Downloaded from YTS.MX
I always kind of assumed that when my life fell apart,
Official YIFY movies site: YTS.MX
it would somehow be my fault.
So now I just kind of feel like I'm playing
with the house's money.
Live comedy is basically my entire life.
When I'm not writing or performing
I'm helping out at Q. E. D. Astoria
which is the venue owned and operated by my wife.
A place like Q.E.D. You know this is our 401savings
and I know multiple independent venues
are in the same boat as us.
Where they created this place from scratch,
and now we're getting left behind,
and we're not even being considered with regards to the reopening.
It's our money but it's Kambri's business,
but I do help out mopping the floors, cleaning the toilet.
It's not glamorous work, but somebody's got to do it.
So 2020 has been a really double whammy.
I went from having two jobs to having zero jobs.
But I do have a bunch of new material
and Q.E.D. does have a backyard
big enough to safely seat a couple dozen people,
so, I literally don't know what else to do with myself.
I don't know whether this thing that we're doing
is an advertising for Q.E.D. or eulogy.
We'll have to see.
Ladies and gentleman, Christian Finnegan.
Oh, my God. You are too kind.
Seriously. No, No. Stop. Stop it.
Stop it.
You're too kind. It's unsettling, quite frankly.
It is a pleasure to be with you here at the end of all things.
Now you might look around and think to yourself,
you know, this seems like a rather small audience
for a momentous, filmed comedy event.
But you would be wrong.
This is not a small audience.
This is an exclusive audience.
Yeah, you are the elite, right.
You guys think you just decided to be here of your own volition.
No.
Each of you has been chosen for very specific reasons.
It's a little bit like that movie Saw.
I'm gonna teach you all a lesson.
Someone's going home without a foot.
In all seriousness, I know this is not how it's typically done.
Usually a comedy special is filmed
in front of a 1000 rabid audience members,
as opposed to a socially distanced smattering of 28.
But do not worry.
I have been doing this a very long time, okay.
I have performed in front of a 1000 people,
and I am very used to only hearing 28 people laughing.
So...
Fun year, 2020.
Wouldn't you say? Fun times.
I will admit I did not take Covid as seriously
as maybe I should have at first.
I guess it's because I've been living in New York City
for almost 30 years,
so I just assumed I was already immune to everything.
All those years licking subway poles for nothing.
I started getting worried in early March
when I began receiving e mails
from every company I've ever purchased anything from
to inform me of their Corona virus preparedness plans.
And most of it was just sort of like boilerplate,
like, "From now on, we're gonna clean our stores."
Okay.
And I thought that was already in the agenda, but thanks.
But then I got one from Petco,
and it concerned me
because it was very dry.
You know, like you get an email from a pet store.
You expected to be in that sort of fun pet store vernacular,
you know, like "This Corona virus is ruff."
Due to the ongoing "cat-astrophe"
we will be putting our stores on paws, but...
We're all adjusting in our own way.
I am-- I'm carrying 25 pounds of grade A quarantine fat.
That's nice. Yeah. All right.
Hubba hubba.
I honestly don't know how it happened,
because I have spent the last few months
on one of those nutritional programs.
Has anybody else tried the existential panic diet?
It is-- Oh, it's the best.
You got to try it. What you do is you only eat...
That's it. You only eat. You only eat.
And you eat and you eat because that's the one thing you can control.
I've had to adjust. My summer 2020 wardrobe was primarily Costco based
Many of you may be unaware that you can purchase clothing at Costco.
Oh, you can.
They have all your favorite labels.
Colvin Klein, Hugo Bosch, Nabisco.
And all of its piled high and giant disheveled heaps on folding tables.
Scavengers picking through it
like seagulls feasting on a bloated whale carcass.
It is how you say "tres chic."
Now I want to be clear.
I do not have to buy my clothes at Costco, okay.
2020 has not been a financial windfall,
but I'm not quite that desperate.
But these are fat clothes, okay?
I have gained and lost and gained weight my entire adult life.
And if there's one thing I have learned,
is you do not spend good money on fat clothing, right?
Yes, especially not in a year
when 90% of the people you interact with
our seeing you in a Zoom thumbnail.
That should be the slogan,
"Costco Apparel, good enough for 2020."
I can see your faces.
Some of you are wondering.
Christian, is that shirt from Costco?
You're damn right it is.
That's right. $17.99, baby. History being made.
Very first comedy special filmed in a shirt purchased at Costco.
Mark it down. Mark it down.
Look, this is a quality garment?
No, it is not.
But it reads shirt.
It has two armholes, some buttons, a place for your head.
It's a shirt, right?
And thanks to social distancing, none of you will ever get close enough
to notice that it is 73% asbestos.
Chafes a bit, I'm not going to lie.
There's a quote that I've heard
that "Depression is the inability to picture a future."
Which is something I think we're all experiencing right now.
I think comics in general or performer artists in general
are a little more comfortable in the unknown.
But I don't remember ever being this in the dark.
I don't know, I feel like I've recently turned a corner with this.
A few weeks ago, I made a decision that has changed my life.
I decided that I am happy.
Yeah, decided. Thank you.
Thank you. Appreciate that.
I wanna be very clear about this. I am not happy.
Not one bit.
But I have decided that I am.
And I think I may have convinced myself.
Man, I mean, just fake it till you make it right?
I mean, sometimes life requires you to be a little bit full of shit.
And now is one of those times, we pretend 50 times a day.
Why can't we pretend that we're happy, right?
I mean, you don't think you pretend?
Do the words "just saw your text" mean anything to you?
I mean, I already pretend a lot of you.
Whenever anyone talks about Bitcoin,
I pretend I know what they're talking about.
Every four years, I pretend that I know what a comptroller does.
I go into the voting booth, and I look at the names,
I'm like, "Oh, yeah, this guy definitely comptrolles better than that guy.
