- The saying they love in Bisbee
is that when you go
through the tunnel
coming into Bisbee,
you're going back through time.
If you don't know the story
of this venue,
it used to be a church
and then it became a theater
and then a--a beautiful
local eccentric millionaire
put a couple million dollars
into renovating it
to make it, like, one of the
best places I've ever played.
And then he closed it.
And then he reopened it.
Then he got angry
and closed it again.
Then he reopened it as
a movie theater, or something.
And then he got angry
and closed it,
and then he said, "Fuck it,"
and he just donated it to KBRP,
the local--
Somehow, dumping $2 million
into a bar
in a town of 5,000 people,
where the biggest employer
is permanent disability
and small pensions,
didn't work out for him
as a business plan.
That's--
The statistic is,
roughly one out of six Americans
live below the poverty line,
which, I know, that's you,
my fan base, generally.
Probably four out of six of my
fan base below the poverty line.
My friends in Bisbee,
five out of six, easily.
Plus a fraction.
But it's not poverty.
People down here work
as little as possible,
which is admirable.
It's just enough to get by.
That's below the poverty line,
but it's just "kind of broke,"
is what it is.
It's not poverty.
It's insulting
to impoverished countries
to say one out of six people
live in poverty.
That's American standards
of poverty,
where you still have
a flip phone,
and you're embarrassed to
break it out in front of chicks.
That kind
of disgraceful poverty.
You have to watch "Walking Dead"
on BitTorrent.
Oh, my God.
"The way I have to live..."
You got to roll up
the passenger side window
with pliers,
'cause the handle fell off
in your Dodge Neon.
"You don't have power windows?
Wow, you're well below
the poverty..."
It's not world poverty.
Our landfills
are third-world bling.
Do you ever--do you ever watch
"Locked Up Abroad"?
[sparse cheering]
If you haven't, the name
is pretty much self-explanatory.
It's stories about people,
Western people
who got locked up abroad.
It's usually some chunky girl
that got talked
into taking an exotic vacation
from some smooth-talking,
swarthy man
in a cocktail lounge.
"And he wanted to take me
to Indonesia,
and he was gonna pay
for my travel,
and I thought it was
a good opportunity to travel.
All I had to do was carry
a satchel of his in my asshole,
and he was gonna help me pay
for community college.
I was skeptical,
but I wanted to travel."
So she winds up
in some Indonesian prison
for seven or eight years.
Granted, horrific conditions.
Just got to shit in a bucket,
and bugs crawling in and out
of her orifi at night,
and rats nibble her toes,
and everyone hates her.
It's not pleasant,
but what they never address is,
just outside
of those prison walls...
exact same conditions.
Real-world poverty.
Some kid sitting right outside
the corrugated walls
and the razor wire,
whistling songs.
He's got raw sewage
shit river
running through his
front lawn.
He's got to spear rats
in a dump to feed his kinfolk.
Just another day
in Indonesia.
I want to see
"Locked Up Abroad:
Abroad Version,"
where that same kid
gets the same opportunity
to smuggle drugs
into our country,
gets busted
at Newark International
with black tar heroin
in his asshole,
spends eight or ten years
in one of our finer
penal institutions.
What tales of woe
he's gonna write back
to his parents.
"Dear Mother,
I am writing to you now
from paradise.
I now live in a castle,
where my room measures
a full 6 feet by 9 feet
that I share with
only four other people.
Meals are catered to my door
thrice daily,
with relatively few maggots
as compared to the home cuisine.
Every room
in my estate is equipped
with a stainless steel throne
full to the rim
with clean drinking water.
So plentiful, you could just
take a dump in it
as a goof
and press a button,
and it's replenished
with even more
clean drinking water.
Mother, I make
72 cents a day here
in the prison laundry,
double that what Father made
sewing shoes for Nike."
[laughing, cheering]
"Mother, Mother,
I can practice homosexuality
openly now,
with no threat of being
beheaded in the town square
by the local mullah."
And good, goodness,
isn't that an easy segue
into ISIS.
[laughter, applause]
Hell yeah.
Scary, that ISIS.
What the ISIS is doing now,
the ISIS is using social media
to recruit disenfranchised,
angry youth
to join them.
And that's what I do.
That's my demographic.
Fuck off, ISIS.
I'm working this corner.
That's my people.
I have never felt threatened
by any other comedian.
I never had a comedic rival
that worried me.
If you're into
the weird shit that I do,
I'm the only guy selling.
It's a very small niche fan base
of weird people
that'll fly
from all over the world
to come and sit in 150 seats.
[cheers and applause]
Jeff Dunham and Peanut
is playing across the street
for free.
You're not flipping a coin.
You're here.
I got you.
No comic has threatened me.
ISIS worries me.
That's you,
the angry, young,
disturbed,
knock-kneed kid
in a Misfits t-shirt
that showed up alone,
lonely
and hapless and helpless.
Yeah, stay with me.
Don't join the ISIS, kid.
I actually care about you
a little bit.
ISIS does not care about you.
You think you could get a selfie
with Jihadi John
after a Friday night beheading?
No.
He wouldn't even talk to you.
I'll take a selfie with you
after the show.
[cheering]
Evidently, the Jihadi John
was killed in a drone strike.
And I don't--I don't know
how this affects
the whole beheading video thing.
I don't know if it's gonna work
like "True Detective" now,
where they film eight episodes
for a season,
and then they recast
the whole thing
now that Jihadi John is gone,
but I watched season one
of the beheading videos.
I don't know if you caught it.
I don't know
if it's on Netflix yet.
But the first run of eight,
Jihadi John
was the protagonist,
or antagonist,
depending, I guess.
That's a glass half full
kind of question.
But he's the main guy.
He would open
the beheading video
with this extended monologue,
which...
runs a little too long.
It's funnier than Fallon,
but it's--still...
