Ladies and gentlemen, from Harvest, Alabama, my son, Derrick Stroup.
How about it, baby?
All right!
Man. Thank y'all. Thank y'all so much. So excited to be here.
Originally from Harvest, Alabama.
Proud to be from Harvest.
And I've moved around a little bit.
Lived in Denver for ten years.
Now I live in New York City.
New York City is touch and go, I got to be honest.
Nobody believes that I live there.
I told the guy at the bodega,
I go, "Hey, man, I live here," and he goes, "Enjoy your visit."
And it's just wild, the type of reactions they have to Southern accents.
I think it's because Southerners, we visit New York City.
New Yorkers do not visit us.
When a New Yorker runs into us, it's like they've caught a Pokémon, man.
They cannot believe it.
They go, "Hey, this guy sounds like Huckleberry Finn!"
"How'd you get here? Did you ride a horse?"
"There's Black guys over there. You're cool with that, right?"
It's like the craziest reaction ever. It really is.
I mean, I know I sound like a bowl of gravy,
but I mean, I'm like, y'all sound like a traffic cone, man.
But it's working out, man.
We're trying to figure it out.
I enjoy the food in New York City so much.
Living in Denver for a decade, I went ten years without a good meal.
They're the most crunchy granola white people that we've got.
They don't eat how we eat.
They use food for energy, a concept I don't even understand.
I'm trying to take a nap after every meal.
I want to put myself down like an old dog, you know?
I want my eyes to fog over,
and the last thing I hear is somebody saying, "He was a good boy."
You should be eating whatever you want. The world's on fire.
If you watch the news and go, "I'll take a kale salad,"
you're sick in the head, man.
This is ice cream news, Fruity Pebbles news.
New York City's food works to my advantage.
I love salt so much.
I love sodium.
Sometimes I'll buy a bologna and just suck on it, you know?
When I get done eating dinner,
I want to take my socks off, and it looks like I still got 'em on.
And healthy people, you won't get that joke.
You've never seen your legs bottleneck before.
That's a good meal right there.
Pull your sock off, you can see the logo on it, you know?
Oh man.
I didn't know that salt was a problem.
When you grow up in the South, everybody warns you about sugar.
Everybody. Somebody'll roll up on a Rascal scooter.
They go, "You better not. You better watch out for sugar." You know?
And we go, "Okay, noted," you know?
I didn't know bad things about salt.
I thought everybody's hands fell asleep. I'll be honest.
I went to my family doctor in Huntsville, Alabama.
He ran my blood work and he goes, "Hey, son, you're all salt, man."
He goes, "I've never seen anything like it."
And he tried to break it down to me
in a way that he thought that I could understand.
He goes, "I own 47 acres, Derrick."
He said, "I feel like if I brought you to the middle of that,
you'd bring deer in."
And, uh, that's a joke that does not work in Manhattan.
Uh, yeah.
You got to find a tree line to tell that to.
I've tried to eat healthy.
I've been eating the wrong way for too long.
My stomach reacts to salads like some of y'all's reacts to Taco Bell.
It's like, "What is this? We've never seen a carotte."
I don't know what a carrot is.
Sometimes I need some chicken fingers to get back on my feet again.
When I was in Denver, they'd all tell me, "You need a smoothie."
"You need a juice drink. You need some juice."
I was like, "If I have any more juice and somebody bumps into me,
I'm gonna poop my britches, man."
I'm not built for juice. Children are built for juice.
If I have two cups of apple juice back-to-back, I'm fighting for my life.
And, you know, they'll go, "It's a cleanse."
I go, "I know diarrhea when I run into it."
The only difference in diarrhea and a cleanse is
you see one of 'em coming, you know?
I don't know.
It was the same… You know, it's…
When I say Colorado, I mean hipsters, you know?
I don't have a problem with hipsters. They've just never helped me.
They're the same people that said I need a deodorant without aluminum.
I need all the aluminum. I do.
I tried that hippie deodorant that runs off of tree bark and friendship.
I need something that fights for me.
When I take a hot shower, I want to feel my armpits burn, man.
I look for rashes.
I go, "Good, good. Rash it up."
Oh man. I mean, hipsters are… They're fine people,
but I feel like they're bringing back a lot of things that we've already got.
Like they made hard seltzer popular.
We've been drinking hard seltzer
in the Midwest and the South our whole lives.
It's called Busch Light.
You talking 'bout a little water, a little alcohol, a little seltzer.
We've been doing that.
Some guy with a beanie on put it in a skinny, tall can,
and now he's the hero, huh?
That hurts my feelings, you know?
But I do love to eat, man.
I'm from a large Southern family.
And there's not many of us. We're just heavy breathers.
We have a classic move. We use low sugar to our advantage.
We don't even have low sugar. We tell people we do.
We go, "My sugar's low. My sugar's low."
And if you don't bring us a piece of pie, you're a bad person.
My dad's done it my whole life.
He's bigger than I am. Six-three, 300 pounds.
We'd be out in the yard working.
He'd go, "Hey, man, I need to head to the house."
"My sugar's low."
I can remember looking at him, thinking, "Man, it looks high, man."
I mean, you look like a Butterfinger with boots on, Bill.
You look like you've had most of the sugar.
I'm from one of those families when we get done eating dinner,
it looks like there was a carbon monoxide leak in the living room.
My mother's face-first on the sofa.
My dad's holding the remote.
He lost his consciousness 'cause the gravy was too thick.
But y'all know how we are, man.
Big people, we'll fall asleep right after a meal.
Our sugar dips, and we just go down.