When you show me pictures of your newborn children,
I pretend that I find them cute.
I'm not saying I find them ugly.
Their babies are cute, but they're not, like, singularly cute.
You know their babies, right?
Like I've never seen a picture of baby and I'm like, "Jesus!"
Like, I know what to expect, generally speaking.
But I know that it's important to you.
So I do the work. I'm like, "Oh, my God.
"Look at him with the nose and the eyeballs.
"This kid definitely has ears."
You can have fun with it sometimes.
Like "Oh, my God, she is so adorable.
"Is it just me, or does she look a little bit racist?
"Just little bit, little bit. Do you want to build the wall?
"Yes, you do. Yes, you do."
The point is you have to stay positive.
Uh, are you guys familiar with the two wolves parable?
Do you what that is? It is a Native American folk story.
So you know that it's gonna be wise, right?
Because that's the brand.
The idea is that within each and every one of us exist two wolves.
And one wolf represents positivity and joy and love.
And the other wolf represents negativity and hatred and fear.
And those two wolves are fighting within each and every one of you.
Now, which wolf do you think will win that fight?
The one that you feed, right?
Right? Pretty wise, right?
Now, again, I did not make that up.
It's literally like a Facebook meme.
I think it originated in the Zuckerberg tribe, if I'm not mistaken,
But it resonates with me.
It makes sense. So I am doing my best everyday in 2020
to feed the positivity wolf as much as possible.
The problem is, as far as dinner companions go,
negativity wolf and I have a little bit more in common.
You know, like--
It just flows better with the negativity wolf.
Like, first of all, positivity wolf doesn't even want to meet you for dinner.
Wants to meet you for breakfast.
7:00 a.m. egg whites.
He wants me to seize the day
as if the day has ever done anything to me.
Whereas, like negativity wolf, he's more flexible.
He'll eat on your schedule.
When and where you want to.
Negativity wolf will even meet you
for one of those late night fuck it meals.
Like you never had that experience
when you're driving home in like midnight, you've had a terrible night
and you just see the golden arches in front of you
and you're like, "Fuck it."
You know, like nega--
Negativity wolf is in the passenger seat,
Ready to go halfsies on the 20 piece nuggets.
The conversation just flows better.
Positivity wolf wants to talk about how much potential I have,
how I can do anything I set my mind to,
how maybe I don't need another pint glass
full of Maker's Mark and Diet Mountain Dew.
Boring.
Negativity wolf gets down to brass tacks.
"All right? Here's how I see this going.
"We'll spent maybe an hour, an hour and a half,
"cataloging all of your personal failures.
"Then we'll hate scroll Twitter for a while.
"Jerk off, take a nap."
Oh, neggy, you read my mind.
We had to move out of our apartment in April.
And so we live here.
This is where we live, when we're in New York
and we have a, you know, a mattress on the stage.
Every night I sleep
where hundreds of open mic-er's
have talked about their masturbatory habits.
I have a little foot-operated camping shower in the basement.
I stand on a tarp.
You pump it like this, you fill it with water
and then, it lasts a good five to seven minutes if you do it properly.
If there's ever a time to kind of winging, it's right now.
My wife and I recently had to move out of our apartment,
which is a bummers.
Fifteen years I lived in that apartment. I loved it.
It was an amazing apartment by New York City standards
because we had a dishwasher.
Yeah, see, you guys understand.
You guys get it.
People watching us at home,
I'm sure appliances rained down from the sky where you live.
Here a dishwasher is an exotic luxury.
Like my friends wouldn't even believe me.
Like whenever I go to visit a friend out in the suburbs
and I would see all the amenities they had they took for granted.
It was as if I was a medieval time traveler...
visiting this strange future world.
"My friend,
"where is the benevolent spirit blowing cool air through vents in the wall?
"Is that the breath of an angel?
"What do you have in this door?
"Your own personal clothes laundering apparatus?
"This washing "machine" of yours.
"How many quarters does it require?
"No quarters?
"You have a staircase on the inside of your home?
"It is the mark of the beast."
I understand what it's like to fear technology,
fear the future, especially right now.
Last week I saw a commercial that said,
"The future is now." I was like, "Dear, God, no.
"Give me a little more time."
I worry about, like technology, artificial intelligence, things like that.
People, we're gonna be in lot of trouble
when robots figure out how to check off that "I am not a robot" box.
It feels like a very thin line of defense to me,
you know, I mean, like, "They're never gonna figure that one out.
"I mean, it clearly says I am not a robot, so...
"And they're robots, so they tell the truth, problem solved."
What's going to happen when Elon Musk invents some lying ass robot?
I'm addicted to technology.
I remember right before pandemic hit, I had to--
I wanted to grab lunch really quick.
And I lived right near Panera and I couldn't afford that.
So...
So I had a really short window in which to grab lunch
I was like, "You know what? I'm just gonna run to Panera really quick."
And I was in such a hurry
I did not even bother to take my phone with me.
And then I guess I had just missed, like, a giant lunch rush.
Because right after I finish paying,
I noticed there were 25 people
at the end of the counter waiting for their orders.
And again, I did not have my phone.
Do you understand what this means?
That means for almost a half an hour I was forced to just stand there
looking at stuff.
Like a psycho path.
How did we do it?
How did-- I have no memory of how to be alone in public
without having that little rectangle to stare at.
Like, I tried not look insane.
It didn't work.
Like, imagine you're at Panera and you're looking down at your phone,
and you glance up and you just see this guy...
I could tell that I was bumming people out,
so eventually I just start staring at my hand.
Just kind of went in Rome, scrolling my palm.
Like, I just want to be very clear,
this is probably not my urine that I'm cleaning up right now.
All of our stuff is in storage, most of our stuff.
This is the entirety of my 2020 wardrobe.
Right now, it is laid out on this table.
