- "You want something, Louie?" "No.
"I don't want anything. We shouldn't be here.
We should call mom and tell her we're coming back right now."
"Oh, you goddamn baby."
"You're a baby."
[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!
[cheers and applause]
You know him from the television show "Baskets."
He is Louie Anderson!
♪ ♪
- So this story takes place in 19...
Let's see, I think 1964,
way back in the way-back machine.
Khrushchev was our Putin.
Johnson was our Trump.
Cars were, like, boats.
Kids were fat.
And dads were veterans
and they drank sometimes.
We were poor; 11 kids.
I had 11 kids in my family.
I was tenth; I just slid out.
I was...
I was home before my mom from the hospital, so...
I to fend for myself, but...
It was winter in Minnesota, St. Paul, Minnesota,
1122 [...] Avenue.
That's what--you remember where you lived when you were a kid.
That's--no numbers since then can I remember, but...
So it's like a winter day, and--
but not bad, but not freezing, but not livable.
And...
You know, me and my brother Tommy,
who was two years younger than me,
and we were the last two kids.
I was 10 and he was 11.
We weren't expected or planned for or...
We were just, "Oh, my God, we have two more."
My parents were both older, and I just remember it well.
We lived in the projects but didn't feel bad
living in the projects then.
We had lawns.
There were flowers.
On my dad's lawn, because he was notorious.
People were terrified of my dad.
So he just had to put a string and sticks around his lawn
and nobody ever kicked it over and I just went,
"Oh, my God. He's a monster to them too.
He's a monster."
Sometimes I'd kick it over, and he'd go, "What the hell?"
Anyways, my dad goes, "Hey, kids."
That's how my dad talked.
[nasally] "Hey. Hey, you guys.
That was the talk back then.
"Hey, what the hell you-- Ah..."
"All right, kids, hey, you want to go up to Joe's?"
Joe's was a gas station that sold the cheapest gas.
I don't know where he was getting it, but...
Anyways, my dad goes, "You want to go to Joe's?
I need to get some gas and get some bulk oil."
Now, you gotta be old to know what bulk oil is.
It's the oil that already has been used,
and they run it through, like, a strainer
and then you can purchase it for 10 cents a quart,
and my dad knew a value when he saw it.
So we had a car that burned a lot of oil so he would get it.
But he said, "Do you wanna go?" I go, "No, I don't want to go."
And my brother--I go, "Tommy, you don't want to go."
He goes, "I want to go."
"You don't want to go. You're not going.
Shut up, please."
"Louie, why don't you go? We'll just go up there,
no big deal, huh?"
And I know--I know what my dad's up to,
'cause he can't get out of the house
unless he brings the kids,
'cause otherwise he'll drink,
and that--my mom knows that.
She knows that. She goes,
"You're just gonna go drink."
He goes, "I'll bring the kids!"
And I wanted to go, "That won't stop him!"
"He's gonna drink!"
And so we get up there, it's starting to snow,
we got a big Bonneville station wagon
which is... gigantic.
And we get the bulk oil.
"You guys hungry for... [mumbles]
Candy or soda or something?"
"No, we should get home." I was that kid.
"Mom's worried about us, I'm sure, by now.
She said you're a derelict."
"Oh, is that so, Louie?
Well, have you ever been in a war, Louie?"
"I'm 11."
"Always some excuse with you, Louie.
You guys, why don't we go over to the Moose Lodge here?"
Do you know--Moose Lodge is like a private club, sort of.
But anyone can come in at certain hours.
So we go in the Moose Lodge there.
No moose except one on the wall
that did not look well.
And we sit at the bar, you know,
and I'm very against this.
That's the kid I was.
I'm sitting there,
I'm in between my dad and my brother.
"You want something, Louie?"
"No.
"I don't want anything. We shouldn't be here.
We should call mom and tell her we're coming back right now."
"Oh, you goddamn baby."
"You're a baby."
So...
"You sure you don't want root beer?"
"I don't want nothing with beer in it."
This is the kind of kid I was,
just a little, I don't know, bitch, I guess, in some ways.
I don't mean that in a female way,
but I can say it now because I play a woman on TV, so...
So... [scattered applause]
I go, "I don't want anything."
And then my dad goes, "Hey, Tommy, you want something?"
"He doesn't want anything.
We're in a pact. He's not gonna go along with it."
"You sure?"
Tommy of course goes, "Yeah, I want something."
And he keeps--my dad keeps--
and he's getting a shot and a beer each time.
He drinks his beer, and he goes back a ways,
and I go, "Whoa." I never realized
that he had that ability to go that far back.
It must have been a war thing.
"I can't go--I gotta--so they can't shoot me.
I stay down."
So he's drinking the shots.
"You sure you don't want something, Louie?"
"What about a Orange Crush?"
"No."
"Hey, how about a pickled egg?"
"Ugh, maybe."
Never. Who wants a pickled egg?
Who's eating the pickled egg?
Who's at the bar and going, "God, is that a pickled egg
"in a jar?
"The one that guy just stuck his hand in
"to get a pickled egg out of?
"God damn it, I want a pickled egg.
"Can I just get a pickled egg?
Do you have any bread I can put the pickled egg on?"
On and on. Finally I go, "Tommy,
"it won't be long now.
Couple more, he's going off the stool, I'm pretty sure."
Boom. He goes off the stool.
The guy goes, "That's it!"
Like, the guy who gave him all the booze.
"That's it!
All right, I need you guys out of here."
"Where are we gonna go?"
