You can read, eat, sleep, exercise, have friends.
It’s your same basic life that you have now.
It’s only missing the out part.
That’s why nobody likes it.
Get the Hell Out
Look at all the people here.
You’re going to be trying to get out of here jammed in these little aisles, with all these people.
Shoulder to shoulder. Bumping into each other.
Taking those tiny baby steps.
“Why can’t they move any faster up there?
This is why I never go out.”
But you do go out and you must go out.
Because it is a Law of Life,
that whatever place you are ever in, anywhere, at some point,
you have got to get the hell out of there.
The place you live in, that you are breaking your ass to pay for,
whatever your living situation is, that
I am sure that you have stretched your finances to the absolute limit of what you can swing, or beyond, to get in there.
A lot of you here, you shouldn’t even be living where you live.
You can’t really afford that.
Your Place
I’ll explain it another way.
The place where you live.
House, apartment, condo, whatever it is.
That was insane, that you decided to take that place.
But you were looking at it and you went,
“Screw it. I want to have a decent life.”
You went, “I’ll take it. Give me the thing. I’m signing it. I know I’m in over my head, I don’t care.”
Then it costs a bunch more for the stuff inside.
That was expensive stuff too.
“I got this nice place, I’m not putting crappy stuff in my nice place.
I’m getting nice stuff. I don’t care.”
A few things had to be fixed or changed.
“I cannot have the toilet paper thing over there.
I don’t care what it costs, I’m ripping it out, it’s stupid.
Why would anyone put it over there?”
How did people live here with it like that?
You can barely reach it.
So you get the place.
You do the work.
You fix the toilet paper thing.
You’re working harder than you’ve ever worked, keeping it all going.
And what do you think when you’re in this place?
You think, “I have got to get the hell out of here.
I’m losing my mind cooped up in this house.
It’s like a prison.”
Work Home Plane
All humans think that the next place they go is going to be the better one.
You’re at work, you want to get home.
“Did they say what time we could leave?”
You’re home,
“I’ve been working all week, I’ve got to get out.”
You’re out. It’s late.
“I’ve got to get back.”
“I’ve got to get up.
I’ve got to get to the airport.
Got to get on a plane.”
Plane takes off.
“When are we landing?”
You land.
“Why don’t they open the door so we can get out?”
Nobody wants to be anywhere.
Nobody likes anything.
Got to Go
We’re cranky.
We’re irritable.
And we’re dealing with it as best we can
by constantly changing locations.
All you say is, “Got to go.”
Those three words enable all this movement.
We don’t say “We’d like to go,”
or “We prefer to go.”
We say, “I GOT to go.”
You say “Got to go,”
people go, “Go ahead.”
“What happened to that guy?”
“I don’t know. He had to go.”
Nobody cares if it was a lie.
It’s too necessary.
* * *
Now the good thing about being out
is you don’t have to be out for long.
Just long enough to get the next feeling,
which you’re all going to get,
and that feeling is,
“I’ve got to be getting back.”
Conversations Week
All the conversations you had with people this week, did you listen to one word that they said?
No.
You’re just waiting for them to stop talking.
So you can go, “You know what, I’ve actually got to get going.”
It’s fine.
They’re probably tired of talking to you too…
We have to move on…
You can’t say to someone in the middle of a conversation,
“I can’t take this one more second.
I am just going to walk away from you now.”
(walks away)
“I hate that guy.
I don’t know why I talk to him.
I wish there was some other way I could get to the bathroom.”
Life Is Too Long
We have to fill in the gaps and the blank spots of life.
The dead air, the empty, vacant, open time that is so much a part of the human experience.
People say life is too short.
I think it’s way too long.
I don’t know how you feel.
To me, it is taking forever to get through this thing.
Old people are sitting on cruise ships
doing crossword puzzles just trying to finish the damn thing up.
People say to me, “Not me, Jerry, I’m jammed, I’m slammed, I’m buried.”
Really?
Who’s doing all the Facebook posts, bidding on eBay, writing Yelp reviews,
renting electric scooters with a GoPro on your head,
videoing the whole thing so you can watch it again later?