And then there's some bags of crap
that I am now too fat to wear, uh, because of the pandemic.
I'm blaming it on the pandemic.
Forty-seven now, 47 years of age.
That's a cry for help, but I appreciate it. Uh...
It's a transitional period is what I'm calling it euphemistically.
Like, I'm not old,
but I'm starting to take notice of pharmaceutical commercials.
Like, I'm not taking any of the drugs.
I'm just sort of familiarizing myself with the names for the future.
Like, "Okay, Prevagen. All right. P-R-E-V-A..."
They're hard to remember, the pharmaceutical names.
Every pharmaceutical name sounds like a word
that you would try to get away with in a game of Scrabble.
Like, you know, when you're down 80 points,
you're just throwing stuff against the wall.
You're like, "Uh, I don't know. Abilify."
"No, that's like, uh, when a building
doesn't have a handicap ramps, you have to abilify it."
"No, you won't accept that one? Okay, let's try this one.
"How about lyrica?"
"Those are the words to a Mexican pop song."
"You know, quando, quando. Mi Amor.
"Something about a corazon that is collectively known. It's lyrica.
"These are real words.
"Do not question my trulicity."
Wordplay.
I think they're running out of letter combinations for the drugs.
There's one drug I see advertised all the time called Xeljanz.
X-E-L-J-A-N-Z, Xeljanz.
First of all, that is one hell of a Scrabble rack right there.
Come on, you got your X, your J and your Z.
Drop that on a triple word score, game over.
I don't know what Xeljanz does, I just know I'll never take it.
I refuse to take a drug that sounds like a character
from like, a 50s science-fiction movie.
"Greetings, humans. I am Xeljanz.
"Servant to Space Lord Xanex.
"We have come to your planet to teach your people about
"moderate to severe rheumatoid arthritis."
Really rolled that R there, did you hear that?
Rheumatoid.
Thank you Tiscali Arts, worth every penny.
I guess that means I will have to embrace wellness.
I don't know if you're familiar with that term "Wellness."
It is a medical term, that means, uh, bullshit, um...
Talking about natural remedies.
Your melatonin, fish oil, echinacea.
I am skeptical of wellness culture, okay.
There has to be a reason when you walk in the CVS
that the wellness products have a section
that is separate from where the actual medicine is kept.
Like, it's actually perfect that they call it wellness.
"Hey, does this stuff work?"
"Well..."
It's like, wellness, um...
"Let us pray." Anyway, uh...
CBD oil.
That seems to be the one that everyone loves in 2020.
Two years ago, I had never even heard of CBD oil.
I had to ask a friend of mine, and she was like, "Oh, my God, CBD oil is so amazing.
"It has all the positive health benefits of marijuana,
"but you don't get high."
I said, "Wow, that is amazing.
"Hey, I propose nothing.
"I know of something with all the positive health benefits of CBD oil.
"But you get high, so..."
Clearly, this is a tomato-tomato type deal, I don't know.
I always sort of assumed that was marijuana's primary selling points,
the getting high parts.
Like, what is the sales pitch for CBD?
It's like, "All right, you're going to feel compelled
"to eat an entire Costco-sized bag of Doritos.
"But wait for it. Get this.
"You're stuck with the same shitty thoughts."
No, thank you.
I'm not trying to imply that smoking pot makes you cool.
Like, maybe once upon a time it made you a rebel.
In 2020, it's just another thing to get through the day.
Like, I think of marijuana as being a natural substance
that allows you to temporarily ignore the wreckage that is your life,
so that you can properly focus on house hunters.
And I don't think I'm gonna get that sensation from the o'douls of weed.
People say that you should give it to pets. Have you heard that?
Like, if you have like, an anxious dog, you should give your dog CBD.
Okay. I just had no idea that that kid in my high school
who used to blow pot smoke in his dog's face was a veterinary trailblazer.
I always thought he was a jackass.
Turns out he was ahead of the curve,
so, way to go, Keith, um...
I don't know, man. I don't worry about getting old so much.
I just worry about getting old and lame.
'Cause I'm entering my 50s.
Which is when like, a white man achieves peak lameness.
Because you become corny,
but you're not old enough for anybody you think it's adorable.
You're just corny.
I don't want to be one of those middle-aged white guys
who starts like, handing people $2 bills or some shit.
I don't know if there are any $2 bill enthusiasts here.
If there's any watching, consider this an intervention.
No one wants a $2 bill. Okay?
My wife owns this establishment, that's how I booked the gig.
And there's a guy who used to come in all time.
Sweetheart of a guy. 55-60.
But every time the bartender be like, "That'll be $6, sir."
And you could see the excitement on his face...
...as he pulled out that stack of crisp twos
and peeled them off like a winning poker head.
Like, two, four, six, straight flush.
Like, I think he expected the bartender to be like...
"What? What are those, sir?"
He was so proud of himself.
He's like, "You know, you can get those at the bank."
"Oh, I know.
"You can also return them to the bank
"because nobody needs a $2 bill.
"Those are not rare enough to be interesting
"and also not normal enough to be useful.
"But thanks for the errand."
Every time someone has given me a $2 bill,
it just collects dust in my wallet for, like, six months.
Until finally, one night, I'm headed home from the subway like 1:00 in the morning
and I stopped at a convenience store to get a Gatorade.
And I get up to the register and I realized I have no cash,
and then it's just, "All right, $2 bill. It's go time.
"It is your time to shine."
And I meekly push that thing across the counter.
And this poor guy at the convenience store
who may have only left his home country 18 months ago.
He's staring at it, and I'm like,
I can see the apple color wheel just spinning in his head.
Like, he's clearly buffering.
And I had to say, "Sir, I promise you that this is money. I promise.
"I realize there is no slot in your drawer
"for a two dollar bill, but this is American currency.
"I'm sorry. I was once inconvenienced.
"Now I'm forced to inconvenience you.
