major
running that account, by the way.
"Word on the salty streets
is you're doing a gig tomorrow night
in Montclair, New Jersey.
How would you like to arrive
at the theater in style?
With a free ride from
the Planters NUTmobile?"
Now my lizard brain read
this message and went,
"Ah, I wanna ride in a peanut!"
Like I immediately wanted it.
And then my superego kicked in and said,
"Patton, that's gonna be fun for a minute.
And then you're gonna be on
the freeway in a giant peanut.
Everyone looking at you.
Then gonna pull up to the
theater in a giant peanut
and you're gonna exit a
giant peanut out of a hatch
in the side like a clown fetus."
"Time to tell my jokey-bokeys!
Thank you, peanut car!"
Have some dignity for once in your life.
Act like a rock star and turn this down.
And I did, and I was really nice about it.
I was like, "Thank you so
much for this kind offer.
I must politely pass.
The venue has already engaged a car,
which they cannot cancel."
Complete lie.
"But perhaps in the future,
I'll avail myself of your generosity.
Very sincerely yours, Patton Oswalt."
And I went to sleep.
The next day, noon,
sleek black town car pulls
up in front of my hotel.
I go down to meet it.
My driver gets out.
He is a handsome, bespoke-suited,
early '50s Egyptian man.
If you were gonna make
an Egyptian James Bond,
this is the guy to hire.
He goes, "Mr. Oswald, let's
see you into the back seat.
Off we go to your show."
And I get in the back seat,
and we pull away like the
fucking rock star that I am.
We go 600 feet.
We're gonna make a right on 6th Avenue.
And as we make the right,
and it's completely my driver's fault,
he bumps into and knocks
over a guy on a moped.
Big muscular guy on a tiny moped
with a skinny little girl
hanging off of his back.
And it's completely my driver's fault.
He has knocked this guy over.
The moped guy gets back up and
says to the passenger window,
"Hey man, watch it.
You just knocked me over."
And my cool, collected,
bespoke-suited driver says, "Fuck you!
Fucking watch where you're going.
I'll fucking murder you."
Zero to psycho in two seconds.
Then my driver realizes,
"Wait, I'm in a car.
He's on a moped.
Fuck him.
I'm just gonna drive away."
So he makes the right onto 6th Avenue.
He's gonna triumphantly drive away.
And we go two feet,
'cause it's a red light.
We're not going anywhere.
We're stuck right there.
The moped driver pulls up next to us,
taps on the passenger window.
"You remember me?"
Raises his left hand
and punches the passenger
side mirror off the car.
One punch.
My driver puts the car in park,
takes off his seatbelt,
gets out, and runs at the
moped guy throwing fists.
And the moped guy is huge,
but there's a moped between his legs.
His girlfriend's hanging off of his back.
He's got no real center of gravity,
and some of the punches are landing.
So he's like, "Fuck this."
And he turns his moped against traffic
and zips away the opposite
direction down 6th Avenue
between all the cars.
My driver gets his arms
around the girlfriend's waist,
but she doesn't let go.
So my driver is now dragged
away down 6th Avenue.
I'm watching all this
through the back window.
There he goes!
That's my driver.
I don't know what the
fuck to do right now.
The light's green,
everyone's honking at me.
I'm like, "You're honking at luggage.
There's nothing I can do.
You're honking at a baby on board sign.
I have nothing to do with this car."
Block and a half later, my
driver loses grip, falls off,
stands up, half of the suit
is torn open, chest is bloody.
This side of his face is bleeding,
and he doesn't adjust any of it,
leaves the suit hanging open,
calmly walks back to the car.
Everyone is screaming at
him, flipping him off,
doesn't acknowledge any of it.
Gets in the car, closes the door,
seatbelt back on,
turns to me and says,
"The fuck was that all about?"
Like, just,
serial killer calm.
I don't say what the fuck that's
about 'cause I'm terrified.
We drive to Montclair in
silence, get to my hotel.
He gets out, "Mr. Oswalt,
have a wonderful show tonight.
We've reached your hotel."
I thank him.
I tip the shit out of him.
He knows where I'm staying.
He can climb the side of
that building and kill me.
Go into my hotel room.
I step out onto the balcony.
I look out over the city
of Montclair, New Jersey.
And I said to myself,
"I apologize, Planters NUTmobile."
"Pride and hubris have
led me to this moment.
I deserve all this tension and terror."
And I made a silent vow to myself,
if I'm ever offered a ride from a food
or product-shaped vehicle,
I will accept it with grace and humility.
If I'm ever nominated for an Oscar
and the Massengill Douchemobile
wants to bring me to the Kodak Theater,
I will be stepping out
of a vinegary sack on
wheels to get my prize.
Fresh as a Nantucket
meadow, let's do this!
You guys have been a delight.
I'm going to, thank you.
I'm gonna leave you with this.
So last year,
our daughter's school
did their winter musical,
and our daughter wasn't in it.
She did tech, and she loved doing tech.
Headset and clipboard and
yelling at actresses all day.
She was in heaven.
And I liked it too,
'cause she'd leave in the
morning as a little kid
and then she'd come home
as a 51-year-old union electrician
with like a Pall Mall
hanging out of her mouth.
"These fucking actresses.
Stand on the masking
tape I put down for you
and say your fucking lines, Bethany."
So,
the wife and I go to see the,
and we went with the attitude
of bless their little hearts.
We knew it was gonna suck.
Middle and high school musicals
are terrible, but goddammit,
you go and you support your kids.
You support what they do
and you support who they
are unconditionally.
The two keys to parenting,
unconditional support and
hiding disappointment.
Those are the two things
you have got to master.
So we go see the musical.
What musical are they doing?
"Freaky Friday: The Musical."
Broadway-level musical.
And we look at each other and go,
"This is gonna fucking suck."
And the lights went down,
and the curtain went
up, and it was amazing.
All the kids on stage had
Broadway-level vocal ranges.
They had a live orchestra made
up of kids from the school.
They didn't miss a single note.
The scene transitions were crisp.
The lighting package was tight.
I know, I know I'm over-gushing, okay?
But you've gotta understand,
I went to high school in
rural Virginia in the '80s.
