- Mark's eyes rolled into the back of his head.
And he starts to spit out Mountain Dew and Cheeto dust.
He looks like a dragon,
and he starts swinging the joystick
in front of his body like a martial arts weapon,
and for the first time I saw fear in my big brother's eyes.
He was like, "Hey, dude, take it easy,"
and he's like-- [high-pitched voice] "Hiyah!"
- The baby's coming! It's coming!
[dark electronic music]
[grunting]
[yells]
♪
[screams]
♪
Ooh. Hello.
♪
[groaning]
[screaming]
♪
[cheers and applause]
- He's got his own podcast
called "Good Times with Steve Simeone."
It's amazing. Please give it up
for Mr. Steve Simeone, everybody.
[cheers and applause]
- So yeah, I have a story about my family.
I think family's a pretty incredible thing
because it teaches you unconditional love.
Like, seriously, if you think back to your childhood,
and if you treated a stranger now
as poorly as you treated your brothers, sisters,
and cousins, you'd be in jail right now.
That's the truth.
In my house, a felony was committed every day.
Every day, a felony was committed.
Blackmail, extortion, assault, larceny,
arson more than once, attempted murder.
It happened all the time,
because my big brother was the worst offender.
He was a dick, okay?
And I remember this one year for Christmas
we all got excited, because we had to come together
and ask Santa for a family gift, like, a big gift,
and I was like, "Oh, what are we gonna get? Can we get a monkey?"
Right, like, I didn't know. Right?
And my big brother was like, "We're gonna get an Atari."
I'm like, "I don't even know what that is."
He was like, "We're gonna ask for an Atari."
So, we got an Atari that year for Christmas,
and if you're not old enough to remember what an Atari is,
it was the first video game system for the house.
Dude, right, I--so many kids, they're like, "What do you mean?
You couldn't play on your phone?"
No, dude, back in the day you needed a quarter
to play video games, and you'd run out,
so you'd have to go through your house
like the goddamn Goonies looking for pirate treasure
to find another quarter.
I'm going, like, "Where did Dad sit? Check the couch there."
We're going through my mom's old jackets.
[imitates hawk] "We got quarters!"
So you'd ride your bike to a video game thing
or maybe get a ride to the mall,
and then you could be at the arcade,
but then, you could be in the middle of a game,
and three teenagers show up in Black Sabbath t-shirts,
and you're like, "Forget it,
"I'm not getting stabbed over Q*bert.
The game's yours."
[cheers and applause]
So--so this Atari was supposed to bring joy
into our house, but it didn't,
'cause my big brother ruined it.
And it wasn't the fact that he would just beat us
in the video games. He would sing songs to us
as he was beating us in the games.
Like, he'd be like-- ♪ You did your best
♪ But I guess your best wasn't good enough ♪
I'm like, "Shut up, dude!"
He's like, "Hey, relax, it's just a game."
So we're still playing, and then he kept quiet.
And then right before the game was over,
he'd go, "Do you hear that?"
And I'd go, "Hear what?" He goes, "Shh, shh, shh!
"Do you hear that?" I go, "What?"
He goes, "I think it's Queen warming up in the background."
♪ No time for losing 'cause I am the champion ♪
Now I'm shaking like McFly at end of "Back to the Future."
I'm like, "You fat son of a bitch!
It's on!" And I hit him,
but that's what he wanted, he wanted me to hit him,
because he outweighed me by 100 pounds,
and then he'd just start to choke-slam me
like André the Giant and drop a big Hulk Hogan leg
and then pin me for a five count like King Kong Bundy,
and then my dad would be like, "Son of a bitch!
I'll unplug the goddamn game!"
Now my dad's running downstairs, he's breaking up the fight.
He's like, "Chris, go to your room!"
And Chris is like, "Steve started it."
And he was like, "Well, then you're going to your room too!"
How the hell is that fair?
That's not fair.
It's not.
So my little brother knew
he could never beat up my big brother.
So he decided to get him where it counted.
Video game championship of the house.
Yes.
My little brother became like the Rudy of video games.
He would wake up at 5:00 in the morning
when nobody was awake just to practice.
