- And of course my macho dad threw a fit,
and he started calling the house collect every day,
threatening to kill my stepfather,
which I think is hilarious that my poor stepfather
had to pay for his own death threats.
[dark electronic music]
- Welcome to "This Is Not Happening."
I'm Roy Wood Jr.
We all come from somewhere, from someone,
who nurtures us, protects us,
and teaches us.
- Ah!
[silverware clattering]
- Some are better at it than others.
♪ ♪
[girl giggling]
♪ ♪
- Ow!
You know him from his book "Free Roll,"
please give it up for Brant Tobler.
[cheers and applause]
So this is a story about how I tried to kill my dad.
Trust me, it's hilarious. Trust me.
So you guys have heard the term "Blood is thicker than water,"
right?
I hate it. My dad must have said it to me
a thousand times growing up.
"Blood is thicker than water, son."
And I just started to hate it because I think it's what
family members say to you when they do something shitty,
and then instead of apologizing,
they're just like, "Hey, we have the same blood type,
so you have to put up with this shit."
So I would hear it all the time.
My dad would miss, like, basketball games and graduation
and he'd always say, "Blood is thicker than water, son."
And he ended up missing most of my childhood,
'cause when I was 5 years old, he went away to college.
Well, that's what my mom called it.
You guys could of course call it maximum security prison.
And every couple years on spring break,
he would get out and he would come visit my little brother
and I, and luckily my mom remarried and we had a great
stepdad who taught us how to ride a bike and build a fire,
stuff that you're supposed to learn from your dad,
because when my dad would come to town,
he would teach me the stuff he knew about.
So for instance, my dad taught me three things in life
I'll never forget.
Number one, you never snitch, no matter what.
Number two, if you have extra food at lunchtime,
you only give it to white people.
Weird to tell a fourth grader. I agree.
And the craziest one of all, my dad got out on spring break
one year and he came back home to visit us,
and he took me and my little brother swimming.
We had a great day at the pool, jumping off the diving board,
playing Marco Polo,
and I got out of the pool, I'm in the locker room,
and I'm taking a shower, and my father comes in
and he sees me showering.
He's like, "Hold on, son. Get out of the shower for a sec."
I was like, "Why? What's up, Dad?
He goes, "Son, every time you take a shower from now on,
before you get in the shower,
put the water on as cold as it can go
and then get in that cold water and shadowbox
until you count to 15."
I was like, "Dad, why would I do that?"
And he's like, "Son, the way your body reacts
when that cold water hits it
is the same way you'll react if you ever get stabbed,
so if you ever get stabbed,
you'll be able to fight for 15 seconds."
That's what my dad--that's what my dad
tells a fucking 12 year old.
And like an idiot, I do that shit till I'm, like, 19,
and I get a girlfriend and she's like,
"Why are we fake fighting in this cold shower?"
Like, you better be ready, bitch.
You could go down at any time.
The shit is real.
So that's my dad.
So my dad only did one good thing for me life,
of course I had wonderful stepdad,
and before I was about to start junior high,
he sent me and my little brother down and he said
he wanted to adopt us
and have us take his last name like we were his sons.
And of course my macho dad threw a fit
and he started calling the house collect every day,
threatening to kill my stepfather,
which I think is hilarious that my poor stepfather
had to pay for his own death threats.
But he would call and he would remind us
"Blood is thicker than water; you're my son."
And he eventually sent some goons over to the house
to, like, scare my stepdad, and my mom made a decision,
like, "Forget it, let's just keep your last name."
Which is the only good thing that my father ever did for me,
because if my stepdad would've adopted me,
I would've started junior high school
as Brandt Hufendick,
which I think has got to be the shittiest last name
in the world.
My poor little sister's named Hayley Hufendick.
I don't know why she didn't get married at midnight
on her 18th birthday, but she didn't do it.
So that was my dad.
And then after that he disappeared for, like, 8 years
and I never heard from him.
And I went to real college in Phoenix.
And then-- well, junior college,
so kind of real, but I went.
But then one day I got a letter out of nowhere,
and it was from my dad, and he just said,
"I'll be at the Phoenix airport in three days,
and I'd love to see you,
and there's no time to write back.
Just--I'll be looking for you."
I didn't know what to do, 'cause I was doing so good
in life and I hadn't seen him in almost a decade.
But then part of me is like, I got to go see my dad.
So I went to the airport,
which was one of the weirdest moments in my life,
because this is before 9/11, so you could go from gate to gate.
And when I got to the airport, I realized
I didn't even know what my own dad looked like.
So I'm in looking at the bars and bookstores.
I'm like, "Is that my dad? Is that my dad?"
And then of course I saw a guy with a ponytail,
wife beater, brown khaki pants.
I'm like, there's my dad.
So I run over, I give him a hug,
and we both fight back tears.
And he tells me how much he missed me
and how blood is thicker than water.
And he's determined to be part of my life again,
and he said, "I'm moving to Vegas.
