- Please welcome my daddy,
Nate Bargatze.
(energetic music)
- My dad is a magician.
He's done that my entire life.
He was a clown at the very beginning,
just in case you're like,
"How do you get into something like that?"
(audience laughing)
It goes clown, then magic.
There's two steps.
You can take 'EM in either order.
(audience laughing)
I was born, he was a clown.
It was never weird to me.
I thought everybody's dad was a clown.
(audience laughing)
My first memory of my life is
I was five years old and
I remember
my mom walked me out to the front yard.
My dad pulled up with his old red Mazda.
He's dressed as a clown.
That doesn't even faze me.
That's just how he left.
How else would we come home?
And (audience laughing)
the Easter Bunny was in the passenger seat.
That's the first thing that I remember to my life.
If you want to know how you get into comedy,
that's a pretty good nudge.
(audience laughing)
And I remember it didn't fit,
The Easter Bunny head didn't fit in the car.
Like he couldn't sit normal,
so he had his head just bent to the side.
And I remember, he had his seatbelt on,
and he was just like...
And I was like...
(chuckles)
I like to think about all the other people that saw
just in the car next to 'EM.
Just at a red light you're like
"I didn't even know they hung out like that."
(audience laughing)
So me and my dad we do,
he just does magic now and he's very good at what he does.
He's very funny.
And we do shows together.
So
one time we did a show.
Magicians have conventions where they get together
and they buy and sell tricks and they give a lecture
and they do this big show.
So this guy was putting' one together in Des Moines, Iowa,
which is the birthplace of magic.
Something a lot of people don't know.
And
it's not but it does sound like it could be.
I don't know why.
I say that in Des Moines and people are like,
"I think I already knew that."
(audience laughing)
They're like,
"No, he's right."
So this guy calls me he's like
"Your dad's performing this year,
so we want you to come down
and we're gonna make you appear out of a magic trick."
I'm gonna come out.
I'm gonna surprise my dad, surprise the audience.
Everybody will go crazy.
And then I'll do five minutes of stand-up,
and that will end the show.
He's like, "it's gonna be like a big deal."
And I was like "all right."
I agreed to it.
I fly to Des Moines, I'm hiding.
I'm in my room.
No one knows I'm there.
The show starts,
my dad's out performing.
I climb in a box backstage.
When my dad gets done performing,
they ask him to stay and help.
They push the box out.
The trick is,
the guy has a very pretty lady assistant.
She walks around, shows the box is empty,
and then she climbs in.
Normally, it just falls apart,
and then she disappears.
But now, it falls apart and it's me
and I pop out.
And you have to come out big.
I don't know if you've ever appeared as a magic trick,
but... (audience laughing)
If you do, you can't just be like
how you doin'.
You know like (audience laughing)
It's gotta be a big grand, like,
"Can you believe it?"
And I look at my dad.
His face is so surprised.
He had no idea.
But his eyes are just like
"Why would you ever do this?"
(audience laughing)
I was like,
"Is this not a good time to visit you?"
The audience is clapping, but they're not going that crazy.
Like the clapping starts dying down.
And as I'm standing there, it's like hitting me.
And I was like,
"I don't think they know who we are."
That guy told me they did and they don't.
They don't know that's my dad.
They don't know I'm a comedian.
This looks like the stupidest trick they've ever seen.
(audience laughing)
It doesn't make any sense.
lIke they're like,
"A pretty girl goes in,
there's a whatever dude comes out?
That's your trick?"
"Your trick is backwards, sir."
"It's backwards."
(audience laughing)
And now I gotta do comedy,
but they don't know I'm a comedian.
So I get a microphone and they're like
"He's gonna talk to us now?"
(audience laughing)
"How long is this trick?"
And when you do comedy in front of people
not expecting comedy,
it does not come off as comedy.
(audience laughing)
It sounds like a mean speech.
They were just like,
"Get back in the box,
where's the girl?"
"Is she fine?"
"Can we hear from her?"
So I have a daughter.
My daughter's name is Harper.
So a lot of people ask they're like
"Did you name her after Harper Lee
the author of 'To Kill a Mockingbird'?"
And, you know, I've never thought
about an author a day in my life, so...
(audience laughing)
That never occurred to me.
I mean, my middle name's Lee
and it just never crossed my mind.