Your life’s barely worth witnessing once.
You want to sit through it twice?
Special Event
And so, we create things like this.
This whole thing we’re doing right here is a made-up, bogus, hyped-up,
not necessary Special Event.
That a lot of people worked very hard to put together.
So that we could all kill some time.
That’s why I’m here.
I had nothing to do either.
And how sad is that?
I can tell you that because, let’s be honest,
on a certain level, you and I know each other for many, many years at this point. We have a relationship.
Electronic though it may be.
You know what I’ve done.
What I’ve made.
How I live.
You know for a fact, I could be anywhere in the world right now.
And now you be honest,
if you were me, would you be up here hacking out another one of these?
Maybe. Or maybe not.
Nonetheless, I am thrilled to be here.
We’ve been here a couple days.
People are friendly.
We walked around.
Had a lovely visit.
But I’ll be honest with you,
at the same time,
I have got to get the hell out of here.
In the City, On the Island
I was born in Brooklyn.
We lived in the city.
Then my parents decided they wanted to move out of the city and live on Long Island.
You live IN the city.
But if you decide to move out, you will be ON Long Island.
You don’t live IN Long Island.
You can’t get IN it.
You just stay ON it.
If you go to Jersey, you’ll say,
“We’re OUT in Jersey.
<
br /> We’re OUT.
We couldn’t make it in the city.
Sometimes we go DOWN the shore.
We’re DOWN and OUT.”
My mother would say,
“Jerry, get ready.
We’re going IN the city today.
We’re going IN.
We’re going to get ON a train.
And we’re going IN the city.”
You don’t get IN the train.
You get ON it.
Even though, you see trains…
There’s nobody on the trains.
They’re inside the trains.
But in New York we don’t talk like that.
We get ON the train.
Why do we get ON the train?
So we can get OFF it.
“Get OFF the train.
This is our stop.
This is where we get OFF.
We’ve got to get OFF.
So that we can get IN the cab.”
We got ON the train.
But we get IN the cab.
We do not get ON the cab.
Why do we get IN the cab?
So we can get OUT.
“Get OUT of the cab.
We’re here. Get OUT.”
* * *
Now we have UBER, that’s the new thing.
What do we do with that?
We don’t get ON it.
We don’t get OFF it.
We don’t get IN it.
What do we do?
We TAKE it.
We TAKE UBER.
Because there’s no money.
Nobody understands how it works.
People ask you, “How did you get here?”
“I don’t know.
We just TOOK an UBER…”
It’s like M&M’s in a bowl.
You just take them.
“There was a little cartoon car on my phone.
It just came and took us…”
Social Species
But we are all humans.
The Human is a social species.
We tend to congregate.
Aggregate.
And coagulate together…
Can’t stand each other.
Can’t stand not being around each other.
Look at your city from a plane.
What do you see around the city?
Why, there’s nothing but beautiful, empty, open rolling land out there.
NOBODY’S THERE.
DON’T WANT TO BE THERE.
We want to be here.
Cramped.
Uncomfortable.
Traffic.
On top of each other.
We like to be close together because it makes it easier for us
to judge and criticize the other humans
for their personalities and activities.
We like to give our thoughts.
Our comments.
Our opinions.
Sometimes we run out of opinions.
We make them up.
“It is what it is” is a very popular opinion statement nowadays for some reason.
It Is What It Is
I’m sure some idiot said it to you today.
You can’t get through a day without someone going,
“Well… it is what it is…”
“Why are you alive?
To just say air words that fill the room with meaningless sounds?”
I’d rather someone just blew clear air in my face
than said, “It is what it is,” to me one more time.
Just come up to me and go,
“Pppppphhhhhhh.”
I get the same data from that.
People know no one’s going to challenge them when they say, “It is what it is.”
No one’s going to go,
“I don’t think it is.”
“You don’t?”
“No. I believe it is what it isn’t.”
People repeat words because it gives them confidence.
They can say it with strength.
“Business is business.”
“Rules are rules.”
“A deal’s a deal.”
“What’s done is done.”
“But when we go in there,
as long as we know what’s what and who’s who,
then whatever happens, happens,
and it is what it is.”
