John Mulaney: The Comeback Kid Page #4

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what brought you to this experiment?"

"Oh, well, thank you for asking. Well...

you know how I'm filled with rage?

I'm so horny and angry all the time...

and I have no outlet for it.

So...

eggs."

Your opinion doesn't matter

in elementary school either.

It matters in college.

College is just your opinion.

Just you raising your hand and being like,

"I think Emily Dickinson's a lesbian."

And they're like, "Partial

credit." And that's a whole thing.

But in elementary school, it

doesn't matter what you think,

it just matters what you know. You

have to have answers to questions.

And if you say, "I don't know,"

you get an X on your test,

and you get it wrong and that's not fair,

'cause your brain has never been smaller.

Also, that's not how life works.

I'm in my 30s now. If you came

to me now and you were like,

"Hey, John, name three things that

the Stamp Act of 1775 accomplished."

I'd go, "I don't know. Get

out of my apartment," you know?

But when you're a little kid,

you can't say, "I don't know."

You should be able to.

That should be an

acceptable answer on a test.

You should be able to

write in, "I don't know.

I know you told me.

But I have had a very long day.

I am very small.

And I have no money.

So you can imagine the kind

of stress that I am under."

Or if it's one of those

true or false questions,

you should be able to add

a third option which is,

"Who's to say?"

Kids are much more supervised now,

but also, they have a lot of rights.

Like, that's the biggest

civil rights increase

I've seen in my lifetime.

The rights of children

have gone through the roof.

I had no rights when I was a little kid.

I remember, one time, I walked

into a supermarket by myself,

and I walked in through the double doors,

and the woman behind the register

just looked at me and she went,

"No!"

And I went, "All right."

And I turned around and left.

That's how broken I was.

And there weren't special things

for kids the way there are now.

Like, we would just go

see movies. Any movie.

Like Back to the Future.

That was a movie everyone could

see. Kids could kinda see it.

Great movie, right?

I rewatched it recently.

It's a very weird movie.

Marty McFly is a 17-year-old

high school student

whose best friend is a

disgraced nuclear physicist.

And, I sh*t you not,

they never explain how they became friends.

They never explain it.

Not even in a lazy way, like,

"Hey, remember when we met

in the science building?"

They don't even do that.

And we were all fine with it.

We were just like, "What,

who's his best friend?

A disgraced nuclear

physicist? All right, proceed."

What a strange movie to

sell to be a family movie.

Two guys had to go in and do that.

They had to be like,

"Okay... we got an idea...

for the next big family-action-comedy.

All right, it's about a guy

named Marty, and he's very lazy.

He's always sleeping late."

"Okay. Is he cool like Ferris Bueller?"

"No.

But he does have this best friend

who's, you know, a

disgraced... nuclear physicist."

"I'm confused here. This best

friend, this is another student?"

"No, no, no.

No, this guy's either, like, 40 or 80.

Even we don't know how old

this guy's supposed to be.

But one day, the boy and the scientist,

they go back in time and

they build a time machine.

Whoa!"

"Okay. I think I see

where you're going here.

They build a time machine,

and they go back in time,

and they stop the Kennedy assassination."

"Ah!

Oh, wow, that's a really good idea,

I mean, we didn't even think of that."

"All right, well, what do

they do with the time machine?"

"Well, now I'm embarrassed to say.

Ah, well, all right, all right, all right.

We thought... We thought

it would be funny, you know,

if the boy, if he went

back in time and, you know,

he tried to f*** his mom."

"I don't know. We thought

that'd be fun for people.

But, no, good point.

No, he doesn't get to, he doesn't get to.

'Cause this family friend named Biff,

he comes in and he tries to

rape the mom in front of the son.

The dad's gotta beat the rapist off of her.

And also, we're gonna imply that a

white man wrote 'Johnny B. Goode.'

So, we're gonna take that away from 'em."

"Well, this is the best movie

idea I have ever heard in my life.

We're gonna make three of them.

Now, you say they go to the past. How

about we call it Back to the Past?"

"No, no, no.

Back to the Future."

"Right, but they go to the past."

"Yeah."

Kids have it very good now.

My friend's a teacher.

She told me that, uh...

the parents will take the

kids' side over the teacher now.

That's insane. That never happened.

My parents trusted every grown-up...

more than they trusted me.

I don't mean coaches and teachers.

Any human adult's word...

was better than mine.

Any hobo or drifter

could have taken me by the ear

up to my front door and been like,

"Excuse me! Your kid bit my dick."

And my mom would be like,

"John Edmund Mulaney,

did you bite this nice man's dick?"

And I would be the only one who's like,

"Hey, doesn't anyone wanna know why...

his dick was near my

biters... in the first place?

Isn't anyone curious...

as to how I had access?"

Don't get me wrong, my parents

love us. They just didn't like us.

We weren't friends.

People are now like, "My

mom's my best friend."

I was like, "Oh, is she a super bad mom?"

My parents didn't trust us, and

they shouldn't have trusted us.

We were little goblins. We were terrible.

I remember, one time, we were

going to this resort for a vacation

when we were little kids.

Three weeks before we went to the

resort, my dad sat us down and he said,

"All right, we're going to a resort,

and I've just been informed that the man

who owns the resort only has one arm."

And we were like, "Oh, yes!

Yay! Yes!"

"Now, I'm telling you

three weeks in advance,

so that you will not freak out when

you see that he only has one arm."

"Oh, we're gonna freak out so bad!"

"Yes, John, you have a question?"

"How did he lose his arm?"

"That's exactly what you won't ask."

And then I did ask.

I went into the kitchen

one day, and I was like,

"So, how'd you lose your arm?"

And he was like, "Well, I

was born with only one arm."

And I was like, "Nah."

No, my parents loved us.

It's just, like, they

were the cops, you know?

And we were criminals.

So, we didn't get along.

We only got along in that way that, like,

cops will sometimes be

chummy with criminals.

Like, when my dad and I would talk, it

was like that scene in the movie Heat,

when Robert De Niro and Al

Pacino sit down in that diner.

We kind of had that rapport of, like,

"Hmm, we're not so different, you and I.

You have your law practice, and me,

I have all these f***ing markers."

"I guess we both have responsibilities

when you look at it that way."

My dad would respect it if I could

get away with breaking a rule.

We had a rule in our house,

you were not allowed to

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