But about 20 minutes later, we'll climb out of that fog,
and we'll go, "Hey!"
"I could use something sweet if you got it."
"Just like a little half piece of pie should get me back on my feet again."
Oh man. It's fun talking about this stuff.
New York City is an interesting place.
I mean, I live in Queens.
Me and my wife, we've got a nice little apartment.
It's me, her, and some mice. We're figuring it out.
I've dealt with mice before, but not New York City mice.
They're built different.
I mean, these mice… I've never seen mice with their hats on backwards.
Uh, it's crazy.
I opened up the cabinet. I threw rat poison in there.
One of 'em picked it up, started using it as war paint, man.
Another one bit the top off and rolled it out like a grenade.
These mice are different.
And I'll tell you, I tried to get rid of these mice at first with glue traps.
And let me tell you something. Glue traps are for psychopaths.
I'm a lifelong hunter.
I wasn't worried about killing these mice, but glue traps are different.
I was in the living room watching TV.
One of the mice came in. He was dragging a glue trap with his leg.
He goes, "Kill me like a man!"
And he just drug the trap into the other room.
I mean, have y'all ever seen a mouse shake its head with disgust?
No, a glue trap only does half the job.
Now you walk in and there's a mouse just sitting there, blinking,
going, "What now? Now what's your move, big dog?"
"Oh, you're gonna stomp on me then go eat dinner?"
"You got problems, buddy."
We're figuring it out, man.
I, uh… As you can tell, I get worked up pretty easy.
I, uh, I run hot, man.
I'm an emotional person. I always have been.
And people don't expect that with Southerners, but we hide it well.
We're just waiting to be mad at you. I can promise you that.
I'm the type of person that if I'm at a crosswalk
waiting to go across the street,
if you come up behind me and press the button,
it's hard for me not to turn around and ask you,
"Do you not think that I've already done that?"
"Do you think I was just standing here going,
'What if there's an easier way to get to the other side?'"
'Cause I'm gonna assume that you think I'm too dumb to cross the street.
Those are the same people that'll come up
and press an elevator button that is clearly lit up.
It's clearly lit up!
I'm not waiting here outside of the elevator like,
"Come on, level five. Get hot, man."
"Come on, land on five one time. Treat me right."
And we've just got to deal with these people, man.
I mean, like another thing,
if I let you over in traffic and you don't thank me,
I feel like I should be able to follow you home.
I'm not gonna do anything crazy.
I just wanna ask you in your driveway, "Do you think you're better than me?"
"No, just tell me the truth. Do you think you're better than me?"
It's tough, man.
It is. I can't bring this up in real life, you know?
People go, "He's a psychopath. He's a psychopath."
So I have to take edibles and say it into a microphone, you know?
Like, I fly all the time.
I hate flying.
But when you have my accent and you tell people you hate to fly,
they assume you do not know how airplanes work.
They go, "Oh, they're so safe."
Blah, blah, blah. I go, "That's not what I'm talking about."
"I'm talking about flying with you, Diane."
"That's what I'm talking about."
Like, here's the thing lately.
I think middle seat people have lost their minds.
I don't know who lied to middle seat people,
but you have no armrests, okay?
We share our armrests out of the goodness of our heart,
but you have no…
And the energy that these middle…
Middle seat people are barely on the flight, okay?
They're the only seat in every row that if they don't show up, we celebrate.
We take a picture of their empty seat.
We put it on Instagram, and we go, "What a Tuesday, man."
You ever seen a middle seat person pull out a laptop?
It's the craziest thing I've ever seen.
It's so hard for me not to look at them and go,
"Hey, nobody's in an office waiting on a middle seat email, okay?"
"If anybody cared about your email, you'd be in the aisle, big dog."
I mean, it's hard for me.
I just want to reach over and just close the laptop
and go, "You need to get your Kindle out, okay?"
"You need to read a story."
And all this confidence comes from me being an aisle seat guy.
I'm the captain of my row.
It is my row.
And some of y'all go, "How's that work?" I can break it down for you.
You want to go to the bathroom?
You're gonna have to go through your boy first.
Yeah. You want a snack?
I'll hand you a Biscoff when I get to it,
'cause the flight attendant's gonna give me snacks
to give to my team when I'm ready.
When the plane lands, what do we do, aisle seats?
We stand up. You already know.
Middle and window seats, they hate it 'cause they look like goblins under there.
There's nowhere to go. There's nowhere to go.
They bang their head. They bang their head.
I go, "Get back in there!"
"You'll get off this plane when all the aisles do."
The more I travel this great country, I do realize
that there is a mental health situation.
There are no resources like we used to have.
I wish there was.
You know, back in the '80s,
if you yelled on a street corner for long enough,
they'd eventually drive you up the hill.
That does not exist anymore.
That's why, my solution, I feel like we should bring back cigarettes.
No, we were better people when we smoked 'em.
We smoked 'em at the wrong time.
We smoked 'em when the world was great,
when brick homes were $60,000, healthcare was affordable.
We need Marlboros now.
And I know there's somebody in this crowd right now going,
"I can't believe he's doing a pro-cigarette bit."
And I'm probably talking to you, Carol.
You're on box wine and Xanax.
You could use a Camel and a long walk worse than any of us.
Nobody has ever smoked a cigarette
and came back a worse version of themselves.
You're gonna get a better version of them.
Nancy's smiling. Her teeth are yellow, but she's happy.
I don't smoke cigarettes, but I was raised by two people that do.
I don't need science for this bit.
I've seen cigarettes walk people off a ledge.
Some of y'all haven't.
Some of y'all have never seen a cigarette save Thanksgiving.