We did not have the level of talent
at Broad Run High School in Ashburn,
Virginia to have a live orchestra.
What we did, and a lot of people my age
have also experienced this,
we would send away to a company
in the Midwest that put
musicals on Cassette tape.
Not the singing, just the music.
And they'd send your drama
teacher 12 or 13 cassette tapes,
and he or she would sit
offstage with a boombox.
'80s boombox.
Not a lot of bass, way too much treble.
And as the kids would ramp up each song,
they'd slam that cassette in and hit play,
and the tinniest,
screechiest music would come out,
and they had to sing over it.
And they weren't sending us quality.
We weren't getting "West
Side Story" and "Oklahoma."
They were sending us all these
weird public domain musicals
that like one guy in
Lawrence, Kansas was writing.
Probably a dude on death row
now that I think about it.
They were all very dark
and very, very weird.
"Your Digestive System and You,"
or, "What Rhymes with Kwanzaa,"
or, "Christopher Columbus,
A Great American."
It was all just,
and the kids had to ramp
up these horrible songs.
"What is the purpose of
the transverse colon?"
So one year my high school
decided to put on a Christmas pageant,
and they made a fatal error.
They made it a mandatory assembly.
So everyone had to go into the auditorium,
had to give up their free period,
and had to watch the drama
kids put on a pageant.
So the attitude of everyone
in that auditorium was,
"Fuck you, drama kids!"
And the drama kids' attitude,
to their credit, was,
"Fuck you, you inbred rednecks!"
"These are the dues I'm paying
until I'm one day on Broadway!"
So two waves of resentment
crashing into each other.
I'm sitting with the metal shop kids.
My class after free period was metal shop,
and I'm sitting behind a
kid named Brandon Tilley.
Brandon Tilley was this
huge, violent bully
in my metal shop class.
Beat the fuck outta me and
everyone else in that class.
Way too old to still be in high school.
I remember his kids visiting him one day.
He was way too old.
A lot of stories about the Korean War.
So,
now, I hate this,
this pageant hasn't even
started and I hate it.
But I hate Brandon Tilley more.
So I decide I'm gonna
enjoy the pageant at him,
to spite him.
Pageant starts.
It's as awful as you think it would be.
The whole theme of the pageant is
a guy is trying to get
home in time for Christmas.
And each song was worse
than the one before it,
over and over again.
How do they celebrate
Christmas all over the world?
How do you make a gingerbread man dance?
Over and fucking over
till we get to the last
song in the pageant.
The last song is gonna be sung
by the one kid in the drama
club who had vocal range
and talent and who after high school
became a professional singer
and dancer on Broadway.
And it says something
about me that I can't remember his name.
But I remember Brandon Tilley,
because I live in an
enemy-centered universe.
So, this kid steps up,
and he's gonna bring this
pageant in for a 3-point landing.
And he ramps up that final song.
"I guess I'll never make it
home in time for Christmas!"
And in the two seconds
between him saying that
and the drama teacher
hitting play on the boombox,
Brandon Tilley went,
"Why don't you fucking sing about it?"
I learned something about myself that day.
My highest loyalty is to comedy, because,
the worst person on the
planet landed a perfect joke.
Perfect, perfect timing,
perfect voice modulation.
The whole auditorium erupted.
I erupted.
The drama kid went to
the edge of the stage
and sang the song directly to Brandon.
Their eyes locked.
It was the best gunfight I've ever seen.
A week hasn't gone by where
I haven't thought about that.
They should have let Brandon
record it on the cassette
before they mailed it back, by the way.
That's the highlight of the show!
You take a show on the
road to see what works.
And Brandon Tilley ruined musicals for me.
Any musical you watch,
right before they start singing,
I hear it.
You're gonna hear it now too.
I'm not dying alone with this curse.
There's a two-second Brandon
Tilley pause for every song.
Anything, at the end of
"Grease" when she comes out
all in leather, and
Travolta's like, "Sandy?"
And in my head I hear,
"Why don't you fucking sing about it?"
I got chills in my
Goddamn you, Brandon Tilley!
Thank you so much, Madison.
Thank you!
Thank you.
Thank you so much!
Thank you, guys!
Thank you!
- Thank you.
Okay.
Thank you.
Thank you, Madison.
Thank you so much.
Yes.
Oh my God.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Oh, thank you guys so much.
Thank you, Madison, Wisconsin.
Oh my God.
Woo-hoo-hoo-hoo!
I'm in a good mood tonight.
I'm very happy to be here,
even though I'm a little shook.
My daughter said something to me
that no father wants to hear.
She called me dude.
Now listen, I understand
why she did it, all right?
She's not 6 years old anymore,
doesn't wanna say, "Daddy."
I don't want her calling me daddy, okay?
But dude, that was an overcorrection.
Like she went way too,
she could have stopped at dad,
but she went all the way to dude.
I didn't like how it felt.
It landed wrong.
How was school today, sweetie?
It was pretty good, dude.
No, listen, no, wait.
I'm not here to sell you weed, okay?
I'm still signing permission slips.
We're not working the line
together at Jersey Mike's.
So how about you call me dad
and then put your headphones back on
and let Phoebe Bridgers whisk you away
from this bland planet you're trying,
I don't wanna be here either.
Dude, ugh, still stings.
How was hanging out with
your friends today, sweetie?
It was pretty good, dude.
Well, that's awesome, bro.
You know what else was awesome?
When you thought "PAW
Patrol" was real 6 years ago.
Call me dude.
Now I have a cat, I have a cat.
Any cat owners in here?
Yeah, I love my cat.
I don't know if other cat
owners have experienced this.
Whenever I play with my cat,
in the middle of playing,
she'll stop and react to another presence
that's in the room
that she clearly sees and hears.
And then she'll follow it across the room.
And then at one point,
I assume it vanishes
'cause she goes back to playing with me
like nothing happened.
And it's fucking unnerving, all right?
Because I'm brushing up
against the netherworld.
I have friends who go, "I
wish my kitty could talk."
I don't, because if my cat could talk,
it would be three things,
annoying, and then terrifying,
and then annoying again.
That's all it would be all day.
"You know, I like that little
chicken treat you gave me.
I'll have another chicken treat.