He knew where my mom hid all the junk food,
so he would steal, like, a 2-liter bottle
of Mountain Dew.
Bro, before there was Red Bull or 5-Hour Energy,
there was mother-effing Mountain Dew.
[cheering] Right?
Twice the caffeine, twice the sugar.
He's drinking it warm straight out of the 2-liter.
He looked like a rapper drinking a 40 of St. Ides
back in the '90s.
He'd be like "Mountain Dew!"
And then his little heart would start getting jacked,
and he's ripping open cheese curls at 6:00 in the morning,
shoving Cheetos in his mouth,
and that orange and cheese curl dust
is floating through the living room
like cocaine in "The Departed."
Do you remember when Nicholson had these, like--
[high-pitched voice] "Cheese curls! Cheese curls!"
And then he would get excited and backwash it
into the Mountain Dew-- disgusting.
'Cause it looked like a bottle of Goldschlager
with, like, just pieces of stuff floating in there
like one of those snow globes.
So Mark, he got really good at video games, right?
But then some of the kids didn't believe him,
that he got that good at video games.
They're like, "Why are you lying to make friends?"
He's like, "I didn't. I did it."
So this is how smart my little brother was.
He's like, "I'm gonna need evidence."
So he bought a Polaroid camera
to take pictures of the TV set
to prove that he beat games and stuff.
And then, I remember this kid Jason was like,
"You--we don't believe you." He's like, "Oh, really?
I wish I had something to show you."
Boom. Right?
And everybody's like, "Oh, that's awesome!"
And then Jason was like, "Yeah?
Well, how do we know you did it?"
And the next picture is, like, my little brother
hugging the TV like--
[high-pitched voice] "I knocked out Mike Tyson,
bitch." Right?
So, Mark got good at games.
My big brother doesn't know this, right?
Couple years had gone by. I remember this day vividly.
Okay.
My big brother's on the game console,
he's down there, he's warming up.
He doesn't know Mark's gotten this good.
We are confident.
I mean, we come down the steps
like Ric Flair in The Four Horsemen confident.
Like, my little brother's like, "Whoo!
"You might not like it, but one day,
you'll learn to love it, fat boy!"
Let's rock."
Mark immediately starts lighting him up
and he's like, "It's awfully quiet over there,
you must be losing. Bawk, bawk." Right?
And Chris is like, "Shut up." And Mark's like, "Okay. Relax.
"It's just a game.
Hey, Chris, do you hear that?" And Chris goes, "Hear what?"
He goes, "I think it's Queen warming up in the background."
♪ No time for losing
♪ 'Cause I am the new champion! ♪
"Steve, take a picture of his fat face when I win."
So I'm like, "Dude, where's your camera?"
And he's like, "Oh, my God! I left it upstairs."
I'm like, "What?"
He goes, "It's next to the Fruity Pebbles!"
So as I'm running up the steps and Mark's not looking,
Chris unplugged his joystick.
[crowd murmurs] Oh!
Oh, my God, it gets so much worse.
So much worse.
So I'm coming down the steps
and I just see Mark going, "I can't move my man.
"I can't move my man! Hit pause! Hit pause!"
And Chris is going, "What? I can't hear you.
Queen's playing too loud."
He's like, "This doesn't count!"
Chris wins the game.
Immediately, Mark starts to cry.
"I hate you." And when Mark pushes Chris away,
he sees that that cord was unplugged.
Oh, my effing goodness.
I didn't think this could happen in real life.
Mark's eyes rolled into the back of his head,
and he starts to spit out Mountain Dew and Cheeto dust.
He looks like a dragon.
And he starts swinging the joystick
in front of his body like a martial arts weapon.
And for the first time, I saw fear in my big brother's eyes.
He was like, "Hey dude. Take it easy."
And he was like, "I hate you!"
Now it's over his head like Indiana Jones.
It sounds like a Blackhawk's landing in our family room.
And he's just going, "Die, bitch, die!"
And he starts to smash my big brother in the face.
I'm like, "What should I do?"
And Mark, he's like, "Help me!"
So we double-teamed on him,
dropping those mother-effing bees on him.
We're giving him a ghetto boy's beat down.