It's a real thing.
Aunt Sharon was about to say something
that was gonna turn that dining room upside down,
but instead she grabbed her leather pouch,
she went out on that porch, and she made a business decision.
Now she's in the kitchen working on the gravy.
That's how cigarettes work.
These youngsters, they don't understand.
These vape pens don't buy you any time.
You get to that cotton candy immediately.
With a Winston 100, you can assess the situation.
You go, "What's everybody mad at, man?"
"I don't know why they got these attitudes."
I mean, back in the day, you'd see somebody outside of a 7-Eleven
knocking down a cigarette, walking in small circles.
You knew to give them a minute.
They were trying their best to make a good decision.
My old man still smokes Marlboro Reds till this day.
Yeah. I was raised by a Bill.
If you know one Bill, you know every Bill you've ever met.
I don't know why, but they're all pretty similar men.
They're all somewhere right now with their shirts tucked in,
looking out a window, going, "Nobody wants to work anymore."
He did what a lot of people did back in the day,
back before we paid thousands of dollars to talk to strangers about our problems.
People used to light up cigarettes and talk to themselves.
It was truly the first form of therapy.
My old man, he would get off of work. He'd never hurry inside.
He'd climb out of his truck. He'd go walk into the front yard.
Bill would light one up and stare at a tree until he cared again.
Sometimes it would take two, but eventually he'd drop it on the ground.
He'd put it out. He'd go, "You know what? I'm gonna go hug 'em."
'Cause that's what cigarettes do. They bring you full circle.
I don't know why hipsters haven't brought back cigarettes.
They've brought back everything else.
You're gonna wear all that denim, ride bicycles,
listen to Bob Seger on vinyl.
Light a dart, scholar.
Nothing goes better with denim than cigarettes.
It's one of the best plays we've ever ran.
Half this room is here because of denim and cigarettes.
Yeah, I mean, it's just the truth.
I mean, some of y'all still don't like this bit.
And I'll be honest, in 1972,
your mama did.
I did this joke in Cleveland, Ohio, just not long ago.
After the show, I'm walking through the parking lot.
This gentleman, he flags me down.
He goes, "Hey, man. Hey, that cigarette bit."
He goes, "It's unbelievable."
He goes, "I'll be honest. I don't know how it ended."
"I had to step out and have one."
Probably the best review I've ever gotten in my life.
Oh man. It's been a great year.
I've, uh, been a really lucky guy. A lot of great things have happened to me.
Got married for the first time at the beginning of the year,
so that's so fun.
Yeah.
I'm 40 years old. I've been on the run for a while.
You got to eventually turn yourself in.
You know, if you're from the country,
if you don't get married in your 20s, they start making up rumors about you.
They go, "No, man, it's not a big deal. He's always been a candle guy."
I've got a good woman though. She's from Kansas.
Everybody should get a partner from Kansas.
They're very easy to impress.
She's from a town of 89 people.
I show her a four-story building, she's like, "How'd they get up there?"
And I'm like, "Elevators, baby. I'm gonna show you the world."
And listen, I know being from Alabama
and making fun of Kansas is a lateral move. I get that.
That's not lost on me.
But when you grow up in the South,
everybody tells you you live in the middle of nowhere.
And then we go and visit the Midwest, and we realize we've been lied to.
No, where I'm from, we talk different and our food's fried,
but we can see our neighbors.
There's parts of the Midwest that if you got the flu,
that'd be the last flu you ever got.
There's no medical care. It's like the Oregon Trail.
They're gonna give you a warm rag and sing a hymn.
Kansas is the flattest place I've ever been. I mean, it really is.
I do feel like every prison in the country should be in Kansas.
You could watch an inmate run away all weekend.
Could you imagine the conversation in the guard tower?
He's like, "Listen, Jason, don't shoot him."
"I like to watch 'em give up."
"Yeah, there's nothing out there. Look at him. He's scared to death, Jason."
"He's running back towards us."
Oh man.
Could you imagine running away from a prison for three days,
turning around and still being able to read the address?
That hurts your feelings, you know?
Oh man.
My wife, she'll travel with me sometimes, which is fun.
Like before we moved to New York City, we took a visit.
I'd been there a bunch for comedy.
Alyssa had never been there.
We went down to Times Square. It's a sight to see, you know?
We're looking around. Alyssa goes, "Derrick, I'll be honest."
"There's more Amish people here than I expected."
And I go, "Alyssa, those are Jewish people."
I go, "I know it's tough to tell from 50 yards away,
but you've got the wrong Abraham there."
And to get this joke, you've got to understand
what a Hasidic Jew and an Amish person looks like.
Some of y'all don't.
Some of y'all heard my accent and the word Jew,
and you went, "I'm gonna sit this one out."
Jewish people know that's a zinger.
Amish people love it too. I did that joke in Pennsylvania.
They got on their horses. They go, "Now that's comedy right there."
"That's something we can make butter to, you know what I mean?"
It's been a big year, man. Things are moving fast.
Me and my wife, we got a baby coming, so we're so excited.
Yeah.
I got to tell you,
I did not know, as a heavyset man,
I'd be so helpful in my wife's pregnancy.
Everything she's going through, I've already been through.
I mean, everything.
I mean, there's a whole list of things. She came into the bedroom.
She goes, "Derrick, I can't sleep on my stomach or my back."
I go, "Me either, Alyssa." And I had to teach her.
I go, "You got to put a pillow between your thighs."
I go, "You're gonna have to ski down that mountain."
She goes, "Derrick, my hips, they hurt."
I go, "I know. You got to flip more, Alyssa."