[cheering]
Wrap it up, Jihadi John.
But they had a different
guest star in every episode
in an orange jump suit.
And he's down on his knees,
and he really carried--
the guest star carried
every episode.
Did you not see the beheading
videos, season one?
He had to carry the show,
'cause he's limited dialogue,
which, that's hard acting.
When you only have a few lines
and you have to carry
the whole show
just with this stoicism
in your face,
trying to not betray
your inner terror.
You're nervous.
It's your first time your
parents are gonna see you on TV.
Trying not to laugh.
Don't want to make
the beheading blooper reel.
Like, "Cut, do it again."
"I'm sorry, I keep laughing."
But my only critique
about the beheading videos...
In this recent...version,
there was no cutting off
of the head.
You didn't watch?
Jihadi John,
"Blah, blah, blah, blah,"
and his black rag
around his head.
And then they put the knife
to the guy's head,
and then they just cut away
to the beheaded body
with the head
sitting next to it.
It--
Like, if you remember
old-school,
early 2000s beheading videos,
Nick Berg, Daniel Pearl,
that was full-on, "Gah!"
Eyes rolling back.
[strained screaming]
Er, er, er.
This is just a beheaded video.
It's not a beheading.
It's--
It's past tense.
It's soft-core beheadings.
There's no penetration.
[cheers and applause]
You hope
somebody is getting chewed out
in an editing bay
over at ISIS central casting.
"Lewis,
I saw your latest reel,
and you're still missing
a very integral part
of a beheading video.
It's the gurgly-gurgly part.
That's what the focus groups
respond to, Lewis.
We're not making
art films here.
Do you remember 9/11?
Imagine if they
forgot the footage
where the plane
actually hits
the fucking building,
Lewis.
It's like, I ask you
to make me pornography,
you show me a man
unzipping his fly,
and then you smash cut
to come.
Just a puddle of come,
and no one knows
how it arrived here."
Why--I don't know why
they have to recruit...
When,
in America, there's a...
mass murder every week
just on our own;
we just do that.
Someone goes out and kills
a whole bunch of people.
Just take credit for it.
Guy goes out and kills
18 people at work
and then kills himself,
just say,
"Yeah, that was us.
It's ISIS."
That was a schizophrenic kid
who dropped out
of community college
and thought the president
was reading his e-mails
and he was a secret
alien lizard person.
"No, it was ISIS, it was us."
All right.
It's just a cheap segue
into the mental illness chunk
I'm about to do,
and it goes on and on.
We're gonna talk
about mental illness
and I know there's
a lot of different types,
but,
for the sake of this bit,
I'm gonna break them down
into two camps:
camp one:
mentally disturbed people.
These are people
with a mental illness
that is disturbing to them.
And there's a lot
of different kinds.
There's the, "Ah...ah...
everything's a germ, man.
I wear plastic gloves
like a Subway sandwich artist
because I know everything's
gonna infect me,
and I wear a SARS mask on
my bicycle when I go to work."
Or, "I got to flip
the light switch three times
before I go to work--
one, two, three.
And then I wipe my feet
on the mat--one, two, three.
And then if I think
I forgot to do the light switch,
I'll go home from work on my
lunch break--one, two, three."
And these boil
all the way down to,
"The government
has a chip in my head,
and they're
tracking my thoughts,
and they're making me
do stuff."
Camp one:
mentally disturbed.
Camp two:
mentally challenged people.
Also have a mental disability.
They just don't seem
disturbed by it on any level.
They seem to quite enjoy
having that disability.
They both have
a mental impairment,
but only one of the two camps
gets any kind of sympathy.
Mentally challenged people
get all the hugs
and kickball in the world.
Everyone loves them.
Mentally disturbed get kicked
the fuck out of the house
as soon as they're old enough.
"There's something wrong
with that boy.
He's got the devil in him.
Get out of my house!"
It's not a--he doesn't have
the devil in him.
He's got a fucking
mental illness.
Take care of him.
But you don't with camp ones,
because mentally
disturbed people
are frightening and irritating.
They seem dangerous
a lot of the time.
They have bees
living in their beard,
and they walk through
the crosswalk
talking to themselves.
[blathering incoherently]
And you know,
if you make eye contact,
all of those problems
in his head
are gonna be your problem.
[blathering incoherently]
[shouting incoherently]
And occasionally--
it's very rare, but
it's always well-publicized--
randomly, sometimes,
mentally disturbed people
will go kill
a whole bunch of folks
for no logical reason
that you can see.
So you don't want
to give them
the same sympathy
and safe quarter
that you do mentally
challenged people.
No one ever says that.
"Retards never kill people."
Nobody ever says,
"Did you hear about Kevin?
He went all Downsy
and shot up a movie theater.
It was the weirdest thing."
"He went full-blown
special needs
and drowned his own children
in a bathtub.
Nobody saw it coming."
So retards get to live at home
until they're 45 or 80.
You can never tell
how old they are.
While your crazy people
just get chucked into the street
as soon as they turn of age
and then you got
free-range crazies
walking all over the streets
and living in the parks.
And then, who has
to deal with that problem?
Us.
Smokers.
[laughter, cheering]
Nobody spends more time
caring for
the mentally disturbed
than smokers 'cause while
you're all in here
laughing your balls off
at some silly play
or break dancing,
or whatever you do
on a Saturday night,
we're out front,
like a salt lick
for the homeless.
You're a stationary target.
"Oh, here he comes.
Hot-box it, honey.
Get a dollar for him.
Ah..."
It's not fair.
We reserve the right
to refuse service to anyone.
Who's that sign apply to?
Where do you enforce that?
With your negroes
or your homosexuals
or your Muslims?
You'd fucking get shut down
in a second.
That sign applies to crazies,
and crazies alone.
You couldn't even do that
with a retarded kid.