He is so plastered, and now if it's your father,
you're humiliated, you're upset,
but there's a lot of humor in my family,
so I'm laughing.
In that sick laugh thing like, "What about to me?
"Why do I have a sick dad?
Why isn't Carl's dad a prick?"
So here I am.
Now, my dad was very funny,
and he goes, "I'm all right. I can drive.
I drove a tank!"
I don't trust you.
"I got it, Louie. Don't--
"Louie. Louie."
"Louie!"
"Louie, yeah, that's right. Ha."
Dads, when they--my dad when he'd get drunk,
he should fall over, but he had a gyroscope
that somehow kept him up.
He just...
And he'd look at you.
"I'm all right."
No, you're not.
We get in the car.
I'm telling you, the snow is a foot now.
He gets in the driver's seat.
I get in the middle. Tommy sits there.
I go, "You ready to go home?"
"I'm ready to go home."
"Dad?" "I got it!"
Now we're going down.
I go by my grade school, Ames.
I go, "Dad, why don't you just let me out?
I'll just stay until morning."
I honestly said that.
Why don't you just let Tommy and I out here?
He just--"No, no. We got it, Louie.
What are you worried about?"
Now we're all over the road. We're going...
There's no other car out there.
It's beautifully--it's really like I going,
God, this is really beautiful out.
But I'm in trouble.
I'm 11. I don't have a learner's permit.
I'm steering the car. We're going down the thing.
We got three roads to get by.
We go by the witches haunted house
that we used to walk by in school.
You always have some kind of weird thing.
"That's where the witches are. They're gonna..."
If you have a little brother, you need that.
"They're gonna get you!"
Anyway, and...
And we're going down the hill,
and we have a pretty steep hill,
so we turn and now we're almost home.
Just at one more turn.
1122 [...] is right up there.
I can't see it, but...
And then my dad,
all of a sudden, he just-- the car stops,
and he just passes out.
And I go, "Oh, my God."
And the windshield wipers are going.
There's only this much open to see,
'cause only where my dad's alcohol breath
is clearing the window.
And I'm going, "I guess I could walk from here,
but, ugh, I hate to walk."
Even as a kid I go, "Oh, could you pick me up?"
We'll get two people then.
Anyway... And so...
Anyways, my dad...
[coughs aggressively]
I heard it, and I go, "What?"
"Oh, I'm back." Oh, thank you.
Thanks for the cough choke, Dad.
So he wakes; I go, "Okay, we're almost home."
Step on the brake and I'll guide the car home.
Just take it easy.
He hits the gas all the way down.
We fly back.
Catch me if I do happen to...
It'd only hurt at first.
And I flew back, and my dad gunned the car;
it had never gone so fast ever.
We're at least going 50 miles an hour,
and we lived 1122 [...]
and right across the street was a big woods
that we had B.B. gun fights in.
And boom, we hit the curb.
The car went up.
I don't--honestly, I just went, "Oh, my God.
"Hey. What?
What?"
I think I said, "Shit!"
"Don't swear, Louie, for God sakes."
Yeah, we landed in the-- all the snow.
Whoo!
You know, it was we were-- I go,
"This is like a snow globe. This is like--
We are--somebody's shaking us. We're..."
And this was a big hill that I had to get up now,
because we were down in the gulch.
And we had ice that, for a week--
so we could slide on cardboard.
That's what we slid on,
but we had ice that we'd take buckets of water,
"No one will ever get up this."
So Fat Louie is going, "Here we go."
I get up to it. I get about halfway up,
and I go, "I am losing my grip, I'm losing my grip."
And I just go on my back and go down.
Whee!
I did it, like, three or four times,
'cause I just go, "I'm just gonna enjoy this."
And then finally I got up to the very top,
and there was a road.
That's right-- there's my house.
And the neighbor came by.
"Hey!
Are you guys okay?"
"Everything's perfect!
We got it! Go ahead!"
"You sure you don't need any help?
"We don't need any help!"
That was my role in the family.
Deflect, deflect, deflect.
"We don't need any help. It's under control.
Someone shot our tires out!"
I didn't want those people to help,
'cause it's a family thing, in families.
It's your dad; it's your situation.
It's your family. You went into the woods.
It's not even explainable, really.
It's just...
We finally get up it across the street,
and I go in the house.
And my brother Roger is there.
"What's going on?"
Dad drove into the woods.
"Oh, for God sakes."
Everybody has that voice in our family, so...
Even mom. "Oh, my God."
My mom was really mad. She was...
She just went... "Mm."
And said to my brother, "Go get him. Go get him."
Tommy's in there. I tell him to stay.
I said, "Don't get out, Tommy.
Just stay with Dad."
And then, he went in, and he was able to drive the car out.
My dad--they brought my dad in.
He was drunk, so drunk.
Sat in the chair.
I was sitting there because when you're 11
you have to think about stuff but you can't really
contemplate it very well. You just go, "Huh.
"I'm starving.
Should I eat the egg?
My dad rustles out of his deep, you know,
drunken stupor.
[groans deeply]
[coughs aggressively]
He's alive. He lives.
My brother, Rog, is standing right next to him.
He goes, "Hey, buddy.
"Hey, you wanna go to Joe's with me?
And get some bulk oil?"
And I never got to go with my dad again on any trip alone.
I hope you enjoyed that. Thank you so much.
[cheers and applause]
I love you, Dad! Love you, Mom!
Forgive your dad. He didn't mean it.
- Louis Anderson!
♪ ♪