(audience applauds) - All right.
All right, all right, all right.
Sorry, we're gonna,
real quick, start it off right.
I can't believe nobody did this before.
Please stand for the pledge.
I pledge allegiance
to the flag... (audience laughs)
No, I'm kidding.
(audience laughs)
Pretty weird how we had to do that
every single day in school though, huh?
Kind of culty, right?
(audience laughs)
No, American schools, they're not doing anything weird.
We're just gonna start off every day
by saying a prayer to a rectangle.
That's normal! (audience laughs)
American schools,
they take kids every single day
and they go,
"Hey, before you can learn any facts about the world,
I'm gonna need you to swear to fucking God,
(audience laughs)
that you'll never betray America."
(audience laughs)
You're like, "Well, I'm seven, so...
(audience laughs)
I don't have any current plans to commit treason.
(audience laughs)
And I definitely don't know
what the word indivisible means, but...
(audience laughs)
I'm down for whatever.
'Cause I'm trying to get these stickers, right?"
(audience laughs)
Sorry I started off political.
Some people don't like that.
'Cause I think I'll be saying something normal.
I'm like, "I think everyone should have equal rights."
And they're like, "Oh, you worship Satan."
(audience laughs) It's weird.
I only have two political opinions
I'll say in front of strangers now,
'cause I think we can all get behind them.
First, I think that
Congress and the Supreme Court
should have term limits.
(audience applauds) Secondly, yeah, thank you.
Secondly, I think the president should be a magician.
(audience laughs, applauds)
Right?
President's always some normal dude!
How you gonna tell me it's best for the country?
You can't even tell me what card I'm thinking of, bro.
(audience laughs)
This is the most powerful job in the world.
You should have some like actual powers.
(audience laughs)
But no,
we got a bunch of regular, normal, mostly white dudes.
(audience laughs)
Fuckin' Joe, Bill, George, little George.
(audience laughs)
Where's our President Mysterion,
who... (audience laughs)
He'd be at the press conference.
We'd be like grilling him, right?
We'd be like, "Mr. President,
you said you'd have a plan to curb inflation by now.
Now where is that plan?"
He's just like, "Check your back pocket."
(audience laughs)
It should be required,
if you're even gonna run,
you should have to be a magician.
Like Lincoln's hat was big enough to fit a rabbit.
He never pulled one out.
That's bullshit. (audience laughs)
And then when the bad stuff happens, it's not so bad, right?
Like JFK gets assassinated,
his head explodes,
but then a bunch of doves fly out.
We're like, "Yo!" (audience laughs)
Jackie's there, covered in blood.
Like, ta-da!
(audience laughs)
Everybody's like, "Yo, was there a second shooter?"
But we'll never know
'cause a magician never reveals his secrets.
(audience laughs)
I came up with that because I was watching mushrooms...
Watching mushrooms?
Doing mushrooms. (audience laughs)
On 'em right now.
(audience laughs)
I was doing mushrooms
and watching the History Channel
and it's fun.
I'm a good, I'm a psychedelics fan.
I like psychedelics.
Are we psychedelics people?
(audience applauds) Yeah.
Okay.
I like psychedelics.
I was doing this thing where I did acid
and I got on the L train in Chicago.
(audience laughs)
It was a mistake. (audience laughs)
Because one day I was tripping
and this drunk dude came on the train
and his whole entire ass was out, you guys.
(audience laughs)
Yeah, like the whole thing.
And I'm like, "I don't wanna look at ass."
'Cause I'm tripping, right?
You're supposed to look at lava lamps and sunsets.
You're not supposed to look at a grown man's dirty ass.
(audience laughs)
But I started thinking about it deeper
'cause I was tripping.
I'm like, technically I'm not looking at ass.
Technically what I'm looking at
is billions and billions of cells,
(audience laughs)
made up of billions and billions of atoms.
And you know what?
I'm not even looking at that.
What I'm looking at is the light traveled 90,000 miles
bounced off that ass,
into my eye, into my brain (audience laughs)
creating a picture of an ass!
And I was so high, (audience laughs)
that out loud to everybody on the train,
I was like,
(gasps) "Oh... (audience laughs)
That ass is amazing." (audience laughs)
That's why I like drugs, dude.
They change your perspective.
I go to work.
I'm high, I'm late.
My boss is like, "Oh, you're late."
I'm like, "Oh well I used to be a sperm, so.
(audience laughs)
You're lucky I made it here at all."
Right? Statistically I should have ended up in the Kleenex.
That's just true.
(audience laughs)
You guys ever think about that?
That's weird.
I used to be a sperm.
Now I bank with Chase.
What the fuck?
(audience laughs)
After I was a sperm, weird transition.