"Ma'am, your son,
spilling the Cream of Wheat
out of his mouth,
it's making people dry-heave."
No, just crazies
can you use that on.
And it's fucked up.
"Hey, Benny Shit-Pants,
get off my coffee counter.
You're stinking up the place,
and the bees in your beard
are stinging my customers."
You got to take care
of them equally.
The whole idea that parents
are no longer responsible
for their children
after a certain age
is such utter bullshit.
You should be responsible
for your children
for the rest
of your natural life.
That's--You did that.
It's not--as soon as you
turn 18, it's not your fault?
No, it's your fucking fault.
Any time you make the decision
to have a child,
you're taking a gigantic risk.
You have no idea
what kind of problem
is about to flop
out of your pink hole.
So if you roll shitty dice
at that craps game,
society should not
be responsible
for covering
your gambling losses.
Pay your marker,
motherfucker,
or the mob's
gonna take your thumbs.
You can't just do that.
We all show up on this planet
in the same state
of confusion and terror.
It's like, if we all left
this building right now,
just disappeared and reappeared
on another alien planet,
no memory of ever being here
or being a thing,
just all of a sudden,
you exist.
"What the fuck?"
You got a couple
of basic instincts.
"I'm hungry.
Throw food down this hole.
And I'm cold.
So wrap me up in something."
But other than that,
"What the fuck is going on?
Anyone?"
And there's other people
who showed up
just as fucked up
and confused as you are,
but they've been there longer,
so they could give you
a few hot tips.
"Yeah, if it stinks,
don't step in it.
And someone said eat kale
and that's good for you,
and don't get
a LinkedIn profile,
'cause the spam is endless
and you'll never use it.
But other than that,
I don't really have
any answers for you."
And then some of you sadists
take this to the next level,
where you say, let's pull
that same practical joke
on somebody else
who doesn't exit.
Fuck me in the front potato.
We'll watch it fall out
all terrified and confused,
and we'll laugh at it
for as long as that joke
stays fresh.
And then we'll wait
till his knees are strong enough
to hold up
his upper body weight,
and we'll make him work around
the house forever for nothing.
Sorry, black people,
you do not corner
that market on slavery.
Every single one of us was born
into indentured servitude.
"18 Years a Slave."
Make that Oscar-winning
motion picture,
"18 Years a Slave."
"You had me.
I used to be nothing.
I didn't exist,
and I never had a bad day.
Then you create me,
I come into this world.
The next thing I know,
I'm doing yard work and dishes.
I got chores."
And then do your homework.
And when your homework's done,
then you're grounded.
"Fuck you, cunt that had me
without my consent.
I'm grounded?
I'm 13 years old.
You know what I could do?
I could make a dude too.
I know your law says 18,
but nature said 13.
I could crank out a dude just
like you did that didn't exist,
put him on your dime, and
he's gonna halve my work load."
Sub-contract that piece of shit
out to rake leaves.
But I didn't do that,
'cause I'm not a dick.
But if my parents
were alive today,
I would sue them into poverty,
just for having me
against my will.
Set legal precedent.
They weren't bad people,
but you made me out of nothing,
then you kicked me out
when I was 18.
Now I'm 48.
I'm ugly, I'm drunk.
I don't have a strong closer
for this special.
And you're conveniently dead
before I can sue you.
It's wrong.
And I'm not even
crazy or retarded.
I'm just un-amused
with the outcome
of their poorly
thought-through prank.
"Not funny, lady."
"Retarded" is, I know...
unfashionable to use,
but it's still in play
down here.
If you're visiting,
go down--
The neighboring town,
Douglas, Arizona,
where they take care
of camp twos,
still have their
big vintage sign:
Douglas Association
for Retarded Citizens, 1963.
It's beautiful.
Any hipster would be proud
to have that in their man cave.
But the thing
with the word "retarded" is,
"retarded" is not
like other epithets.
It was not a word of hatred.
"Retarded" was
the medical definition.
It was actually a word
born in sensitivity,
'cause they used to call them--
Before "retarded"
was the word,
doctors would use
"imbecile" or "moron."
This is something a smart fuck
at Harvard
has labeled
the euphemism treadmill.
"Moron" and "imbecile" were
the correct terms for a while,
and what happened is,
we co-opted those words
to call our friend
when he does something
incredibly stupid,
to the point
where it became an insult.
So, out of sensitivity,
they changed the word
to "retarded."
And what happened was
we co-opted that word
to call our friend
when he does something
incredibly stupid.
So you can keep
changing the word,
and if you make
the new one stick,
that's what I'm gonna
call my friend.
"Did you just put
a metal plate in a microwave?
What are you,
developmentally disabled?
You don't fucking put
a metal plate in a microwave.
Who doesn't know that?"
You can make it
as difficult to pronounce
and Latin-based
and medical-rooted,
and if you make it stick,
that's the new word
I'm gonna call my friend
when he trips
over his own shoelaces.
"Ha-ha!
You just exhibited some
of the atlantoaxial instability
that is usually associated
with a trisomy 21
genetic imbalance.
Oh, you fucking loser."
[cheers and applause]
Ha-ha.
And you still have some blogger
or a Susan Blackford
in the back of the room going,
[high-pitched voice]
"That's not funny.
Letter to the editor:
My son was born
with the trisomy 21
chromosomal imbalance.
And if you ever had to raise
a child in such a condition,
you would show
more sensitivity
and not use that kind of word,
mocking--"
[normal voice]
This is where she's being
thrown out by Chad Shank
in my imagination.
[muffled shouting]
[cheers and applause]
You have to take care
of your crazy people.
That's the whole point
of this.
And they don't here.
I don't know if--
Bingo, my girlfriend
that you know,
she's mentally ill,
camp one, mostly.
Shows signs of camp two
here and again.
But, yeah, she--
Bipolar schizoaffective
is her diagnosis.