She's learning.
Side sleepers, we'll find a bad mattress quicker than anybody in the room.
You people on your back, you'll wake up the next day.
"I think I feel…"
No, I'll be on my side for ten minutes. I go, "How many springs is in this, man?"
I mean, my legs locked up.
Everything she's going through, she goes, "Derrick, none of my clothes fit."
I go, "Will it ever end?" You know?
I told her, I said, "Our dryer's running hot."
All my polos look like crop tops, you know?
I'm one of those big guys where I've never gained weight.
The dryer's running too hot.
I go, "My jeans, I can't get…"
"What, we got it set on hell? What's going on?"
"My britches have shriveled up. They all look like capris, Alyssa!"
Everything she's going through.
I mean, I'm what the doctor ordered.
She goes, "Derrick, I'm starting to chafe pretty bad."
I go, "My goodness." I go, "You're talking to the right guy."
I said, "I've been chafing since '91."
I had to teach her about Gold Bond, you know?
I go, "Hey, listen,
you're gonna smell like Papaw, but you're gonna be on the move."
"You're gonna be on the move!"
And I go, "Listen."
I go, "If you got a dress on, Alyssa, don't put too much on and sit down."
"You'll be covered in it. Okay?"
"A dab will do you, you know?"
No, I love… We all know about Gold Bond.
I thought that was my dad's cologne until I was 14.
I go, "My dad's got a little menthol smell to it."
"Just a little menthol smell."
I'd walk in Walgreens, I'd go, "Daddy!"
No, it's just Gold Bond.
It's fun talking about these things, man.
It is. The dynamic of our relationship has changed.
We're one of those couples where I'm usually a lot bigger than my wife.
We don't really match up, if you will.
We're one of those couples that when you see us come, you go,
"Man, he… must be funny, man."
"He, uh…"
"I can't imagine how silly that man is."
And how she'll love on me. If I drop something on the ground,
she'll pick it up so all the blood doesn't rush to my head.
That's how you love on big people.
She doesn't watch me fight with that recliner.
She'll grab the billfold for me.
That's love.
But now we got a pretty similar build, the dynamic has changed.
A few weeks ago, I dropped something on the ground,
and it was a standoff.
Uh, we were both looking at it like,
"Somebody's gonna have some blood rush to their head."
Earlier this week, she dropped an ice cube on the ground.
She went to go pick it up.
I go, "Alyssa, we don't pick up ice cubes."
I go, "Nobody picks up ice cubes."
"Ice cubes live under the fridge!"
She goes, "What happens after that?"
I go, "It turns into water and into mold. Nobody cares."
But it's been a fun journey.
I've gained 17 pounds during my wife's pregnancy.
They said you should get some partner weight,
but I'm truly showing out.
I mean, I'm in a higher percentile than our baby is.
And it's wild. We're sitting in the doctor's office,
and she goes, "Derrick, my breasts are getting so big."
And I go, "Alyssa, I don't know if you've noticed,
but I got some hammers on me now too."
I go, "Your boy's got some dogs on him."
I go… And I had to explain to her, I go, "I can't keep eating like this with you."
I go, "You're gonna kill me, okay?"
I had to draw the line. She didn't understand.
I said, "Your journey is not permanent, all right?"
"You're renting your property."
"I own this land."
"You're gonna have a baby and lose 40 pounds."
"I can't take a dump and get rid of this."
"This is the new me."
Elastic Khaki Stroup. It's your boy.
No, man. We're having fun.
It's a little bit of a scary time to, uh, bring a kid into the world,
but I'm excited for the experience, you know?
Yeah, I really am.
I mean, there's some things, you know, that, uh,
that he's gonna miss out on, that we really got to enjoy.
Because, listen, I'm a '90s kid, born in '84, raised in the '90s.
Yeah!
I'm a proud '90s kid.
We were the last generation to not be ruled by the internet.
The last ones to know where our friends were,
by the bikes in the yard.
These kids these days, they don't know real jealousy.
They've never been riding their bike through a neighborhood,
turned the corner and found out that everybody was swimming at Jason's.
There was no group chat in '89.
You just ran into it, you know?
And I think the internet does a lot for adults.
I think it steals from kids, their imagination, their core experiences.
So I thought of some things that we went through
that helped make us who we are that they're missing out on.
Like do you remember back in the day when you had a crush on somebody?
You'd have to call the house and talk to a parent
before you talked to your crush.
I'd like to bring that back.
None of this dodging and weaving and texting.
You got a crush on Hannah, let's earn it, big dog.
You remember how nervous we would be for that phone call?
I'd be in the kitchen by the phone like, "Stay loose right here, Derrick."
"Her grandmother might answer. Be ready to pivot." You know?
I can still hear that phone call till this day.
He'd answer the phone. "Yello!"
And I'd go, "Uh, is Hannah home?"
He'd go, "Yeah, buddy, she's running around here somewhere."
He'd go, "Uh, who am I speaking with?"
You'd go, "This is Derrick Stroup."
He'd go, "Nice to meet you, Derrick. I'm Geoff Turner."
"I'm Hannah's father."
"So why are we calling my daughter tonight?"
Y'all remember that?
These kids are not built for that direct a communication.
Not these days.
If that happened to one of y'all's kids, they'd hand you the phone.
They'd go, "Geoff wants to talk to you."
Back in the day, we had to stay in the saddle, figure it out,
send old Geoff a line, you know?
I'd go, "Well, I was gonna ask Hannah a question about math."
And this was not Geoff's first rodeo. He'd go, "Derrick,
you're not gonna believe this, buddy, but I'm pretty good at math myself."