If you have another chicken treat,
I'll eat another chicken treat.
Is that chicken?
Oh, demon.
Demon just came in the room.
It's walking across the room.
It has a coyote head.
Now the coyote head is splitting open.
It's two baby heads.
Now it's pointing at you.
Now it's gone.
Hey, you have another chicken treat?
Those are good.
No?"
So a couple of years ago,
it was dishwasher
stacking videos all night.
There are videos on YouTube
and Instagram of people
stacking dishes in dishwashers,
and I would watch them for hours, hours,
swiping one after the
other all frigging night.
And then I upgraded to
hoof cleaning videos.
I don't know, okay.
Yes, it's horse and cow
hooves being cleaned.
And I have dodged conversations,
I have not read books,
I have lost sleep lying on my side,
two in the morning with a
pillow, just vroom, next.
"You won't believe."
I will believe, show me.
Next, next.
Maybe we don't need writers.
I don't know.
I mean, I'm just watching
fucking hoof clean.
The people, they're working
too hard on "Yellowstone."
They could just show the
hooves being cleaned.
Why are they bothering
paying all these actors?
You could just laugh for,
previously on Yellowstone.
There you go.
Next week on Yellowstone.
Then I discovered house cleaning videos.
There's a woman
and she goes to like hoarder
houses and she power cleans it.
And again, hours,
hours swiping over and
over and over again.
But then I finally reached my final form.
Yard cleaning videos,
yard care and yard cleaning video.
There's a guy, yeah, we
all, he has fans obviously.
He's on YouTube and he goes
into sketchy neighborhoods
and he finds abandoned houses
and he swoops in and he tames
that lawn and it is my porn.
I can't, when he,
you get that edger and you show that curb.
You make that curb
street legal, goddammit.
You get around that mailbox
and give it a Brazilian.
When he finds a hidden walkway,
that's like a money shot for me.
I'm just like, "Oh my God,
that is a brick breezeway.
Give me some tissues and get out."
What's weird is in the
'80s when I was a teenager,
I did those chores.
I had to do the dishes.
I had to clean the house.
I mowed lawns to make money.
And while I did it,
I dreamed of some future
world that would never happen,
some crazy science fiction year, 2025.
And in that year, I'd have some magic box
in my pocket where I
could call down any movie
or piece of music or
book to entertain myself.
And now I live in the year 2025
and I have that magic science fiction box
and I'm using it to watch chores!
I'm watching the chores
that I did while I dreamed of that box!
What fucking monkey's paw did I wish on?
I don't know what happened.
And by, listen, I'm not one
of these people that goes,
"Oh, social media and cell phones
are gonna destroy humanity."
Humanity's track record was not great
before cell phones, okay?
We were not this elevated
species that got laid low
by social media.
You know what laid us low?
Sticks.
When we discovered sticks
to hit each other with,
that was the end.
It's all over.
Maybe if we'd had cell
phones back in the 1300s,
there would've been a
few less witch burnings.
I don't know, if people had hobbies
like Wordle or Candy Crush
instead of the one hobby
everyone had back then,
which was being afraid
of the woods at dusk.
Like it was this,
"Oh, the sun went down.
Let's put an old woman in the wicker man
so it comes up again."
That was the one app they had
back then, "The Wicker Man."
That was the one.
We've always, by the way,
we've always been on our cell phones.
Even before we had our cell phones,
we were on our cell phones.
And there's evidence of this.
Last year I read Jane Austen's
"Pride and Prejudice."
I read it.
I needed a cool down
between my MMA fights.
And in the middle,
in the middle of "Pride and Prejudice,"
which was written In 1813,
1813, all the main characters
go to a garden party together.
They go to a garden party
and they're all making eye contact
and they're having conversations
and they're connecting with
their fellow human beings,
not a cell phone in sight.
And then in the middle
of this garden party,
Mr. Darcy peels off and starts
reading a book by himself.
Two other women peel off,
start sewing by themselves.
Two other men peel off,
start playing cards by themselves.
And one woman, Mrs. Hurst,
and this is how it's
described in the novel,
stops talking to people
so she can look at her
rings and bracelets.
That is a room full of people
who would kill to have cell phones.
They're on their cell phones,
they just don't have them.
And do you know how boring you have to be
for someone to rather read a book in 1813
than talk to you?
That is a dagger through the soul.
I'd love to hear the
rest of this anecdote,
but I'm in the middle
of an 800-page book about a rabbit lost
in a patch of thistle,
and I cannot pull myself away.
And I can't get over Mrs.
Hurst stops talking to people
so she can look at her
rings and bracelets.
What is a better indication
that your society is failing?
"Hey man, next week we should,
shit, I'm getting a text,
let me check it.
Don't go anywhere, I'm
just gonna check it."
Or, "Next Sunday we should
have buttered scones,
and Walter, one moment."
Ee-hee-hee-hee-hee-hee!
Yeah, okay, I guess we're done.
We're done, right?
Mrs. Hurst stopped, she's
looking at her rings right now.
We're done, right?
All right.
Jews.
A few years ago,
when my daughter was 13,
every other weekend one of
her friends had a bar mitzvah
or a bat mitzvah,
and I took her to every
single one, and I loved it.
I love bar mitzvahs.
What I realized was,
even though I'm still an atheist,
as I get older, I really
love religious rituals.
I just love them.
It's so, because it's show business.
I'm in show biz.
I love show business.
It also means that even
the deepest, most esoteric,
searching cosmic religions all
had moments where they went,
"We have to give them something fun to do
or they're not gonna show up.
We gotta think of an activity, please.
Have you read this book?
It's just, it's lists.
All it is is lists.
Think of an activity or we're fucked."
At a bar mitzvah, at one point,
I don't know why they do this,
but they bring the Torah out
and they run it around the room.
It's like it's crowd surfing!
I love it so much!
"Let me touch a tassel!"
Muslims have to stop five times a day
and face Mecca and pray.
I don't know why.
I just know it's like improv everywhere.
You don't know when it's gonna happen.
Keeps you on your toes.
I don't know how these
traditions started, by the way.
I'm not gonna look 'em up on Wikipedia
for this dumb bit, but,
I feel like they didn't start that,
like they didn't start with,
running the Torah around the room.
