John Mulaney: The Comeback Kid Page #6

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And her phone rang, and this

was her call, and I'm quoting.

Her phone rang and she said,

"Hello? Hush!" And then she hung up.

Think about that two times a week.

And I didn't know her well

enough by then to be like,

"Hey, what kind of a

person are you?" You know?

Who could she have been talking to?

"Hello? Hush!" This

was a place of business.

My only thought was that it was

the CEO of the company being like,

"Mischa, help. I'm

doing a crossword puzzle.

I need a four-letter word

for 'be quiet' right now."

- "Hush!"

- "You're promoted."

I temped at a little web company

on 25th Street in New York City.

It was a small web company

owned by this old man who was

old, old, old money New York.

His name was Henry J. Finch IV.

Like old, old, old money.

Like, his money was in

molasses or something.

He owned this web company.

I have no idea why he

owned this web company.

I think he won it in a rich man's game of

dice and small binoculars, or something.

Mr. Finch wore linen suits.

He had suspenders, he had

a bow tie, he had a hat,

he had a cane with an ivory handle.

I'm giving you more

description than you need,

'cause I need you to believe me.

This was a real person I

knew in the 21st century.

Mr. Finch was in his 70s.

He had an assistant named Mary.

She was in her 50s, she was Korean.

I don't know why he had an

assistant. He did not need one.

Unless he needed someone to be like,

"Remember, Mr. Finch, at five o'clock,

you need to keep looking

like a hard-boiled egg."

One day, Mr. Finch came into the office.

It had been raining.

Everything I'm about to say to you was

said in front of me on that afternoon.

Mr. Finch walked into the office,

and he was wearing a raincoat,

he was wearing a rain

hat, and he had his cane.

And he walked in and he

said, and I'm quoting,

"Ah!

One feels like a duck splashing

around in all this wet!

And when one feels like

a duck, one is happy!"

And then Mary yelled, "Ooh, ducklings!"

To which Mr. Finch replied,

"Too old to be a duckling. Quack,

quack." And then walked into his office.

I think about that every goddamn day.

I mean, imagine you're me.

You're a 22-year-old temp,

and you're so hungover,

and you just wanna die every day.

And then that happens in front of

you, and I don't know, gives you hope?

And I did that a little fast.

Let me break that

conversation down for you.

Mr. Finch walked in,

and he began a conversation

the way anyone would.

"Ah!"

"One feels like a duck splashing

around in all this wet!"

The rain.

"And when one feels like

a duck, one is happy!"

Now, that's debatable.

But rather than debate that point,

Mary brought up a new, separate,

but interesting point...

which was, "Ducklings!"

But Mr. Finch, ever the realist

about his own age and mortality...

said, "Ah, too old to be a duckling!"

As if to say, "My duckling

days are behind me.

Mary, don't you see?

I'm a duck now.

And to prove it...

Well, I'll say just about the most

famous catchphrase a duck has...

'Quack, quack.'"

And I knew right at

that moment, by the way,

that it meant nothing to

Mr. Finch, what he had said.

Crazy people are like that. They

have unlimited crazy currency.

Like, if I had gone into his office

a couple weeks later and been like,

"Hey, Finch, you remember

that time you were like,

'Too old to be a duckling. Quack, quack'?"

He would just be like,

"Ah, perhaps I did quack!

But such is life for an

old knickerbocker like me."

Like, he'd say something else crazy.

That's the wonderful thing

about crazy people, you know?

Is that they just have unlimited currency.

The things they say mean nothing to

them, but they mean everything to me.

I was once walking into

Penn Station in New York.

I was walking down 31st

Street towards Eighth Avenue.

I'm walking down 31st,

there's this woman

standing at Eighth and 31st.

I have my little roller

suitcase. You can all imagine.

I'm walking towards her.

She's smoking a cigarette

that is not lit anymore.

She's watching me walk, kind

of scanning me up and down,

as if she had Terminator vision...

where she could see

little bits of data, like,

"Little honky ass,"

and could read information.

As I walked past her, she said this to me.

I walked past her and

she said, and I'm quoting,

"Eat ass, suck a dick and sell drugs."

Very dirty, yes?

A very upsetting thing to hear, yes?

I'm sorry you all had to hear that,

but at least you all got

to hear it as a group.

I was alone out there that afternoon.

And she said this totally unprompted.

"Eat ass, suck a dick and sell drugs."

It wasn't like I had paused

in front of her and been like,

"What should I do with my life?"

So, I walk away from

her with this to-do list.

And I like structure, I like a to-do list.

It did dawn on me that that list of

things does get better as it goes along,

when you really think about it.

'Cause it starts in a pretty rough place.

It starts with just about the worst

task a to-do list can start with.

But by the end, you have

your own small business.

And isn't that the American

dream when all's said and done?

That if you eat enough

ass and suck enough dick,

one day you can sell drugs.

Imagine you did all that to sell

drugs and then they legalize drugs,

and you were like, "But I..."

This has been a real thrill

to perform here, by the way.

I just wanna say that in all

sincerity. Thanks for coming to this.

Really, really appreciate it.

I wanna tell you one more

story before I get out of here,

about the night I met a

guy named Bill Clinton.

Now, I don't... Some

of you know who that is?

For those of you that don't,

he was President of the United

States from 1993 until 2001,

and he is a smooth and fantastic hillbilly

who should be declared Emperor

of the United States of America.

Now, I know you know who Bill Clinton is.

But I was doing a show at a college,

and I mentioned Bill Clinton,

and, like, they kind of

didn't know who he was.

Like, sorry, they knew the name, right?

But they only knew this 2015 Bill Clinton,

who's a very different Bill Clinton.

Have you seen his ass lately?

What the hell is he trying to pull?

He's all thin now, and he

wears these little tight suits,

and he's got these grandpa

reading glasses, like,

"Hey, I can't do nothing

to nobody no more."

"Oh, me? I'm just an old, old man. I

don't have the appetites." You know?

And he's always flying around the world

with Bill Gates trying to cure AIDS.

That is not the Bill Clinton that

we all signed up for 20 years ago.

Our Bill Clinton was like a big, fat

Buddy Garrity from Friday

Night Lights-looking guy,

who played the saxophone on Arsenio,

and his work in the STD community was

not in curing anything at that time.

That was the man we all elected president.

That was the Bill Clinton that I met.

I got to meet Bill Clinton when

he was Governor Clinton in 1992,

when he was first running for president.

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