(audience laughing)
I love having a kid.
When kids cry, it's just innocent.
I love how innocent it is.
They cry over a tag over a shirt.
And I mean, they're bald.
They don't like...
it feels weird.
And then if you walk, it's like
is your house on fire?
Like, I've never seen someone cry this much.
It's over nothing.
She's on her iPad a lot, you know.
That's the hard part.
You gotta get this kids off.
You don't want technology all the time.
She just sits there on her iPad.
She wants to be a YouTuber,
which as a comedian makes me furious.
(audience laughing)
She watches all these kid YouTube videos,
and now she makes her own videos.
It's just her sitting there going,
"Hey guys, what's going on?"
"Click the links below."
"Subscribe."
"Leave a comment."
None of this is anywhere but my phone.
I got 90 hours of this.
It's not on YouTube.
Me and her mom are the only subscribers.
(audience laughing)
Our daughter still sleeps in our bed too and
parents don't like that when you say it.
They're like,
"You gotta keep 'em outside."
"Don't look at 'em."
(audience laughing)
It's my fault.
So we had a kid late in life, we have one kid.
And so, we're kind of hittin' all the sights.
And I would be
I travel a bunch and I get home
I'd want to fall asleep in bed together.
And I kind of
built up a habit now.
It's happened.
So it's tough though
because kids don't know how to sleep.
I mean, she makes
king bed feel like a twin.
I mean I'm on the edge.
When I sleep alone in a hotel
I have to sleep with my head on the nightstand.
It's the only way I know how to go to bed.
(audience laughing)
She gets sideways, upside down.
If you woke up upside down tomorrow
you would go to the hospital.
(audience laughing)
She's also apparently going through menopause
because she's the hottest human being that's ever lived.
(audience laughing)
I'm freezing at night, she kicks all the covers off
and you're like
"Yeah, now you go ahead."
"It's you bed,
we're lucky to be in it."
(audience laughing)
She's got to get out at some point.
You know, I don't know.
She'll be 37 years old
"Hey, can I get in the bed with you guys?"
Her kids are upstairs asleep in their bed.
Her husband left awhile ago.
He ain't gonna put up with that.
(audience laughing)
Our daughter is in third grade
and
for first grade she started taking bus
and it was the first time she took the bus.
So if you know as a parent, you walk them to the bus stop
it's very fun.
And so we got her on the bus
she went to school.
At the end of the school day someone from the school
called my cellphone.
They have my wife's cellphone, they have my cellphone.
They called my cellphone and she said
"Hey, do you know what bus number
you daughter is suppose to be on?"
And I said
"I'm her dad."
(audience laughing)
"This is how you thought you could get this information
was to call the dad?"
(audience laughing)
You saw mom and dad cellphone, you go
"I bet the dad knows."
(audience laughing)
I was like "you have parents?"
"You've ever seen a family before?"
You thought "let's call the husband"?
Unless there's two husbands,
you should never call a husband a day in you life.
(audience laughing)
I would rather you ask a lady that doesn't know her.
I think she can get to the bottom quicker than I can.
(audience laughing)
I had to go get her.
I go "all right, I'll come get her."
"Tell me the name of the school and I'll come get her."
"Where is she now?" (audience laughing)
We're doing homework.
(indistinct) starts to bring it all home
which homework's fun.
First and second grade was awesome.
Third grade you're like "okay."
They throw some stuff in and you're like
"Oh, okay."
"All right."
(audience laughing)
Okay, learning it earlier than we use to, huh?
I don't know if that's true but...
(audience laughing)
I have learned stuff
from elementary homework.
Which is embarrassing.
(audience laughing)
I'm 41, my daughter's eight.
Nothing should ever come out of her mouth
that I'm like "what?"
"What was that?"
(audience laughing)
I learned when use a or an
in a sentence.
I didn't know there was a rule.
I thought you felt it out.
You know, you just go (audience laughing)
"That feels right."
That's what you do.
I do the same thing with the comma.
I've never known where a comma is suppose to go.
If I feel a comma's coming,
I try to get out of that sentence so bad.
(audience laughing) I mean I..
And if I can I just put a comma and see
if someone said something, you know.
They're like "is that a comma?"
And I'm like "is it?"
"My comma button sticking on my phone."
(audience laughing)