Like, doesn't it?
It feels to me like the
Torah was on a table
and everybody went up and
they touched the Torah.
But then there was the one
religious lunatic in the family.
We all have one, who's like,
I'm going to touch the Torah
and I'm going to stand here
and recite the entire Torah.
And then everyone was
like, "Your fucking cousin.
You know, dude, I was,
I was being nice inviting him."
It's like, "I know, dude, he's,
listen, he means well.
Listen to me.
Let's run the Torah around the room.
We'll let him chase it.
It'll tucker him out.
All right?
I'm with you.
I just want some wine
and challah up in this
piece, motherfucker.
I'm with you."
Muslims facing Mecca five times a day.
My theory on that is that
started a guy who didn't know how
to get out of conversations at parties.
That's how that started.
He was a really nice guy.
Too nice for his own good, I think.
And he was at a party
and another guy was like,
"Can I tell you my 500
favorite chickpea recipes?"
And then he was like,
"I would love to hear that,
but I do a thing now where
I face Mecca and I pray.
It's like this thing I do."
And the guy wouldn't let it go.
He's like, "I can tell
you when you're done."
And then he panicked.
He was like, "I do it
like five times a day."
Like he just completely lied to the guy.
Didn't wanna hurt his feelings.
And that's why they gotta do that,
because of Abdul the chickpea nerd
fucked it up for everybody.
Nobody does rituals like
the Catholics, though.
Oh, boy.
Oh, goodness gracious.
Have you, has anyone here
been to a Catholic Mass?
Yeah?
All right.
That's it?
Guys, go on StubHub and get a ticket.
It is amazing!
It is the campiest, most
metal Rocky Horror shit
you've ever seen.
At one point, a guy in a dress comes out,
and he has a chain and
there's a big metal ball
at the end with smoke coming out
and he just fucking whips it around.
What the fuck is that?
I'll tell you what it is, it's awesome!
There are Swedish death
metal bands watching that go,
"We are stealing that.
Guys, did you see this?"
They give you snacks.
In the middle of a Catholic mass,
"Anyone want a cracker?"
You're like, "Yes, oh, thank you."
But here, I don't wanna spoil anything,
but it's a prank, all right?
It's a nice, they're not mean about it,
but when you bite it, they go, "Sike,
that's a magic zombie in your mouth."
You're like, "Ow, come on."
And then they'll say,
"You know, we feel bad.
You want some wine to wash that down?"
And you go, "I would."
And then you sip it and they go,
"Psych, that's magic zombie blood!
Twice, we got you twice!
Ha ha!"
It's fun.
I don't know why,
why do they stop with
the body and the blood?
They should just keep going.
Bring out a big bowl of grapes.
"These are Jesus's eyeballs."
Just haunted house the
shit out of it, man.
I'll be there every Sunday.
Bring out some cold spaghetti.
"Who wants to touch the Savior's brain?"
Woo, spooky!
And if you get bored,
you can play, "Which priest
is fucking the kids?"
It's like a big perverted game
of Clue all of a sudden, like ooh.
I think it's the guy from
Ohio, they transferred him.
I have a feeling.
All right, I'm gonna guess.
I'm not gonna open the
envelope, but I'm gonna guess.
I think I know who it is.
All right, Father Just
with his penis
in Timmy.
That's my guess.
I'm gonna open the
envelope now, here we go.
Feeling pretty good.
Father Just, all right.
Timmy.
Guys, I think I won.
Feeling pretty good.
Oh God.
Lead pipe.
Man, I,
I thought you had,
you didn't have, what did you have?
Candlestick.
All right.
So, okay, last year I took a
flight on Southwest Airlines.
I flew from Burbank to Vegas.
It's a 40-minute flight.
It's so easy, it's so chill.
I love taking it.
We all get on the plane.
We have not taken off yet.
We're still on the runway.
And before we take off,
one of the attendants
comes back and asks a guy,
"Would you mind moving?
This woman wanted to
sit next to her husband.
There's no free seats.
Would you be okay with that?"
He was so cool.
"Absolutely."
Got up, got up out of his aisle seat,
sat in a center seat so
this woman could sit.
Really nice guy.
And then we took off.
Now we're in the air.
And once we're airborne,
the attendant comes
back with the drink cart
and she goes directly to
the guy that moved and said,
"Sir, that was so considerate of you.
May I offer you a free
beverage of your choice,
including an alcoholic beverage?"
Booze costs money on Southwest.
And he goes, "Yeah,
I'll get a can of beer."
And she gives him a free can of beer.
And for the next 40 minutes,
he would not shut the fuck up
about his free can of beer.
For 40 minutes.
And I mean nonstop.
"I mean, I haven't even landed yet,
I feel like I'm in a
goddamn VIP, you know?
I mean, I don't know
if there's gonna be a red
carpet when I get there,
but I'm going right to the roulette table,
feels like Lady Luck's already on my side.
This must be how like rock stars are.
You go in here and they
just give you free booze.
But anyway, it feels
like I'm already winning.
I haven't even gotten to Vegas yet.
This isn't even my favorite brand,
but nothing beats a free
can of beer, am I right?
Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang!"
40 minutes.
You know what was worse?
The 11 people around him
who didn't get a free can
of beer would not shut the fuck up
about not getting a free can of beer.
40, same thing.
"This is bullshit.
She should have asked for a show of hands,
who's willing to move?
And then we think of a
number between 1 and 20.
But no, this airline sucks,
and life sucks, and it's all
bullshit and God is dead."
Non-fucking-stop.
I've never wanted a plane
to crash more in my life.
Not only did I want it to
crash, I wanted, as it crashed,
I wanted to look at everyone and go,
"I'm making this happen!
I manifested this!
Taking you all off the genetic chessboard.
I called in a karmic airstrike
on my own position to take you out!
They'll name high schools after me!"
But no, we landed safely.
I had to sit and watch
these 12 people go off
and continue their lives,
powerless to stop them.
12 supervillain origin stories.
They're gonna ruin every Thanksgiving
and Christmas they go to.
Every single one.
The guy that got the free can
of beer, every Thanksgiving.
"You know, we have some good news.
