- It's too much.
I wanna be an '80s mom, an '80s mom.
Oh, they had it the best, didn't they?
There used to be a commercial
that came on at 10 o'clock at night that said,
"It's 10:00 PM, do you know where your children are?"
They had to remind bitches they even had kids.
(audience laughs)
(upbeat music)
- I had no supervision when I was a kid.
We were free to do what we wanted.
But also with that, no one cared about kids.
I grew up before children were special.
I did, very early '80s,
right before children became special.
Like, I remember when milk carton kids became a thing.
When they were like,
"Hey we should start looking for some of these guys."
(audience laughs)
"I don't think they're just blowing off steam."
(audience laughs)
- Oh fuck.
I know what this is.
This is how I felt growing up. (laughs)
(audience laughs)
Yeah, this is what the '70s and '80s were like.
Both your parents work,
you got a set of keys to the house when you were three.
"Ah, get outside. Get the fuck outta my face."
Right?
It was fucking nuts.
Yeah, I grew up in a very, like, angry time.
You know, like you were afraid of your dad, your dad's dad.
I talked about this shit before
but I'm still working through it, so just bear with me.
You just were fucking, yeah.
Like, I love seeing kids nowadays loving their dad.
Like, "Dad, let's go play, dad, let's go ride bikes.
"Dad. Dad."
Yeah, when I was a kid, I was like,
"Dad, dad, fuck, dad, fuck!
"Run, open a window.
"Mom, what did you see in that?"
(audience laughs)
Fucking lunatic, right? - Yeah.
- It was absolute fucking lunacy.
And, and not just my house.
I love my parents, but it was just the time.
Like everybody was fucking crazy.
You were afraid and people could put their hands on you
and other people's dads could hit you.
And then you come home, "Oh, what the fuck did you do?
"I'll fucking hit you first."
Just nuts.
Teachers would grab you,
dig their nails into your fucking neck.
She'd come home,
"Well, well, she wouldn't have done that unless
"something fucking happened, right?"
It was all of that shit.
Yeah, me and my siblings,
we all beat the shit outta each other, you know?
And then we all teased the dog and the dog bit all of us.
And we never got rid of the dog.
One time the dog bit me in the face.
I was fucking with it.
It was eating it and I was like, "Ah, ah,"
and it just latched onto my face and was like (growls)
like that. (audience laughs)
My dad had to stitch me up and everything.
We still didn't get rid of the dog, you know?
"Ah, he's a good dog, he had a moment, Jesus.
"Jesus Christ, you shouldn't've to put your god damn
face down there near the fucking dog."
(audience laughs)
- I don't know.
Grew up in the '70s, '80s, you know?
I was a kid back then.
And I reflect back on those times.
It seemed a little simpler.
I don't know, my birthday parties were simple.
Had water balloon fights.
Remember water balloon fights?
My family was too cheap to buy the balloon
that held the water.
We had little balloons that we had to fill up.
Kept popping off the.
Remember filling up a balloon?
(imitates water rushing)
Shit! God!
18 rubber rings around the kitchen faucet
by the end of the party, three balloons you got.
(audience laughs)
But man, once you got the balloon,
you couldn't wait to hit the kid that you couldn't stand.
(audience laughs)
He would dart across the yard (imitates whooshing),
right in his ear, man.
The the balloon went in his ear canal, went deaf.
(audience laughs)
Kid couldn't hear nothing for three months out of his ear.
I came home from the party, parents like, "How was it?"
"Can't hear nothing.
"It was a wicked party.
"Balloon." (audience laughs)
- That's the kinda stuff that they would do in the '80s.
I mean, recess alone was like godspeed.
(audience laughs)
You were on your own.
I mean, think about it, our favorite game, Dodge Ball.
You were taking a large, heavy ball,
and you were pummeling each other in the face
as hard as you can.
That's where we had to learn the Matrix.
(audience laughs)
To keep from getting our teeth knocked in.
That game did come in handy for me a little bit
later on in high school.
