- My buddy picks me up, throws me in my own car, takes off,
hits another car, and just floors it.
And I always wondered what that exit looked like
to those other pharmacists.
[dark electronic music]
♪
- Oh! Ahh!
♪
Ugh! Oh! Ahh!
Augh!
♪
[cheers and applause]
He's got his own podcast called "The Blackout Diaries."
Please, warm round of applause
for Mr. Sean Flannery, everybody.
Let him hear it.
[cheers and applause]
♪
- I'm gonna tell a story about the time I walked off
a three-story building, fell onto concrete,
broke my back in three places, and shattered my heel,
and I think if you're gonna have an injury that bad
where you almost die,
doctors think you might even be paralyzed,
it should be for something
you're willing to die for, right?
Should be for something important.
Mine was I was trying to sneak into
a Huey Lewis concert.
[laughter]
Huey Lewis and the News are my favorite band of all time.
I love Huey Lewis and the News,
and they were enormous in the '80s, and, you know,
I grew up in the '80s, and then they sort of, you know,
weren't as big in the '90s, and it turns out they were doing
pharmacy conventions in Cleveland, Ohio.
[low laughter]
And my friend was training to be a pharmacist.
He was very talented, and he turns to me one day,
and he goes, "Hey, man.
"I'm going to this convention tonight for pharmacists,
"open bar, pretty cool.
Also, Huey Lewis and the News are playing it."
I'm like, "Oh, you've got to get me in.
Like, that's my favorite band of all time."
And he goes, "I'm sorry. Security's very tight.
I don't think I can get you in."
And I go, "Well, find some old guy that doesn't want to party
late, and I'll use his credentials."
And he did, and I went in as Bob Dopple in Creative Health Care
Solutions from New Jersey.
And I'm partying all night, and I end up at, like, this
rich CEO pharmacy guy's apartment in Cleveland,
and it's, like, amazing, and nobody else is drinking that
hard at this point, but I am still, like,
really hitting it hard, and I yell,
"Let's go to the roof, everyone."
And they're like, "No, you know, it's really not
"that kind of roof.
Uh, I wouldn't do that."
But I go up there anyways.
And I'm so lost in, like, how beautiful this is, and, like,
how great of an evening it is that I just kind of, like,
walk clean off the roof and fall three stories.
Literally, I just thought I had a little bit more roof,
you know, like...
[laughter]
I don't know if you've ever walked down steps, and you think
you've got another step, and you don't, and you're like, "Whoa."
Like, I thought I had another solid step of roof,
and it was not there.
I fall down.
I don't know how long I'm unconscious for.
I--I later learned that inside this room in the party, like,
I go up to them. "Let's go to the roof."
They're like, "That's not a good idea."
They later turned to my friend and they go,
"Is he gonna be okay?"
And he goes, "Bob Dopple...
is the most mistake-proof pharmacist I know."
They then see me fall through the window.
I hit the ground.
I don't know how long I'm unconscious for.
I come to, and I'm, like, triple-y confused,
because I have all these strangers above me,
and they're going, "Bob?"
[laughter]
"Bob? Bob?"
And that's when it hits me. I go, "Oh, shit.
They think I'm Bob Dopple in Creative Health Care Solutions."
And I panic, because I was relatively certain I was gonna
die from my injuries, so I think to myself,
"Oh, my God.
I'm about to die, and they're gonna call Bob Dopple's wife."
[laughter]
Like, she's gonna get this phone call, like, "Bob's dead."
Like, "What happened? Heart attack? Stroke?"
Like, "No, he walked off a three-story building."
So I sit up, and I go, "I don't care what happens next.
Nobody talks to my wife."
[laughter]
[appaluse]
And I just fall down to die.
My buddy picks me up, throws me in my own car, takes off,
hits another car, and just floors it.
And I always wondered what that exit looked like
to those other pharmacists.
[laughter]
They had to be like, "Wow.
That New Jersey office parties."
[laughter]
"Bob Dopple just walked off a building,
"told us not to tell his wife,
and I think his friend just stole a goddamn vehicle."
[laughter]
And we're driving now in this vehicle--my car--
and my buddy turns, and he's like,
"Oh, my God, Flannery.
"I saw you fall through that window.
I thought you were dead."
I'm like, "Me too, brother.
I didn't think I'd ever see you again, man."
And he's like, "Geez, I panicked.
I didn't know--like, what am I gonna do if you die?"
"I know, I know."
I go, "You want to know what's weird is as I was falling,
"I thought I was gonna die,
"but I was totally comfortable
because I was singing 'The Power of Love' in my head."
[laughter]
"And I was a total peace."
He starts laughing so hard
he loses control of my car and hits a tree.
[laughter]
So I've now been in two major accidents in about 45 sec--like,
I don't even know if they get to the chorus of "Power of Love"
in 45 seconds.
I've been in two major collisions.
We get out of the car. We back to his apartment.
I go to bed. I think I'm fine.
I wake up the next day, and I feel a little sore.
I go into the E.R., and that's when I realize that I was so
drunk, I literally walked off a roof,
and I didn't know I was falling.
So I didn't bend my legs,
so the force of the fall compressed
my first three vertebrae.
I got a compression fracture in my--the surgeon that was looking
at the X-rays was--is it, "What? Uhh, uhh, no.
"Uh...
this would mean you made no effort to adjust..."
[laughter]
"Like, at all.
No, uh..."
I mean, like a 7-Eleven clerk looking at, like, a $20 bill
where he's like, "Nuh-uh."
Said he'd never seen the injury in anyone
under the age of 92.
He brought in another surgeon to look at it,
like, just to show him, and I will never forget what that
other surgeon said to his residents as long as I live.
He held up the X-ray, and he goes, "This young man right
"here, he walked off a roof.
I am talking Daffy Duck-style."
[laughter]
That was his medical--
his medical terminology
for how I injured myself.
[laughter]
But what was amazing is they both agreed that being drunk
saved my life, 'cause they said that if I was sober,
I would have realized I was falling,
I would have braced for impact,
it would have changed my center of gravity,
and I might have hit my head.
I learned that evening that every fall over ten feet
is lethal if you hit your head, so they said,
"Being drunk actually saved your life."
Now, the nurse overhead this, and she goes,
"Of course, a sober person may not have been on that roof."
[laughter]
I'm like, "You know, ma'am,
we don't need to cherry-pick science here, okay?"
[laughter]
So, ladies and gentlemen, I don't know if there's
necessarily a moral to this story, but if you find yourself,
like, on an unfamiliar roof just exploring at night,
please, dear God, in the interest of safety
be drunk out of your mind.
Thank you very much.
[cheers and applause]
♪