Millicent worked with a tutor all semester
and got a perfect score on her SAT."
"Well, you know, when you do good things,
good things happen for you.
I was on a flight to
Vegas a few years ago.
I don't know if I told you this story,
but they asked me to move and I moved,
they gave me a free can of beer.
When you put in the work,
good stuff happens for you."
"Oh my God, Kevin, shut the fuck up!
You did not work with a tutor
to get a free can of beer.
Finish your pie,
go sit in your car, and
will your organs to fail."
And the people who didn't get the beer
are gonna be just as bad.
Every Christmas,
"Remember last year I
told you about my coworker
that's going through that divorce?
Well, it turns out she also has cancer."
"Well, life fucks you, man.
I was on a flight to Vegas a few years ago
and they gave this guy a free can of beer
and I didn't get nothing.
You know, that's what life does to you.
It either gives you cancer
or you don't get a free can of beer.
They both have the word can in it.
Think about it."
I'm celebrating 30 years on
Prozac, ladies and gentlemen.
Hell yeah, Prozac!
I accept it now.
When I first started doing it,
I was still this snotty little,
I was like, "Man, Prozac,
I don't need my emotions dampened.
I need my creativity to be real,
even if it's dark and twisted!"
Called up my dad.
"Dad, I got to go on Prozac."
"Good, it'll probably help you."
"No, it won't.
Lou Reed didn't take Prozac.
Humphrey Bogart never took Prozac."
And then my dad said,
"Yeah, Bogart never took Prozac.
He also smoked a carton
of cigarettes a day.
Okay?
So take your crazy pills
so you don't die of lung
cancer when you're 57."
And now it's 30 years on,
it's like has this cool
retro vintage feel.
It's like has this Rat Pack
kind of vibe to it now.
"What's that new stuff you're taking?"
"I'm Prozac, baby.
That's right.
I got suicidal ideation, ring-a-ding-ding.
Let's go to Reno and
put it all on black 17,
'cause it's all black, isn't it?"
Oh, my daughter inherited
one thing from me,
not my depression.
She is very upbeat and goofy,
but she did inherit my
love of horror movies.
She loves horror movies.
Oh my God!
Oh my God!
But she always punches above her weight.
She wants to see the
gnarliest shit out there.
Even when she was young, "I
wanna see 'The Exorcist.'"
"No, I'd like you to have a childhood.
I saw it way too young,
neglectful '80s suburban VCR parenting.
I'm not going to do that to you."
But she didn't go.
She said, "I wanna see 'The Shining.'"
"No."
But this last Halloween,
she did a full-court press on me.
She was like, "I wanna see the
original 1978 'Halloween.'"
I was like, "Sweetie,
that's a great movie.
I don't think it's
appropriate for you now.
You can see it someday, just not now."
And then she said, "All
my friends have seen it."
"That's their parents,
that's their business."
She goes, "Kids younger
than me have seen it."
Again, "That's their parents,
that's their business."
Then she says, "It's
gonna get ruined for me."
"That landed.
Nicely done."
I went, "Okay, I'm gonna
make a deal with you.
I am going to sit
and watch the original
'Halloween' by myself,
and if I decide it's
appropriate for you to watch,
we will watch it together
so I can talk to you about it afterward.
Is that acceptable?"
And she said, "Sure, dude."
So then I,
so I sat and I watched John Carpenter's
original 1978 masterpiece, "Halloween."
Has anyone seen that movie recently?
Yeah?
It's a great movie.
It's really scary.
It would barely get a PG-13 today.
All right?
It's scary, but it's not violent.
It's not gory.
All the kills are very
stylized, very Hitchcockian.
John Carpenter knew where
to put a camera lens, man.
And there's one bare
boob for half a second,
and it's PJ Soles' boob,
and every child should see that.
So,
I said, "Okay, Alice,
we are gonna watch 'Halloween' together.
I've decided it's okay for you to watch."
And she goes, "Yay!"
And we sat, and before I hit play,
I said, "Now listen.
This movie really messed me up.
I saw it at your age.
This is a very intense movie.
There is no shame in you asking
me to turn this thing off
and we'll go do something else, okay?
It is a very scary movie."
And she said, "I think I'll be okay."
Like, "Okay, but you wanted
this, and I'm just warning you."
She goes, "Okay, all right."
And I hit play,
and she and I watched the
original 1978 "Halloween."
The original 1978 "Halloween"
is the funniest movie
my daughter's ever seen.
She was either laughing her ass off
or disgusted with how stupid
everybody in the movie was.
And I mean scenes that freaked me out.
Remember at the beginning,
Michael Myers is just standing
in Jamie Lee Curtis'
backyard in broad daylight
in between all the laundry,
looking up at her window.
It's so friggin' creepy.
And my daughter's reaction was,
"Call the cops, he's right there!
What, this movie could
be five minutes long!
What is she doing?
Or forget the cops, just open the window."
"Hey asshole, we all see you!
It's three o'clock in the afternoon!"
There's, okay, there's one scene.
This was not meant to be a comedy scene,
but when you watch it through
2024 goggles, it is hilarious.
All right, so the scene
starts off, Jamie Lee Curtis
and Nancy Loomis are in a Camaro,
and they're driving along
and they're smoking weed
and they're listening to
"Don't Fear the Reaper."
When that scene happened, I
wanted to pause it and go,
"Alice, the entire 1970s.
That's all you need to know.
That's the whole decade.
You ever have to do a history report,
submit this screenshot, you'll get an A+."
The girls pull up to the hardware store,
which has been broken
into on Halloween Day.
And the sheriff is standing out
front and the two girls say,
"What happened, Sheriff?"
And the sheriff says,
"Someone broke into the hardware store."
And the two girls go, "Oh my God!"
And then the sheriff says,
and this is a line of
dialogue in the movie,
"Oh, it's probably a couple of teens.
They just stole a rubber
mask, some rope, some knives."
My daughter exploded laughing.
She was like, "Sure, dude.
Someone stole a murder kit on Halloween.
I'm sure this will work
out perfectly fine."
You know what else she liked doing
while watching the original "Halloween"
set in Haddonfield, Illinois?
Pointing out all the palm
trees in the background.
