Yeah, my kids...my kids are into Hanson now. Oh...you have no idea!
You know, kids like to play the same song over and over again...MmmmBop,
MmmmBop, MmmmBop. And the funny thing is, I've actually come to love
Hanson, because...and I'll tell you why, you know why? Because these kids
are a giant rehab festival just waiting to happen. Oh yeah! They are
going to crash and burn so quickly it's gonna be fuckin' great. Their
parents might as well call Liz and Gary Coleman right now and have a
meeting. I can't wait. Especially the drummer, what's he? Six? Oh
yeah...great...oh yeah, oh, he's going down, mark my words, oh yeah.
They're gonna find him in a hotel room with a hooker and an eight-ball,
mark my words! Mark my words. Yeah. He's gonna actually be all the way
up inside the hooker's vagina, y'know what I mean? They're gonna have to
pull him out..."C'mon out of there! What are you doing?" "I don't know!
I'm six and I have credit cards . what the fuck?"
Mmm-bop-eee-ooom-bop-eee-ooom-bop-eee-oom-bop...
I got good kids. Love my kids. Been trying to bring 'em up the right
way, not spanking 'em. Find that I don't have to spank 'em. I find that
waving the gun around pretty much gets the same job done. Because they're
trying to kill me, they are! Y'know, I try to explain the rules to them,
you know what I mean? But the rules go in one ear and out the other!
Close the door! How hard can that be to remember? Close the door? You
just opened it, close it behind you. I have a dog, I've seen him close
the door with his nose, and he's a DOG! Apparently a kid's dream house is
just a house with no doors. The leaves blow in, there's bats flying
around there, they don't care.
Start out with two kids, now we think there's twelve. Starting to
think that other parents are dropping their kids off at my house, so they
can puke, shit their pants, break stuff, and then leave. That's what the
dog told me. They are unbelie...y'know, if you don't have kids, I don't
know how to describe it to you, I really don't. I don't know how to
describe it to you. Y'know, it's like...uh...I don't know what it's like.
It's like...it's like having drunken midgets around the house, that's what
it's like, folks. That's what it's like. It's like a rodeo clown car
pulled up, and fifteen rodeo clowns got out, and they're running around,
and you can't catch 'em. It's like there's monkeys on acid hanging off
the lights, "Come down!" and you can't reach 'em, "Come down!"
You keep thinking that they're going to wake up one day and they'll go,
"Oh, now I know the rules." But they don't. Just like listening to
MmmmBop over and over again, every day is the same thing. It always
starts the same exact way. "Close the door...give me that bag of Oreos,
you're not having Oreos for breakfast...no TV right now...close the
door...no, leave the dog alone...will you please find your shoes...give me
that bag of Oreos...find your shoes...you put your shoes on...I don't know
where your shoes are...I didn't have your shoes on...close the door...put
that...no, don't cut the dog's hair right now...c'mon...those are HIS
shoes...go tell him you have his shoes and then find your shoes...close
that door...put the phone down, who are you calling? You're too young to
call anybody...don't feed Oreos to the dog...give me that bag of
Oreos...now, close that door...uh...yeah...no...no...no...no...those ARE
your shoes...they have to be! Who are you? I want ID...let me see some
ID."
And your life immediately, when they hit age 5, becomes about quiet.
You just want peace and quiet. That's all you want . you want the
fighting to stop, can't we all just get along? You turn into Rodney King,
you do! If you don't have kids, take this note down . don't buy the toys
that make the noise. That's the key thing. If there's a toy that has a
button on it that makes noise, they're going to press that button like
Bart Simpson, over and over again. For days at a time . WHAAA! WHAAA!
WHAAA! WHAAA! Their friends come over, "Hey, cool!" WHAAA! WHAAA! WHAAA!
WHAAA! Oh my God...so you stop buying the toys that make the noise, but
then you know what happens? The in-laws buy the toys that make the noise,
they drop them off at your house, and then they leave! And you're stuck
with the toys that make the noise.
You heard about the Darth Vader bank toy? Oooooooh... oooooooh, let me
tell you about this toy. So, don't buy this toy. Mark that down, too.