After I was a sperm, (audience laughs)
I was adopted by white people as a baby,
that's half of what's wrong with me.
(audience laughs)
People ask me what it was like to be raised by white people.
I'm like, I don't know. I had fun.
(audience laughs) Right?
I'd get in trouble, I'd be like,
"Ah, you can't hit me.
That's a hate crime!"
You know? (audience laughs)
My dad's like, "Gimme my belt!"
I'm like, "Gimme Al Sharpton, bitch!
Whatchu tryna do?"
(audience laughs)
They try to send me to timeout,
be like, "Go to timeout."
I'm like, "Oh, interesting.
(audience laughs)
Did you know that
a disproportionate amount of the people
incarcerated within timeout in this household?
(audience laughs)
African-Americans." (audience laughs)
Here's the thing about white parents nobody tells you.
White parents hate it
when you sing negro spirituals (audience laughs)
just 'cause you have to do chores.
They hate that.
(audience laughs)
Straight up.
I'll be unloading the dishwasher.
I'd be like,
♪ Swing low ♪ (audience laughs)
♪ Sweet chariot ♪
They tried, though.
They were white,
but they knew their black son
needed to have access to black culture in America.
So they tried their best.
So we celebrated Kwanza,
just like none of the black families in America.
(audience laughs)
And I want everybody here,
I need you to picture it, right?
It's me, little black child, two adult white people.
All three of us just were in full African dashikis.
(audience laughs)
Even as a kid I was like,
"Are you sure we should be doing this?"
(audience laughs)
My mom was looking like Nancy Pelosi in that bitch,
I swear. (laughs) (audience laughs, applauds)
They would go too far.
One time, my white mom, she sat me down.
She was like,
"Skyler, just so you know,
there's this word that people use
in reference to black people.
It's a very racist word.
It's called a racial slur.
It's called the N word and you should never say it.
You should never say the N word."
I looked at my mom, I was like,
"No nigga, you should never say that."
(audience laughs)
That's the thing.
Sometimes I run into racism
where I'm not expecting it, right?
Like I was in like
the woke sort of liberal snowflake part of town
at a coffee shop.
It was called a Starcucks or whatever.
(audience laughs)
And I was writing on my laptop,
minding my own business.
There was a a black man sitting to my right,
minding his own damn black business.
And there's a white woman sitting across from us,
also on her laptop.
And she had that moment where you stand up
and you gotta ask somebody to like watch your laptop.
You become like a little lord of your things.
(audience laughs)
Right? You look around, you go,
"Who among these strangers is worthy
(audience laughs)
to guard my laptop?"
And it's always whoever's closest to you, right?
And she stands up
and she makes eye contact with me for a very long time.
(woman laughs)
And then she looks to the black man
sitting to the table to my right
and then she makes the choice to turn around
and ask another white person,
sitting way further away than us,
if he could watch her laptop.
And this dude,
I could tell he didn't want to say yes
'cause he knew what was going on,
but he was like,
"Ugh, it's either this or recite a Maya Angelou poem, so."
(audience laughs)
So this woman goes to the bathroom, right?
I'm sitting there in this like weird like racial tension.
I'm like, wow.
She just saw that we were black
and just assumed that we would take her laptop.
I can't let this stand.
I gotta teach everybody a lesson right now.
If she's gonna see black, I'll show her black.
(audience laughs) Right?
So I wait for her to come back from the bathroom,
sit back down in front of her laptop,
which is when I stand up in front of my laptop
and I make eye contact with her.
Same way she did with me.
And then as soon as we make eye contact,
I turn to the black man to my right,
I go, "Hey brutha!
(audience laughs)
Hey my fellow black strong brother,
(audience laughs)
my fellow melanin king
(audience laughs)
out here overcoming the chains of oppression
(audience laughs)
to shine like the diamonds of Mother Africa.
Brother, I ask you,
nay, I beseech you, brother,
you'll be beseeched!
(audience laughs)
If you, as well as our ancestors,
could turn a watchful negro eye
(audience laughs)
towards my laptop. (audience laughs)
Because as we all know,
there are some white devils out here
(audience laughs)
that would like to steal our property
the same way they stole our people as property
all those years ago.
What do you say, brother?
And as-salamu alaykum by the way.
(audience laughs)
I just put this dude on the spot, right?
(audience laughs)
Actually, I was thinking about it.
I'm like, "Did he even see what was going on?"
(audience laughs)
I didn't know if he was aware of the situation.
I might have just thrown
a Black Panther surprise party on this man.
(audience laughs)
But he did it.
He played along perfectly.
He didn't say anything.
He just put his fist up real quick.
(audience laughs, applauds)
Alright, I've been Skyler Higley, give it up for yourself.