-Well, hey, guys, it is March, late March,
and that means that it's time for people to --
Tariq, you okay?
Seem a little bothered.
-No, I'm good.
[ Scattered laughter ]
-You sure? You don't seem good.
-No, I'm just, you know, thinking of some new entries
for my irk list.
-Irk list? What's an irk list?
-Come on, man. You know, it's a list that I keep
of things that annoy me.
Random stuff.
You know what? I'll just show you.
It's time for "Tariq's Irk List"!
-♪ "Tariq's Irk List" ♪
♪ Of the things that irk Tariq ♪
-So, my daughter woke me up last night
because she heard a noise in her room.
I go, "What do you want me to do?
You know I haven't been eating meat, girl. I'm weak."
-[ Laughs ] What?
-So, she says she thinks she heard a ghost.
Now, no disrespect to people who believe in the supernatural --
I mean, I think I do.
I definitely believe energy just transfers and never dies.
But I don't really buy into the concept of the traditional,
mischievous, "boo," Scooby-Doo variety of ghosts, Jimmy.
So, I go, "Child --"
I'm terrible with names.
I go -- -Your own child?
-Yeah, I -- -Your own --
-It leaves me.
I go, "Child, there's no way ghosts exist."
And she's all, "How do you know?"
which at this point, is pretty much all she ever says to me.
I mean, she's 15 years old.
But it irks me that she demands
I produce proof to support anything I ever said --
footnotes, bibliography,
complete this CAPTCHA screen, identify all the fire hydrants,
stop lights, and bridges. It's a bit much.
So I say, "You know what?
Somebody confirmed it on YouTube."
And she goes, "Why didn't you say that in the first place?"
And then I tell her, "Because I'm kidding."
It's actually because I know way too many vengeful,
spiteful, petty people who've died
that would have come back a long time ago to haunt somebody,
anybody if they could.
It takes one to know one, and I'm that type of person, Jimmy.
I'm "petty" petty.
-You are petty? -Can't help it.
I'm still mad at you for something you said to me
on a random Tuesday morning in 2009.
[ Light laughter ]
I never got over it.
I'm not gonna say what it is right now,
but if I die and come back as a ghost,
I'll for sure remind you of it, maybe --
[ Laughter ] -Wait, wait, I'm sorry --
So, you're going to haunt me?
-Yeah, maybe for all of eternity.
So, I'm up now. I can't get back to sleep.
That wakes up my wife.
Instinctively, she immediately does something that irks me,
because for her not to do so would be too much like right.
She says, "Babe, you're up?"
I go, "No.
I'm fast asleep, Michelle.
I'm sound asleep.
I'm in the Land of Nod right now."
And she goes, "It's 3:00 a.m. in the morning."
And that's like nails on a chalkboard for me,
because the fact that you said "a.m."
is already indicative of it being in the morning.
We didn't need both. It's one or the other.
So consider yourself irk-listed. -Okay, alright, yeah, okay.
-I mean, at this point, she basically has a high score.
Now I'm wide-awake.
I'm wide-awake, man. I'm "woke" woke.
So I go, hey, I'm going to try and get some work done.
And she's all, "This is a personal problem.
You know, I could care less."
And it irks me that we're cool as a society
with the saying, "I could care less."
But we've unanimously agreed
that it means we actually could not care less.
One could even split the difference
and use the word couldn't, but we just can't be bothered
with the business of adding that one apostrophe "nt"
and making it official.
So, like, I'm a little angry, just a little bit,
you know what I mean? I'm not "angry" angry.
But I'm a little irked.
-Yeah. -I jump in the shower.
You ever take a irk shower, Jimmy?
-Have I ever -- Have I ever taken irked shower?
No, I -- -It's abrasive.
You could hurt yourself. -Uh-huh.
So in my attempts to calm down, I sing a song.
-Okay. -And when I sing in the shower,
I go old-school. I want some funky ad-libs.
I come from days when singers would get fifty-eleven syllables
out of like a one-syllable word. -Fifty-eleven?
-Yeah, yeah, but this new R&B, man, they only got two ad-libs.
They go, "Yah. Ey.
Ey. Yah.
Yah-yah. Ey-ey."
It irks me. It irks me, man.
Back in the day,
those jokers would made "Yeah" a 9-, 10-, 11-syllable word,
talkin' 'bout,
♪ Yea-ea-ea-ea-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-h ♪
Now... [ Cheers and applause ]
...that's flavor.
Like, we should bring back words like that,
words like ♪ Wah-boh ♪
We need to add more flavor. -Oh, yeah, I know "wah-boh."
-Yeah! Come on, more funkiness. -Yeah. ♪ Wah-boh ♪
-You ever hear that song "Get Off Your Ass and Jam"?
Well, first of all, it was the profanity
that drew me in as a kid. I was maybe 3 years old.
It was genius. I'm not going to curse up here,
but I'll sing it in pig Latin for you.
It goes, uh...
[Bleep]
"God am-day, get off your ass and j--"
Well, there's no pig-Latin word for ass.
-Yeah, okay, alright, that didn't help at all.
That didn't help.
-But then they hit you with that ♪ Wah-boh ♪
And, oh, man, that's like the secret weapon.
That's the sauce, Jimmy. So it makes it "funky" funky.
Man, you singing some funk ad-libs in the shower,
and you can't stay mad.
So I get out happy, and I reach for a towel,
but then I'm immediately pissed right back off into irkdom.
The towel is non-absorbent.
What am I supposed to do
with a towel that just relocates the wetness?
This towel, it was giving me nothing.
So, I go, "You got one job, towel!
The hell is your problem? Stay thirsty, man!
Get your head in the game."
[ Laughter ]
"You know, when you were a little wash cloth,
I thought you had promise.
I watched you grow into a hand towel
and then a full-on bath towel.
But right now, right now,
you acting like a little beach...towel
right now.
Actually, you're giving me lettuce vibes, man."
That's what it was, Jimmy. Like, the towel had a heft
comparable to that of a wet leaf of lettuce.
So I'm basically trying to dry off with a Caesar salad
before I decided, you know,
to just use a bunch of paper towels.
Needless to say, the day started on a bit of a sour note.
But right now, I'm great, man. So thanks for asking.
[ Cheers and applause ]
-Wow.
Tariq Trotter, everybody! Thank goodness.
Better now.