"It's a whole "pay it forward" type scenario."
I'm sorry. The hilarity police are coming.
Outdoor comedy.
So, Kambri's always had, like a bookstore section here,
books by comedians or books about comedians,
and I don't know when we're going to be able to open again
and certainly not going to be full capacity.
So we're kind of transitioning the front area to have, like, games and puzzles.
She's got a great eye for that kind of thing,
so it's going to be more of, like a gift shop up front,
and then she'll be able to put on shows in the back.
At what capacity?
I don't know. I mean, maybe this will be a rousing success.
Or maybe check back in two years and we'll be a rub and tug.
I mean, I don't mean to make fun of people who have hobbies.
I think it's very important to have hobbies,
especially with what everybody is going through right now.
Like, you can't be online all the time.
Like, I have no problem with social media,
but it's replaced people having genuine hobbies.
You know what I mean? Like, I'm not talking about a side hustle or a second gig.
I'm talking about genuine thing you do for your own amusement.
Hobbies are our psychological defense
against the awfulness of the world.
Do you know what I mean? Sometimes your soul needs to get off the grid, right?
It's like, "Oh, another three months of social distancing?
"I'm going to go watch birds.
"What's that you say?
"Jared and Ivanka made how much last year?
"Stamps."
I'm learning Spanish.
That is my 2020 hobby.
Uh, thank you. I appreciate that. Very kind.
I figure, you're gonna live in Queens
you should learn the language.
I'm joking. My neighborhood speaks Arabic.
No, I've been doing it for a few months,
and I feel like I'm making some progress.
Not quite enough progress that I am willing to whip it out
on a native Spanish speaker.
I haven't reached that threshold yet.
I go to the same taco truck at least once a week,
and every time I walk up to the counter, I'm like, "All right, it's time.
"Es el momento."
And I get right up there, I'm like, "Disculpe, Senor."
"Three fish tacos please."
"No, es el momento."
I'm using Duolingo.
I don't know if anyone's tried Duolingo.
It's fun, right? It's a great language app.
And I'm not being paid to say that,
although make me an offer.
It's super great. I will say though,
it is a testament to how angry everyone is in 2020
because there are arguments going on
within my Duolingo comment threads.
I'm not even talking about general message boards.
If you do Duolingo and you get a question wrong,
a little word bubble will pop up and you can click on it,
and other people who got that same question wrong can compare notes.
So this is one question,
within one lesson within one level, within one language.
So maybe 15 to 20 people are ever going to see this.
And yet people are at perpetual battle stations.
Last week a woman asked why she had to use the word "usted"
and some guy told her to shut the fuck up.
Shut the fuck up.
What happened to you?
Who hurt you?
Nothing in life is worth being that angry all the time.
Or, as they say in Spanish...
I haven't gotten that far yet. I'm sure they say something.
I don't know what it is.
Also, it violates the unwritten rules of the Duolingo universe.
That is not how Duolingites communicate.
I'm not talking about the real people like me who used the app.
I am talking about the make-believe people
that only exist within my remedial Spanish lessons.
My new friend, Carlos E. Fernanda.
I consider them friends because they talk to me directly.
Nobody's calling me a snowflake in Duolingo.
Nobody's saying, "Okay, Boomer."
It's just a bunch of muy contentos personas
trying to locate the biblioteca.
Just the fact that they care so much about bibliotecas.
When's the last time anybody in your life wanted to know where a biblioteca is?
These people are obsessed.
Este pueblo tiene dos bibliotecas.
La puerta del bibliotecas muy grande.
By the way, I have also discovered that I am incapable
of speaking Spanish...
...unless I do it like this.
I think if you look like me, you can't be like, "Gracias, senor."
Gracias...
To give yourself vocal polyps.
I was such an idiot in high school.
I took French like a moron.
Those were my only two options. Either Spanish or French.
I was in that last generation of American children
that thought French was gonna be remotely useful.
Did anybody else make that mistake?
Yeah. Yeah?
Do you use your French at all?
- No. - No. No.
You thought you're gonna be fancy.
You aren't.
Thought you were gonna do a lot of fine dining.
Become some sort of baguette enthusiast.
By the way, fuck a baguette, okay.
I mean, not literally 'cause ew, but I am anti-baguettes.
I had a baguette five days ago.
The roof of my mouth still feels like it suffered a bear attack.
I mean, I know carbs are dangerous, but give me a break.
These are jagged, injurious pieces of bread.
I did not order a baguette.
I ordered a chicken chipotle avocado panini at Panera.
But this Ne'er-do-well behind the counter,
I guess they had run out of the normal bread,
so he just slapped it on a baguette and didn't even warn me.
Like, they should have to tell you.
Like, "Hey, this sandwich you're about to eat,
"it will ruin your week.
"This... you will regret this on Wednesday."
But we think they're fancy because they're called baguettes.
Would you eat them if they were called bagettes?
It's sounds kind of hate-crimy.
"A baguette. Oh, so romantic."
I don't mind romance. I have nothing against romance.
I just don't like forced romance.
Like, I've never been a big fan of Valentine's Day.
You know, I feel like Valentine's Day is the only holiday
where people who aren't celebrating it care more
than people who are celebrating it.
Like, if you don't have somebody on Valentine's Day,
it's like a personal statement.
"Oh, I don't have valentine. What am I doing wrong?"
When you're married, Valentine's Day is a goddamn zit
on the face your calendar.
It's nothing against my wife.
I love my wife. I worked very hard at being a good husband.
But if you think of being married as a job,
Valentine's Day is like your annual review.
That's a lot of work.
I gotta get my talking points together,
put on a tie, go in and sell myself.
Make sure I'm retained for the following year.
Well, honey, I think I've had a very productive year as your husband.
I did close that big deal to get snow tires put on the car.
If you will recall, I cleaned the bathtub upwards of twice.