Oh my God,
did she love doing that.
There's a palm tree, there's two.
"My friend lives here!"
The end of the movie is where
she lost her mind though.
She couldn't take it anymore.
That's where Jamie Lee
Curtis stabs Michael Myers
with a knitting needle and he
drops behind the couch dead.
And she sits in front of the couch,
"Oh, the danger is past, I'm safe."
And my daughter's next to
me going, "Stab him again!"
"Cut his head off!"
Then Donald Pleasence shows up,
pumps six bullets into Michael Myers.
He goes over the railing, blam!
Falls on the front lawn dead.
Donald Pleasence begins
walking toward the railing.
And as he's walking toward the railing,
my daughter next to me starts going,
"He won't be there.
He'll be gone, watch, he'll be gone."
And as he reaches the railing,
in perfect sync with him
leaning forward, she goes,
"And he's not there."
I was seething.
I've never been angrier at her.
You do not make fun of a movie
that made me shit my pants!
Now I want her to see "The
Texas Chainsaw Massacre."
I wanna, that's my mission now.
Like, oh yeah, I'm gonna,
"Mommy and I are gonna go out to dinner.
We might get a hotel and stay overnight.
Let's keep all these lights out.
We're a greenhouse.
Okay, bye-bye, have fun!
Scary movies are silly, bye!"
I'm that petty.
So,
there's a place outside of LA,
and it's my favorite place
on the planet right now.
It's up in the mountains of Palmdale
and it's a place called Wolf Connection.
And it is a wolf rescue
and rehabilitation center.
It's really beautiful.
What they do is they rescue
and rehabilitate wolves.
What happens is people
buy wolf cubs as pets
because they're adorable.
And then a year goes by and they go,
"Oh, there's a fucking wolf in my house.
I did not,
I did not think this through at all.
Didn't we have three kids?"
All right, so they abandon these animals
and then Wolf Connection comes
and picks 'em up and resocializes them.
And you can go visit the wolves.
And when I say visit the wolves,
you don't go look at 'em in cages.
You go into their habitat
and sit and the wolves come up to you
and you can encounter them.
And it's very moving
and very transcendent.
But the last time I went there,
I made the mistake of
asking everyone that works
at Wolf Connection,
what brought you here to Wolf Connection?
And they all had a variation
on the same story, which was,
"I was kind of working
as a comedian in LA,"
or, "I was sort of working as an actor,
and I came up here one weekend
and I just never went back."
I don't need that in my head right now.
I do not need to know there's
a magic mountain covered
in wolves that I can just go live at.
All right?
I'm hanging on by my fingernails as it is.
I love doing comedy, but
listen, in a few years,
might not see me doing this anymore.
"What happened to that guy?"
"He found his pack.
He's in the mountains.
He's happy.
He's happy.
When the moon is just right,
you can hear them howling.
You can hear the rat from 'Ratatouille.'
They're all there watching.
They're protecting the city.
He's happy.
He's very happy."
And I also realize that's been
a recurring thing in my life,
is just wanting to vanish
from society and civilization.
It doesn't happen a
lot, but it does happen.
And when it does happen,
it always lands hard.
And the last time it
really hit me was in 2020.
I did phone banking for the 2020 election.
Has anyone here ever phone
banked for an election?
You call people up and say,
"Hey, are you planing on voting?"
Okay, I got addicted to
it because when you do it,
you get a core sample
of just pure insanity.
You are, you're on the
phone and it's nothing but,
"Fuck Biden and fuck Trump
and the fucking black helicopters
and the fucking 5G towers
are making us sterile!"
It is,
it is the best podcast
you will ever listen to.
And you're the host, so.
One day we did phone banking
in Nevada, not Las Vegas,
the desert, the fucking desert dwellers.
And of course it's
everything I wanted it to be,
just on the phone, "Fuck everybody
and the fucking fluoride in the water
and the fucking Illuminati!"
I'm like, "Oh, tell me
about the skin shifters!"
So,
I get one guy on the phone.
I should have hung up with
him way earlier than I did.
This is my fault, okay?
I get him on the phone.
"Hi, I'm calling to see
if you're planning to vote
in the 2020 election."
And he immediately, "Ah, fuck that.
They're all assholes.
I'm not gonna vote for any of that shit."
You gotta keep 'em on the phone
and get demographic information.
You know, how old are you?
What do you do for a living?
"What do you do for a living, sir?"
He was like, "I don't work."
I said, "Oh, do you live
in an apartment or house?"
And he goes, "I have a house."
I said, "Oh, what is the house worth?"
And he's like, "It's not worth anything.
They were building a suburb up here
and they quit halfway through.
And a bunch of us came up here
and just grabbed the half-built houses.
I just have a, I threw
a tarp over the roof.
I'm good."
I was like, "Well, you're
talking on a phone.
Do you have electricity?"
He goes, "I built a windmill outside.
I got a little generator.
You know, I got a little hot pot.
I can make noodles and coffee.
I got a fireplace at night.
It's good."
I go, "So what else do you do for food?"
And he said, "Well,
a bunch of hippies moved up
here trying to start a commune.
They brought all this livestock with them,
but then they named the fucking things.
They don't want to kill them.
I'll kill a pig.
I don't care what its
name is, man, you know.
You can write whatever you want
in that spider web over top.
I want some bacon, you know.
I go around every few months,
I kill their animals.
They give me some eggs and ham."
I was like, "Well, do you get your news
from like television?"
And he goes, "I don't watch TV.
You ever looked at a fire?"
And that stopped me short.
I have looked at a fire.
Fire's fucking awesome.
TV right now is great.
It's not as good as a fire.
It isn't even close.
But the last question is what broke me.
The last question broke me, 'cause I said,
"Well, what else do you do
for entertainment, sir?"
And he said, "Well, I have
a dirt bike and a shotgun,
and in the evenings I
ride out into the desert
and I shoot at rabbits."
And I said, "Are the
rabbits a source of food?"
And he said, "You can't
hit a rabbit with a shotgun
from the back of a dirt bike, you idiot!"
"I shoot at them!
I'm not gonna hit 'em!
They know I'm not gonna hit 'em.
They all line up and wait for me.
