Having marijuana is just as bad as having cocaine."
And in my mind, I was like, "What if you have both?"
[police siren blaring in the distance]
[dark electronic music]
♪
[coughs]
♪
Ha! Yes! [laughs]
Whoo! Whoo! Whoo! Whoo! Whoo! Whoo! Whoo!
Yeah! Yeah!
Yeah!
[truck horn honks]
♪
- Ladies and gentlemen, a very, very funny man,
you guys will absolutely love him.
Please give it up for Mr. Nick Thune, everybody.
Let him hear it.
[cheers and applause]
- First time I ever got a laugh from an audience
was in seventh-grade English.
It was the ten-minute silent-reading point
in the middle of class
when the timing just hit me perfectly to fart.
And the class erupted in laughter--
probably the best thing they ever heard in their life.
And then the teacher, noticing that if he were to go against me
that he would lose the class,
decided to play along, and he said,
"I'll give that a 7 out of 10."
And then the class again erupted into laughter.
And that's when I realized that farts are funny.
They're always gonna be funny.
As far as I'm concerned,
a fart's one of the funniest things.
It's the best fart joke-- just a straight fart.
And I'm not proud of what I've done.
I'm a dad now.
Don't judge me.
2008, I was in Las Vegas, Nevada,
for seven days, performing at Planet Hollywood,
and my friend Ben Kronberg,
who's a very funny stand-up comedian,
was performing with me.
And if you've ever been in Vegas for longer than three days,
you know that it's a suicide mission.
They're should be a limit.
Like, three days we got to kick you out.
It's not gonna be good for us.
It's not gonna be good for you.
But I stuck it out, seven days.
And on the sixth day of my seven-day run,
we had two shows.
And the first show went great.
In fact, a couple people from Hollywood--
some industry was out there gambling.
They came to the show. Afterwards, we smoked some pot.
And they said, "Hey, listen, we know you've got another show.
"But after your next show,
"there's gonna be a party at the club
at the top of Planet Hollywood."
I think it was called Privé at the time.
Said, "Go up there and just say,
'Table 60, Isaiah.'"
They weren't Isaiah. That was just the name of a guy.
And they said, "They'll let you right in.
Table 60, Isaiah."
They were like, "The guy practically owns the place."
I was like, "All right, fine, yeah."
So we do the next show, and after the show,
another standing ovation...
[laughter]
I get sick of them, to be honest, after a while, but...
After the show,
a girl walked up to me, and she had a magazine
that was rolled up as tight as it could be,
and she handed me the magazine,
and she said, "This is from Craig."
And he's a comedian that had been there the night before,
and apparently he wanted to give me something.
And as she walked away. I unrolled the magazine,
and inside this magazine was cocaine, Percocets--
prescription pain pills--
a lot of mushrooms, and marijuana.
So apparently Craig had leftover drugs...
and gave it to somebody and said to surprise me with it.
So I looked at all the drugs, and out of all of these drugs,
I'd done one of them, and I thought, "You know what?
Since I've never done mushrooms"--
a lot of people decide to do mushrooms
for the first time in the woods with some good friends
or maybe at a great Phish concert.
I thought, "Why don't I do it
in the most nightmarish landscape possible--Las Vegas?"
So I just eat some mushrooms.
And then I'm like, "Well, I've never had mushrooms before,
I might as well throw a couple Percocet on top of it."
And so there I was, feeling like--
for the first time-- like I was living at 100%.
And I looked at Ben, and I said, "Isaiah, table 60."
And he said, "Fuck, yeah."
And we went up to Privé, and we got Isaiah, table 60,
and we had some woman escorting us up through whatever,
and the walls are vibrating because of the mushrooms.
My feet were vibrating-- I think that was the Percocet.
So it just kind of felt like we were all in sync,
and there was Isaiah at table 60,
and you couldn't miss Isaiah.
He had the body of George Costanza...
with fashion sense...
a certain type of fashion sense.
His hair was slicked back. He was like an Italian guy.
And he was wearing a silk yellow shirt
with almost-matching pants.
He had his name--
Like, his initials--
they were stitched onto his pocket.
