I wanted a Roomba for Christmas.
I was disappointed.
Made me think of
all the disappointments that
I've had in life
and I think the greatest
disappointment was
was the time I tried
to impress the goth girl.
Yeah. When I was young
I was infatuated with this goth girl.
She was just ravishing.
She was all corsets
and lace and hair
the color of midnight
and eyes like emeralds
and I was a dork.
I had no idea what I could do
that would make her attracted to me,
so I thought long and hard
and I said, you know,
maybe I could take her
to the Reptile House
at the Chicago Lincoln Park Zoo,
'cause they have this
Reptile House there
that was an old Victorian building,
built like in 1896
and a hundred years later,
all the reptiles
were still there
because none of them died
'cause it's almost impossible
to kill a reptile.
You turn off the heat and
they just go to sleep.
You stop feeding them
and then they eat their young,
so I figured this would
be perfect is I could
bring her there because
it's old and dark and cold
and creepy and
boring.
Reptile houses are really boring.
They don't do anything.
They don't even blink.
(audience laughing)
They just sit there, staring
and I thought, well,
maybe if I could get us in there
at feeding time
so I went to one of
the docents and I said,
Can you tell me when
they feed the reptiles?
And she said, "Oh, we're not allowed
"to tell anyone that."
And so I gave her 20 bucks
because it is Chicago
(audience laughing)
and she said, "Well, I'm not
"supposed to let anyone know
"but they only feed the
"snapping turtles once a month
"and they're scheduled to be fed
"this Friday at one o'clock."
And I said, oh,
this is absolutely perfect.
I'll make a date.
We'll go to the zoo
and about one o'clock,
she's gonna start worried
about getting tan,
(audience laughing)
so we could go into this
nice dark Reptile House,
and then we could see
the snapping turtles fed
and it could just be
incredibly romantic
and we go in there
and she goes straight
for the Boa constrictor
and over here in this corner,
there's a bunch of little kids,
fifth grade kids with a teacher
and a couple of teachers aides
checking out the chameleons
bored out of their skulls.
(audience laughing)
Chameleons are a lot
more fun in cartoons
than they are in real life
and I go right over
to the snapping turtle tank,
'cause I want a good seat
and it was this huge aquarium
just filled with snapping turtles
and behind it
were these rocks to make it
look like a route in nature.
If you ducked way down,
you could see
over the rocks and into the
preparation room that was
behind all the tanks
and I could see the
zookeeper starting to
get the food ready
and I go, Hypoxia!
(audience laughing)
I believe they're about
to feed the snapping turtles
and one of the teachers
overhears me and just,
"Hey kids,
"do you want to see them
"feed the turtles?"
And the kids are like, "Yeah!"
And they all go rushing over
and they shove us way back and
pull all the kids in front,
so they're all right up
against the glass
and then the zookeeper comes up
with this big white
five-gallon pickle bucket
and you wonder what's in there,
you know.
Purina turtle chow?
Maybe some yummy snappy treats?
No.
The bucket was filled with live mice
and these aren't the greasy gray mice
you catch out in the shed.
No, these are adorable white mice.
The kind you buy a little kid
when you can't afford a puppy.
(audience laughing)
They have soft pink ears
and big button eyes
and little twitching whiskers
and she takes this bucket of mice
and just pours it into a tank
of starving snapping turtles
and for about five minutes
it was like watching a documentary
on World War II.
(audience laughing)
The water just started
boiling and foaming
and churning
splashing against the glass
and you couldn't see anything
but occasionally the water would part
and you'd see like
a little scene of horror.
You know, you see like
one little mouse swimming
as fast as they could
towards the end,
but his entire bottom half is missing
(audience laughing)
and at this point,
the kids are catatonic.
(audience laughing)
They're in shock.
Teachers have no idea what to do.
"Hey kids, do you want
"to go see the pandas?"
(audience laughing)
There are no pandas
at Lincoln Park Zoo.
They're just improvising at this point
trying to get them
moving out of the—
and at this point
something happened
that I know is stuck with those kids
the rest of their lives.
They learned a lesson
in the struggle against adversity
because somehow someway
a little mouse managed to swim
through all this chaos
and get up on the rock
and the turtles
would have none of that.
They're still like reaching up
and trying to snap him
and pull him back in
and he climbs up
to the second rock and
they can't reach him anymore
and he takes a couple of breaths
and he shakes off all the water
and the zookeeper goes
plink!
(audience laughing)
And this one little kid had enough.
(audience laughing)
"What did you do that for?
(audience laughing)
"It was home safe.
(audience laughing)
"It made it through the go—
"you're suppose to let him go!"
(audience laughing)
The poor little kid learned
for the first time in his life
that happy endings only
happened in Disney cartoons
(audience laughing)
and even the goth girl was mad.
She starts yelling at me.
"Did you plan this?
"That is the most disgusting thing
"I've ever seen
"in my entire life!"
(audience laughing)
And she turns around
and she helps the teachers
gather the children
and then calmly escort them
out of the Reptile House
and she walked into the sunlight
and out of my life forever.
(audience laughing)
I never saw her again.
She probably doesn't
even remember me,
but if she does she
probably still hates me,
but I did her a favor,
because that was the day
that she realized she's not a vampire.
(audience laughing)
She realized she is a mammal.
We are all mammals.
We are intelligent.
We are warm blooded.
We don't eat our young.
That's why we feel sorry for the mice
and not the poor turtles that
haven't had a bite to eat
for the past month.
(audience laughing)
We are all together
on team mammal
and if you keep reptiles as pets,
you're sick.
(audience laughing)
You are fighting on the wrong team
(audience laughing)
and that's why I want to
encourage everyone tonight
to use plastic straws.
(audience laughing)