1
How are we doing, everybody?
Thank you all...
so much for being here.
You guys, it is so great
to be back in the Twin Cities.
And when I say that...
When I say that, I mean it is great
to be back in Minneapolis
because I have never been to St. Paul.
Hear it's lovely. Hear it's lovely.
Wanna go.
But I do think it's very important...
I know with twins, you have
to pay attention to both of them equally,
or else one of 'em gets a complex.
I will say, in real life,
I think of you have twins,
it would be the wrong move
to give 'em such different names.
"And this is Minneapolis,
which is the Dakota word for 'water'
and the Greek word for 'city.'
And this is Paul."
I also want to start by saying
I know it might be a little weird
to see me in this environment.
Most of you are probably used to seeing me
wearing a suit, sitting behind a desk.
Very odd.
See me doing stand-up in casual clothes.
It can be very jarring to see someone...
out of context,
like when a kid sees a mall Santa
getting into his Ford Festiva.
I mean, it might be weird
to even be seeing my legs right now.
It's like that time Kermit rode a bike.
It was fun, but you were like,
"Are those weight-bearing legs?"
So, hopefully, you'll learn a few things
about me tonight you don't know.
Uh, one thing people think
they know about me that is wrong
is, uh, I am not Jewish.
Um, all Jewish people
assume I am Jewish...
because of my name and my face
and everything about me.
My father's father was Jewish.
My mother could not be less Jewish.
For example, the other day, she said,
"As long as my kids are happy, I'm happy."
So...
My wife is Jewish.
And her parents were so excited
when they first met me.
They were so happy that their daughter
had met a nice Jewish boy,
and then I had to break the news to them
that Seth Meyers was not, in fact, Jewish.
And that is very unfair to them,
because to be named Seth Meyers
and not be Jewish is false advertising.
But I will say, over the course
of the five years
I dated my wife before we got married,
I think, to my in-laws,
I became, to them, Jewish enough.
And I believe that's the only religion
that that happens in.
Which is why it's so great
that it's the only religion
that ends with -ish.
I really believe...
I really believe
that on our wedding night,
people were going up to my mother-in-law
and saying, "Is Seth Jewish?"
And she was saying, "He's Jew-ish."
You may have noticed that I said,
"In the five years my wife and I dated
before we got married,"
the only mistake...
the only mistakeI made with my wife
is that I made her wait five years
before I married her.
That is too long
for a woman of her caliber.
I made a mistake.
I also appreciate right now
that if you're watching this
with a woman you have dated
for five or more years,
I have ruined your night.
Right now, you are staring at me,
but you can tell...
that she is staring at you.
It gets awkward.
The longer you go,
the more awkward it gets.
We were together for four years.
We were trying to figure out what to do
for my wife's birthday.
We decided to go to Europe. She said,
"Where do you think we should go?"
I said, "Why don't we go to Prague?
We've never been to Prague.
I heard it's amazing. Let's go to Prague."
She said, "We could do that.
Or we could go to Paris.
I know we've been to Paris before,
but we have such a nice time in Paris."
I said, "Hey, it's your birthday.
If you want to go to Paris,
let's go to Paris."
We go to Paris,
and the first night in Paris,
my wife is more miserable
than I've ever seen her.
And finally, I said,
"Why are you so upset?"
And she said,
"Every one of my friends said,
'If he's bringing you to Paris
for your birthday,
he is going to propose.'"
Oh!
To which I said,
"Did you fucking tell them about Prague?!
Did you tell them
my opening offer was Prague?
A place where, famously,
no one gets engaged."
No one has ever said, "Look what happened
in the Czech Republic."
But shame on me.
You cannot bring a woman who is expecting
an engagement ring to Paris.
It is too romantic a place for that.
At one point, we were crossing a bridge
going over the River Seine,
and my passport fell out of my pocket.
And I looked down,
and I realized it would be easier
to kick it into the river...
and replace it at the embassy...
than it would be to take a knee in Paris
without an engagement ring.
Like, "Oh! We live here!
We live here now.
We live here."
But I finally wised up,
and after five years, I proposed,
and my wife planned
the most amazing wedding.
She was very sweet,
because she tried to involve me
in the planning of the wedding
by asking me questions,
but I kept getting the questions wrong.
For example, she said,
"Hey, for the wedding invitations,
I was thinking, since we're
getting married near a lighthouse,
it might be cool
to get a lighthouse embossed
on the back of the wedding envelopes.
What do you think?
It's a little bit more expensive,
but I think it'd be really nice."
And I said, "I have to be honest,
I don't think people look at things
like the back of wedding envelopes.
And if it's more expensive,
it's probably not worth it."
And then, I could tell from her expression
that what had happened was...
is she had phrased a statement
in the form of a question.
And the punctuation was purely ornamental.
But instead of giving up on me,
she just made the questions easier.
She was really holding onto this idea
that I would help her plan the wedding.
So she would say things like, "Hey,
what do you think we should do for food
at our wedding?
Do you think we should have it
professionally catered, or...
do you think we should have a trash can
full of Wendy's
in the middle of the dance floor?"
And I'd think about it, and I'd say,
"I think we should have it
professionally catered."
And she'd say,
"Look who's planning a wedding!
My little wedding planner
right over there!"
So, she plans, uh,
this amazing, uh, wedding.