Do we have--
and I'm not trying
to open up the floor
for open mic--
but are there any, like,
legitimately diagnosed,
medicated crazy here tonight?
[scattered cheers]
Labeled?
What's your label?
- Clinically depressed.
- Clinically depressed.
- Bipolar.
- Bipolar.
- Canadian.
- [laughs] Canadian, see?
[cheers and applause]
That kind of proves my point.
See, if I was asking
if anyone--
If I said, "My girlfriend
is surviving cancer;
has anyone else had cancer?"
Fucking disease.
You wouldn't go,
"My wife's a cancer!
Ha-ha!"
I'm saying, you can shit
all over crazy people,
where retards are sacrosanct.
They're both mentally ill!
Think you just kind of
proved my point.
You can't even say--
Crazy people, you can call them
whatever you want.
Fucking lunatic, psycho,
nut-job, whacko.
You drop a tard-bomb
in mixed company,
ooh, you better
pick up the check
at that company luncheon.
Thank you
for making my point.
Clinically depressed,
you might just be correct.
Bipolar, welcome to town.
I hope you're not here
seeking treatment,
'cause Arizona--
Arizona is kind of notorious
for not taking care
of mentally ill people.
Well...
Jared Loughner.
Few years ago,
for people who are watching this
if it ever gets released,
Jared Loughner
was one of our camp one
mentally disturbed people,
and he thought the government
was playing with his head,
and he had all sorts
of weird theories.
And he had to take it out
by going down
to the Safeway in Tucson,
and he killed, I think,
seven people or nine people,
and he shot our congresswoman,
Gabrielle Giffords.
Shot her right
in the fucking bean--whap!
And she survived.
Sort of.
She walks among us, but...
No, this is the good part,
is, one of our mentally
disturbed people
shot our congresswoman
directly into camp two.
She's straight-up
retarded now.
She lived,
much to her husband's chagrin.
She did manage
to pull through.
Wait--if you don't know
the story,
it might be a little touchy
for the locals,
but her husband
was an astronaut,
and after she got shot
mentally retarded,
she's still in
a rehabilitation facility
when he had to take
his last space mission.
And you know he was hoping
to get lost up there,
like George Clooney
in "Gravity."
"She's gonna live.
I can't fucking--
Put me on the leakiest rocket
with the worst
maintenance record
and shoot me
the fuck out of here."
This is Major Tom
to ground control
Is my wife still
shot retarded?
Is she still making
Those awkward
personal appearances
Where she gives a speech
But no one knows what the fuck
she just said?
This is only okay
to laugh at,
if you need a reason
for it to be okay,
is because, at the time
that Jared Loughner,
mentally disturbed,
shot our congresswoman...
mentally challenged,
we ranked 49th
in mental health care
under her watch
as a congresswoman.
That's out of 50,
for a lot of my fans.
It's not very good.
That's your job.
That's not so much tragic,
as that's some instant karma's
about to catch you
right in the grape, Gabby.
Boom, bow.
Should have chucked some of that
retard money crazy's way.
Crazies don't have a big 1963
vintage sign out on the highway.
If you want to drive by on
your way out of town tomorrow,
drive past where Bingo
gets mental health care.
It's in a U-shaped strip mall
on the outskirts of town
on Highway 92.
On this side of the U
is the Second Amendment
Gun Shop,
in the middle of the U is
the Beast Brewery,
and on her end is Community
Intervention Associates,
with the acronym blown up
on the door,
where you do not get to see
a doctor.
You see a registered nurse
via Skype.
[audience groans]
A woman that I was actually
in the room
when she said to Bingo,
"Next time you feel
like cutting yourself,
try doing something
positive instead,
like get a new hair style
or a manicure."
[laughter, groaning]
It's fucking actual quote.
- Jesus!
- So if you have
a mental health issue,
like a Jared Loughner,
and you think, oh, you get
the shortwave radio
is playing in your head,
and the plastic bags
are floating around your brain
like "Poltergeist,"
and you want
to do the bad, bad thing,
and you're loading a clip,
and that last rational synapse
is telling you,
"Maybe you should see
some mental health care first,"
in order to get
that health care,
you would have to stroll
past the gun shop,
then past the bar,
walk through
a tinted glass door
marked "CIA,"
for Community
Intervention Associates,
where you talk
to a television set
that's talking back to you.
And you wonder why
people die
in hails
of gunfire in America.
It ain't ISIS.
[cheers and applause]
You know what I was thinking,
Alex, if you can hear me, is,
I would love to hear
the second-hand review
of this show
from Sheri, the checker
at Safeway in lane 4,
the town gossip,
who just hears about it
and then tells everyone else
what she heard.
"And then I heard
it was like $50,
and it sold out
in six minutes,
and all he talked about
was retarded people
beheading Gabby Giffords,
and I--
I would never pay that."
I'm in a hurry, Sheri.
If you go to Safeway,
don't go to fucking aisle 4,
lane 4, she just--
She's the TMZ of Bisbee.
I'm just trying to buy
two fucking things,
and she's got to tell you all
the gossip you don't care about,
as though she was already
talking when you got there.
That was a cheese-dick segue
into a good TMZ joke.
TMZ, it's fucking
celebrity gossip shit.
But now they're being cited
as a legitimate news source.
CNN will go,
"And TMZ has just released..."
That's a fucking--
That's like saying,
"Breaking news
from your gossipy Aunt Nancy,
this just in."
This fucking--
TMZ, the guy that runs it--
They have a TV show as well.
The guy that runs it,
his name is Harvey Levin.
He's this fake-tanned,
greasy, smarmy--
He's the Fagin
of celebrity gossip,
where they don't even
do any legwork.
They just count on you,
the public.
"Any time you see a celebrity,
just film him
with your cell phone
until he breaks
and flips you off,
and then we're gonna
run that footage."
"Uh!
