by Bill Hicks
MC Hammer – there’s another boat that left me on the fucking island, man.
‘Bill, you comin’ aboard? It’s nice.’ (laughs)
‘I’ll stay here and eat my own flesh.’
(makes noise of boat horn) ‘Bye Bill.’
MC Hammer, I never . . . what is the deal with him? ‘He’s a great dancer.’ What? It’s like a fucking sand crab in his knickers. He’s not dancing, he’s having a fit. Satan’s semen burning a hole in the lining of his stomach, that’s what . . . (makes snorting, snarling noise) Big fucking worm inside of him. (snorting, snarling) Ha ha ha ha! It’s part horror film. Just hang with me, all right? ‘What is this, Satan’s semen? What is this? What is he doing?’ (snorting, snarling) I think that’s the perfect response for comedy, right there. Ha ha ha ha ha!
I love film, and I was watching Terminator 2, and I was— incredible. It is a good movie, incredible special effects, unbelievable stunts, right? And I’m thinking to myself, hundred-million-dollar budget . . . unbelievable stunts, man. A guy flies out of a building, through glass, on a helicopter and lands – I mean, through – oh no, hold on, on a motorcycle and lands on a fucking helicopter. Unbelievable. How are they gonna top this stuff in a movie ever again? How can you top this? There’s no way! Unless . . . they start using terminally ill people . . . hear me out . . . as stuntmen in pictures. OK. I know to some of you this perhaps sounds a little cruel, maybe. ‘Oh God, Bill, terminally ill stuntpeople? That’s terribly cruel.’ You know what I think cruel is? Leaving your loved ones to die in some sterile hospital room surrounded by strangers. Fuck that. Put ’em in the movies. What? You want your grandmother dying like a little bird in some hospital room? Her translucent skin so thin you can see her last heartbeat work its way down her blue veins? Or do you want her to meet Chuck Norris? She’ll be thrilled.
‘Doc, how come you’ve dressed my grandmother up as a mugger?’
‘Shut up and get off the set. Action! Push her towards Chuck.’
(makes fight noises)
‘Wow, he kicked her head right off her body. Did you see that? Did you see my Grammy? They add sound effects later.’
‘Give me all your money. I’ve got a gun. I’ll cut your fucking head off.’
‘It’s not Grammy – they added that later.’
OK, not the most popular theory ever professed. Terminally ill– all I’m saying, folks, is movies are getting more and more boring each year, and people are dying all the time. I’m a weaver.
I ah . . . this abortion issue in the States is dividing the country right in half. You know, and even amongst my friends – we’re all highly intelligent – they’re totally divided on the issue of abortion. Totally divided. Some of my friends think these pro-life people are just annoying idiots. Other of my friends think these pro-life people are evil fucks. How are we gonna have a consensus? I’m torn. I try and take the broad view and think of them as evil, annoying fucks. Yeah. But I’m a diplomat. And a weaver. I’m Earl Weaver.50 I’m McCloud. You know what bugs me about abortion, though? Is people – even people who are pro-choice – waffling on the idea of abortion. You know what, pro-choice people like ‘We’re not pro-abortion, we’re pro-choice. We just don’t believe the government has a right to tell us what we can or cannot do with our own bodies. We’re not pro-abortion, we’re pro-choice.’ Hey, just say it. Just fuckin’ say it. People suck, there’s too many of ’em, and they’re easier to kill when they’re foetuses than when they’re grown up. Just say it. People suck! . . . Sorry. The mask came off there. I’ll put it back on.