And then, uh, at the rehearsal dinner,
night before the wedding,
uh, my wife got food poisoning.
Oh!
That is the accurate reaction
to that piece of news.
We're at the rehearsal dinner,
it's a wonderful night,
but my wife does not look well,
and I say, "What's wrong?"
And she said,
"I think I have food poisoning."
And so, then, I did something, uh,
called mansplaining.
And...
Uh, if you don't know
what that is, uh, ladies...
It is when...
a man with no shared experience
to what you're going through
tells you what's actually happening.
And so, I said to my wife,
"You do not have food poisoning.
What you have is something called
the wedding jitters.
You're gonna go back to your parents'
house, I'm gonna go to the hotel.
In the morning, I'm gonna call,
you're gonna feel great,
and we're gonna have this amazing wedding
that you have planned."
And so, we did that,
and the next morning I called her,
and I said, "How are you feeling?"
And she said, "I'm at the emergency room
because I have fucking food poisoning."
So, I'm driving to the hospital
the morning of my wedding,
and I'm thinking to myself, "Oh, my God.
I hope she doesn't die for two reasons.
One...
I love her more than anything
in the world.
I cannot imagine living another day
without her."
Two, I couldn't help but think,
if your wife dies
of any kind of poisoning...
morning of the wedding...
you're gonna be a suspect.
And even once they clear you,
that's a real shadow
for the rest of your dating life.
"Were you ever married?"
"Almost. Died, morning of. Poisoned.
Anyway...
Can I make you another drink?"
There's one thing I feel terrible about,
which is this.
I felt so bad for my wife,
and the whole time I was thinking,
I'm so angry that it's her and not me.
That's really not fair.
A bride should feel great
on her wedding day,
but there was one thing that made me...
a little happy...
that it was her, which is this. About...
a month before our wedding,
my wife said to me,
"Hey, I think, at our wedding,
we should do a choreographed first dance."
The only person I know who's
a worse dancer than I am is my wife.
But because "Envelope-gate"
had just happened...
instead of saying,
"I think that's a terrible idea."
I said to her,
"I think that's a great idea.
And I think that not one
of the over 100 professional comedians
at our wedding...
will talk shit about us behind our back...
during our terrible-ass dance."
And we went and we saw a woman,
a choreographer,
and this was her specialty, was to teach
people who did not know how to dance
how to do a first dance at a wedding.
And we went in, and it was the most...
She was the most vibrant person
I've ever met,
and she looked at us and said,
"I know you think you can't do this,
but I promise you, you can do this.
If you put the same commitment to this
as you're about to give to each other,
this will be the most amazing thing.
And when you do this dance, your family,
your friends, all of them will say,
'You are a perfect couple.'"
And we bought in. Guys, we bought in.
And we said, "You know what, lady?
You won us over. Let's do it."
And after a full hour
of dancing with this woman,
her soul had died.
I've never seen a person
look more hopeless.
She looked the way
an emergency room doctor would look
if you just ran in with a bunch of bones
and said, "Help my grandpa!
Stay with us!"
My wife's not here,
but this is one of the moves
of the wedding dance that I remember.
See if you can imagine this.
If I did that better than anyone on Earth,
it would be the worst thing I ever did.
So, as we're leaving the ER, after my wife
has been pumped full of fluids,
and my wife is a superhero who's rallied
and was about to actually have
a great wedding,
she turns to me in the car and says,
"I think I don't feel well enough
to do the dance."
And I will tell you
that Daniel Day-Lewis himself
would've tipped his cap
at the delivery I gave.
When I looked at her
with the hands on the wheel,
and I said, "That is so unfair."
Now we're married, we have two kids,
a three-year-old and a one-year-old.
And it's great having two kids.
It's a lot, but also,
you're a little bit more relaxed,
because the more kids you have,
the more resilient
you realize children are.
Uh, now, we don't panic
every time we hear a "thunk."
For those of you who don't have kids,
a thunk is the sound of a toddler's head
hitting the ground.
And when you first hear it,
when you only have one kid,
you panic every time you hear it.
But then, you grow to learn
that a toddler's head
is so close to the ground that...
it can't reach terminal velocity.
The thunk is either followed by the sound
of your kid just getting up
and going, doing whatever
he was doing pre-thunk.
Or they start to cry, more often than not,
because they've scared themselves.
The other day, I was upstairs
and my wife was downstairs
with one of our boys,
and I heard the thunk, followed by a cry.
And I realized, that provided me
with an opportunity
to go downstairs and behave the way
I want my wife to behave
when the thunk is my fault.
'Cause this was clearly on her watch
that the thunk happened.
So, I came downstairs
and she was comforting our son.
And I said to her, "He's fine.
He's just scared. Don't blame yourself."
And my wife looked at me and said,
"He was actually going down that step
I always warn him about.
And I thought if I just let him fall,
maybe he'll learn his lesson."
And all I could think was the fucking look
she would've given me.
We've got two now,
we're a little more loose with it.
You know, we've realized now
we don't like hanging out with friends
that just have one toddler,
they're too stressed out.
We also don't like hanging out
with friends that also have two.
There's just too much going on.
We like hanging out with people
who have three or more kids.
Because people with three or more kids
are so Zen and checked out.
They are so checked out.
There could not be a sound loud enough
from the other room...
that will make them
put down their CBD-infused Pinot Grigio.