The toy is this bank, it's bigger than the kids, and it's Darth Vader,
he's standing like this [Darth Vader pose]. He's got that super-duper,
Oakland Raiders helmet on, y'know what I mean? Here's the gig with the
toy . the kids put money in the front of the mask, okay, and here's what
happens immediately after the coin goes in . [Darth Vader breathing
sounds]..."Use the Force, Luke...[Darth Vader breathing sounds]...for
fifteen fuckin' minutes! And they bring the other kids from the other
houses over, and they put money in. So it goes on for hours! [Darth Vader
breathing sounds]..."Use the Force, Luke...[Darth Vader breathing
sounds]...the third day, the mechanism breaks. Yes, so now it doesn't
need money to go off, it just goes off randomly in the middle of the
night. And at my house, my kids and my wife, they sleep like wood. Not
me, I'm an insomniac! I find myself, forty years old, naked, creeping to
go to the bathroom in my house like this...just so I don't have to hear
James Earl Jones' fucking voice. And right at the last step, right before
I go to the bathroom, I hear, "Denis! I'm on again! Come in here and
turn me off!!" I'm giving the finger to Darth Vader in the middle of the
night, it's not right! Shut up!! And now he's full of money, and we
can't get the money out, and he's still talking to us! "Haaaa...I have
all the money!"
Just want some peace. And quiet. I don't want the dangerous quiet,
you know what that is, right? That's the one during the day, when the
kids are in the house, you're in the kitchen reading the paper, right?
Reading the paper for about fifteen minutes, and slowly it dawns on you.
Heeeeeey...wait a minute...uh-oh. Go into the dining room, nobody in
there. Go to the living room, nobody. Go by the bedrooms and the
bathrooms, I hear this little voice inside the bathroom...it's my
daughter. I'm thinking, she doesn't like to baths at all, nevermind it's
three o'clock in the afternoon. What's she doing? I open the door, you
know what she's doing? Giving the dog a bath, in the toilet! Oh yeah,
she's soaping him up and singing away, la-de-de-de-da-de-de. And like
some weird Vegas magician, I gotta pull a dog out of a toilet. Like the
Great Learatini . "Look at this! I pulled a dog out of a toilet!" And no
explanation from her, "What was that about? Go to your room, don't touch
Darth Vader please, thank you."
My wife and I bought a home theater system. You don't have one of
these, you should get it. It's unbelievable. The big, giant widescreen
TV, there's like sixteen speakers, so you get the surround sound. You got
the big woofer on the ground, so it makes the floor shake when you listen
to Jurassic Park, right. It's got the big rack of stuff, the VCR and the
DVD and the Laserdisc player, and a bunch of other stuff, you don't know
what it is, but it looks fuckin' great! It's really shiny. Had it for
eight hours, okay? Eight . count 'em. Actually, it was only four hours,
'cause the guy was installing it for four hours. So I had it for four
hours, officially. Put the kids to bed, get a copy of Apocalypse Now.
Yeah...yeah...Dennis Hopper hopped up on coke in sixteen speaker surround,
that's great. I go to put the tap in...CLING CLING CLING CLANG...won't go
in...CLING CLING CLING...won't go in. Reach inside the VCR, you know
what's inside the VCR? Peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Peanut butter
and jelly SANDWICH. Smucker's strawberry . I tasted it! Now, I would
like to believe I don't have retards in my family bloodline. I'm hoping
it wasn't as stupid as "NOM NOM NOM, I'm finished with this, it goes in
HERE!" I'm hoping it was more thoughtful . "Maybe if I put this in here,
I can watch the peanut butter and jelly movie! You can really hear the
crunchy parts!!"
So, I wake 'em all up and I have a little People's Court session down
in my TV room at two o'clock in the morning. I'm your host, Ed
Koch...exhibit A, the sandwich...exhibit B, the VCR. Does anyone have an
explanation as to how this could've happened? You know what I get? I get
a sea full of dumbfounded faces. [Blank stare] My oldest one, my son
Jack, steps forward, "Dad...um...maybe...the sandwich was flying around
the house...it was flying around the house, and central headquarters
called them and told them to dock here in the VCR. They docked." "No
they didn't! Food does not dock. Pull up your pants." I look over in
the corner, the dog is eating the peanut butter sandwich, it's stuck to
the roof of his mouth...NOM NOM NOM. These are the people I live with.
It happened.
They wanted a dog. They had...the kids, they had a union meeting,
apparently. They came out of the union meeting, they picked a spokesman .
it was Jack, "We want a dog!" Great idea, I love dogs. You know what I
pictured . I pictured a big, giant, seven-foot tall, 350-pound Irish
wolfhound, huh? Named Buck..ARRRARRRARRARR. Gotta have three leashes and
people have to hold him down, "No, Buck! Put that mailman down!"