Nowhere to run to, nowhere to hide.
The only thing that'd eventually save you would be
a mother in the background that would go, "Geoff, that's enough!"
"Hannah's crying in the dining room."
"You don't know when to quit, Geoff. It's not funny to us."
And then you got to hear a grown man get in trouble, which was cool, you know?
You go, "Yeah, Geoff. Go away, Geoff with a G."
It's fun looking back on these experiences, man.
I was a bus rider growing up.
I think that helped mold who I am today.
Some of y'all were car riders. I know it when I meet you.
Your hands are soft. You're not built like a bus rider.
Car riders, your day started off with a lunch bowl and a high five.
The last thing you saw was a minivan full of love.
Bus riders, our day started off with death threats.
"If you miss the bus, so help me!"
I was in there ironing my pants. They're on me.
I'm going, "Oh my goodness."
And the bus back in the day was lawless.
I grew up out in the country. My bus was K through 12.
-The whole school was on one bus. -Yeah!
It should not be that way.
We grew up fast.
I was a third-grader sitting next to tenth-graders.
I was hearing words I didn't understand,
sentences I couldn't comprehend.
They was all going right over my head.
I went home and told my strict father, looked him right in the face, I went,
"Hey, Dad, for Christmas, I want two hand jobs."
I didn't even know what they were.
I go, "I'll cut the grass. We can work something out."
"Everybody that's had one on the bus, Dad, they love 'em, man."
You should've seen Bill.
He couldn't believe I was going to hell so young.
That's because the bus was the internet before the internet ever existed.
It was Google on wheels,
and the further you went on the back of that bus,
the deeper in the internet you got.
That last row was the dark web.
There'd be some seventh-grader back there
with some burned CDs and a Black & Mild, you know?
I was just a little Christian kid.
I was like, "Oh, I've, uh, I've never heard of Three 6 Mafia."
"Wow."
"Bawk bawk chicken chicken. That's crazy."
Some of y'all don't know. Listen.
You car riders, you do not understand that long ride to school
when you miss the bus
and your family acts like everybody's jobs are up for grabs.
My mother, she'd be smoking her cigarette, driving me to school.
"Now your daddy's gonna be 15 minutes late."
"I'mma be 20 minutes late. If he loses his…"
"Don't roll that window down. We're gonna smoke this together."
"You don't care about anybody but yourself."
"That's the problem."
You remember how small the crack in the window was?
Our parents were so scared
the wind was going to take a pull off of their Marlboro.
They didn't want to share even a little bit of it.
They'd have it cracked this much.
They go, "Well, we might as well let the wind just have the rest of it."
I like talking to kids who grew up with parents that smoked.
We have similar lives, you know.
We're the same people.
We went down to the bottom of our backpack
looking for our homework.
It was… I mean, we came up with a goatee and a buzz, man.
It smelled like menthols at the bottom of that JanSport.
It's fun talking about these things, man.
I think we could help these kids out by, you know, bringing…
We should bring back overreacting, you know?
My parents really knocked it out of the park.
We should bring it back.
I mean, my old man, he was the best at it.
You'd just forget to take out the trash. You'd walk out of the garage.
Bill'd be standing in the driveway
in a pair of gym shorts that didn't really matter that he had on.
And he'd go, "Hey, man."
"Me and your mother have tried. I want you to know that."
He goes, "One day, when you don't have a job,
don't look around and ask how this happened."
"It starts with the small things."
You're sitting there going, "There's no way
that this is about a trash bag, man."
My old man, he'd get so mad, he'd refer to my mother as his wife.
Y'all ever have that happen?
He goes, "Hey, you're not gonna talk to my bride that way."
And you go, "We're not… That… Uh… We're not a family anymore?"
He starts acting like he barely knows you.
"Me and my woman are living an honest life!"
"We don't know where you came from!"
You're like, "I'm the oldest of three, Dad."
In hindsight, I kind of think
that my mom loved when my dad put on like that.
You ever grown up and looked back
and thought maybe there was a little theatrical stuff going on?
I know when I walked out of the room, my mom was like,
"They don't respect me like they respect you, Bill."
"When you get worked up like that, my goodness gracious!"
"No, come here. Come here, you little overtime rascal."
"I love when you act like that. That vein pops out."
"And did you see how scared Will was? He was like…"
I don't think these kids these days are bad kids.
I refuse to subscribe to the notion
that every generation behind us is a bad batch.
They're a different group, that's for sure.
I mean, you know, it's just a different time.
I haven't seen a kid get spanked in a grocery store in a decade.
No, that's where you used to watch some pretty good live whuppings go on.
You'd just be pushing your cart through Bruno's, cruising right along.
You'd look down the aisle. There'd be a kid just getting wore out.
And you'd go, "You know what?"
"I'm gonna go get chips in a little bit," you know?
I mean, back in the day, other parents would chime in.
You'd be getting spanked, and another parent would go,
"And that's why you listen to your mother."
You'd be like, "Who are you? Who are you?"
"I don't even know you."
I think the main problem with these kids these days,
in my opinion, is they've never been bored.
They don't even understand what being bored is.
They don't know.
Like my nephew, he came up to me.
He was on a hoverboard, holding a tablet.
He goes, "Uncle Derrick, I'm bored."
And I go, "Joseph, it looks like you're from the future, man."
"You look like the most unbored person I've ever seen in my life."
They don't even know what it is.
They've never rode in the back of a car on an eight-hour family trip
with no electronics,
just looking out the window going,
"If we play I Spy again, I'm gonna kill myself."
When's the last time you saw kids dodging trees with their hands, man?