You can hear...
just a grandfather clock
come crashing down,
and they're like,
"Watch it in there, guys.
They're kids. They're fine. They're kids."
Somebody runs in, is like,
"A raccoon bit me!"
They're like, "Did you bite 'em back?
They're kids. They gotta learn.
They're kids."
I'm fascinated
by the youngest of three kids.
They're so much more interesting
than the other kids.
They're so resourceful and self-reliant
because they've received
so much less attention in their lives.
They've figured out everything
on their own.
You know, when you have one two-year-old,
they're crying for you to make a smoothie.
When your third is two years old,
they make the smoothie.
They just walk into the kitchen,
drag in a stool, get up on top of it,
start throwing bananas into a blender.
And it's not even your blender.
It's a blender they bought
from a job they have on the side.
And the parents know
that they get things done,
and so, the parents take advantage of them
and treat 'em like a tiny monkey butler.
"Tyler, we're out of beers!"
And he just comes in with...
Coronas on a tray and limes in the tops.
And they're verbally advanced,
so much more verbally advanced
than their siblings were at that age,
and at the end of the night, they say,
"Well, if that's everything,
I'm gonna put myself down.
I can feel myself getting a little cranky
and I certainly don't want any of you
to have to see that.
If you need anything else,
my older sister, Becky,
is here to help you. Good night."
We are, um...
We're thinking about a third.
We are thinking about a third.
Our biggest hesitation
is that when you have a child,
you have to give birth to a child,
and we...
We've had very dramatic birth stories...
so far in the old Meyers family.
Our first boy was almost born
in the backseat of an Uber.
My wife started having contractions,
they started moving so quickly.
We called our doctor to explain.
He said, "You have to come right now."
We got into the Uber.
And on the way to hospital,
my wife was in so much pain
that she was on all fours
in the backseat of the Uber
with her head out the window...
screaming, "I do not like this."
Being very economical
with her word choice.
Also, in any other city in America,
if someone's yelling,
"I do not like this,"
out the window of a car,
it is an abduction taking place.
In New York City, nobody blinks an eye.
See, we weren't on highways.
We were, like, stopped at stop lights.
And my wife was screaming,
"I do not like this,"
and old women were, like,
crossing the crosswalk,
saying, "It's New York City.
Nobody likes it."
And we got to the hospital,
my wife gave birth
15 minutes after we got to the hospital,
15 minutes after we got there.
And I had not decided
where I was gonna watch from.
I had not decided vantage point,
and then, things were moving so fast
that I just watched it all,
and I'm so glad I did.
It truly was one of the most beautiful
things I've ever seen in my life.
It truly was stunningly beautiful
to watch my son being born.
I have since seen a still photo of it.
Horror show.
But good when it was, like, moving.
So, anyways...
we almost have our first kid in an Uber.
And despite that, our second baby was born
in the lobby of our apartment building.
And guys, I know you're judging me
right now.
Like, "How could you have your baby born
in the lobby of your apartment building
after what happened last time?"
But we were on our toes
based on what had happened last time.
Once again, the contractions started.
We didn't wait a second,
we didn't call the doctor.
We went downstairs into our lobby
and we started walking out to the car.
And all of a sudden, at the door,
my wife stopped and turned to me
and said, "The baby is here."
Subtle.
Nuanced.
From the people who brought you,
"I do not like this"...
"The baby is here."
And so, once again,
I go to my old standby of mansplaining...
which, if you ladies forgot...
is when a man uses no shared experience,
and says to his wife,
"The baby is not here.
You only think the baby is here.
We have more than enough time
to make it to the hospital.
Take it from me,
a man who has also had a baby
out of his vagina."
And my wife looks back at me and says,
"The baby is here."
And I looked down,
and the only way to describe what I saw...
It looked like my wife was trying
to smuggle a baby
in a pair of sweatpants.
It was like,
"Oh! That can only be one thing!"
It was like a velour boa constrictor
ate a baby.
And so, then my wife doubles back.
And I would describe her gait
as the way you would walk
if you had a wet grocery bag
full of oranges.
Like, "Okay, where...
Would love to find a place
to put this down.
If there was anywhere to put this down."
And we basically had two choices
of where to go at that point.
We could either get back on the elevator
or go to the lobby.
Terrible options...
if what you want is a hospital.
Neither of those are even close
to a hospital.
That would be like if you said to someone,
"Hey, do you have an iPhone charger
I can borrow?"
And they said, "No, but I have
a grapefruit and a sombrero."
You would say, "Just fucking say no."
So, my wife chooses lobby,
and my wife goes down
and she lies on her back in the lobby.
And I cannot stress to you
how quickly she gave birth to our son.
I was on the phone with 911,
and this was the extent
of my conversation with 911.
"We're about to have a baby.
We're having a baby. We had a baby."
And let me tell you, it is very strange
to be on a 911 call
that ends with the operator saying,
"Congratulations!"
Almost never happens. Almost unheard of.
You might be saying to yourself,
"Seth, you just told us
that you watched the birth
of your first child from a vantage point,
wherein you might actually
have learned something
that would be helpful
in the birth of your second child.
Hopefully, you're about to tell us
how helpful you were."
Sadly, I am not.
I stood with my back against the wall,
mouth agape,
as my wife Lion King-ed her own baby.
She played...
She played two roles.
She was Simba's mom
and that weird old monkey.
