-Our next guest will be at The Comedy Attic
in Bloomington, Indiana, August 12th and 13th.
Making his "Tonight Show" debut,
please welcome the very funny Emil Wakim!
[ Cheers and applause ]
♪♪
-Thank you so much. Hello.
[ Cheers and applause ]
Oh, thank you. Thank you.
Thank you so much. Thanks. Thanks.
[ Light laughter ]
Alright? Cool?
So, here's what I think about Israel and Palestine. Uh...
No, I'm kidding. That'd be a crazy way to take the show.
No. No.
I don't know. I don't know.
I know it looks like I would know.
But I do not know.
[ Light laughter ]
It's weird not knowing, especially when you look like
both sides of the conflict in the Middle East.
[ Laughter ]
But I'm very happy to be here. I hope you guys are doing well.
[ Cheers and applause ]
And -- Yeah. Yes.
And by "guys," obviously I mean half not that.
Uh, it's a weird thing we do.
We just say, "Hey, guys," to a whole group of people.
I don't know what the better term is, either.
Like, I don't know what, like,
the more accepting, encompassing term is.
Like, some people think it's "y'all."
But it's -- it's not. No, it's --
"Y'all" with that twang on it.
Like, no minority has ever heard,
"Where y'all from?"
and thought, "This is gonna turn out well for me."
[ Laughter and applause ]
[ Laughs ]
Like, okay, I saw a lady
wearing a shirt that said, "Y'all Means All."
And I was like, "No, it doesn't."
It doesn't.
A sign that says, "Y'all are welcome here,"
does not mean all are welcome here.
It's less.
Like, it's less in the way that --
Like, you know when you see someone holding a sign
that says, "all lives matter,"
yeah, they mean y'all lives.
Like, that's the difference.
[ Cheers and applause ]
It's tense racially. You can feel it in the country.
It's very tense.
I worry all the time about people in my life, you know?
Because, like, my dad is an immigrant,
so I worry every day that someone is going to treat him
poorly because of the color of his skin.
And my mom is a white lady from the suburbs,
so I worry that she's gonna be the one to do it.
[ Laughter and applause ]
[ Laughs ]
Dude!
Every time my mom starts yelling at my dad for something now,
I just start recording her on my cellphone.
I'm like, "You're getting canceled, okay?"
[ Laughs ]
We're trying to be better now. We're trying to be good.
It's great.
You know, we're in this movement now
where, like, people, like, love diversity
and, like, everyone loves culture.
It's amazing. It's very beautiful.
It's just -- It's exhausting to me now
to always have to be, like, proud of my culture.
Because I never learned how to growing up.
Like, all I learned how to do growing up
was how to push it away to get by.
So now it's just frustrating because now I have, like,
these, like, woke friends that are mad at me
for not being as authentic as they want me to be.
They're like, "Why don't you know how to speak Arabic?"
And I'm like, "Because I wanted to come
to your birthday party in fifth grade, okay?
That's why."
[ Cheers and applause ]
I mean...
[ Laughs ]
Yeah. No one wanted a kid speaking Arabic at laser tag.
Like, I don't know if you remember.
It was tense.
[ Laughter ]
I hope it's genuine.
That's all I'll say for this movement.
I hope it's genuine change.
I just don't think it is.
It's just -- It's too rapid of a shift.
You know? It's hard for me to get used to.
We went really polar opposites.
Like, I'm 24, and I remember a different America.
That's how recently no one cared about this.
I remember as a kid, like,
I started shaving when I was in fourth grade.
When I would go get my hair cut, I would have them thin it out
with shears so it wouldn't be curly.
If my parents packed me lunch with hummus in it,
I would throw it all away
because I would rather go hungry than be persecuted.
I hated, like, who I was. You know that feeling?
I have vivid memories of kids looking me in my eyes
and saying, "Don't think we'll ever forget
what you did to our country."
And now things are different.
I was at the grocery store,
and I saw pumpkin-spice flavored hummus.
[ Laughter ]
And I was like, "Oh, my God.
They forgot."
[ Cheers and applause ]
My name's Emil Wakim. Thank you guys very much.
[ Cheers and applause ]
♪♪
-Emil Wakim! There you go. Not too bad.
Standing "O." Emil Wakim. You look sharp, buddy.
-Thank you. -He'll be at The Comedy Attic
in Bloomington, Indiana, August 12th and 13th!