Kid Gorgeous at radio city

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[organ music playing] Welcome to Radio City Music Hall. It’s time. Any questions? No. Walk with me. [eerie organ music playing] [mechanical whirring] [audience applauding and cheering] Good evening. Hi, I’m John Mulaney, nice to meet you. Jon Brion, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for coming to see me at Radio City Music Hall. I love to play venues where if the guy that built the venue could see me on the stage, he would be a little bit bummed about it. Look at this. This is so much nicer than what I’m about to do. It’s really… It’s really tragic. What a historic and beautiful and deeply haunted building this is. I keep walking through cold spots being like, “I wonder who that used to be.”

I’ve never seen a ghost, by the way. I asked my mom if she’d ever seen a ghost. That’s where we’re at conversation-wise in our relationship as a mother and son, because I’m 35 and I don’t have any children to talk about and she doesn’t understand my career. So I was home for Christmas and we were just eating Triscuits in silence and I was staring at the floor and I was like, “Well, here goes nothing. ‘You ever seen a ghost?'” And my mom said, “Yes.” Which is the best answer. She said, “I never told you this before but our house, when you were growing up, was haunted.” I said, “Say more right now!” She said, “Outside you and your brother’s room, I used to see the ghost of a little girl in a Victorian nightgown and then she would walk down the hallway and then she would evaporate.” And then my dad said, “Let’s change the subject!” And I think he was just doing that dad-thing of, like, “This is a weird topic and I want to talk about a book I read about World War II.” But the way it came off was that he definitely killed that little girl. “Let’s change the subject! Why are we even talking about Penelope… or whatever her name was? I didn’t kill her! Whoever did kill her only did it to protect her from this world.”

None of us really know our fathers. Anyway… My dad is so weird. I’d love to meet him someday. You know, my friend was telling me that his dad used to beat him with a belt and that’s just the setup to my story, so… Forget about that poor son of a b*tch. Anyway… He was talking and I was waiting for him to be done so I could talk. So he’s “talk, talk, talk.” It’s my turn next! And… [audience laughing] I said, “My dad never hit us.” My dad is a lawyer and he was a debate team champion. So he would pick us apart psychologically. One time I was at the dinner table when I was like six, because I had to be. My dad goes, “How was school today?” I said, “It was good but someone pushed Tyler off the seesaw.” “And where were you?” “I was over on the bench.” “And what did you do?” “Nothing. I was over on the bench.” “But you saw what happened?” “Yeah, ’cause I was over on the bench.” “So you saw what happened and you did nothing?” “Yeah, ’cause I was sitting over on the bench.” “Let me ask you this. In Nazi Germany…” [audience laughing] “…when people saw what the Nazis were doing and did nothing, were those good people?” “No, those are bad people. You gotta stop the Nazis.” “But you saw what they were doing to Tyler and you did nothing!” “Because I was over on the bench.” And then my dad said, “Just explain to me this. How are you better than a Nazi?” And then my mom said, “I made a salad with Craisins!” And the conversation ended.

My dad’s a very weird, informal guy. A lot of people ask me if he gave me a sex talk. Yes. I think. I was like 12 years old and my dad walked up to me and he said, “Hello… [chuckles] Hello, I’m Chip Mulaney. I’m your father.” And then he said the following, “You know, Leonard Bernstein… was one of the great composers and conductors of the 20th century, but sometimes he would be gay. And according to a biography I read of him, when he was holding back the gay part, he did some of his best work.” [audience laughing] Now we don’t have time to unpack all of that. And I don’t know if he was discouraging me from being gay or encouraging me to be a classical composer. But that is how he thought to phrase it to a 12-year-old boy. How would that ever work? Like years later, I’d be in college about to go down on some rocking twink and I’d be like, “Wait a second… What would Leonard Bernstein do?” I’ve never talked to my dad about that, but I figured I would tell all of you. [audience laughing]

This is so great. Thank you for coming. You’re here. That’s great. You all showed up. -[audience cheering] -I appreciate it. And then we showed up so you got to see the things that you paid to see. That’s great. You don’t always get to see the things that you paid to see. Ever been to the goddamn zoo? Those guys are never where they’re supposed to be. Every time I go to the zoo I’m like, “Hey, where’s the jaguar?” And the zoo guy is like, “He must be in the inside part.” The inside part? Tell him we’re here. [audience laughing]

I love doing stand-up for crowds because this right here, this reminds me of assembly in grade school. And assembly was the only part of school I ever liked. Once you leave school, you don’t get to have assembly. This is the closest we get in adult life to assembly. ‘Cause look at you all, you’re just sitting there in chairs, looking at a guy with absolutely no expertise, who’s going to talk for a while. Although this is different than assembly because you bought tickets, you knew this was coming. Assembly you never knew was coming when you were a kid. You just showed up at 8:00 a.m. and they were like, “Put down your stuff. Go to the gym.” You’re like, “God, I guess they’re finally going to kill us all. All right. This is younger than I thought I would be but we are pretty big a**holes.” You get to the gym and the whole school is sitting on the floor. You’re like, “What are we, about to graduate from Tuesday?” My principal would always come out to kick things off. She’d be like, “Children, rather than continue to teach you how to read, we have cleared the entire day for this random guy.” [imitating New York accent] “I used to smoke crack! As you seven and eight-year-olds probably know, freebasing is the greatest orgasm known to man. But I’m here to tell you there’s hope. I’ve been sober now two weeks. Well, weekdays, not weekends. Weekends, that’s Nunzio’s time.”

I was once in assembly listening to a guy talk about smoking crack. My social studies teacher yelled at me, “Sit up straight! Show some respect.” I was like, “He’s smoking cocaine.” “Sit up straight”? He’s standing on a 45-degree angle. Or, as junkies call it, first position. [audience laughing]

I always got yelled at at assembly. That’s right. There was always assembly and then, like, that second assembly to yell at you for how you behaved at the first assembly. They’d be like, “Get in here! Sit down. I want to talk about what happened yesterday.” You’re like eight years old, “What’s yesterday?” “We invite a woman here with homemade puppets to teach you about bullying through skits and you laugh at this woman? We noticed you had all been bullying each other and making fun of everything constantly. So we invite a woman with straight gray hair, in a denim dress, with a wrist-cast and homemade puppets that all have the same voice to teach you about bullying through skits, and you, ha-ha-ha, laugh it up. What was so funny about that woman? I want to know. What was so funny about when she couldn’t fit the box of puppets back into the trunk of her Dodge Neon? What was so hilarious that you all ran to the windows? Well, you all missed a valuable lesson on the danger of cliques.” “What’s a clique?” “It’s when a group of people hang out together.” “Oh, you mean like having friends?” “No, because these people make fun of other people.” “Oh, you mean like having friends?” [audience laughing]

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