You know, I think we all think
of ourselves
as the heroes in our own story.
You see your entire life
from your perspective.
And yet, there's never in my life
been a moment where I've felt
more like the sidekick to someone else
than when I stood there
and watched my wife deliver our child,
which made the next moment
one of the more harrowing moments
of my life.
Because in every day
of the past nine months,
my wife had said to me, "Make sure
you have the doctor's phone number
in your phone."
So, imagine how I felt...
having watched my wife do
what she just did,
to have her look at me and say,
"Call the doctor,"
and I had to look back at her and say,
"Do you have his number?"
I had 911!
The other thing that was crazy is,
within 15 minutes of my son being born,
there were, uh, five firemen
and seven police officers in our lobby.
And, uh, that was weird for me,
because, uh, I think, as a dad,
you're hopeful that until your kids
are seven, eight, nine years old,
you will be the coolest man
they ever meet.
And yet, I feel,
a full 15 minutes into my son's life,
he was looking around being like, "Man,
I really hope my dad
is one of these 12 kick-ass dudes.
Not that scared guy in the corner.
Looking in a phone for a number
he knows isn't there.
Is he Googling, 'Baby doctor New York?'"
They were...
They were so professional.
If any of them recognized me,
none of them said a word
until the last minute,
because as we were loading my wife
into the ambulance,
the last fireman was walking by,
and as he passed me,
he whispered in my ear,
"Guess you got your monologue
for tonight."
I was like, "I do. Thank you.
Thank you. I do."
You may be wondering,
I don't blame you for wondering,
you may be asking,
"Is it possible to love a lobby baby
as much as a hospital baby?"
It is.
Over time, it is.
In fact, the only relationship
that changed
based on the fact
that we had a baby in a lobby
is our relationship with the two doormen
who were on duty that night.
And it changed in very different ways.
Ramone is now like family.
Ramone feels like he was there
for a magical moment.
He feels closer to us
than anyone else in the building.
Every time he sees our son,
his face lights up.
Kevin cannot make eye contact
with my wife.
Kevin is definitely giving off
a "I've-seen-your-wife's-vagina" vibe.
The other crazy thing about being a dad
is you just aren't a dad,
and then you are.
It changes immediately.
And I feel like, for a mother, you know,
your body is telling you
that a change is coming.
You feel like a mother
before the moment actually happens.
But you are just not a dad,
and then you are a dad.
And that became very clear to me
after our first son was born.
About two hours after,
we were in the hospital,
and he's asleep and my wife's asleep,
and a nurse brings me
some paperwork to fill out.
And the first question was,
"Mother's name?"
And I put my wife's name.
And then, it said,
"Mother's phone number."
And I put my wife's phone number.
And then, it said, "Father's name."
And I put my wife's father's name.
And then, it said,
"Father's phone number."
And I thought, "Who the fuck knows
their father-in-law's phone number?"
And then, I realized,
"Oh, I'm the father!"
I hope I can be
as good of a father to my kids
as my dad was to me and my brother.
My dad was an incredible father.
So supportive, our best friend,
even to this day.
And there are things
that I want to emulate
in the way that he raised us.
One thing I'm really looking forward to
is trying to be the kind of disciplinarian
that my dad was,
because he really seemed to enjoy it.
He was never physical or threatening.
He used a technique
that I believe cognitive psychologists
would refer to as "mindfuckery."
I remember there was this time
there was a storm in our town
that knocked down a tree in our backyard.
And the town came and took the tree,
but they left the stump.
And my dad thought
the stump was an eyesore,
and it really drove him crazy that he had
this ugly stump in his front lawn.
And so, one day, we were driving to school
and one of our neighbors
had a landscaping crew there.
And my dad stopped the car and he got out,
and he went over to the foreman and said,
"If I gave you 100 bucks, would you get
rid of this stump using your bulldozer?"
The guy said, "I can do that."
Dad took us to school, went to work.
That night he got home,
the stump was still there.
Next day, stopped again.
The guy said, "We got busy.
We'll get rid of the stump."
School, work, came home,
stump was still there.
My dad was so mad
that the stump was still there.
It was all he talked about.
It was the week we found out
the incredibly high bar he had
for the customer service he expected
of under-the-table stump removal.
So, finally, after about a week,
we're driving to school,
and my dad stops the car,
and turns around to my brother and I,
and says,
"Everything's gonna be fine."
Which is a terrifying thing to hear...
if it never even occurred to you
everything would not be fine.
It sounds like a positive thing,
but in context, it's very negative.
It'd be like if a surgeon,
right before you went under, said to you,
"I hope we meet again!"
So, my dad said,
"Everything's gonna be fine."
And he gets out of the car,
and he walks over.
And in his business suit,
he lies down in front of the bulldozer.
Lies down on the ground
in front of the bulldozer.
And then, as you would do
if you were a landscaping crew
and you saw this happen,
they all walked over.
The foreman said, "What are you doing?"
And my dad looked at him and said,
"I'm so depressed
about the stump in my lawn...
that I don't want to live anymore.
Will you please run me over
with your bulldozer?"
And the foreman said,
"Man, you've got to get up."
My dad said, "I can't get up.
I'm too sad...
from, you know,
the stump."
And so, they looked at my dad,
and then they looked at my brother and I
with our faces pressed against the window.