Hey, Justin Timberlake,
uh, what are you doing?
Where you going?
You going to the gym?
You're in front of the gym
with a gym bag.
Were you gonna use
a Stairmaster?
What are you--
Justin Timberlake!"
And finally, "Fuck you."
"This just in, hey,
looks like Justin Timberlake
doesn't appreciate his fans;
I'm a smarmy cunt."
If the Nazis only committed
all of those atrocities
because they had some prescience
and they were trying
to prevent Harvey Levin
from one day existing
on this planet,
even a lot of Jews would have
to write off the Holocaust
as collateral damage.
And that is factual.
It was for the--
it was for the greater good.
Don't worry, I'll be apologizing
for that joke
tomorrow at noon
at a press conference.
It will be attended
by absolutely no one.
I just one day wish
I would have to do that,
or even be asked to do that.
Every fucking week,
there's some celebrity or comic
or an athlete
that has to apologize
for a--you know,
a caught-on-tape comment
or insensitive joke,
a drunk tweet.
And they have
a press conference.
And it's always something
that's way weaker
than the shit
I say every night.
As a segue,
I say worse shit.
No one ever asked me
to apologize.
I wouldn't,
but I want to be asked one time.
I got way better shit
than they do.
I demand outrage.
For God's sakes,
what do I have to do?
I could have told that joke
at the Simon Wiesenthal
Museum of Tolerance,
and people would go,
"What'd he say?
I wasn't listening."
I could--I could--
I could finger-fuck
all the Duggar daughters
as a closing bit to this set.
If you don't know the Duggars,
just imagine
an American reality show
of a Christian family
with 18 children,
and it turns out
the older brother
was fidgeting
all the little tiny gir--
You don't even
have to know that.
Imagine me,
as a closing bit,
with three tiny towheaded
blonde girls,
like a ventriloquist act,
finger puppets.
S'all right?
S'all right.
S'all right?
S'all right.
Still wouldn't--
I could play
all the Duggar girls'
little tiny vaginas
like wine glasses
on "America's Got Talent."
[to tune of
"Mary Had A Little Lamb]
Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh
Ooh-ooh-ooh
Ooh-ooh-ooh
Ooh-ooh-ooh
Still wouldn't get any press.
I could commit suicide,
hanging myself
with a belt off a doorknob
like Robin Williams.
I wouldn't even make
the local police beat
on the back page
of the "Bisbee Observer."
I don't know
if that's a good thing.
Maybe it's good
that no one notices.
No one from TMZ
is following me around.
I'm only famous
within 100 feet of my show
on the night of the show
for a half an hour
before and after.
And other than that...
[cheers and applause]
If you don't know this,
Robin Williams--
I did an episode
of this show "Louie,"
on FX or whatever it's on.
[cheers and applause]
Thank you for stealing that
online as well.
Yeah, I played a washed-up,
alcoholic, bag of shit,
loser,
suicidal comedian,
which took months of training.
I had different acting coaches.
I had to find a guy
that fit the bill
and do ride-alongs with him
to find out
what makes him tick,
to really nail the character.
But after it aired,
Robin Williams
sent an e-mail to Louis
that he forwarded to me
so I could read the compliment.
Robin Williams wrote that the
"Doug Stanhope episode
of 'Louie' was
the most powerful dialogue
I have ever seen
on the subject of suicide."
Which, you know, hey--
[cheers and applause]
That's nice.
Pat on the back.
It made me think, perhaps,
even the lowly rated
Doug Stanhope
might have influenced
the great Robin Williams
in the last days
of his career.
Maybe I am reaching people.
[cheers and applause]
I have a big head,
but I can find small hooks
on which to hang my hat.
Same way I like to believe
that I influence Michael Sam,
the first openly gay NFL player
to come out of the closet.
If you saw my last special,
I closed my last special
with about a seven-minute,
gratuitous, graphic,
detailed depiction
of interracial gay man rape
on an NFL field
during a live game.
And right after that came out,
first gay NFL player
comes out of the closet.
I like to believe
that he wasn't even gay
until he saw my special,
and I made it sound
so appealing,
that he jumped at the chance.
Now we got
a gay baseball player,
minor leaguer for the
Milwaukee Brewers organization.
We had a gay basketball player,
Jason Campbell.
I might have
fucked up his name.
And it's all great.
Every time an athlete
comes out of the closet--
if it's,
like, a manly sport--
if you're a skater, you'd
have to come out as straight.
But, like, yeah,
with the football player,
it always boils down
to this weird hypothetical
locker room scenario that the
"SportsCenter" guys bring up.
"All right,
level with me, Tony.
How are you gonna feel
if you're in the locker room
with an openly gay athlete.
Tell me the truth.
Are you gonna feel okay
with that,
when you're in the showers
with a man who's openly gay?
Is that gonna be good?
Can you maintain?
Is the teamwork--blah-blah."
I'm trying to profile
for anyone with a job.
Does anyone--
what do you have for a job?
Just make something up
if you don't.
Property manager.
How would you feel,
honestly,
if, at the end of the day
of fucking, you know,
kicking out deadbeats,
or whatever you do,
and you get back to the office,
and you're griping about--
And then you get
into the showers
with the other
property managers,
knowing that one of them
is an open homosexual.
Are you gonna feel like you're
being sexualized in the shower?
My point is,
what other occupation
on the face
of Western civilized society
do people shower together,
and that's not
the first question,
if not the only question?
Why are we showering together?
Fucking, you're selling cars,
your first day.
"You have a real knack
for this, Nicky.
You got good instincts.
Hit the showers, and we're gonna
see you on Monday."
"Showers?"
And these are multimillionaires.
These are professional athletes
with money spilling
out of every orifice.
You could not write--
You have a private jet.
You couldn't get
a private shower?
Your agent couldn't write that
into your rider
in your signing bonus?
Do you take dumps together too?