We ride around in a circle for an hour.
I come back, I look at my fire."
I'm like, "Fuck my life!
What am I doing?
I'm doing everything wrong!"
I wrote that guy in for president.
I mean, that's the guy.
That's our leader.
I'm sorry.
We need him.
We need him on his dirt bike, goddamn it.
And I know things seem dire
right now and very grim,
but just trust me,
it's gonna get so much worse.
So just save,
you gotta pace yourself.
I'm trying to find a
silver lining in all this.
This is the only silver
lining that I could think of,
'cause I wanted Kamala to win.
I voted for Kamala.
I wanted her to fucking, well,
you might not like where this goes.
Yes, I wanted her to win.
But please keep in mind,
as sad as a lot of us are,
two terms of Barack Obama, Black man,
the reaction was Trump.
So a term or two of Kamala Harris,
Black woman,
God knows what that reaction
would've been, all right?
If she'd won, they'd be growing that thing
in an underground lab right now.
There would be an aquarium
full of Alex Jones' urine
and there'd be 10 incels
jerking off into it.
God knows what they'd be trying to grow.
I don't know, but it would not be good.
Let's fight the Godzilla we know.
I get too,
look, I get snotty and
wrapped up in myself.
I'm just as much to blame.
I get all elitist and full of myself,
and I gotta keep checking myself.
Luckily life will always check,
when you get all blown up and puffed up,
life will fucking check you,
which I think is beautiful, all right?
Happened to me a few years ago.
I was doing a gig in
Montclair, New Jersey.
And no.
And,
so I go to New York
a couple days early 'cause
I'm hanging out in Manhattan
and I'm taking selfies.
"Hey, I'll see you in
Montclair Saturday night,
having a good time!"
So the night before the gig, Friday night,
I go to sleep, and I check my Instagram
and there is an Instagram message
from the official blue
check mark Instagram account
of the Planters NUTmobile.
Planters Peanuts has a car
shaped like a giant peanut
and it has an Instagram account
and it sent me a message
and the message read,
"Word on the salty streets."
That's literally what it said.
That is a failed MFA major
running that account, by the way.
"Word on the salty streets
is you're doing a gig tomorrow night
in Montclair, New Jersey.
How would you like to arrive
at the theater in style?
With a free ride from
the Planters NUTmobile?"
Now my lizard brain read
this message and went,
"Ah, I wanna ride in a peanut!"
Like I immediately wanted it.
And then my superego kicked in and said,
"Patton, that's gonna be fun for a minute.
And then you're gonna be on
the freeway in a giant peanut.
Everyone looking at you.
Then gonna pull up to the
theater in a giant peanut
and you're gonna exit a
giant peanut out of a hatch
in the side like a clown fetus."
"Time to tell my jokey-bokeys!
Thank you, peanut car!"
Have some dignity for once in your life.
Act like a rock star and turn this down.
And I did, and I was really nice about it.
I was like, "Thank you so
much for this kind offer.
I must politely pass.
The venue has already engaged a car,
which they cannot cancel."
Complete lie.
"But perhaps in the future,
I'll avail myself of your generosity.
Very sincerely yours, Patton Oswalt."
And I went to sleep.
The next day, noon,
sleek black town car pulls
up in front of my hotel.
I go down to meet it.
My driver gets out.
He is a handsome, bespoke-suited,
early '50s Egyptian man.
If you were gonna make
an Egyptian James Bond,
this is the guy to hire.
He goes, "Mr. Oswald, let's
see you into the back seat.
Off we go to your show."
And I get in the back seat,
and we pull away like the
fucking rock star that I am.
We go 600 feet.
We're gonna make a right on 6th Avenue.
And as we make the right,
and it's completely my driver's fault,
he bumps into and knocks
over a guy on a moped.
Big muscular guy on a tiny moped
with a skinny little girl
hanging off of his back.
And it's completely my driver's fault.
He has knocked this guy over.
The moped guy gets back up and
says to the passenger window,
"Hey man, watch it.
You just knocked me over."
And my cool, collected,
bespoke-suited driver says, "Fuck you!
Fucking watch where you're going.
I'll fucking murder you."
Zero to psycho in two seconds.
Then my driver realizes,
"Wait, I'm in a car.
He's on a moped.
Fuck him.
I'm just gonna drive away."
So he makes the right onto 6th Avenue.
He's gonna triumphantly drive away.
And we go two feet,
'cause it's a red light.
We're not going anywhere.
We're stuck right there.
The moped driver pulls up next to us,
taps on the passenger window.
"You remember me?"
Raises his left hand
and punches the passenger
side mirror off the car.
One punch.
My driver puts the car in park,
takes off his seatbelt,
gets out, and runs at the
moped guy throwing fists.
And the moped guy is huge,
but there's a moped between his legs.
His girlfriend's hanging off of his back.
He's got no real center of gravity,
and some of the punches are landing.
So he's like, "Fuck this."
And he turns his moped against traffic
and zips away the opposite
direction down 6th Avenue
between all the cars.
My driver gets his arms
around the girlfriend's waist,
but she doesn't let go.
So my driver is now dragged
away down 6th Avenue.
I'm watching all this
through the back window.
There he goes!
That's my driver.
I don't know what the
fuck to do right now.
The light's green,
everyone's honking at me.
I'm like, "You're honking at luggage.
There's nothing I can do.
You're honking at a baby on board sign.
I have nothing to do with this car."
Block and a half later, my
driver loses grip, falls off,
stands up, half of the suit
is torn open, chest is bloody.
This side of his face is bleeding,
and he doesn't adjust any of it,
leaves the suit hanging open,
calmly walks back to the car.
Everyone is screaming at
him, flipping him off,
doesn't acknowledge any of it.
Gets in the car, closes the door,
seatbelt back on,
turns to me and says,
"The fuck was that all about?"
Like, just,
serial killer calm.
I don't say what the fuck that's
about 'cause I'm terrified.
We drive to Montclair in
silence, get to my hotel.
He gets out, "Mr. Oswalt,
have a wonderful show tonight.
We've reached your hotel."
I thank him.
I tip the shit out of him.
He knows where I'm staying.
He can climb the side of
that building and kill me.
Go into my hotel room.