See, America’s all screwed up, and American airlines? American planes? They don’t allow smoking, right? But they allow children. Hey. Let’s be fair. I was on this flight from LA to New York, I’m asleep on the plane, right? All five seats were empty, cool, I was laid down, going to sleep, and I feel this tapping on my head, and I look up, and there’s this little kid loose on this fucking plane. He’s just loose. This is his playground in the sky. And he’s decided the funnest thing he could do is repetitively tap me on the top of the fuckin’ head. The ONE PERSON WHO WANTS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE FUCKING KID. Everyone else: ‘Hey come here, little boy! Come here, little kiddy! Oh, yeah, you’re so cute.’ No! No! He comes right to me – na! Na! Na! Na! Na! Na! I look across the aisle at his mom. She’s just smiling, you know. ‘Mmmm.’ This guy next to the mom goes, ‘They’re so cute when they’re that small. Huh, huh, huh, huh.’ Isn’t that amazing? Just letting your kid run loose like that on a fucking plane? And the kid runs over to the emergency exit, and he starts flipping that handle to the door. The guy next to the mom starts to get up, and I go:
‘Wait a minute. We’re about to learn an important lesson right here. (makes sound of door opening) Oh, you’re right. The smaller he gets, the cuter he is. Ah, wish I had a camera right now . . . with a telescopic lens. Love to get the expression on his face when his pudgy little legs hit that farmhouse down there. Stewardess, since we got a breeze in here, can we smoke now? Fairly well circulated.’
True story. In these days and times, only the death of a child will amuse me.
I saw a lady today, a kid on a leash. You seen these people? Kid on a leash? How horrible. Put him in the pound where he belongs. ‘Oh, you don’t mean that, Bill.’ That’s why my girlfriend and I broke up. She wanted kids, and I (laughs) oh, well. She wanted kids. (laughs) I had no idea her philosophy was that flawed. She goes, ‘Wouldn’t it be nice to have a kid, to have this fresh, clean slate, which we could fill, and a little clean spirit, totally, you know, innocent, and to fill it with good ideas.’ Yeah, yeah, how about this? If you’re so fucking altruistic, why don’t you leave the little clean spirit wherever it is right now? OK? Horrible act, childbirth. It’s a nightmare. Bringing– I would never bring a kid to this fucking planet.
(laughs) I’m not usually doing shows at this hour. This is usually back when I’m in my room calling the States, going, ‘I don’t know if I can go on. I don’t know if they like me, or they’re laughing at me. I can’t tell. They seem nice enough, but they stare. I . . . I . . . and I can’t understand a word they say, yet we’re all speaking English . . . I . . . I . . . I . . . they all sound like little birds tweeting to me.’ I think I’ve been over here a lot, cos suddenly the food tastes good, so ah . . . I think I’m getting used to it here. When I came over first of all, I was pretty stunned. First of all, you don’t boil pizza. Now . . . no, no listen to me. I think. And this fascination with fucking chips – french fries. You call ’em chips; they’re french fries. I love fries, don’t get me wrong. If you leave here tonight going, ‘Bill doesn’t like fries’ . . . you’ll be wrong. But every single fucking time you eat? Come on! You’re having too many fries! You’re over your spud quota. Everything has these. I saw hookers on London streets going, ‘Head and chips!’ You may think you’ve gotten good head before, but unless you’ve had it with a big, hot, piping plate of fries in front of you . . . Very civilized. We could learn a lot from you. You’re an ancient culture. We, a young, upstart nation . . . exporting American Gladiators, so instead of us having to grow, we’ll bring you to our fucking level. Ha ha ha ha ha!
I’m trying to get this show on Channel 4, right? We came up with this show. I think it’s real good idea for a show, and I’m like, you know, going to all these meetings with Channel 4 (whispers). Then I picked up the paper, and I read Channel 4’s TV listings. (laughs) Ah, fuck you. ‘Scooby-Doo, Get Smart, Blossom, Who’s the Boss?, Full House.’ Aargh! Same country where George Bernard Shaw used to jot things down? Why are you exporting our American horse-shit? Why do I get off the plane and see Kentucky fuckin’ Fried Chicken? Why am I yelling at you about it? ‘Bill, we didn’t do– we had nothing to do with it. Giant corporate conglomerate that has tentacles all over the world. We are like you, Bill, merely the puppet people. They tell us where to go and what to do.’
Open a McDonald’s in Moscow and everyone’s backslapping each other. It’s depressing to me. ‘Oh, it’ll h
elp the economy. McDonald’s, it’ll supply forty-five new jobs there in Moscow.’ Yeah, twenty dentists and twenty heart specialists. It’s shit. Don’t eat it.