I don't know if it's doing any damage, but it feels great.
I'm like, "Take that, fat boy, take that."
Marky starts to take the cord,
and he's wrapping it around Chris' throat.
He's making noises like Luca Brasi in "The Godfather."
Like--[groaning]
I'm like, "You're gonna kill him!"
"I want to kill him!" "I want to kill him!"
So as Mark's leaning in on the choke,
I see Chris's legs start to shake,
and his chubby fingers going back and forth like this.
Like-- [breathing heavily]
Like Hulk Hogan in The Sleeper, and he just throws Mark.
[whooshes] Mark flies.
And he gets up and he's like-- [breathing heavily]
And I'm like, "Hey man.
I'm glad you won."
And he goes, "Oh, yeah? I'm glad I did this."
And he went...boom.
Right in my face.
Now, look, there's a code to brother wars.
It's passed down from generation to generation.
No punching to the face.
Everything else is on the books.
You could throw a ninja star at your brother,
launch a bottle rocket at him,
put a stick in his bike and watch him flip over.
All that's cool.
But no kicking to the balls and no punching to the face.
So he drops me, and I'm pissed.
I get up and I'm like, "Oh, ho, ho, eff this.
I'm getting Mom!" And I take off.
He's like, "Where are you going?"
I'm like, "I'm getting Mom!
You're going to jail, bitch! You're going to jail!"
And Mark is like, "We're pressing charges!
We're pressing charges!"
Now, Chris is real calm, and he's like, "Where you going?"
I'm like, "I'm getting Mom! You're going to jail, bitch!"
And he just looks at me, he goes,
"You mean, uh, my mom, right?"
And I went...
"Get--I'm getting Mom." He's like,
"The woman you live with?
"That's my mom.
Nobody ever told you that you were adopted?"
And Marky goes, "That's not true."
"Is it not true? Did I punch you in the face?
"No, 'cause you're my real brother.
I punched Steve in the face 'cause he's a stranger."
I was like,
"Well, I'm-- I'm still gonna tell."
He's like, "Go ahead.
"Tell my mom that her real son had to punch you in the face.
"See what happens.
She'll make you pack up your stuff and leave."
I was like...
[laughter]
"I don't have anywhere else to go."
So he's like, "Well...
"I guess I won't tell.
"So if you don't tell,
you can just come down here and pretend this didn't happen."
I was like, "Thanks, man."
He's an evil genius.
He punches me in the face and I'm thanking him for it.
So I didn't--I didn't have an ending to that story,
'cause that, like, happened.
Do you know what I mean? Like, it just--
I was just like, "Yeah, my big brother was a jerk
and had me convinced for a couple years
that I was adopted.
Like, it happened all the time.
We would always fight, we would always say
the meanest stuff possible.
So then I was like, "Yeah, if I talk about this onstage,
people can relate to it, you know?"
That's it, like, big brother-- brothers can be mean
and you love each other through it and that's it.
Now we're awesome friends.
So, one night after a show, this guy came up to me,
and he was like, "You know what, dude?
"My big brother, same thing.
He used to tell me I was adopted all the time."
He--and I was like, "Yeah, they're jerks, right?"
And he was like, "Well, the messed up thing is,
years later I found out I really was adopted.
Yeah, and here's the thing though, he wasn't the only--
People started to come up to me and they were like--
Like, they had this uneasiness about being adopted.
I'm like, "Oh, my God, this is not what I want to do."
I want to put more love into the world
and remind people that family's awesome
and it's the little things and pizza night and stuff.
You know?
And then the other thing is, like, so I always thought
I wanted to adopt kids at some point,
maybe 'cause, in hindsight, my brother told me
I was adopted for years.
But, right, like I think what a privilege it would be,
'cause getting back to that whole unconditional love thing.
Like, how amazing that would be to, like, one day hear my kids
getting into a fight downstairs and one kid's like,
"You know you were adopted?"
And he's like, "Yeah, that's right, bitch,
"'cause Mom and Dad wanted me.
"They walked into a room and picked me out.
"You were an accident.
"You just showed up and they were like,
'How we gonna feed this one?'"
Good night and God bless you.
Take care.
[dark electronic music]
♪