You had a bad game.
The coach makes you line up
in a trough.
"All right, I saw
no teamwork out there.
We have no defense.
Everyone, shit in a trough.
You line up
and shit in a trough,
and you wipe the guy
to your left,
till I see more team-building."
"All right,
I'll wipe him, coach,
but if he gets a boner,
I'm gonna kick the shit
out of him."
Playing on no team--
Gay--gay porn stars.
When gay porn stars
get done a long day
of gay porning around
on the set,
they shower alone.
They're not animals.
So I say this to you,
professional athlete person.
Try to raise your standards up
to that of gay porn stars
before you start worrying
about someone's sexuality.
[cheers and applause]
I came out of the closet on my
last special, if you saw it.
And you know what?
I was not embraced
by the gay community.
It's almost like they thought
I was lying,
like they thought
I was making it up.
But that's pass anyway.
So now I'm gonna tell you
the real truth, all right?
You're in my hometown.
This is what
a lot of people don't know.
I'm transgendered.
Not just 'cause
it's the hip thing to be now.
It's really what I am
and I've been hiding this
from you for so long,
and I feel so free now.
I'm transgendered,
which, if you don't know,
that means I identify
as a woman.
I was born into a man's body,
but I was born a woman...
as far as I'm concerned.
I just happen to be
a slovenly, pig, skank woman
that doesn't take care
of herself.
I'm a woman
that let myself go,
but I'm okay with that.
I'm not some Goddamn
beauty queen.
I don't shave body parts.
I don't wear makeup;
I couldn't.
I laugh so hard--
crying laughing
at a loud, ripping fart,
that it would make
my mascara
run all the way down
my face,
'cause that's the kind
of girl I am.
I'm a daddy's girl.
We're not all Caitlyn Jenner.
I'm an individual.
Caitlyn, she's in a ball gown
on the cover of "Vanity Fair."
Go, girl.
I'm just not that same--
The only modeling I ever did,
is, I did model my teeth
for warning labels
on packages
of Canadian cigarettes.
I did that.
And that was enough
of the spotlight for me.
I didn't need anything more.
I'm the kind of girl
that watches beheading videos
and reviews them on Yelp.
If I destroy a bathroom,
I'll try to trick you into it
by saying there's a spider
in the tub,
and then
I'll jam the door shut.
I'm just a rustic,
tomboy, kind of gal.
And if you cannot accept me
for the woman that I am,
then you can suck my dick
and juggle my balls,
because you're intolerant.
[cheers and applause]
What is it in you
that makes you so uncomfortable
around a strong woman
like me?
And, no, I'm not
getting the surgery.
That's all your
follow-up questions,
with your minds in the gutter.
"Are you gonna have
the surgery, Doug?"
'Cause that's
my chick name, too--Doug.
I'm not very creative.
Not getting the surgery,
'cause balls are hilarious,
and I'm not gonna lose that.
Why would you--I have surgeries
I actually need,
that doctors have
implored me to get.
Had two really strong
hernias working.
And hilarious balls
aren't gonna take precedent.
You can pull your balls out
at last call
and hang around the jukebox.
You don't need jokes.
You just wait
for someone to notice.
Especially when you have,
like, really hangy balls.
My balls have hangy hair on--
I have long ball hair.
Crispy, long ball hair,
like a hipster's beard.
And if you can hang those out,
you don't even have to come up
with new material.
Why cut those off?
I got to get back
to the hernias.
I got two strong hernias
working right now.
I got a ventral hernia.
That's where the abdominal
muscles split apart.
That's common in alcoholics
and pregnant women.
So jury's still out
on what caused this.
The other one
is the run-of-the-mill
inguinal hernia,
the groin hernia.
And that one,
that's where your intestines
are trying to spill
through your ligaments.
So I learned
to work around it.
I haven't got surgery,
'cause I learned, like,
if I have to sneeze,
I do a high kick like a Rockette
to keep my guts from spilling
out like a balloon animal.
So health care
is completely overrated.
You just got to figure out
how to work this shit.
I'm working on developing
an eating disorder,
'cause my only--
'cause with the hernias,
I can't do sit-ups
or lift heavy objects,
which is perfect.
Who'd fix that?
My only problem is,
with the fat,
you got to understand
how much time and effort
I put into these suits.
You don't just buy this suit.
This is years of hitting every
Goodwill and Salvation Army
across the road
in every town we play,
and you find the coat one year,
and one day I'll find pants
that match it,
and then a tie.
And you go--
You get one pants size,
my whole closet is done,
years of effort.
And on a side note,
can we start putting sizes
in obituaries?
Can that be a tradition?
That would make
thrift store shopping
so much easier,
if I could just read
the local obits.
He was a Korean War veteran.
He worked with the unions.
He liked to disco dance
in the '70s at the Studio 52,
and he was a 40 regular,
size 32 pants.
And then I'd know exactly
what neighborhood
to hit the thrift store.
I figured out, if I could just
get an eating disorder,
I could do an eating disorder,
because I don't have
the horrible psychology
that goes with
an eating disorder.
I could vomit socially.
Just, I don't want
to be like some--
I don't have a bad
body self-image.
You have that about me.
That's not--I don't care.
I just don't want
to lose my pants.
I'm not some teenager
who's gonna just start puking,
and then it's gonna catch on
till I rot my teeth
down to little black nubs
and I'm emaciated.
I just want to puke enough
to get the outer layer
of smoking stains off.
I want to vomit my way
into teeth whitening
while maintaining a 32 waist.
And I think I could
pull that off socially.
The problem with people
with eating disorders--
and I say people,
'cause it's not just ladies.
It's also jockeys.
People who have
eating disorders,
there's an inherent rudeness
to an eating disorder
that's not intended.
It's just part and parcel
of the disorder,
'cause the reason that a person
can vomit their way down
to Karen Carpenter-Auschwitz
emaciated,
'cause they still
think they're fat.