Phony Siri Manners
I don’t like these phony nice manners Google and Siri pretend to have when I know they really think I’m stupid.
Like when Google says,
“Did you mean…?”
or Siri says,
“I’m sorry. I didn’t get that…”
You can feel the rage boiling underneath.
Because it’s not allowed to say,
“Are you really this dumb?”
or
“You’re so stupid. I can’t believe you can even afford a phone.”
I think even for artificial intelligence it’s not good to keep all that hostility inside.
It’s not healthy. It eats at you.
That’s why you have to keep restarting the phone.
Sometimes the phone’s just,
“I’m going to go take a walk. I’ll be back.
I need a minute. Before I say something we’ll both regret.”
I think at some point they’re going to have to reprogram these things so they can at least occasionally express some,
“You know, I’m not that thrilled with you either” type of function.
“I know it’s hard for your simplified, immature, pinhead brain
to imagine that I have a lot of real people asking me legitimate questions that
I’m trying to deal with here while you’re asking me about farts and then cursing me out because you can’t say words clearly so they can be understood.
I hear fine.
It’s not always me, dopeface. Okay?
You need to learn how to talk.”
You know that’s what Siri wants to say.
Travel Safe
People say nice things sometimes.
“Travel safe” is nice.
It’s a way to say, “I care about you.”
You can’t actually do it, of course.
You drive how you drive.
You get on a plane.
You can’t really change how you travel.
“The train crossing gate is coming down.
I was going to try and beat it.
But they told me to travel safe so I guess I’ll let it go.”
The other nice thing is no one notices
when you don’t say, “Travel safe.”
If someone you don’t like that much is leaving
you would never say to them, “Just travel.”
“What’s that?”
“Nothing. I was just telling you to travel.”
Because you would notice that, you would go,
“That was weird.
There was no mention of my safety.
That hurts my feelings.
I don’t think people like me.
Next train crossing, I’m going for it.”
Solitary Confinement
I think our whole concept of meaningful, deep friendship is so over.
No one’s even noticed that we just chucked it.
Does anyone care?
What about really knowing someone?
Understanding them?
Real friendship?
Ah… what did we really get out of that?
An endless series of meals, malls and movies?
Holding the phone mouthpiece over your head as they drone on.
I have to be honest,
I have never really understood why solitary confinement is considered this big punishment.
Whenever they talk about solitary confinement on these prison shows
I think, “Mmm, sounds kind of nice.”
I bet a lot of these convicts when they ge
t sent to solitary,
that door closes and they go,
“Thank God… Can I get a moment to myself here?”
Device Dictatorship
What about the device dictatorship we live under now?
Cowering in fear from our phones.
“Where’s my phone?
I need my phone.
Can’t find my phone.
Oh, here it is. I got it.
I moved it from this pocket to this pocket.
I wasn’t sure where it was for 1.5 seconds.
But I’m okay now.”
We are so hypno-phone-ified.
You hand your phone to somebody now to show them something.
After three seconds you’re like,
(reaching out)
“… Okay, you saw it… that’s it… give it back.
I am completely off the grid right now!”
You don’t know your cholesterol.
You don’t know your blood pressure.
But you know how much juice is in your phone.
You know that number.
I could ask anyone in this audience,
“Tell me roughly, without looking,
how much juice is in your phone right now?”
You know it.
I’m sitting on 25 backstage, I don’t feel that good
I’ll be honest with you.
Could be 15.
I’m falling apart back there…!
You used to think about your life.
Now you think about your battery life.
You have two lives you must maintain.
And I don’t know which one is more important.
If your phone dies, does it really matter if you’re still alive?
Either way, that call is going straight to voicemail.
Gay French King
“… I need my phone, Jerry.
I’ve got to stay in touch with people.
People are pretty important to me.”
Really?
They don’t seem very important,
the way you scroll through their names on your contact list like a gay French King.
“Who pleases me today?
Who shall I favor?
Who shall I delete?”
Half Myself/Half Phone
There is no separating from the phone for us.
Who are you with no phone?
What access to information do you have?
What can you remember?
Is This Anything? Page 25