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I am known for being late to most places.
My sister will invite me to dinner.
I'll ask her, "So what time is dinner?"
She'll be, like, "3:30." (crowd laughs)
I'm, like... "Wait a minute."
So knowing that, I was supposed to be meeting some friends
at a place called Club Café in the South End.
And it was a summer night,
and I know it was around the late '80s
and I know this because I had an '85 Jeep
that was getting a little long in the tooth,
so it was around, like, '89, '90, something like that.
I was supposed to meet these friends at 7:30,
and I got out of the shower about 7:20
to get ready to go,
and I sort of pulled myself together, jumped in the car...
It was very warm-- I didn't have the automatic windows and stuff,
so I had rolled all my windows down,
and I'm driving across, you know,
to go to the South End,
and as I'm driving down Columbus Avenue,
I look to my right and I see these two brothers,
and they are running down the street.
I mean, they were what we used to say in the old days,
they were booking it.
They were booking it down the street,
and I remember looking at them and thinking,
"I don't know what you're running from
"or what you're running to,
but, God, you guys are at it-- okay, whatever."
Didn't think another thing about it.
I pull up to a stop light,
my two passenger side doors open,
and these two guys jump in.
(laughter)
One of them looks at me and he says,
"G-Man's been shot!
We got to get him to the hospital!"
(laughter)
Now, I forgot to tell you
that before I got in the car to come over,
I had smoked some really good pot,
and it was all kind of coming together
right about now,
so I'm not afraid or anything, I'm just mostly amazed.
So I'm looking at this guy and he's looking at me,
and I'm not going to use the word he said,
but you'll get his innuendo.
He looks at me and he says, "Drive, mofo, drive!"
"All righty."
I start driving.
We get to another stop light.
He says, "Go through, mofo, go through!"
"All righty."
I drive through.
Meanwhile, he's looking in the back seat.
"Are you all right, babe? You all right, G-Man?"
And he's, like...
(weakly): "Yeah, I'm okay, baby, I'm okay."
I'm, like, "Whoa, this is too much."
He's, like, "Turn down here, mofo, turn down here!"
I turned down here.
Now I'm beginning to think to myself,
"What am I going to say to the police officer
when he pulls over this car?"
You got these three black men in a car,
G-Man's been shot,
Baby's got a gun,
and I'm going to be like, "Good evening, officer."
(laughter)
"I, uh, smoked a little pot.
"These guys jumped in the car at a stop light.
"Baby's got a gun, G-Man's been shot,
and we need to get him to the hospital."
So somehow or another,
we managed to get to Boston City Hospital.
I pull up, Baby opens the front door,
jumps out of the car, opens the back door for G-Man,
and he helps him get out.
As they're about to leave,
Baby turns back and looks at me and he says,
"Thank you, man-- thank you."
And I thought, "Whoa, we went from 'mofo' to 'man'!"
I feel, like, "We're bonding.
We're, like..."
You know, I'm feeling close, I'm feeling it.
So they take off.
So I pull myself together.
I look in the back seat,
and there's, like, blood on the back seat,
and there's an unopened bottle, a little bottle,
of Hennessy cognac.
So I'm, like, "Strange."
Drive back to the club.
I walk in, I see my friends.
I'm, like, "You got to come out to the car with me.
I got something to tell you."
So we go out to the car.
I tell them this whole incredible story,
and I've got proof because there's blood
and there's this bottle of Hennessy.
So I said, "So you see, that's why I was late."
(laughter)
They looked at me and said, "Please, you're not late.
That's why we told you 7:30."
(laughter)
So we open the Hennessy, we each take a swig.
We go back into the club
and we have this fabulous evening.
Go home-- the next morning, I wake up.
And I'm looking at the local newspapers,
I'm looking at local news television shows,
because I want to know,
are they going to say anything about G-Man and Baby?
But there's nothing about it.
So the story's over, it's done.
However...
Every time I get in my car now,
I put on my seat belt,
I adjust my mirror,
I make sure it's in neutral before I start,
and then I...
(pops mouth)
Lock my door.
Thank you very much.
(applause)