So, if you check out this power point presentation
you'll see my numbers are way up.
Uh, in Q1 I spent over 42 hours
listening to what you dreamt about.
And...
over 45 hours, reassuring you that,
yes, those leggings look fine.
So...
This is probably my favorite thing in the entire place.
Kambri is obsessed with David Lee Roth,
and she's a storyteller and on a storytelling show
once she told the story about how she didn't have
any religion growing up, so David Lee Roth
was kind of her Jesus Christ.
And some random guy drew this pencil drawing
completely by hand and just sent it to her.
This is sort of the Patron Saint of QED,
and it's also why we have a "no Van Hagar" sign over there
because we're in our late 40s
and these are the things that are important to us.
My wife is maybe the most honest person I've ever met in my life.
Like, unlikeably honest.
Like painful-- Maybe dial back the honesty just a hair.
But she's also a human being, which means she's full of shit.
Because everybody's full of shit.
You understand what I mean?
There's difference between being a liar and being full of shit.
Like, being a liar means you are knowingly giving
false answers to direct questions.
Like, "Where were you on Tuesday?"
"Who's cock ring is this?" Like simple direct questions?
Being full of shit is more nebulous.
Like nobody-- It's like, plausible deniability to it.
Like, you may not even know for sure yourself,
if you are full of shit.
I'll give you, like, a concrete example.
My wife is convinced that I am bad at driving.
Which I am not. I am fine.
And I realize that using the word fine implies
that I may in fact be a bad driver.
But I'm not.
I can drive. I'm fine. I'm fine.
I'm fine!
My wife is convinced otherwise.
Any time I'm behind the wheel, she wants to let me know
how bad of a driver she thinks I am.
But she doesn't want to say it.
So what she does is any time I have to hit the brakes
just ever so slightly,
you know, maybe a squirrel runs on the road
or maybe the light suddenly turns red.
Anytime I tap the brakes,
my wife immediately transforms into a crash test dummy
from one of those 80s PSAs which is like...
Ricocheting off the dashboard, like, slow motion somehow.
Professional soccer players
do not flop like my wife flops when I hit the brakes.
Now, is she lying?
No, but she's full of shit. she's full of shit.
And one day I'm going to tell her.
I try not to argue with my wife, uh,
because she's a bit of a bully.
No, she is. She is.
And I'm not saying she's like physically violent.
She's a time bully.
Do you understand? What I'm-- A time bully.
We've been together 17 years.
and at this point-- Sure.
Three more to go. No, uh...
We've been together 17 years,
and at this point in our relationship,
she knows that I am incapable of arguing about anything
for as long as she is capable of arguing about it.
I'm not talking about right or wrong.
I'm talking strictly endurance.
This woman is a rhetorical triathlete,
and she lords that over me.
Cause we'll be sitting on the couch and be like,
"Hey, remember, you said you were gonna walk the dog?"
She's like "No, you were gonna walk the dog."
"No, remember we were at dinner
and you said you'd walk the dogs tonight
and I'd walk 'em in the morning.
And I know I'm right. I know I'm right.
But then I just see her face transform
And she's like, "Oh, you want to do this."
And suddenly Eye of The tiger
starts playing in the background,
and she's like, "All right, asshole,
"go put on comfortable clothing because this is our night now.
"This conversation is now our-- I have three hours for this.
"Do you have three hours for this?"
And 10 minutes later, I'm walking the dogs.
I know, right? What a cuck.
Or is it simp now?
I'm not up to date on the nomenclature.
Any Alpha males out there? No.
There's only one type of dude that genuinely terrifies me,
and they're very easy to pick out
because they all have the same body.
They have a body type that I would call
the pregnant body builder.
I'm talking about a guy
who was completely jacked, but only from the chest up.
Do you know what I mean? Like, like bulging pecs,
deltoids, biceps, nips up ripped, this guy.
But from the nipples down, he looks like a water balloon
that's about to pop. Like a bulbous tick, right?
Like, dude, pick a torso and go with it.
Listen, nothing wrong with having a fat stomach.
I have a fat stomach, but it's consistent with the rest of my body.
And the fat hangs downward like fat is supposed to,
like gravity intended, like...
It's like that kind of fat.
The guys I'm talking about their fat stomachs
are oddly three dimensional.
Like the fat rides really high,
and it, like, bulges out at you.
Like they all look like that dude
from the movie Total Recall, right before Kuato crawls his way out.
'Open your mind, Quaid."
If you have that body type, it tells me two things about you.
It tells me that you are aggressive,
but undisciplined and that is a terrifying combination.
Because if you're in legitimately great shape, I'm okay with that.
Like, if you have washboard abs, you have like Davids like,
I'm not scared of you.
Like, yes, maybe you're aggressive,
but you clearly have a lot of self-discipline.
Like, you're not going to go start a race war.
Tomorrow's probably leg day.
But these guys, man,
what are you spending all this time lifting weights for
if not to make your body look attractive?
Because that's not attractive.
It looks like - you took He- - Man arms
and stuck 'em on a Mr. Potato Head.
If you have that body
it tells me the only reason the you lift weights
is to work through unprocessed rage.
Like every time I see one of those guys,
I just picture him on the bench press
just pushing up the bar like, "Ugh, immigrants!"
I am neither aggressive nor disciplined,
so you have nothing to worry about.
I'm not saying I'm incapable of evil.
Sure, I have twisted thoughts, but I have neither the energy
nor the organizational skills to do anything about it.
So I'm low risk.
Last week I was listening to a podcast
about Jeffrey Dahmer and how he committed his crimes.
And after an hour, my main takeaway was, "Seems like a lot of work."
I can see the upside of being a serial killer.
I mean, you are your own boss, which is nice,
but who has that kind of time?
I mean between the seducing and luring and the murdering and the dismembering...