I step out onto the balcony.
I look out over the city
of Montclair, New Jersey.
And I said to myself,
"I apologize, Planters NUTmobile."
"Pride and hubris have
led me to this moment.
I deserve all this tension and terror."
And I made a silent vow to myself,
if I'm ever offered a ride from a food
or product-shaped vehicle,
I will accept it with grace and humility.
If I'm ever nominated for an Oscar
and the Massengill Douchemobile
wants to bring me to the Kodak Theater,
I will be stepping out
of a vinegary sack on
wheels to get my prize.
Fresh as a Nantucket
meadow, let's do this!
You guys have been a delight.
I'm going to, thank you.
I'm gonna leave you with this.
So last year,
our daughter's school
did their winter musical,
and our daughter wasn't in it.
She did tech, and she loved doing tech.
Headset and clipboard and
yelling at actresses all day.
She was in heaven.
And I liked it too,
'cause she'd leave in the
morning as a little kid
and then she'd come home
as a 51-year-old union electrician
with like a Pall Mall
hanging out of her mouth.
"These fucking actresses.
Stand on the masking
tape I put down for you
and say your fucking lines, Bethany."
So,
the wife and I go to see the,
and we went with the attitude
of bless their little hearts.
We knew it was gonna suck.
Middle and high school musicals
are terrible, but goddammit,
you go and you support your kids.
You support what they do
and you support who they
are unconditionally.
The two keys to parenting,
unconditional support and
hiding disappointment.
Those are the two things
you have got to master.
So we go see the musical.
What musical are they doing?
"Freaky Friday: The Musical."
Broadway-level musical.
And we look at each other and go,
"This is gonna fucking suck."
And the lights went down,
and the curtain went
up, and it was amazing.
All the kids on stage had
Broadway-level vocal ranges.
They had a live orchestra made
up of kids from the school.
They didn't miss a single note.
The scene transitions were crisp.
The lighting package was tight.
I know, I know I'm over-gushing, okay?
But you've gotta understand,
I went to high school in
rural Virginia in the '80s.
We did not have the level of talent
at Broad Run High School in Ashburn,
Virginia to have a live orchestra.
What we did, and a lot of people my age
have also experienced this,
we would send away to a company
in the Midwest that put
musicals on Cassette tape.
Not the singing, just the music.
And they'd send your drama
teacher 12 or 13 cassette tapes,
and he or she would sit
offstage with a boombox.
'80s boombox.
Not a lot of bass, way too much treble.
And as the kids would ramp up each song,
they'd slam that cassette in and hit play,
and the tinniest,
screechiest music would come out,
and they had to sing over it.
And they weren't sending us quality.
We weren't getting "West
Side Story" and "Oklahoma."
They were sending us all these
weird public domain musicals
that like one guy in
Lawrence, Kansas was writing.
Probably a dude on death row
now that I think about it.
They were all very dark
and very, very weird.
"Your Digestive System and You,"
or, "What Rhymes with Kwanzaa,"
or, "Christopher Columbus,
A Great American."
It was all just,
and the kids had to ramp
up these horrible songs.
"What is the purpose of
the transverse colon?"
So one year my high school
decided to put on a Christmas pageant,
and they made a fatal error.
They made it a mandatory assembly.
So everyone had to go into the auditorium,
had to give up their free period,
and had to watch the drama
kids put on a pageant.
So the attitude of everyone
in that auditorium was,
"Fuck you, drama kids!"
And the drama kids' attitude,
to their credit, was,
"Fuck you, you inbred rednecks!"
"These are the dues I'm paying
until I'm one day on Broadway!"
So two waves of resentment
crashing into each other.
I'm sitting with the metal shop kids.
My class after free period was metal shop,
and I'm sitting behind a
kid named Brandon Tilley.
Brandon Tilley was this
huge, violent bully
in my metal shop class.
Beat the fuck outta me and
everyone else in that class.
Way too old to still be in high school.
I remember his kids visiting him one day.
He was way too old.
A lot of stories about the Korean War.
So,
now, I hate this,
this pageant hasn't even
started and I hate it.
But I hate Brandon Tilley more.
So I decide I'm gonna
enjoy the pageant at him,
to spite him.
Pageant starts.
It's as awful as you think it would be.
The whole theme of the pageant is
a guy is trying to get
home in time for Christmas.
And each song was worse
than the one before it,
over and over again.
How do they celebrate
Christmas all over the world?
How do you make a gingerbread man dance?
Over and fucking over
till we get to the last
song in the pageant.
The last song is gonna be sung
by the one kid in the drama
club who had vocal range
and talent and who after high school
became a professional singer
and dancer on Broadway.
And it says something
about me that I can't remember his name.
But I remember Brandon Tilley,
because I live in an
enemy-centered universe.
So, this kid steps up,
and he's gonna bring this
pageant in for a 3-point landing.
And he ramps up that final song.
"I guess I'll never make it
home in time for Christmas!"
And in the two seconds
between him saying that
and the drama teacher
hitting play on the boombox,
Brandon Tilley went,
"Why don't you fucking sing about it?"
I learned something about myself that day.
My highest loyalty is to comedy, because,
the worst person on the
planet landed a perfect joke.
Perfect, perfect timing,
perfect voice modulation.
The whole auditorium erupted.
I erupted.
The drama kid went to
the edge of the stage
and sang the song directly to Brandon.
Their eyes locked.
It was the best gunfight I've ever seen.
A week hasn't gone by where
I haven't thought about that.
They should have let Brandon
record it on the cassette
before they mailed it back, by the way.
That's the highlight of the show!
You take a show on the
road to see what works.
And Brandon Tilley ruined musicals for me.
Any musical you watch,
right before they start singing,
I hear it.
You're gonna hear it now too.
I'm not dying alone with this curse.
There's a two-second Brandon
Tilley pause for every song.
Anything, at the end of
"Grease" when she comes out
all in leather, and
Travolta's like, "Sandy?"
And in my head I hear,
"Why don't you fucking sing about it?"
I got chills in my
Goddamn you, Brandon Tilley!
Thank you so much, Madison.
Thank you!
Thank you.
Thank you so much!
Thank you, guys!
Thank you!