I dodged a couple balls, not many.
(audience laughs)
Never caught one.
It was actually a Red Rover that would get the most intense.
You guys remember Red Rover? (audience applauds)
You get in a line with your friends and you'd lock arms.
Your other friends would get in a line
across from you and they lock arms.
And then you yell, "Hold the line!
"Hold the line."
Like we're "Braveheart." (audience laughs)
You're staring your friends down from across the field.
Your only objective is to run as hard as you can,
right towards that line and they just wanna break your arm.
(audience laughs)
And then all you wanna do is when they're running
towards you, you want to grab your neighbor's arm,
you wanna pull your arms up,
and then you just wanna crush their clavicle.
(audience laughs)
And then you start taunting each other.
You go, "Red Rover, Red Rover, you send that little bitch,
Timmy right on over." (audience applauds)
Timmy gets that look in his eye.
He starts running as hard as he can.
We're like, "Hold the line."
Here he comes.
We grab each other's arm, we pull our line up.
Now Timmy's crashed through our line.
Now our arms dangling from the socket.
"Right, did we win? (audience laughs)
Did we hold the line?" (audience laughs)
Your teacher's not doing anything.
She's over there on the black top
just smoking a Virginia Slim. (audience laughs)
Having some sort of midlife crisis.
She's like, "They don't pay me enough to care about that."
(audience laughs)
- It's like I said before,
like, when you're a kid you don't know you're poor.
You know, 'cause everybody you live around
is pretty much on the same level, you know?
You don't get it.
Like, I grew up in the '80s.
In my neighborhood everyone was poor.
Back then the only way you could tell someone had cash,
you'd walk into their living room
and they would have a set of encyclopedias.
(audience laughs)
I knew Juan was doing good.
I didn't know he was doing encyclopedia good.
Mira, he's got the Q. (audience laughs)
I feel like half of you don't know
what the fucking encyclopedia is.
(audience laughs)
- But I get it.
You know, this is the age when music hits your life.
You know, you don't listen to your parents anymore.
When I was her age, that's when Prince showed up.
You think I was listening to my father?
My fat, bald, white father when Prince showed up?
Right, half naked, his little nipple hair sticking out,
full mustache but wearing makeup, kind of gay,
but singing about sleeping with women.
I was like, "I don't know what this guy's trying to tell me
"but I'm gonna follow him to the end of my days."
(audience laughs)
- But in the '80s I was a straight up dyke
and it was different then.
I mean, we didn't have "Queer Eye."
You know, we didn't have anything like that, you know?
And it was dangerous to be gay and it was very hard.
It was like the '80s and I was like, "I'm gay, I'm gay!"
I had like really heavy boots
and, like, cargo pants with lots of shit in the pockets,
like carabiners and D rings and measuring tape,
and lesbians just like to hook shit on other shit.
It starts with a fucking friendship bracelet
and then hooking one thing to another thing
and then it's a U-Haul.
So you're just hooking one thing to another thing.
Heavy as fuck, "I'm gay, I'm gay."
You know, with bike chain and a messenger bag
and a CD player playing Ani DeFranco.
(audience cheers)
And I was gay 'cause we were gay,
'cause you had to be gay.
You had to be strong as a lesbian.
We had to be strong in the '80s because our brothers,
our gay men, were dying of AIDS.
So we had to be there for them, be strong for them,
be courageous for them. (audience applauds)
And they were learning how to have safer sex
and use condoms.
So lesbians, in solidarity, were using dental dams.
(audience laughs)
There's nothing sadder than trying to eat pussy
through a piece of plastic. (audience laughs)
Just trying to gum that pussy.
(audience laughs)
It's like talking to the pussy in prison,
behind the glass, on the phone.
- All right, y'all make me think of my husband.
Let me tell you about him
'cause he's got a 401k.
(audience laughs) Yeah.
Okay, we met at the University of Tennessee.
(audience cheers)
When I hear a man say, "Go Vols,"
I think, "Oh my Lord, did I make out with him in the '80s?"