How am I going to dismember a bunch of teenage boys
and still binge watch all 11 seasons of Frasier?
Doesn't agree with my lifestyle.
And, God forbid, I got arrested.
I wouldn't be able to cooperate with the FBI
because there is zero chance I will remember where those bodies were buried.
None. None. I lose my keys twice a week, on average.
I have to look at my bank account number
every single time I deposit a cheque.
Same bank account, 20 years, look it up every time.
You think I can remember
where I buried some random kid's femur?
Like, I can picture myself leading the FBI
through the woods for, like, three hours
and finally being like,
"Well, guys, I feel like a real jerk.
"Ah, I'm gonna go ahead and take the L on this one.
"I know for a serial killer, I'm not exactly killing it, am I?
"I mean, I wrote it down.
"Go out to the woods behind the abandoned amusement park.
"Keep walking until you see the tree that looks like mother.
"It should be here."
I'm sort of, like, typical New York City liberal, I guess.
Which is always awkward because people think
that means I hate the flag because they're right.
No, I'm not talking about, like, what the flag represents,
of which I agree with 65%.
I'm talking aesthetically. I don't know if you know this,
if you put on American Flag polo shirt,
a pair of Oakley wraparound shades
magically appears on your face.
A goatee sprouts out,
before you know it, you're in your car,
shooting an iPhone video...
Red, white and blue, that's great, that's nice.
Bold, but nice.
But then you put Stars and Stripes on the same flag...
Did Betsy Ross not have even one gay friend at all
to just step in, like, "Betsy,
"love we're doing for the revolution
"but this flag, it's busy.
"Take one thing off."
Even people who are politically engaged,
they may not want to hear that at a comedy show.
It's like some, you know, can you just make a joke about spoons, please?
Can we just talk about Burger King?
Do we have to talk about systemic racism
or, you know, or the march toward fascism or whatever?
Can we just kind of keep it light?
And I understand that, and I try to temper that some.
But there's certain things,
I don't want to look back on this period and not feel like I addressed it at all.
I want to feel like I had something to say about what we're going through.
I've never been able to relate to people
who supported President Trump until Covid.
Now I get it.
Cause I think we all see how poorly it's going, right?
Even the supporters,
they can see how badly he's doing, right?
And so I relate to that because I know what it's like
to know that I am wrong in an argument,
but have no choice but to fucking power through it.
People are always like, why are they still supporting him?
They're not supporting him. They're supporting themselves.
You've been putting Maga on your Facebook wall for the past four years.
You can't be like, "Oh, turns out I was wrong.
Hey, what's for dinner?" Like you can't.
There's no back. There's only forward.
Have you ever played the game hearts?
At a certain point, you gotta shoot the moon, right?
You're not gonna get rid of all these hearts.
You just got to push forward and hope it magically works out.
Listen, we all know what that's like.
You know, when you get your credit card statement
and you see the amount and you're like, "This can't be right.
"There is no way that I spent all this money.
"Someone has made a mistake."
So, like, whenever that happens,
I'll call Bank of America all indignant,
"Uh, there's been some fraudulent activity on my account,
"and I demand restitution."
And then they painstakingly
go through my statement item by item
about halfway through I'm like, "Oh, yeah, that's all me.
"That is 100% this guy."
Uh, but my ego's online at that point,
so I can't admit that I'm wrong.
I've to be like, "I'm going to have
"to consult a lawyer, and then we'll..."
And if you are annoying for long enough,
sometimes they were refund you for shit you actually bought.
That's what Trump supporters are doing.
Like, it may work, man.
We're taping this in early September.
When people are watching this, the election will have happened.
So you are in the future right now.
Just-- by the way, if you are in the future,
how is the Great Awakening?
Has Q revealed himself?
Is he a dreamboat?
Have I been sent to a labor camp?
That's the problem with QAnon
is they have really taken the glamour out of joining a cult,
and you know what I mean?
Like, I thought a cult was supposed be
everybody wears like, colored pajamas,
and they were finger cymbals on the way to the orgy.
So I can be in a cult and just stay on Facebook all day?
Does not make for a good documentary series.
I'm obsessed with cult documentaries.
Have you ever watched a cult documentary?
You have to admit those people are happier than we are.
As long as you don't watch the last half an hour.
Like, you have to turn it off turn.
That's my 2021 goal.
I want to be first hour of a cult documentary happy.
I just worry that maybe I'm not cult material, you know?
Like I'm not a big hugger.
Feels like a very hug-centric culture.
Very touchy feely.
I'm not a fan of nudity, generally, speaking, like non sexual nudity.
I don't know if that's cause I was raised Catholic.
But to me, if there are two naked people in a room together,
there should be sex happening or else what are we doing?
You know, like, for some reason, a naked man with an erection
is less creepy than a naked man without an erection.
Like, if I'm in my apartment and you just, like, burst in naked with a boner,
like at least I understand what the proposition is.
I understand the terms being offered.
Whereas if you just kind of stroll in with a little mushroom cap,
like, "Hey, pal, how was your weekend?"
Like, "Ugh!"
No mas.
Maybe I'll join the occult.
Do you know the difference? There's, there's cults
and then there's the occult, which is like a cult for Irish people.
That is the shittiest joke I've ever written.
And it got exactly what it deserved.
Two people laughed and one person went...
The occult is like, you know, the dark arts like Satanism.
Satanists? Satanists here?
That seems like a lot of work too.
I mean you gotta grow a ponytail
and wear fake John Lennon glasses
and were a black dress shirt with a red tie.
Like every Satanist looks like a roadie for the White Stripes.
You gotta learn how to say pretentious, satanous stuff like,
"You know, the name Lucifer actually means light bringer."
Which was something that was literally said to me at a party
that I immediately left because that's not a very good party.
You got to learn the names to, Of course, there's like,
Satan and Lucifer, - which is like the Coca- - Cola and Pepsi of devil names
like, everyone knows those.