ARRRARRRARRRARRR. Buck, the scourge of the Upper West
Side...ARRARRARRARR. But, of course, they got the dog while I was away.
So we got a little tiny little black little faggy little half-Pomeranian
half-French Poodle little pound-and-a-half little thing that's supposed to
be a dog. I could throw this dog sixty yards, I guarantee you. "Run a
post pattern, go out, go go go...BAROOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!"
So I go okay, we can keep the dog, you guys like him. But y'know what?
We're going to have a democratic vote thing on the name. Me and your mom,
we're going to stay out here, we'll come up with some options. You kids,
go in that room, come out in five minutes with some ideas. Wanna hear
their top three ideas, that they came up with? Pretty hot...number one,
Chickenhead, I swear to God. Chicken. Head. Number two, Pizza. Number
three, Fish. Not Abe Vigoda, Fish. So I go, y'know what? Go back in the
room and come up with some other choices, okay? When we get a chicken, we
can call him Chickenhead, okay? But we're not calling the dog
Chickenhead. Chickenhead? Chickenhead? Oh, boy. So they come out,
about fifteen minutes later, they really worked hard. And they had an
agreement amongst themselves. They have one choice, and they want to name
the dog "Pongo", the dog from 101 Dalmations. Pongo. My wife goes,
"That's a great idea!" And I go, "Whoa...whoa...whoa...hold on a minute
with the Pongo! Hold on! Let's face the facts here: Saturday night at
midnight, in the middle of winter when it's snowing outside, you guys are
all gonna be asleep, and who's going to be walking Pongo down Broadway?
Huh? Me! Running along Broadway, 'Pongo! C'mere, Pongo!' No, it's not
happening. We're not naming the dog 'Pongo', out of the question!" Then
there was a fifteen minute cry...so his name is fuckin' Pongo. Of course
it is. Me and Pongo on Broadway on Saturday at midnight, "C'mon Pongo,
shit for daddy, c'mon. Shit for daddy, please? Oh, that's a big one.
Thank you, Pongo. Let me get my plastic bag out to scoop it up."
Fiiiiiiiiiine.
The phone...is something that you cannot explain to children. I don't
know what age it is when they finally pick it up. Probably when they
start dating, maybe that's when it is. But so far, none of the kids in my
family have figured out the phone. Even the idea, the theory of the
phone. It's always when you're on the phone that they want to talk to
you. And you're probably talking to some distant cousin in Killarny, it's
probably seventeen million dollars a nanosecond, that's when they walk up
to you when you're on the phone. "Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad?
Dad? Dad? Dad?" "I'm on the phone!" "Oh, dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad?
Dad?" "WHAAAAT! I'm on the fuckin' phone...I know fuckin's a bad word,
but you're fuckin' making me say it! How many times do I have to explain
this thing to you? Are you going to be a grown-up, be thirty-five years
old and go to the office, and go 'Boss! Boss! Boss! BOSS! BOSS!!
BOSS!!!' What?" "Can I have a cookie?" "It's Leary's kid . fire him, I
want him fired. He's the guy who put the sandwich in my VCR last week,
fire him!"
Me and their mom have been together now for fifteen years. Yeah, yeah,
we're all...you can applaud the pain. It's very difficult, it's hard, let
me tell you the key things you need to know to stay together that long.
Love, honor, respect, and stay the FUCK away from each other, really. As
much as you can. Get separate bedrooms if you can, that's the way to do
it. Just come out, eat, talk, fuck, go back in the separate rooms.
That's the best system I've come up with so far, folks. Don't fuckin'
bump into each other too much, that's what I'm saying. Key thing. And
for guys, learn this, even if you're just going to be living with a woman,
you're not even married to her. Give up any thought of being involved in
the interior decoration of the place you're going to live in, okay? Just
give it up! And all your stuff? Put it in a storage place, someplace
you're not gonna see it, you're gonna visit occasionally. All your
fuckin' sports mirrors and your beer mirrors . put 'em in storage. I've
been to Wayne Gretsky's house . he's got five MVP trophies...you know
where they are? They're in the fuckin' garage! I go into stores with my
wife now...man, forget about it. She'll say, "What do you think of those
chairs?" "I think they suck." "Too bad, we just bought eight of them,
asshole! Let's go!" "They're not that bad..." I'd like to tell you more
about my wife, but I'm not allowed to. I'm not alllloooooowwwwwed...It's
one of the ruuuuuules.