I have done that up and down Highway 65 my whole life.
I'd be in the back seat, then you'd hit a tree line.
That was entertainment.
There's not sibling violence like there once was
'cause they're overstimulated.
Back in the day, we could only play outside for so long
until we'd look at our brother and we'd go,
"You know what? I'm gonna send it, man."
And your mother would go, "Why did you do that?"
You'd go, "Because you gave us sidewalk chalk
and we have a gravel driveway."
"I made a business decision. That was a lot more fun."
"And as you can see, I did fold him."
These kids have never been bored.
That's why they don't understand the games we played.
And we made up all of our own games.
Looking back, they're a little different, and some of 'em don't make any sense.
I mean, one of the games that we made up that still exists today is ridiculous.
And I mean, it goes like this right here.
Yeah.
What's crazy is I "O" every one of y'all.
This game is ridiculous, and it's still alive.
I was at a wedding last year in New Orleans.
Saw a childhood friend. I go, "Man, Trey!"
I haven't seen Trey in forever.
Trey goes, "How about this, buddy?"
I go, "Are you kidding me? We're 40 years old."
He goes, "Isn't it crazy, man?"
The games we'd play. Some of 'em weren't even real games.
Your buddy'd come over. You'd go, "Jeremy's here. What's up, big dog?"
"Up here. Cup check! Ha-cha!"
And Jeremy'd go, "Why'd you do that?"
You'd go, "We don't have Call of Duty, man."
That was a drone strike on your care package.
They don't understand.
These kids. You don't see titty twisters anymore.
Back in the day, we had to keep our head on a swivel, man.
If you grabbed a kid today, tried to give him a titty twister,
he'd go, "Safe space."
Back in the day, we'd be cruising through our grandmother's house.
Your cousin would hop out and light you up.
And then he'd grab your other nipple
and he'd go, "Hey, jumper cables," you know?
And you'd learn a little bit about yourself.
You'd go, "You know, I don't hate this, Ricky, but you're rough, buddy."
"I wish you'd hang on, but let go, you know?"
"How about some finesse?"
We took regular playground games, turned 'em into the Thunderdome.
Red Rover. Red Rover got physical.
I mean, it really did.
We'd go, "Red Rover, Red Rover, send Kevin right over."
Kevin would think it was a normal afternoon
till he got about right there.
And then at the last minute, we'd tighten our grip.
Hi-yah!
Welcome to the jungle, Kevin!
Now Kevin's on his back. He swallowed his retainer.
You gotta be a certain age to remember the dodgeball we used to play with.
That ball that was, like, made out of tire tread.
You know, it was heavy, but it still bounced, you know?
When they made it in the factory, they were like, "Yeah, this'll hurt 'em."
I can still hear that ball bounce off a kid's head till this day.
You'd hear that "dong."
That ball'd go 50 feet in the air. That kid would be over there.
I miss the old-school PE teachers we used to have,
the ones that didn't even have degrees.
It was just somebody the community trusted.
We had Coach Sykes, man.
Coach Sykes, he'd be over in the corner with a tucked-in Jimmy Buffett shirt,
sneaking a cigarette.
That kid would be on the ground flopping like a fish, taking a ball to the head.
Coach would walk up to him. "Hey. Hey. Look at me."
"You're out. Yeah."
"I know that hurts. Life hurts, man."
"Wait till a woman leaves you. That'll sting."
We were 11 years old like, "When a woman leaves us?"
I hope Little League coaches and people in that capacity
still drop off little gems like that to kids.
Growing up in the '80s and '90s, you'd have those coaches, man,
they'd smell like a little Polo Green, a little Busch Light, you know?
They'd be your third-base coach. You'd hit a triple, slide in.
They'd go, "That's what I'm talking about."
"Way to hit the ball. Look at me, son."
"Do not ever get married, okay?"
"All right, here we go. Two, three, look alive!"
Oh man.
It's fun looking back on this stuff, man.
It really is.
The game Twister was a wild one.
It really was.
I mean, I was shocked we were allowed to play Twister growing up.
In the home I grew up in, they wouldn't…
I had a crush on Ashley. They wouldn't let me near her.
And then they would pull out Twister.
And they'd go, "Hey, Ashley, come touch the yellow dot."
Then they'd go, "Hey, Derrick, come sit on Ashley's neck and touch the blue dot."
They'd pull it out at the youth group.
I'd go, "Finally, this Sunday's going my way, you know?"
I'm upside down under a dress leading the points.
This is crazy.
Twister should be for single 30-year-olds that can't figure it out.
We pull out Twister and we go,
"Everybody that struggles with eye contact and wants a family, grab a dot."
The pantsing game was the craziest game.
No rules, no teams, just a weird curiosity.
And there was some hard lessons learned.
We all didn't hit puberty at the same time.
I remember we pulled down Tony Johnson's pants and we went,
"Hey, Tony, you can't play with us anymore."
I go, "We're all still kids, Tony. You clearly have a family."
It was a wild game, man.
And it was out of control. You'd be talking to your principal.
Your best friend'd come up and go, "How about this right here?"
And you know what, the timing?
That the popularity of wind pants and pantsing collided in the '90s.
You couldn't find a leather belt in '96.
Our pants either ripped off with snaps or slid to the ground.
It was warfare in middle school.
I was 10 years old, white-knuckling my gym shorts.
I was like, "I'm not ready. Let mine cook a little longer, man."
The weirdest thing about that game is they'd pull your pants down,
point at you and go, "You're gay" and take off running.
You remember how confusing that was?
You were like, "There's no way I'm gay!"