I had this incredible cocktail waitress girlfriend,
and you're allowed--you know you can come see us
whenever you want."
And I was like, "Okay, Dad, thanks.
I gotta go back to college."
And I drove back to my dorm, and when I got to my dorm,
I called my two best friends back in Wyoming
who also had shitty dads growing up,
and I told him this story and they're like,
"We should go see your dad on our spring break."
And I was like, "All right, cool."
So they drove down from Wyoming.
They pick me up in Phoenix, and we went to Vegas
on our spring break and spent five days with my dad,
which was incredible, 'cause we were just dumb kids
from Wyoming.
He taught us about, like, hookers and craps,
seafood buffets.
We're like, holy shit, this is incredible.
So at the end of five days, he's like,
"You guys are welcome to come back whenever you want.
You can live with me and my girlfriend in this trailer."
And then we were like, "Sorry, dad, we gotta go back
to college."
And they started driving me towards Phoenix,
and every mile we got away from Vegas,
we were just itching to get back.
And by the time we got to Phoenix,
the three of us idiots made the decision
that we were going to drop out of college
and move back to Vegas to get our dream jobs
as pirates at the Treasure Island.
We thought, what would be better than wearing an eyepatch
and jumping off a big ship every hour
while drunk tourist chicks scream at us?
We're like, "That's it. That's the dream job."
So we dropped out of college.
Our families were furious with us,
and we moved to Vegas,
and of course we don't get pirate jobs.
I don't--we didn't know anything about casting
or any of that shit.
So my friends sober up and they go back home to Wyoming
and reenroll in college, but I was enjoying
hanging out with my dad, and I didn't want to leave,
so I decided to stay.
And then one day I actually got the dream job.
I would go play basketball every afternoon
with a bunch of professional gamblers,
and one of 'em hired me to be a runner.
So my job was just to carry hundreds of thousands
of dollars' worth of cash up and down the Strip
and bet on sports.
So it was great. I was making a ton of money.
Everything was good, so I told my dad we're moving out
of this trailer and I rented this beautiful house
on a golf course.
And I started calling my little brother who lived in Portland
at the time, just a little stoner dude that ran a Subway.
And I told him you got to come to Vegas.
It's me, you and dad; we can finally be a perfect
little family again, and he's like, "All right."
And he moved to Vegas, and we had a great time
the first six months.
We'd sit on the back porch every night,
just get drunk, tell stories.
He'd tell us about prison riots and shit
and we'd tell him about scoring 8 points
in a JV basketball game,
or whatever shitty stories we had.
He obviously had much better stories.
But he was always just waiting to get off parole.
He's like, "I can't wait to get off parole.
I can be my own man again."
And he'd talk about it every day,
and we counted down the days
till he finally got off parole.
And I remember I threw a big party at the house,
invited all our family and friends over,
and we just got wasted.
And I remember about 4:00 in the morning,
it's just me and my dad and brother in the kitchen,
and we're just telling him how proud we are
and we're just drunk and it's this incredible moment,
and then--but that is the last good moment
I'll ever have with my dad,
because the next morning he woke up, got back on drugs,
started bringing around, like, little 20-year-old meth heads
to my house, even though they're younger than me.
My dad's, like, 48 at the time.
And he starts just acting like a drug addict,
you know, stealing my friends' wallets,
forgetting my birthday, just being a shitty dad,
and I knew it was going bad,
but I didn't know how to get out of it.
And you know, it's hard to yell at your own dad,
and I knew it was going to happen.
And then on a Saturday during football season
I'd have to bet college football all day,
so I'd get to the Strip at 8:00 in the morning.
I'd run up and down and bet till, like, 9:00 at night.
Then I'd go home, go to bed,
and then do the same thing for NFL on Sundays.
So on the Saturday I worked my ass off,
I come home, I'm exhausted.
When I get home, my dad's there all cracked out,
and I tell him, "Hey Dad, I'm going to bed.
You can come down tomorrow and get everything comped
if you want to watch football."
He's like, "Okay, son."
And I went to sleep about 10:00.
Around midnight, my little brother busts in
and he's like, "Hey, Brandt, Brandt,
someone stole my money."
My little brother had saved up $350 to fly to Portland
to watch his girlfriend graduate college.
So I jump out of bed, like the big brother,
and I run downstairs to try to find my dad
and tell--to find whatever little shitty kid
took my brother's money.
So when I get downstairs, I don't see him,
I'm telling for him, and I go look in the garage,
'cause my white trash dad has this stupid convertible
Camaro that he thought was, like, the dopest car
in the world, and it always had to be parked in the garage.
So when I got in the garage and I looked
and his Camaro was gone, it hit me:
Oh, shit, I got all my money upstairs.
And I ran upstairs and my dad had stole
$80,000 cash from me.
And now, I worked for guys that you don't want to be
$80,000 short for, not that there's any job
you could $80,000 short for.