And he said, "Man, I promise
if you get up right now,
and get in your car,
I will turn this bulldozer around.
The stump will be gone by lunch."
My dad said, "You promise?"
He said, "I promise."
My dad got back in the car. We drove off.
We watched the bulldozer turn around
and go the other way.
And it was a very quiet and awkward drive.
And then, finally, after about
ten minutes of silence, my brother said,
"Why would you do that...
with us in the car?"
And my dad, with no hesitation, said,
"Oh, it wouldn't have worked
without you in the car."
I have great parents.
And it's fun to be a parent,
because I think in a lot of ways,
it makes you a better person in general
because you just have more empathy
and you care more
about the future of the world.
But in other ways,
it makes you morally a worse person
because now there are things
you would never have done before
that you would do for your kids.
Like, for example,
we have this plastic toy.
It's basically a plastic box
with four holes in it,
and it has four corresponding shapes
that goes into those holes.
There's a square, there's a circle,
there's a triangle, there's a star...
We lost the star.
I don't know where the star is,
but we lost the star.
And yet, every time we take the game out,
my three-year-old says,
"Where the star go?"
And I say to him, "We lost the star."
And if you've ever met or talked
to a three-year-old,
you know that's not the end
of that conversation.
No three-year-old ever says,
"Ah, such is life.
We shall not speak of it again."
So, I'm not sad that we lost the star
'cause he misses the star,
I'm just so fucking irritated
talking about it.
And the other day,
we were over at one of his friend's house
for a play date,
and I noticed they have the same toy.
And they have the star.
And I couldn't believe the speed
at which I had the thought...
"Am I gonna steal the fucking star?"
I'm like casing the place for a nanny cam.
It's like I was George Clooney
in Ocean's Eleven.
Asking the dad weird questions,
like, "Hey, when you lose stuff,
do you just let it be lost
or do you investigate?"
In the end, I did not steal it,
but not because
it was the wrong thing to do.
I didn't steal it because I thought
I wouldn't get away with it.
I think I could've gotten the plastic star
out of the house.
I think I could've done that part.
But I think the next time I took it out,
I couldn't be sure
that my son wouldn't go,
"That's Tony's star."
And the minute he does that,
we can never see Tony again.
'Cause my son will give me up.
And three just seems like it's too young
to teach him,
"Snitches get stitches."
We don't want to let our kids
play video games,
which means I have to stop
playing video games.
Which is sad because I love video games.
I like it 'cause it's the only place
I'm good at sports.
My brother said, "Oh, you should play
Xbox Live, it's really great."
And I said, "Why's it great?"
He said that you put on a headset
and you can talk to the people
you're playing against. And I did it.
And it wasn't great
because I found out by doing it
that I'm way worse at video games
than 12-year-olds.
The way I found out they were 12 is
the other day I was playing somebody
and I lost two games in a row.
I said, "One more game?"
They said, "No, I have to go."
And I said, "What do you have to do?"
And they said, "Social Studies homework."
And I said, "How old are you?"
And they said, "Twelve, how old are you?"
And I said, "I'm 36."
And I'm not.
I'm 45, and let me tell
you guys something. When you...
When you lie about your age
by nine years...
and you're still three times as old
as the person you're lying to...
it's a real
take-stock-of-your-life moment.
Like, pretty much the only upside there
is, "Well, at least I'm not a pedophile."
Speaking of pedophiles,
and I'll be brief...
My least favorite thing
about pedophiles...
My second-least favorite thing
about pedophiles...
My least favorite thing is,
you know, the whole...
the whole deal.
My second least favorite thing,
every time they catch a pedophile,
the same thing happens, they interview
friends and neighbors of the pedophile.
And they always say, "He's the last person
we ever suspected of something like this."
And I hate that so much because it implies
everyone's walking around
with a list in their head
in reverse order...
of the likelihood that everyone they know
is a pedophile.
Just once I'd love to see
someone on the local news
being like, "What do you think
of the local pedophile?"
"Who's the local pedophile?"
"Your neighbor Dave."
And they're like, "Oh, yeah!
Yeah, of all our friends,
we thought it might be Dave."
Also, "pedophile" is too fancy a word.
You know what I mean?
It's like a pervert who's also a snob.
It's like, "Child molester? Please.
I'm a pedophile."
It also reflects so badly
on the other "-philes."
You know, like bibliophiles, cinephiles.
Those are just people
who like books and movies, you know?
An audiophile likes music.
He doesn't fuck the record player.
That is the best that joke has ever gone.
The best that joke has ever gone.
You were probably thinking,
"I was right in the middle."
Nope. Best it's ever gone.
And for the special, no less,
peaking at the right time.
Thank you.
Thank you, Minneapolis.
I was bombing everywhere and people said,
"Give it a chance in Minneapolis,
they go...
they go for the pedophile jokes there."
Every now and then,
I do a show at a college.
And every now and then,
it is a Catholic university.
And...
Uh...
Ugh...
Oh, man.
You remember
what we were just talking about, right?
Every time I do a show
at a Catholic university,
the same thing happens
right before I go on stage.
Someone from the school will take me aside
and say, "Hey, the only thing we'd ask
is don't make any jokes
about the Catholic Church."
And I feel like I have
the perfect response to that,
which is I look at them, and I say, "Oh,
what kind of jokes do people make
about the Catholic Church?"
