Uh, I had to take a break from work 'cause, uh, I went mental.
And, uh...
my friend told me, hey, you're talking a little too fast,
having a lot of shit ideas.
Uh, why don't you get in my Ford Flex,
and I'll, uh, motor you over to the public storage.
And, uh...
I went into a psychiatric facility,
which, if you haven't been, uh,
don't feel bad if you go,
and, uh...
they're uniformly awful.
You're not at the wrong one.
They're all bad, they're all bad.
Uh... [laughs]
It's as if an art director came in and said,
"Okay, I want to break five more chairs,
and then we need...
uh, at least three pieces taken out of every puzzle.
And...
the big screen TV,
let's have it playing Ultimate Fighting Championships
at maximum volume,
lose the remote."
[laughing]
They sat me down with the-the psych guy,
and he said, you know, the usual questions.
"Why are you here?"
Oh, I have...
explicit plans to kill myself.
"Okay, great."
Uh,
pretty common.
"What, uh, are the circumstances?"
Every moment is unbearable.
"Uh, what kind of work do you do?"
[groans]
I'm a comedian.
No response.
Felt... so relieved.
And he went back to his little laptop, um, and some music came out of it,
and I was like, well that's kind of weird. Uh, but I get it, uh...
A lot of times, in the light booth right now actually
I have a little, uh, Wimp video playing a baby tortoise
trying to eat a raspberry.
And it's just so,
when at work when I get bored,
[laughs]
I have something to cheer me up.
[audience laughs]
It doesn't affect my performance at all.
Um...
He turned the laptop around,
and he said, is this you?
And I said, yes, clearly it's me,
with more make-up and better material.
And, uh...
he said, "I had to YouTube you
because I was concerned that you were delusional."
Since when is it grandiose psychosis
to claim that in any way you're involved
in the entertainment industry?
It is simple courtesy to wait
until someone has left the room to IMDb them.
[audience laughs]
And it's not like I said I was Richard Pryor.
And had I claimed to be
one of the finest comedians of our past century
and been able to perform anything
from his quintessential 1979
Long Beach stand-up special,
or,
perhaps, more weirdly,
uh, been able to quote some of his lesser-known material
about the difference between beating white women and black women.
Uh,
doesn't age well.
[laughing]
But the joke was on me,
uh, because, uh, the psychiatrist then put me on a mood stabilizer
whose primary side effects are cognitive,
making it almost impossible to think or talk.
Ho on!
Or should I say, "Oh no."
[audience laughs]
Yeah.
Seventy two hours later, you know how it is, you've gotta work.
Oh, God, get back to work.
I'm working on stuff.
I'm really doing the inner work so I can get back and get,
get back to work.
I found myself in downtown Chicago, bleeding.
I had lost all my identification
and was making this noise.
[vocalizes] Ah.
I called my mother and said,
[gurgles]
She...
[exhales]
[audience laughing and clapping]
She said, "Honey, somehow, you know what?
Somehow get to the airport,
tell-- Go to Delta Priority.
Tell them you are gold medallion!"
[audience laughs]
I did what my mother told me,
and it turns out, uh,
points is not a bad form of health-care.
[laughing]
Got an upgrade.
Uh... I was bleeding and crying,
but a lot of leg room.