But then there's the other ones. There's like, Mephistopheles
which sounds like the name of, like, a kid you'd hear getting yelled
at Whole Foods, you know?
No running Mephistopheles.
Come now, Mephistopheles, need to get your cello lesson.
No gluten for Mephistopheles.
Beelzebub, that's the one I like.
I could hang with the Beelzebub, right, I mean like,
it's just cooler, like,
Beelzebub seems like like the George W. Bush of devils.
It's like, okay, clearly, you are evil.
But come here, you.
You are a demon I grab a beer with.
I just find it weird that Satan doesn't get his own holiday.
Such an important cultural figure.
Like the Easter Bunny gets one,
but nothing for the Prince of Darkness.
I mean, yeah, you can say Halloween, but he has to share it with, like,
- Spider- - Man and slutty nurses.
There's a kid who used to trick or treat in my apartment every year.
He was so adorable he would show up at my front door,
and, uh, this last year he was like, he's like nine-years-old
and he went as Dracula and he really went for it,
like he had the Cape and the fangs and the blood and he showed up
and he was like, "Bleh, I'm Dracula, bleh"
and I didn't wanna ruin it by laughing at his face so, I played along
and I just grabbed a pencil and just stabbed him in the chest.
Just plunging,
I said, "Back to Hell demon spawn."
That did not happen.
In the trade we call that a "make 'em up."
No one calls them that, no.
I like the dress up part of Halloween.
I just, the scary part, I don't...
When you're 47, man,
you're not put off by ghosts anymore, because,
you're already haunted.
By younger, cooler versions of yourself.
Like, not a night goes by where I'm not staring at the ceiling and then,
27 year old me floats in the window like,
"What the hell happened to you?
"You used to be cool.
"You don't even have a podcast."
Seems oddly specific, ghost me.
I've never fetishized being scared.
Like, my wife is obsessed with horror movies.
I have never been sitting in the theater and thought,
you know what makes this experience really fun?
If for just a minute, I thought I was gonna die.
If my heart could just see the...
Really... That would really enhance the moment.
I went to a haunted house a few years ago, like, not one of those
Times Square, $85 haunted houses,
like, one of those rural haunted houses where they just
just rent out a construction site
and they hire local meth heads, jump out at you.
And as with a couple of friends of mine,
and we came around a corner, and this kid jumped out
with, like a machete in a bloody wife-beater,
and I reacted like a human being reacts.
And everybody started laughing.
Okay, so, a man with a bloody machete jumps out and my central nervous system performs
exactly as designed.
And I'm the asshole here.
Haunted houses...
They're still the same, which is weird, like,
they've been the same since I was a kid, like,
like I'm Freddy Krueger, and I'm an axe murderer.
We need like, to update the haunted house model.
You know, like, imagine a haunted house
where you walk into one room, and all of a sudden
your phone is at 3% charge.
I just plugged this in.
Spooky.
Then you walk into a room and every person
you've ever insulted online is waiting to speak with you.
You know, like, an ex-girlfriend, your old boss,
Ed Sheeran.
Just random people with bones to pick.
You walk into another room, and it's just your dad looking at pornography.
You walk in and he's like, "Shut the door."
"Oh, Father, I had no idea you were such a fan of the Far East."
You know, like, uh...
Very ribald.
Christmas is where it's at.
It's a lot of pressure, though. Christmas is a lot of pressure.
My wife every year, - like around mid- - December,
she starts getting extremely excited.
To tell me about the presents that she has bought me.
And what she imagines my reaction to them will be.
Like, "Oh, you're gonna love what I bought you.
I can't wait till you open, you're gonna love it so much." And I just...
I start to get, like, panicked about it, you know what I mean?
And I've done it to myself because I'm really good at faking stuff.
I fake it, man.
Christmas gift reactions are to husbands what orgasms are to wives.
Like, sometimes it's real.
Sometimes you knock our socks off.
But even when you don't,
I appreciate the effort.
Let's not make this weird.
Sometimes you gotta pull the old Meg Ryan.
But, thanks for the snorkel, umm...
I never know if I'm done buying Christmas presents
because my wife is so excited about what she's got me.
I'm always like, I guess I gotta go for buying more stuff.
I had a buying, like 50 gifts like, I have
all feature acts, no headliner, like, I have no...
I get so jealous when I see those car commercials where like a guy
leads his wife out and opens her eyes and there's like, a Lexus in the driveway.
Because he's done. He's done.
That's it. No stocking stuffers for that guy.
I cannot afford to buy my wife a Lexus, uh...
I'm not entirely sure I can afford to buy her
the giant bow they put on top of it.
Like, does it have to be real velvet or can we go synthetic on this?
Maybe that's what I'll do next year
is I'll just leave my wife outside like, don't look, don't look.
And open her eyes, there's just be a giant bow
on our 2009 Honda Fit.
Maybe one of the best things
that I have experienced, since this started was,
when we started doing outdoor shows in the backyard,
the look of just sheer
joy on the face of some of my fellow comedians.
There are some comedians who just need to do stand up.
They need to do it.
They need to do it...
Almost more than the audience needs them to do it.
You guys have been so wonderful.
I feel like I wanna end the show on a, on a positive note.
Um, a happy story.
A happy Christmas story, why not, right?
Why not?
This was something that happened to me when I was seven years old
and my older brother John was nine, and um,
we came home on Christmas Eve, we had a half day at school.
My mother was in a panic.
She said, we got to get in the car because right now we have to go out,
we have to buy a pinata.
No, she's right to be weirded out.
That's very strange.
That's a very strange thing to want to do on Christmas Eve.
I should say, for the record, my mother was severely mentally ill.
She had borderline personality disorder,
which you don't know when you're seven years old.
You're just like, "Wow, Mommy is fun."