And he had bottle service at the table,
and he was shaking drinks up and serving everybody.
He was the king of the party.
He practically owns the place is what I was heard.
It's what I was heard.
[laughter]
And so I sit down, and I get introduced
by these industry people, like, "Here's Nick.
He's the comedian that's here for the weekend."
And Isaiah immediately perked up.
He was excited to take care of me.
We got the comedian here.
"What do you want? What do you want?
You want a drink?"
And I was like, "I don't"--
In my mind, I'm like, "I don't think I should add that.
Like, I don't think I should be adding things at this point."
So I was like, "No, I'm good. Thanks, Isaiah."
Oh.
The disappointment just sunk into him.
The look on his face was like, "That's not okay.
I want to serve you something."
And he goes, "Well, then what do you want?"
And I'm looking around this club,
and people are dancing, and there's women dancing on tables.
And it's not like one girl is like, "Should I do it?"
"Yeah, let's do it."
No, they're paid to dance on these tables.
It's like these models
that fly into Vegas on Southwest Airlines--
you can see them every week if you want--
that come in and do this.
And they're dancing on these tables.
And I just looked at a girl from across the room,
and I go to Isaiah, "Her."
And he was like, "All right."
And he did some hand motion,
and she was off that table in seconds.
And she walked over, and she said, "What do you want?"
And he goes, "He wants you."
And this is a weird moment where you're like,
"Well, yeah, who wouldn't?
"Oh, my wife wouldn't.
My definitely wouldn't want me to have her."
So I was like, "Oh, I was actually joking."
And I gave her to Ben, and she danced on Ben for a song.
And then Isaiah gave her two $100 bills,
and she went back to her table.
And Isaiah was just so disappointed in me.
I know that he wanted to please me in some way,
so I was waiting for the opportunity
where Isaiah finally had something for me.
And then it happened.
One of the guys from Los Angeles
that had brought us up to the table
had rolled a joint,
and that was gonna be their gift for Isaiah
for bringing us up there that night.
'Cause weed's actually kind of hard to find in Las Vegas.
I'll tell you more about that later.
So the guy took the joint, and from across the table
in a very loud room goes, "After hours!"
And he hands the joint to Isaiah.
Isaiah looks at the joint
and then looks at me and says, "Huh?"
And I was like, "Yeah, I'll do that."
And so he lit this joint up in a very secretive way,
handed it to me, and now I was just like--
[inhales] And everyone's like, "No, you got to"--
And I'm like, "Well, it's Isaiah,
he practically owns the place, but, yeah, we'll hide it."
So it's getting--[inhales] passed around the table,
people are, like, hiding it, going under the leg
and, like, keeping it down, and it came around two times
and hit me as the last person, my third turn with the joint,
and I took the last hit, and I went to go
put it down by my feet, and in that moment,
I feel a hand on my shoulder, and I turn around,
and it's a guy with an earpiece in
and a polo shirt-- he's a security guard.
And then I look around the table,
and people are scattering.
Isaiah is jumping over this fucking booth.
Like, I don't even know what he's doing, he's just--
People are clearing out, and not me and not Ben
and not this agent that was there from Los Angeles.
We're all just stuck at the table,
and now we're surrounded by ten security guards,
all in polo shirts, with the earpieces.
And they don't just surround us
like there's, like, a couple areas
where we might be able to jump through.
It's like they've barricaded us with their arms.
And their move was this--
It wasn't grabbing us.
It was just, like, a group walk.
And they just slowly group walked us.
And we're just in the middle of a circle, and I'm like...
You know, you think it's like a dance circle.
But it feels weird,
and they pull us out, and in this kind of big hallway,
there's more security guards.
These ones have suit jackets on, same earpieces.
Things are starting to change.
Temperature has changed a lot in the room.
I have all of my drugs in this pocket--all of 'em.
In my jacket pocket right here, I have my own weed.
And the first thing that they notice
is that I look a little more eccentric
than the two other people.
So they separate all of us,
and then everything's focused on me.
And they're like, "What drugs do you have?
Tell us right now."