And it's so great, because when I do that,
their eyes light up...
with joy, because you can tell
they're thinking, "Oh, my God.
Maybe he hasn't heard!"
And that...
is faith.
Really, there's a lot of conversations
lately about people in scandals,
and questions like, "When can that person
come back into society?"
"When can this person,
post-scandal, come back?"
And it makes me think,
doesn't it feel like the Catholic Church
should've had to have taken
at least one week off?
Just after everything that's happened,
just one week you go to church,
and there be a sign outside saying,
"Hey, we're closed for the day.
We're doing an all-staff meeting.
We're gonna go over the rules
one more time."
I mean, there was one racist incident
at Starbucks
and they shutdown all the Starbucks.
And solved racism.
That's why you don't hear
about it anymore, 'cause of Starbucks.
I've nothing against Catholics.
The most wonderful people.
Yet, the leadership, it's crazy.
If your favorite restaurant in the world,
if you found out they had a rat problem,
you would say, "Hey, I'm not coming back
until you solve the rat problem."
If you waited a month, came back,
and said, "Is everything taken care of?"
If they said to you,
"It's more than taken care of.
We found a thousand rats
in the dining room,
and we moved 'em to the kitchen."
I mean,
when Netflix kicked Kevin Spacey
off House of Cards,
they didn't move him to Stranger Things.
And I mean, he would've...
loved that.
So, I want to talk about, uh, politics,
uh, for a second.
But I also... Yeah.
I also know there are people
who, uh, don't like jokes about politics.
And because this is on Netflix,
it presents us with a unique opportunity.
Uh, we are gonna have an option
for people watching at home
to skip politics.
There will be a box right down there.
And they can just click that,
and it will take them to the next moment
of the show when it's not about politics.
So, let's give them a second to find that.
Because I appreciate that there are people
who think there are too many jokes
about Donald Trump.
And they say, "When are the jokes
about Donald Trump gonna stop?"
And the only thing I'll say
is I feel like the jokes
are the only good part
about living through the Trump era.
The only good part.
I mean...
living through the Trump era
without any jokes
would be like getting a prostate exam
and not wanting the results.
"Let me tell you what we've found."
"No, no! That's not what I'm here for!
I'm gonna be here tomorrow,
get you back up in there, though."
It's also very strange for me,
because, based on the kind of show I do,
and because it's a show about politics,
people have been coming up to me so much
over the last few years and saying,
"Oh, my God.
This Trump presidency must be so good
for you.
How good is this Trump presidency
for you?"
And I hate that, because I hate
having people feel as though
I'm benefiting from this.
I'm feeling like... I feel as though
I'm a gravedigger in the Middle Ages.
And people are coming up to me, like,
"Oh, my God.
This plague must be so good for you.
How good is this plague?"
And I have to say,
"Well, obviously, we're very upset
about the plague.
But it has been very good for me.
It's been very good for business, really.
We had to open a second location."
It's also strange because there are people
who blame me for the Trump presidency,
because in 2011, I told jokes about him
at the White House Correspondents' Dinner,
and many people say that's the night
that maybe he decided
to run for president,
because I told jokes about him
and President Obama told jokes about him.
And it turns out, he has very thin skin.
Which is ironic, because it looks thick.
Like the heel of a catcher's mitt.
A lot of people said it
because I told jokes about him that night,
Obama told jokes about him that night.
That night he began plotting his revenge,
began plotting this course
to be president of this country.
And a lot of people wrote articles
about that night
in the lead-up to the election.
And a lot of those articles only talked
about Obama's jokes and left me out of it,
and that hurt my feelings,
because I also wanted credit
for tricking him
into running for president,
because I was so sure
that he was going to lose.
And then he won, and the minute he won,
I realized something.
"This is Obama's fault."
You know who I feel really bad for
in the Trump era is, uh, Canada.
I feel bad for Canada
because in the run-up to the election,
so many people said, "If he wins,
I'm gonna move to Canada."
And then he won, and nobody did.
They must've been so excited
on election night.
Like, waiting at the border.
Then a couple of weeks passed,
nobody showed up, they called.
They were like,
"Hey, you guys coming or not, eh?"
And we're like, "Oh, what? Oh, yeah.
Umm... no."
They're like, "Why not? Did he not win?"
"No. Yeah, no. He did. He did win."
"Oh, is he not as bad
as you thought he was gonna be?"
"N-No, he...
he's a little bit worse."
"So, what's this all a-boot?"
"Uh...
"I g... Yeah, um...
I guess we just don't want to live
in fucking Canada."
A lot of conservative Christians
voted for Donald Trump,
and they voted for him for the reason
that he would pick conservative judges.
He would pass legislation
that was kind to them,
and they are certainly getting
what they voted for.
And I am not to deny anyone
voting for what they want.
The thing that frustrates me
is when conservative Christians
tell us that Donald Trump
is a religious man.
Donald Trump is not,
in any way, shape, or form...
...a religious man.
Here's a dead giveaway.
Here's a dead giveaway.
Donald Trump does not go to church.
Which makes sense,
because he would hate church.
Can you imagine Donald Trump
sitting for an hour in a room
where someone talks about the glory
of someone who is not Donald Trump?
"Is this whole hour about Jesus?
Do you know
he didn't own a single hotel?
True story. Night he was born,
couldn't get a hotel reservation."