Until she's not, uh...
But, you know, at seven years old, pinata,
I'm in, right, like, pinata, pinata, pinata.
And so we drove around, and I don't know if any of you have ever tried to
purchase a pinata in December in suburban Massachusetts.
It's not a real big Mexi-culture,
but, uh, we went to Sears, went to Kmart, we went to Lechmere.
And uh, finally,
we found, like a place that had one of those, just,
Cinco de mayo donkeys.
And my brother John was like, Mom, that's a donkey and she's like, it's a reindeer.
Uh...
And he was like, but Mom, it's yellow and purple and green.
It's a Mexican reindeer. Feliz Navidad!
And so,
we brought home this pinata, and I was like, ready to go, I'm like,
"Pinata, pinata, pinata."
My mom was like, no, you have to wait until your father gets home.
Which I knew was going to ruin everything, because,
my father is a lovely man. He's mellowed out a lot over the years.
But when I was a kid, my dad would show up every day
at like 6 o'clock from work just filled to the brim
with Irish Catholic impotent rage.
Does anyone have a dad who would like swear through clenched teeth?
Until I was 12, I thought my dad's jaw was wired shut.
It's like, all the time.
And so he came home, and we were like, pinata, pinata and he's like, no pinata.
We have to go buy a Christmas tree.
We had a pinata, we had no Christmas tree.
Because we had a family tradition, a Finnegan family tradition,
where you would only buy a Christmas tree on Christmas Eve.
Then I get older and I discovered that Christmas trees
go 50% on sale on Christmas Eve.
So it's not so much a tradition, as a cost saving measure.
Every year, our Christmas tree was like, a Charlie Brown special.
Like some scoliosis piece of shit that we would bring home.
And then we had to spend about 90 minutes while my father tried to stand, to put up the tree.
Younger people, you really lucked out,
because tree stand technology,
has really advanced over the years.
When I was a kid, you had to impale the Christmas tree onto a spike.
And then you've to like, ram it onto, which is weird for Catholics.
But we rammed,
we'd ram the tree on a spike and then drill screws
in the side of it like, it was like Frankenstein's monster, right?
And then my dad would eventually give up
and drill a screw in the wall and use twines
so the tree would like lean forward slightly.
Like, if you were to hit it, it would like swing like a pendulum, you know.
And then we had to dress the tree, like, this is where young people miss out.
You guys were not around for the golden age of tinsel.
Yeah, tinsel.
The trashiest of all holiday decorations.
Little thin strips of me--
Oh, did I love me some tinsel?
I would just keep throwing gobs of tinsel on the tree and my dad would be like,
"One string at a time!"
I would not stop putting tinsel on the tree
until it looked like it had been like gang banged by cyborgs.
Just, just coated in tinsel.
Can't stop won't stop.
So my now it's like, 8:30, 9 o'clock,
we sat down, we had our angry dinner
and...
You think okay, 10 o'clock on Christmas Eve.
Probably time for the family to settle in, and have a nice Christmas Eve.
Wrong. Because we were Catholic.
Do you know that means? Midnight Mass.
Yes. If you are Catholic, you have to go mass
at midnight on Christmas Eve.
Because when you are Catholic, nothing can ever be purely enjoyable.
Everything nice must be mixed with something shitty.
So that you never forget that you do not deserve joy
Also, my uncle was a priest,
so we had to drive all the way to downtown Boston like it was this fucking gig.
And...
So we drove in a downtown Boston.
My uncle did mass,
we got home at like, 2:15 in the morning and my dad's like,
"Go to bed, Santa is going to be here."
And I was like, pinata, pinata, pinata, pinata.
And at this point, he didn't want to take the time
to actually hang the pinata from the ceiling.
So what he did is he took his belt off,
and he's strung, the pinata on his belt.
And then he and my mother stood about six feet apart,
with the pinata dangling in the middle.
And then, they put a blindfold on my brother John.
And gave him a Wiffle ball bat.
Some of you have a sense of where this may be going,
I should say, for the record, my brother John,
he's not an athlete, uh...
Very active in the Dungeons and Dragons community.
More of a sword kid than a bad kid, but, uh...
They gav-- he did his best, they gave him his wiffle ball bat.
And he wound up and he took a big cut,
and he missed the pinata entirely,
and he hit my mother right in the um...
The teacher bulge.
Do yo--
Do you know what a teacher bulge is?
You might know it as a FUPA.
Fat upper pussy area.
I have also heard it call the gunt.
I'm sorry I did not make those words up.
We call a teacher bulge cause we were innocents, right?
Cause all the teachers in our elementary School
would have their like, polyester pants up to their rib cage.
And then there's that little brute, like we call that a teacher bulge.
By the way, I'm not body shaming, okay?
Men's bodies are just is disgusting.
They're just different. Okay?
Women have teacher bulges, men have front butts.
But, uh...
So, my brother nailed my mother right in the FUPA
and she buckled over and started screaming,
"My ovaries! My ovaries!"
My dad is like, "Fucking, fuck, fuck!"
And then my brother started going to town
on the pinata, which was now lying on the ground.
So my most cherished holiday memory is of my mother in the fetal position,
with my dad's swearing at her through clenched teeth,
while my brother beat the crap out of a paper mache donkey,
that then split open, and there was nothing inside,
my mom didn't put candy in it.
♪ O Holy Night! The stars are Brightly shining ♪
I don't know what my future in stand up is, if I'm being perfectly frank.
But I don't want to go out with a whimper.
I mean, you could argue that this is going out the whimper, but,
it's gonna be an audible whimper.
Guys, you have made this my very favorite night of 2020.
I wanna thank you guys for coming tonight.
Viva Q.E.D. Onward.
♪ Paint me
♪ Purple
♪ Tear my
♪ Heart out
♪ Everything is
♪ As it should be
♪ Everything is
♪ As it should be