But I'll never forget that, and I see my little brother crying,
and I'm like, you stole 80,000;
why would you go steal your own son's $350, you know?
And it just drove me crazy, and to watch my little brother cry,
you know, I brought him from Portland, he was doing good,
and I brought him into this shit.
So in that moment, I made the decision, I'm like,
that's it; I'm gonna fucking kill my dad.
I'm gonna fucking kill my dad.
So the next morning I wake up and I call my cousin Kato
who lives in Phoenix, and he's like...
[laughter] He's like a real gangster
and the most loyal dude in my life, and I tell him
what happens.
He says, "I'll be there in five hours."
And he drives straight from Phoenix to Vegas,
and when he gets there, doorbell rings,
I open the door, and there he is.
He's like, "Where's he at? Where's he at?"
I was like, "Hold on. I got a plan."
Now, in my defense, I was 23 years old.
I'd never killed anybody before.
This is before "Dexter," "Breaking Bad."
This is obviously a fucking stupid plan,
but this was my plan.
My mom had told me a story that when I was young,
my dad had cheated on my mom and got chlamydia
and he had to go to the doctor,
and the doctor prescribed him penicillin,
not knowing that he was deathly allergic to penicillin.
So he took that penicillin and he almost died.
So in my head, I was like, "That's it."
You know, almost every morning
my dad would go to the Jamba Juice,
like, three blocks from my house, get a Jamba Juice.
I mean, that was, like, his favorite thing,
so I figured, fuck it, if I just get some penicillin,
put it in a Jamba Juice,
give it to my dad, he'll drink it,
he'll be dead, perfect. Airtight plan.
So I tell my cousin, he's like, "All right,
I mean, I can get penicillin."
So I was like...
He's like, he can get anything, trust me.
So he's like, all right.
I go, one more part of this plan, everyone will think,
like, I'm the number one suspect,
so I'm gonna go to Colorado
and you guys just take care of this shit.
They're like, all right, you're kind of a pussy,
but we'll do it.
And I was like, all right, good.
I don't want to go to college like my dad.
So...
I fly to Colorado, you know.
Me and girlfriend go to Estes Park.
We go to a hotel, and I call my cousin Kato.
I'm like, "Yo, are you ready?"
He's like, "We're ready.
Extra-large mango in the fridge
just waiting for your dad to come home."
I was like, all right, cool, call me when he's dead.
He's like, all right.
So I wait about a hour, two hours, no phone call.
I call him back, I'm like, "Yo, what happened?"
They're like, "Well, your dad came home,
but he wouldn't take it."
I was like, "What do you mean he wouldn't take it?"
Like, we gave him the Jamba Juice,
but he just put it back on the kitchen counter.
I was like--and looking back, I get it.
You know, my dad was in Leavenworth and real prison,
so he knows you don't take, like, a gift
from your enemy, you know?
I don't think he thought we were trying to kill him,
but he probably thought we pissed in it
or something stupid, right?
So I said, you know what, forget it.
This plan's stupid. Just go with the original plan.
Pack up my brother's stuff, go to Phoenix,
I'll fly home, we'll just never talk to my dad again.
My cousin's like "No, fuck that.
We do it my way now."
I'm like, "What's your way?" He's like, "We do it my way.
We'll call you in an hour," and he hung up the phone.
And I just sat there in the hotel like,
what are they gonna do?
And this is the plan they came up with.
So they knew my dad loved that stupid Camaro
and it always had to be parked in the garage.
So what they did was, they opened the garage door
and then they went out and they cut the phone lines
and the power lines and the just waited
for my dad to come home
in this dark corner in the garage.
Sure enough, my dad came home just like they thought,
parked in the garage, hit the button to get the garage
to shut, it wouldn't shut.
They said he was so frustrated, he didn't know what was
going on and he got out of the car, went over,
got the garage door, manually shut it, and locked it.
And as soon as he locked it
and started to walk back through the garage
into the house, my brother and cousin
jumped out with golf clubs
and tried to kill him in the garage with golf clubs.
But they were fucking idiots, because there was no light.
So they're swinging their hearts out,
almost killing each other.
It's like we needed a better murder caddy.
They fucked it all up.
But there was--the only light coming into the garage
was there was a side door that led to the backyard,
and at the bottom of that side door
there was a little doggy door,
and there was a little light coming through,
and my dad saw that light and he just put his shoulder down
and ran and busts through that door
and fell into the backyard, jumped over the back wall
onto the golf course and ran away.
And that was, like, 17 years ago
and I never saw him or spoke to him since that day.
So my brother and cousin go to Phoenix.
Three days later, I fly back from Colorado,
and I'll never forget I was standing in the garage
with this garden hose
trying to clean up the mess they made,
and that's when it hit me.
I was like, my dad was right this whole time.
His blood is way thicker than water.
I'm Brandt Tobler. You guys have been awesome.
Thank you guys.
[cheers and applause]
- Brandt Tobler, everybody!