I need to get laid, that’s ah . . . I just realized what it is. I just realized I’m starting to have that kind of draggy pale, wan, jacking off a little too much for my own good. I am, I’m going for some kind of masturbation record right now. It’s not pretty at all. Is it a bad sign when you come and nothing but air comes out? I know, I mean, even I, failing biology, understand the ramifications . . . and implications . . . of tossing air, you know? Uh, uh. Oh, room service, could you send some milk up here, please? Think I lost all my bodily fluids. I am merely a shell of my former shadow. I am so pale and so wan.
But it’s hard to have a relationship in this business, you know? I mean, no really, I’m not looking for sympathy, but you’re always travelling, keeping weird hours, you know, it’s gonna take a very special woman, you know? Or a bunch of average ones. Again . . . I ah, far be it from me to set some type of demarcation zone on the qualities I look for in a woman – breathing . . . is ah, for me, you know, 99 per cent there. Breathing and no fuckin’ Hammer albums. That’s it, I’m in love. Hammer. ‘He’s a good dancer.’ Think we need a Priest to this guy’s concerts, he’s ah . . . I think he’s possessed. (sighs) But my girlfriend left me, and ah, years ago, and ah (laughs) I’m still talking about it, because . . . I loved her. Oh, me? She’s got five guys since me. ‘Tell us about your ex, your true love. Oh, you mean Hank? Tony? Don? Tim? . . . Bill?’ (laughs) Yeah, five back! Me! Goatboy! Randy Pan the Goatboy (bleats) She loved me. I know she loved me, man. Cos I am Goatboy. I am here to please women, that is my only job, I worship them. Tie me to your headboard, ladies. Let Goatboy wear you like a feedbag. (makes snorting, sucking noise) So it’s really weird, I’m askin’, I’m talkin’ to Martin, my tour— my factotum tour manager, Martin. I’m goin’, ‘Martin, why is it after every show the only people that wanna meet me are about five to seven pale young guys?’ (laughs) And he goes, ‘Well Bill, could it be perhaps the subject matter of your show?’ I don’t know. All I talk about is how much I like eating pussy. You’d think there’d be five to seven lovely young women going . . .’ Carrots in each hand. ‘Hello goat.’ (bleats) But no, I always get five to seven pale guys. ‘We jack off too till we’re almost dead.’ ‘Nice to meet you.’ Grips on them.
But my girlfriend left me and I was very depressed for ah seven years, and I drank my body weight in Jack Daniels whisky every fuckin’ night, and ah . . . and ah . . . then it occurred to me: you can’t get down, man. You gotta let it go, you know, I mean, it’s, look, you know, you gotta, all right, you have to look on the bright side, you know? You have to, there’s no other way, and as small as that bright side may be, you gotta look at it, and that’s all, that’s all you got, you know? So I think on the bright side it helped my career that she left me. Well, I mean cos now . . . I’m driven . . . by a fantasy . . . that one day this girl who I loved more than anything in the world and she said she loved me then left? One day she’s gonna be living in a trailer park . . . somewhere in Oklahoma. She’s gonna have nine naked little kids with rickets that bring home dead animals from the side of the road for them to eat at night. Birds in their hair, mud on their face, rats laying babies in their ears at night . . . she’s gonna live with this ex-welder, 600 pounds, fur all over his back, drinks warm beer, farts, belches, beats the kids, watches American Gladiators every fuckin’ night, and has to have it explained to him . . . yeah. One night he’s gonna be making love to her and his heart’s gonna explode, and she’s gonna be trapped under 600 pounds of flaccid fish-belly cellulite shifting like the tides of the ocean . . . as blood and phlegm and bile and a chaw of tobacco pours out of his mouth and nose . . . into her face. And just before she drowns in that tepid puddle of afterbirth . . . she turns to the telly, and I’m gonna be on it. So you see, I’m not bitter and ah . . . the important thing is to live and let live. Hoh, I’m hangin’ by a hair. Hangin’ by a hair to sanity.