"That happened very fast."
I was so confused. It didn't make sense to me.
I was like, "Is this what happened to Elton John? This is crazy."
Somebody pulled his pants down, and he went, "You messed up, man."
"I'm gonna write 'Tiny Dancer.' Yeah. Make a career out of it."
It's fun looking back on this stuff, man.
I've grown up a lot since then. A lot's happened, you know?
Like I haven't drank in five years.
Really excited about that. Yeah.
I, uh, I mean, I'll have a beer, like, once a year
because I'm terrified of being completely sober.
'Cause my friends that are, they're insufferable, you know?
"I'm rooting for you, Chris, but if you tell me your story again,
I'm gonna have to take a shot to hear it," you know?
"You're pushing me the other way."
And I know that sounds like a tough take,
but my friends that have beaten hard drugs are the most humble people I've ever met.
I got a buddy that beat heroin in 2012. His testimony's strong now.
And he will not share it unless he thinks you need to hear it.
We're never out to eat
and I order soup and he goes, "Hey, Derrick,
you know that spoon's gonna get me."
There's some good Christians that will not get that joke.
It is a zinger.
No, I, uh, I wasn't an alcoholic.
I got into mine in a different avenue. Um…
Fifteen years ago, I got two DUIs in six months.
And I say six months 'cause it sounds better than four.
And I don't condone drinking and driving at all,
but I did get my DUIs when we were still fighting for ourself.
There was no Uber or Lyft.
I mean, and if you're under the age of 30, you don't understand this.
You've never seen your DD black out before.
It's very scary.
Tyler promised us he wouldn't drink. Tyler lied to us.
And it took some teamwork back in the day, you know?
And also, people, when I do this bit, they'll go, "What about a taxi or a cab?"
And growing up in Harvest, Alabama, it's hilarious to hear that.
Where I'm from, cabs are in the back of trucks, okay?
And taxis are on Seinfeld.
If you got left at the bar,
you either lived there now or you drove home.
And we didn't break up back in the day. We didn't splinter off our group.
We went out together, we went home together.
These people these days are the kings and queens of the Irish goodbye.
Back in the day, if you got done drinking early, too bad.
You just had to grab a Sprite and watch Daniel dance.
And it took teamwork to get home.
Now we're outside of the bar with four of our best friends.
We know if we don't get a Mexican pizza, we could die as a group.
You go, "Hey, Jeremy, can you drive?"
And Jeremy goes, "I can no longer hear you!"
And you go, "Oh no, Jeremy's had so many Jägerbombs, Jeremy's deaf, man."
And then you go, "Hey, Brandon, can you drive?"
And Brandon goes, "If I can get a Gatorade and some Cheez-Its, I can lead us."
And you go, "Zip your pants up, Brandon. You're driving, buddy."
They don't under… These kids these days,
they've never been stranded at a house party 30 miles outside of town.
Completely stranded. Just left there with nobody you know.
You're walking around a kitchen,
going through a pantry like, "I wonder what this family eats."
They've never slept in a freezing cold sunroom,
just laying on the floor, using a rug as a blanket,
looking out the window, going, "Will daylight ever come?"
When you're from the country, you know.
I have woke up and had breakfast with parents I had never met before.
You're just in the kitchen eating scrambled eggs, going,
"No, man, I see why y'all moved out here, man."
"It's a big old yard. It's nice. Somebody's gotta take me home."
And I enjoy sharing that story
because that's a testimony with zingers, man.
Comedians, we take trauma and we find ways to make it funny.
I didn't know that was an entertaining story
until I was on tour a couple years ago with Bert Kreischer.
And we're on his tour bus.
And Bert goes, "Hey man, how does somebody from Alabama get into comedy?"
And I shared that story with him, and I was emotional sharing it.
And Bert was laughing so hard that I realized I had something.
And I told him at the end,
I go, "Bert, I know, man, I haven't drank in a long time,
but what's even crazier is I have not drove in 15 years."
I haven't drove since my second DUI.
And Bert looked at me like some of y'all are.
He was shocked, man.
He goes, "I've heard a lot of DUI stories."
He goes, "None of them end this way."
He said, "They all end the same way, Derrick."
"They all end with, 'Hey, Bert, I have not drank in 15 years.'"
He goes, "You just looked at me and said you have not drove in 15 years."
He goes, "I don't mean anything by this,
but I do think you're the first person I've ever met
that gave up the vehicle and not the booze."
And in hindsight, unfortunately, he was correct.
I couldn't believe it, the dots I was connecting,
'cause I can remember thinking, "This Jim Beam is not the problem."
"This Camry's bad luck."
I go, "Every time I get in this thing, they pull me over, man."
I don't smoke, I don't drink, but we've all got our vices, you know?
I take edibles to go to bed at night.
Yeah, I've tried Ambien, and I just…
I'm not gonna have color trails on my weather report.
I tried melatonin,
and melatonin's not built for a man like me.
I needed something that can help me exit the chat, you know?
I take it with intention. I take it to go to bed.
I don't dabble in 'em. I really lean into 'em.
Like some of y'all think we're similar. You go, "Oh, I'm just like him."
Twenty milligrams. I get out that leaf blower.
That patio's in trouble.
I'm different. I take 50 milligrams.
I'm standing on my patio going, "I am a leaf blower."
Hoo!
I like to take enough to where I'm scared in my own home, you know what I mean?
Creeping around your own place, yelling around a corner,
"It's gonna be hard to kill me!"
"I know the layout!"
Looking down a dark hallway. "Pawpaw, is that you?"
A few weeks ago, man,
I got caught out on the sofa riding some lightning.