(audience laughs)
I did horrible things in the '80s.
(audience laughs)
- So I went and I paid, it was nine bucks,
obviously cash only in a place like that.
And so I give them my nine bucks.
I go up, first snake I see is a Gaboon viper.
It's a crazy venomous snake.
And there's a story written out about how venomous it is.
And the story was that these two kids
broke into the Washington National Zoo in the early 1980s
to steal a Gaboon viper for whatever reason.
So they get it, they put it in a trash bag,
when they're walking out they have the trash bag
over their shoulders as if they forgot what they just did.
(audience laughs)
The snake bites through the trash bag,
because it's a 1980s trash,
it's not like a Glad one now, you know?
This was like when trash bags were not doing good.
So it bit the kid.
The kid went into a coma for four days
and then it was like, "That's all we know.
"We don't know what happened."
And you're like,
"That's the whole reason we even reading this,
"to see what, did he die?
"Is he stronger?
"Are you him?
"Like, what's the rest of the story?"
- The '80s, man.
There was no mindful parenting.
My mom used to cuss me out in the JCPenny parking lot
in Hungarian. (audience laughs)
Screaming at me. (screaming in foreign language)
Which translates to, "I'm gonna hit your head so hard
"you're gonna shit your pants." (laughs)
(audience laughs)
Yeah, you could hit your kid.
Hell, you could hit other people's kids.
(audience laughs)
That wasn't illegal, you were doing that mom a favor.
(belches) (audience cheers)
You see me, you really, really see me.
Now, I'm not saying that the '80s were perfect
or that child abuse is right.
(audience laughs)
But here's the thing,
well you need a little strife in your life,
a little struggle, a little putting a brick in it.
Why?
To create resilience.
Resilience, okay?
'80s weren't perfect
but I'll tell you what they didn't have.
There were no safe spaces.
There were no trigger warnings.
And there were no fucking peanut allergies.
(audience applauds)
- Entertainment is in our blood.
My sister sang and I dance.
And I know what you guys are thinking, "You dance?"
Yes, I used to dance.
I'm an OG B-boy from the '80s, man.
(audience cheers)
I still remember back in the day
when I used to do the Moonwalk at talent shows.
And when my mom found out I could impersonate
Michael Jackson,
it was the best day and the worst day of my life.
(audience laughs)
Best day because my mom was like, "Oh, you have talent."
It was the worst day 'cause my mom was like,
"Oh, you have talent." (audience laughs)
And when she found out I could dance like Michael Jackson,
she made me do it every time someone came to the house.
Every time.
It didn't matter who was at the house.
"Your auntie is here.
"Joseph, do the Michael Jackson.
(audience laughs)
"Joseph, your uncle is here.
"Do the Michael Jackson.
"And not just one time like that.
(audience laughs)
"Joseph, my friends from work are here.
Do the Michael Jackson one time, Joseph."
She made me do Michael Jackson my whole life.
And then it just got to the point where I was like
I was done.
I'm not gonna do the Michael Jackson anymore.
I remember that day, "Joseph, my coworkers are here.
"Do the Michael Jackson for me, Joseph."
And I was like, "No, I'm not doing it.
"I'm done.
No more, stop telling people I can do that."
"But I told all my coworkers
and, look, oh, they're waiting, just..."
(audience laughs)
"Come on, Joseph, just do like, come on, just one, Joseph."
"No, mom, stop telling people I can do Michael Jackson.
I'm not doing it anymore, I'm done."
"I'm not gonna do it."
"My God, Joseph, I told my coworkers,
that's why they're here.
They want you to do the Michael Jackson
and you're not going to do it.
That's embarrassing me, huh?
Why don't you wanna do the Michael Jackson, Joseph?
Tell me why, huh?
Why?
Tell me why you don't wanna do the Michael Jackson, Joseph.
Why?"
And I was like, "'Cause I'm 33."
(audience laughs)
(upbeat music)