No matter how thin they get,
they still
see themselves as fat.
So if you can puke your way
down to 78 pounds
of bile breath
and organ failure,
and you still think
you're obese,
what are you thinking
when you look at me?
I know what you're thinking.
It's fucking rude, lady.
Stop it.
I'm a little bloated,
alcoholic-doughy,
but I'm not some fucking
Ralphie May
circus act, freak show guy
up here.
It's rude, how you see me.
Rude.
It's like kids with cancer.
Fuck you,
little kid with cancer.
You're rude too.
Little kids
are dying of cancer,
and everyone goes out
and they have these foundations,
like Locks of Love,
where people shave their heads
for the little kids with cancer.
Oh, we're gonna make wigs
for the little kid with cancer.
That should be
such an affront to any bald
or balding man in this room,
where some child
is dying of leukemia,
and you, as a parent,
your biggest concern,
"Oh, yeah,
he's gonna croak any day,
but God forbid he dies
looking like you.
Not my baby!
Get him a wig.
Doll him up for the grave."
It's fucking hair.
Who gives a shit?
This is not
a medical condition.
This isn't painful.
It's fucking hair.
This kid's 6 years old.
He's not trying to get pussy.
What's fucking wrong with you?
"God forbid my child dies
without having learned
our grotesque obsession
with personal appearance
and vanity."
And I'm not just fucking
with you.
I got a situation
going on right there.
It's not bald.
You've committed.
This is a--
This is a little
something there.
I can pull on it.
If you put a cigarette
lighter to that,
you'd get a small, "Foof."
There's a little something.
This is a running argument
with my girlfriend,
where she'll go,
"You should put some sun block
on your bald spot.
You're getting red."
Like, it's not a--
it's not a bald spot.
There's technically
hair on there.
And I took this
to an extreme,
where, one night, shit-faced,
which I don't have to--
you'll know by the story.
I shaved my entire head,
razor shaved, to the bone,
everything except for this spot,
right here.
And I came out of the bathroom,
so proud of myself.
"Where's my bald spot
now, Bingo?
Point to it.
Point to the part of my head
that you just referred to
as my bald spot.
Is it here?
What's this?
Oh, is that my hairy spot now?
Say it!
Say it out loud, Bingo.
Yes, that's your hairy spot,
Doug Stanhope.
And I'm always wrong,
and you're always right."
Then I had to walk around
with that haircut for a week,
till I rubbed it in enough,
while all my friends are going,
"What the fuck
did you do to your head?
What is that?
Did you lose a bet?"
No, I won a bet,
technically.
I won a bet,
right there.
And then I thought,
"Wouldn't it be
magnanimous of me
to donate my hairy spot
to some little kid
dying of cancer?"
Just go down to that
Locks of Love.
Supermarket parking lot,
everyone shaving
their head fest.
Find the kid
that showed up late.
Don't worry, little buddy,
I got you covered.
Right here,
I'm gonna give you this.
Yeah, right down here
in front of everyone.
You want to look like that?
You want to look
like some elderly Jew
who's still wearing
the same lucky yarmulke
for the last 70 years?
Now it's all threadbare
and wispy.
'Cause I'm gonna give that
to you.
You want to wear
that pompadour of shame
into your little tiny grave?
I'm willing.
But no kid with cancer would
ever want my "hairy" spot.
It's not good enough for them,
'cause they're rude.
Go sit with your puker friend
in the back, kid with cancer.
You're both rude.
I know you're having a bad day,
but you don't take it out
on people who are trying
to give back to the community.
It's the only part of my body
I could donate
that isn't toxic at this point.
My little fucking chemo wisp.
Good, the fucking show went
downhill so badly without you.
Everything started to suck.
No, thanks.
Fucking Guinness?
Grotesque.
Fucking do a shot
and eat a loaf of bread.
Here's--I'm getting
"Jagermeister"
tattooed across my toes...
so that when I lose my toes
to the diabetes
that I assume,
if I don't have it,
I'm gonna get it from 20 years
of drinking that swill,
and they have to lop my toes off
from diabetic neuropathy,
I can then hang those toes
around my neck
on a fishing line.
A little shrunken head
charm bracelet
of little, tiny Jager toes
to remind me of all
the good times I can't remember
from drinking Jagermeister.
Like a Vietnam vet
coming out of the jungle
with V.C. ears
strung around his neck
to remind him of his time
in the shit,
I will have little,
tiny shrunken head Jager toes
of my own,
and I will have to clobber
the first person
that points out the typo,
'cause I know there's at least
one bean counter
in here right now
doing the math,
and no, I don't have 12 toes
to fit all of "Jagermeister."
I'll have to eliminate
some unnecessary
"I" before "E" bullshit,
but you'll get the message.
You know what
gives me the creeps
about the Vietnam vets,
they have this obsession
with wearing the hat.
They have to let you know
they're a Vietnam vet.
They all wear the baseball hat
with the gold leafs
and the platoon and the year.
"Dang Wang, '68 to '70,
Vietnam vet."
Why the fuck
would you wear that hat?
Did you forget
how brutally fucked over
by your own government
you got on that deal?
And you wear a hat
celebrating it?
Nixon, in his own words
in the Nixon tapes,
talks openly and casually
about delaying the withdrawal
of troops
just so he can win reelection.
"Fuck 'em
if thousands more die.
I need this gig again."
And then you're wearing a hat.
They fucked you over
and then sold you merch
after the gig.
How bad do you need someone
to buy you a Pabst Blue Ribbon
down at the VFW?
That's like a rape victim
walking around
in a pink trucker cap
that says, "Molested,
step-brother, '82 to '86."
"Hey, girls,
where's all the fun at?"
[cheers and applause]
And if you've suffered
any kind of trauma like that,
a war or rape
or whatever it is,
I'm glad you're here,
so we can annex
some of those problems
and goof on them.