And the Bible warns
against this exact thing.
In the Bible, it says,
"Beware of a wolf in sheep's clothing."
Donald Trump isn't even trying that hard.
He is not a wolf in sheep's clothing.
He's a wolf in a shitty wool sweater...
Just walking into a flock,
being like, "Baa, I'm a sheep.
When are you guys going to bed?
Baa, I'm also a sheep.
I'm not gonna eat you.
'Cause I'm a sheep. Baa!"
The other crazy thing about that
White House Correspondents' Dinner night
is it was on a Saturday,
and on Sunday, Barack Obama
went on television
and announced that SEAL Team Six
had killed Osama bin Laden
the very next day.
And it was an amazing moment.
I think it caused a lot...
Yeah.
It was a moment of great relief
to many Americans,
which is why I'm ashamed to this day
at how I reacted to that piece of news.
Because I...
did what I thought was a very good job
at the White House Correspondents' Dinner,
and it went to my head.
It went to my head and I started thinking,
"When the news comes on Monday,
all they're gonna do is talk about
how fucking funny I was on Saturday...
as long as nothing major happens
on Sunday...
a notoriously slow news day."
I'm basically admitting to you
that I was the one person in America,
who upon hearing that SEAL Team Six
had killed Osama bin Laden
had this reaction...
"Shit!
Tonight!
They waited ten years
and they got him tonight!
Fuck me!"
All right.
That's the end of politics.
And, uh...
we're gonna have the people who left us
join us again.
But when they come back,
I want them to hear me say something
that will make them curious enough
to go back...
and watch it.
So, I'll just give it a beat here.
So, I guess my point is I misjudged him
and I do think he's a very good president.
The whole thing,
based on how I laid it out.
You agree with me, too.
I've been, uh, living with my wife now
for ten years.
We've lived together for ten years,
and let me tell you,
my wife has made my life
just immeasurably better.
Living with her has made
just my environment immeasurably better.
Everything about living with my wife
is so much better.
With that said, and I'm ashamed to say it,
there are times where I resent
how much better she thinks she's made it.
Like the other day,
I couldn't find my belt
and my wife found my belt,
and as she brought it to me,
she said, "Where would you be without me?"
And I wanted to say,
"Exactly here without the belt."
In fact, I would have the belt
because I would know exactly where it was,
in yesterday's pants on the floor.
But now...
we're not allowed
to leave yesterday's pants on the floor,
so I need a National Treasure-style map
to find my one lousy belt.
My wife always knows where everything is
because my wife has OCD.
She's one of those people
who, if she walks into a room
and anything is even a little bit off,
if a Venetian blind
is turned the wrong way,
she cannot settle
until she figures out what it is.
And I think it's really important
to find ways to never be bored
in a marriage.
And so, what I like to do...
If I get home first, what I like to do
is I like to go into our closet
and turn around one of the hangers.
And then, when she gets home,
I sit on the end of the bed,
and I ask her how her day was.
And then, I wait until she goes
into her closet and she gets quiet,
because her spidey sense is telling her
that something's wrong.
And it's in that silence
that I think to myself,
"As long as I can do this,
I will never be bored in this marriage."
I have a brother.
My wife has a brother and a sister.
And it's been a real education
what sisters are like,
especially how sisters fight.
The way my wife and her sister fight is
it escalates so quickly,
and then is immediately forgotten
by both of them.
And the only people left
to pick up the pieces
are those of us unlucky enough
to have been there when it went down.
This is a very normal argument,
a normal fight between my wife
and her sister.
One of them will say,
"Hey, when you borrowed my sweater,
you stretched out the neck."
And the other one will say,
"You were a slut in high school."
I'll be like, "Whoa!"
Where is the middle of that argument?
The sister will leave and slam the door.
You'll think, "We'll never see her again."
The next day, the buzzer
in the apartment rings.
"Who's that?" "It's my sister."
"What's your sister doing here?"
"She's borrowing a sweater."
And I'm like, "What about the neck?
Did you already forget about the neck?"
This is a true story
about my wife and her sister.
When they were five and nine,
they were sharing a bowl of guacamole.
And one of them, I won't say which one,
took the last bite of guacamole,
and the other one said,
"Did you take the last bite of guacamole?
You are a bitch."
And then, the one who had taken the bite,
very calmly looked at her sister
dead-eyed,
pulled the bowl back, opened her mouth,
and let the bite of guacamole fall back
into the bowl.
And the only part...
The only part of that story
that isn't true
is that it happened last week.
It happened last week and I was there.
My wife is a lawyer.
My wife is a former prosecutor.
Uh, I use "former" loosely
because she falls back into it
pretty quickly when we argue.
In every one of our arguments,
my wife is
this incredibly well-prepared prosecutor
and I am a public defense attorney
who just found out I have the case.
Like, she's so ready
for all of our arguments,
and I'm running into the courthouse late,
and I've got papers
coming out of my briefcase
and mustard on my tie,
and I run up to the judge,
and I say, "I need a continuance!"
And the judge says, "Overruled!"
because my wife is also the judge.
She's one of those really,
really good prosecutors
that gets you to admit to your crime
on the stand without you knowing it.
Like, we'll have an argument,
and she'll say, "Hey,
did you forget to separate the recycling
when you took out the trash today?"
And I'll say, "Absolutely not."
And she'll say, "You're so confident.