And in my mind, I was like,
"Ah, let's just give them one at a time
and see if they keep pushing."
So I pull the weed out of my pocket,
and I'm like, "I've got this."
And so now he's looking at this device.
It's like this wooden thing with a twist top,
and there's this metal bat that springs out
because there's a spring in there, and it, like, jumps out.
And the guy's like, "What is this?"
And so I'm starting to explain.
I'm like, "Well, you take that thing, and you put it in,
and it gets some weed out, and then you smoke it."
And he's, like, turning it upside down,
and, like, there was no weed.
Just, like, some specs fall out.
I'm like, "Oh, God."
And he goes, "All right, all right."
And in that moment,
I realized, "Oh, my God, I can't get arrested."
I'm actually performing on 'The Tonight Show'
four days from there.
Like, I had just shot a pilot,
a television show for NBC the week before.
I cannot get arrested
for all of these drugs in Las Vegas right now.
This is the biggest moment of my life,
and I am a fuck-up, and I hope--
Oh, my God, everyone's gonna hate me, my family.
And, like, it's all kind of hitting me.
And when you're kind of high on stuff
and you start to take that negative turn,
it really goes bad.
The one nice thing was the Percocet
that was just really warming my body.
So I'm standing there, and right in that moment,
I'm like, "You can't arrest me. I'm the comedian.
I'm the comedian performing here at Planet Hollywood."
And that was the moment that the agent who was in there,
even though he's not my agent, steps up, and he goes,
"You can't arrest him.
If you do, then I will never book another comedian
in this casino again."
And this seemed to affect something
a little bit for a moment.
And they're like, "Well, the cops are already on their way,
so we're just gonna take you guys down to the holding room."
So now they take us to an elevator,
and we're stuck in this elevator,
and we're going down, and the vibes are bad.
And I'm like, "It's just weed. It's not a big deal."
And he goes, "This is Nevada, son.
Having marijuana is just as bad as having cocaine."
And in my mind, I was like, "What if you have both?"
[laughter]
No.
We get down to the basement of the casino.
They walk us to this room, and they sit us down,
and I'm sitting in this chair.
And they take our IDs.
They tell us the cops are on their way.
And one of 'em puts on some rubber gloves.
And he points to Ben, and he says, "You're first, stand up."
And I swear to God, Ben jumped up
like he'd won the fucking lottery.
Like, the most sarcastic, like, "Whoo, yeah! It's me."
And the guys are just like, "Oh, this is"--
And so Ben gets on the wall...
and he starts, like--
I mean, I think we were all wondering
what the wall felt like, you know, initially,
and Ben was just kind of doing an initial check-out,
like, "Yeah, it feels-- it's definitely wall-like.
And the guy goes,
"Hey, comedian, don't make this funny.
This isn't a joke."
And Ben says, "How many movies have I seen this scene in?
How can I not make this funny?"
And then in that moment,
Ben...
farted...
out loud.
It rumbled through the room,
through the basement of this casino,
and everybody erupted in laughter!
And in that moment,
on that chair, I took my jacket,
and I took all the drugs in my pant pocket,
while people were laughing hysterically,
and put all of the drugs in my jacket pocket
and took my jacket off and rested it on my chair
and just sat there.
They finished searching him. They said, "You're next."
I stood up, they searched me, found nothing.
Searched the agent.
Put my jacket back on in the middle of all that
while nobody was looking,
and they gave us back our IDs, and they said,
"All right, we're not gonna have you guys arrested."
And I knew it was because they couldn't find the joint,
because I later found that it was still stuck
to the bottom of my shoe,
which was confusing the fuck out of them,
because I was smelling it, too, and I was just like...
"You guys missed one area to search,
I'll tell you that right now."
[exhales deeply]
They let us out on a loading dock,
and there's some workers smoking,
and I walked up and just...
Just was really feeling the ground...
that was moving.
And...
Ben...
saved my life with a fart.
Now, like I said earlier, I always knew
that farts would be funny-- every time--
which proved itself down in that room,
but I never knew one would save my life.
Thank you guys very much.
[cheers and applause]