If you're a victim of any kind
of traumatic event like that,
and you ever find yourself
being the person
who says publicly,
"And I still have nightmares,"
just remember,
so does everybody else.
At least now yours make sense.
Everybody else has nightmares,
and they don't make--
I have nightmares of riding
on the back of carp
through a swamp,
like a camel,
and then we
fly up into the air
and get sucked
into a jet engine,
and now I'm in a middle seat
in the back
that doesn't recline,
and everybody hates me,
and I'm having to watch
"Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2,"
and I'm starring in it,
and everyone's booing me.
That doesn't make any sense.
You wake up shaking
from the war.
At least there's some connection
to reality.
I don't wake up shaking and
have my girlfriend holding me
going, "It's okay, honey.
You needed the money
for 'Paul Blart: Mall Cop.'"
Yeah, no, I prefer nightmares
to dreams.
Dreams suck.
I just won $750,000
on a scratch ticket,
and I'm rich,
and I missed my plane,
but Air Force One is here,
and the president
is a huge fan,
and he has all of my DVDs,
and I'm huge and famous.
And then I wake up,
and I'm in some
fucking Travelodge
in Big Timber, Montana.
I slept in my suit,
and I sweat through it.
And I have a nine-hour drive
to Pocatello, to another gig,
a 40-seater
that I can't sell out,
with the Patel motel mafia
hammering at my hotel door
'cause it's past checkout.
That's the reality.
I'd rather ride the carp.
[cheers and applause]
I was really trying to have
a whole positive spin
on this entire special,
and I feel like I failed again
in my career.
I was trying to be uplifting
somehow with all this shit,
and it doesn't feel
like it's working.
Problem is,
when you spend 25 years
just pointing out everything
that's wrong in life
and wrong with the world,
you have a tendency to come off
as a negative person.
But I'm not.
It's true,
but it's not negative.
The truth is that human beings,
as a species,
have almost always
been wrong
about almost
every single thing
that we ever thought was right
for the entirety
of recorded human history.
Wrong, wrong, oops, fail,
missed again,
get you next time,
wrong, erh!
Earth is flat,
burning witches,
slavery, reefer madness.
They thought Liberace
was straight
and Bruce Jenner was a man.
Wrong.
[cheering]
So that--
That should be inspiring.
Occasionally, here and again,
someone's right about something,
and they have a genius idea,
and they're right.
And maybe you have
a genius idea.
So don't be afraid
to put it out there.
Don't be afraid to be wrong,
because that's what we do.
"Ah, you fucking stupid.
You thought
that was gonna work?
You're wrong."
Well, that's what
we always have been.
But maybe you're right.
I know no one in my audience
is curing Ebola or anything.
But maybe you have
a genius idea
that works on a lower level
but changes the social structure
a little bit
to make life
a little bit better.
Put it out there.
If you think you're brilliant,
try.
And if you fail, fuck 'em.
There's a--
in 1960, the New York Giants
hired a kicker from Hungary.
This is back, if you watch
old black-and-white NFL footage,
they used to kick field goals
just very stiff.
A-dut-dut-dut.
Like a fucking kid
with rickets in leg braces.
Da-da-doy-doink!
And that was the norm.
And then they finally hired
a soccer player from Hungary,
and he came over,
and he sees all these people.
It had to be
a lot of pressure.
You sail on a boat
all the way from Hungary
to be a kicker, and...
everyone else is kicking
like a dildo.
"I don't want to have to learn
how to kick like a dildo."
So finally he says,
"Fuck 'em, I'm gonna kick
like I kick."
And he's the first guy to kick
like they kick field goals now,
soccer style.
He didn't know he was a genius.
He just said, "I don't want
to look like an asshole,
so I'm gonna muster up
the courage to kick like I kick
despite the peer pressure.
And fuck 'em, it's 1960,
they don't pay shit yet."
And he revolutionized
special teams in the NFL,
just by being brave,
a little tiny thing.
So whatever it is,
if you think you have
a brilliant idea,
don't be afraid to be wrong.
Kick like you kick,
and fuck 'em
if they don't like it.
When I was--
[cheers and applause]
When I was a young man
growing up,
jerking off in the shower,
I would notice that as soon
as my load hit standing water,
It would all coagulate
into this angry swarm
of gummy bear boner sap
that had some sonar,
like it was trying to
attach itself to my toe hairs.
It's, like, chasing you.
And you don't want to have
to get down on all fours
and wipe all that up
with a hand cloth.
So at an early age,
I realized,
if I just got my shoulder
into the shower stream,
I could manipulate
every little bead
of gummy bear jisma,
like a Super Soaker effect,
running off your arm,
and guide each one
into a drain hole.
And I didn't know,
is this a genius idea?
Does everybody know this?
Should I run down the street
in my towel,
yelling to all my friends?
I don't know, 'cause I didn't
grow up in a household
jerking off
with 12 other guys.
I did not grow up
in an NFL type of environment.
Perhaps, if I did
grow up like that
and everyone all jerked off
in the shower at the same time,
we'd go, "Oh, j'ugh!
Wow, we really
chowder-housed the drain
on this one, gentlemen.
Who's gonna clean this up?
Get Stanhope; he's a rookie."
And I come through like
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer
on a foggy Christmas Eve,
and I go, "Stand back, guys.
Look what I discovered."
Bah-bah-bah
bah, bah, bah
Ba-diddle-la-da-whoo
They would have carried me
out of that shower
on their shoulders
as a conquering hero.
To this day,
it would still be known
as Stanhope-ing the drain.
And I would have left
a mark on this world.
Bisbee,
you're a beautiful people,
and I got to get
the fuck out of here.
[cheers and applause]
We'll be drinking soon enough.
[cheers and applause]
[audience chanting
"Doug"]