How can you be so sure?"
And I'll say,
"I didn't take out the trash today."
And she'll say,
"No further questions, Your Honor."
One of the things my wife loves
about the law
is each side gets to make their case.
And we were talking
about how that's so different from my job,
where I get to come out here
and just give my side of the case.
So, we decided
it would be healthy and good
if I also shared her perspective.
So, would it be okay right now
if I did stand-up as my wife about me?
Is that good with everybody?
Hey, everybody.
Um, my name is Alexi Ashe Meyers.
Thank you so much for letting me do this.
I really appreciate it. Thank you.
I do not...
I do not do this professionally,
because unlike my husband,
I do not live my life
in the desperate quest
for the approval of strangers.
It is true that I found my husband's belt,
but I do take issue with him saying
he tried to find it, could not find it.
I want to tell you
how my husband looks for things.
He looks one place,
and if it's not there, he loses his mind.
This is my impression of my husband
as Sherlock Holmes.
"Watson, I believe the killer
was the coachman."
"Well, it couldn't have been
the coachman, Holmes.
The coachman was out of town."
"Then I don't fucking know, man!
I don't fucking know, Watson!"
It's true, I have OCD.
My husband has no CD.
And that,
I mean there is no amount of clutter
that can make him
even the least bit upset.
He is a glass-half-full kind of guy.
And by that, I mean
there is not one surface in our apartment
that does not have
a half-full glass of water on it.
Because despite being a full-grown man,
he can still not remember
how much water he needs when he's thirsty.
Nor can he remember
when he's thirsty again
that he has unfinished water
right next to where he was sitting.
So, however hard it is
to live with my OCD,
I assure you it's only a fraction as hard
as it is living with a man
who has aqua aphasia.
I'm a former prosecutor.
I'm a former sex crimes prosecutor.
And you would think, based on that,
that at the end of a hard day at work,
my husband, the comedian,
would cheer me up.
You'd be wrong.
One time, I came home
and he was lying on the couch.
And I said, "What's wrong?"
And he said, "Two of my jokes didn't work
in the monologue tonight."
And I said,
"You have a show tomorrow.
I'm sure you'll get them next time."
And the, he just rolled over
and made a noise, like...
And then, a full hour later, he finally
got around to asking how my day was.
And I said, "It was really hard.
We arrested a pedophile."
And then, I swear to God...
when he heard that word, he smiled.
And I said, "Why are you smiling?"
And he said,
"'Pedophile' is too fancy a word."
And I said, "That joke will never work."
And he said,
"It might work in Minneapolis.
You never know.
Give it a chance in Minneapolis."
I spit out the guacamole.
Who's the bitch now?
Every now and then,
I want to let my husband sleep in.
When I want to let him sleep in,
what I will do
is I will get up very quietly.
I will take our two boys,
I will bring them downstairs,
and I will make them breakfast.
When my husband wants to let me sleep in,
what he will do is he will wake me up...
and say, "I'm gonna let you sleep in."
Because he can't even go an hour
without getting thanked.
And by they way,
I'm not gonna make it an hour,
because there are so many questions.
The morning that he tries to help out,
there are so many questions.
He'll go downstairs, then he'll
come back up and just say, like,
"Hey, what do the kids eat?
How do I make it?
Where do I put it? In their mouths?
When they're done, how do I clean up?
Do I do all the dishes
or just throw them in the garbage?"
And then,
I'm so frustrated that I just get up
'cause it's easier to do it myself
than explain it all to him.
And then, he gets frustrated at me
and says, "I will never learn
unless you teach me."
And when he says that to me, I am so happy
that the windows in our apartment
have child locks,
because if they didn't,
I would open them up and throw myself out.
Because how do you not know?
There's that expression,
"If you give a man a fish,
you will feed him for a day.
If you teach a man to fish,
you will feed him for life."
My question that I ask my husband now is,
"How do you not know how to fucking fish?
You watch me fish every day.
And then, when it's your turn to fish,
you eat the worm
and throw the whole fucking rod
in the water.
What's wrong with you?"
Sometimes my husband
will open the refrigerator
and say, "We're out of yogurt."
And I will say,
"We are not out of yogurt."
And he will say, "I swear to God,
there's no yogurt in this refrigerator."
And I will say, "Please don't make me
come over there and find the yogurt."
And he will say, "On our child's lives,
there is no yogurt in this refrigerator."
And then,
I will walk over to the refrigerator
and it will take me this long
to find the yogurt.
This is my husband if he was Apollo 13.
"Houston, we have a problem.
There is no moon."
And then I would say,
"Have you looked out both windows?"
And then, there'd be a pause.
And he'd say,
"Houston... we're good to go."
But guys, I feel bad.
I do feel bad about something.
Every tenth time...
there is no yogurt...
Every tenth time I have just forgotten
that we ran out of yogurt,
and we did not replace the yogurt.
But now my husband is too afraid of me
to ask me to find the yogurt.
And so, he'll just stand there
with the refrigerator door open
looking for yogurt that is not there.
And in those moments where I see him,
with the blue light of the refrigerator
illuminating his stupid face...
as he scans the only three shelves
over and over again...
In that moment, I think to myself,
"As long...
as I can make him do this...
I will never be bored in this marriage."
Thank you, guys, so much!
You've been amazing!
Good night, Minneapolis.