Unsolved Mysteries came on.
Unsolved Mysteries is the scariest show in the country.
No, they've never solved a mystery.
They're O in a million. It's just bad news.
Every episode ends the same way.
They go, "David killed his whole family, left no fingerprints."
"We'll see you next Tuesday."
I'm in there with tears in my eyes.
I go, "If we don't find David, he's gonna kill every one of us."
I'll grab my little pistol. I'm shooting into the bushes.
I go, "Hey, David,
you might have got your family, but I'm a little bit of a rascal, my man."
"It's just a .22. Raise your hand when I get you, okay?"
And that joke's better if you know what a .22 is.
I'm not trying to kill him. I just want him out of the yard.
I'll cook on edibles sometimes.
Not 50 milligrams. That's too much.
You think you're being creative. You need to lay down.
Nobody wants whipped cream on their chicken nuggets, okay?
That's not a sweet and savory. You're on Mars, Bubba.
Twenty milligrams will put you where you wanna be.
Light and tight, watch Chef's Table, get inspired, you know?
It feels like you're live on the Food Network.
I start off my show behind the island in the kitchen.
I like to squat down, and I'll pop up to start the show.
Welcome to Derrick's Deli.
Today we're doing fried bologna sandwiches cut diagonally.
I didn't know bologna was for poor people till I moved to the big city.
Where we're from, it's a delicacy.
I moved to New York. I go, "Hey, I love bologna,"
and they go, "You know what, man, I've got a dollar on me."
"No, come here, let me give you some turkey money to run around with."
And I know my audience.
There's some of y'all out there that
there's no capacity that THC is okay with you.
I get that, but you boomers are getting into it the way you do, you know?
A little CBD on your elbows. I see y'all.
Yeah, a little bit of that not-going-to-hell marijuana.
Yeah, got a little bit of pickleball coming up.
Little bit of pickleball.
Yeah.
They're gonna turn it into a vapor rub and have y'all in a headlock, man.
You're gonna be sitting watching The Price is Right.
When nobody's looking, a little ha-ha.
"Showcase!"
It's fun to talk about this stuff, man.
It really is.
I, uh, I mean…
…it's hard for me not to talk about food onstage, you know?
I try not to, but I've thought about food three times during this set.
I mean, I can't help it, you know?
I go, "When I get home, I'm gonna eat
and just rub my feet together until I pass out."
Rubbing your feet together's underrated.
I like to go to Texas Roadhouse and just burn 'em up.
I'll be eating those rolls, just burning 'em up.
You can smell the wool burning down there.
I think it's tough as a big person when you get a stain on your shirt.
It's the end of your day.
Nobody respects heavyset people with stains on.
Nobody cares anymore if you're fat.
But if you show up just heavyset with a stain,
they go, "Hey, look at me. Do not give up."
It's crazy, man.
Skinny people, if you get a stain on you, it's no problem.
People go, "What happened? Did a fat person spill something on you?"
"Did a fat person drop honey mustard on your khakis?"
"'Cause I know you don't live that life."
Ice cream is my favorite thing.
I love ice cream. I try to eat it every night.
Sometimes I miss. It happens.
But it's my favorite food.
And I don't eat it fast. I eat it the way you should.
I whittle my ice cream.
I put my spoon on the side and I whittle it.
I take a bite. I fix my bite.
It looks like nobody's even eating it, you know?
I show it to my wife and I go, "Hey."
"Looks like nobody's eating it, doesn't it?"
I go, "Your boy's eating it."
I love to eat ice cream, man.
Then I hand it to Alyssa. She just attacks it.
She's just going after it with a spoon.
She's just there for the swirls and chunks.
She hands it back to me.
I go, "It's gonna take me an hour to grade this out."
I go, "I've never seen elevation changes in ice cream like this in my life."
How you eat things matters.
If you eat a Kit Kat like a cold cut, you should be tagged by the government.
I was on a flight recently, and a guy diagonal from me,
he had a bag of trail mix.
He was bouncing the bag, picking out what he wanted,
bouncing the bag, picking out what he wanted.
You get what you get!
No, it's a trail of mix!
Not everybody wants cashews and raisins, but it's the game we play.
Trail mix is like life.
You hope for the best, but you have to take what happens.
You stick your hand down in the bag, and sometimes you go, "Yeah,"
and sometimes you go, "No," but you go,
"Nom, nom, nom, nom, nom."
I do love to eat.
I had to save this for towards the end of the show
'cause I know how y'all are, but I am a cat guy.
Um…
I know, I mean, that took all the energy you cat people had.
I'm a loud person for a cat guy, I am,
but I'm also brave for bringing up that I'm a cat person.
In the South, I mean, y'all know, y'all give cat people a hard time.
Really project on 'em.
Like I told my dad, Bill, I go, "Hey, Dad, I bought a cat."
And he goes, "That's a weird way to come out."
You know?
And I go, "That's not what happened, man."
I just, if I had a dog, I'd break its heart, you know?
But Jameson's in the window waving. He's like, "Bye!"
Cat people are nice people.
They don't say anything to me after the show.
Cat people are emailers.
After the show, they'll shoot me an email, you know?
They'll go, "Hey, Derrick. My name's Catherine. I love cats too."
"I've got seven. How many do you have?"
And I go, "My goodness, Catherine,
I can smell the piss through the keyboard."
Thank y'all so much. Thank you for having me.
I love y'all, man. Thank y'all so much.
You're truly the best. Thank you. Thank y'all. Thank you, man.
Thank y'all.
Have a great night. Thank you. u. Thank y'all. Thank you, man.