So you guys in college? Is that the deal? College? Oxford? No? Cowley High? Where are you? ‘I’m takin’ Assembly Line and Nuts and Bolts 101, and How to Clean the Ashtray.’ I’m an elitist scum. Welcome me to your hearts. I only like readers. Sorry! No time for hooligans. Readers and artists, those are my kind. But you ladies keep fuckin’ the Conservative guys, yeah, keep fuckin’ the Tories, fuckin’ the Republicans. These bullneck, bulging vein, fuckin’ burr-cut, waterhead fuckin’ idiots, you keep fuckin’ ’em. Two-inch piggly-wiggly dicks, probably can’t even put ’em in you one time before they come. ‘Eurgh, ahhh. Sorry honey’ (snores) Yeah, and then we see ya on Donahue and Oprah, you know, years from now, going, ‘I wish my husband would eat me more, make love to me better.’ Right, fuck it, you chose him. Sorry, you had the artist who wanted to eat your butthole for dinner, but no. You chose Conservative Mr Bank Account. Well, fuck off! Get in the tub and fuckin’ raise your legs under the water – there! There! There’s your fuckin’ love. Let the poets jack off in circles in the woods. You get stuck with piggly-wiggly, burrcut, two-inch pecker. Fuck it. Fuck the artist! That is your job. Fuck artist! Find a flute player, someone who can use his fingers and his tongue! Fuck artist . . . only! ‘I’m an accountant at Western and Western, I’m a lawyer.’ NO! You’re now a jack-off gang. ‘I’m fuckin’ the street musician over you . . . guy who I can reside my buttocks on his face.’ Do I seem shallow? ‘No Bill, you have a great emotional depth.’ ‘I’m scared for your soul, Bill.’ Don’t worry – I don’t have a soul. Hey. ‘Send in Bill Hicks.’
Is there a message in all this? Cos I know all y’all gonna remember is the dick jokes, I know that. I do two hours, the last seven minutes are dick jokes, everyone goes, ‘He’s so dirty.’ And with Madonna it’s all fuckin’ pussy on every page, and you go, ‘She’s making a political statement.’ I can’t WIN! Do I have a message? Yes, I do. Here’s my message: as scary as the world is – and it is – it is merely a ride . . . in the amusement park of the universe it is merely a ride. It has its thrills, it has its chills, it has its ups, it has its downs . . . my factotum Martin, getting ready for the pale young men to line up. Either that or I get women – weird women with their poetry.
‘Here Bill, I think you can relate to this: The hooved beast rode me like the incubus bitch I was.’
‘Thanks, I . . . I don’t . . . I’m not in the mood to read right now. I appreciate your thoughts . . . on the hooved beast who rode you like the incubus bitch you were, but your poem?’
‘No, those are your notes. They fell out of your pocket.’
‘Thanks.’
The world is just a ride, and some people have known it. We think it’s real, cos that’s how powerful our minds are, but it’s not, it’s a ride. And some people have known it, and they’ve come here an’ told us: ‘It’s just a ride.’ And we . . . have killed those people. (laughs) Cos we love the fuckin’ ride. You ever noticed that? We always kill the good guys and leave these demons just running amok on the planet – you ever noticed that? Jesus – murdered. Martin Luther King – murdered. Gandhi – murdered. Malcolm X – murdered. Reagan – wounded. But it’s just a ride. And since you know it, and some people are tired of the ups and downs and the thrills and chills, and prefer instead the quiet – they have to be told it’s just a ride. Thank you very much. You’ve been fantastic, I appreciate it, I hope you enjoyed it. Oxford, you’ve been great! Thank you! Thank you very much.
UK TV Interview
Female Interviewer: Do your audiences get upset sometimes by what you say? I mean . . . in America, any way.
Bill: Occasionally there are some members of the audience who don’t find it funny. And therefore they’ve paid money, therefore they get upset, you know. What am I supposed to do when half the people are going, ‘That was great’, and the other half are going, ‘You’re evil’? Is it my job to go into their lives and try and please them? I actually had a woman say, ‘Why can’t you do th
ings that appeal to everyone?’ That’s impossible! What a burden! (laughing) No one’s done that yet! That would be a challenge. I will please all people. And I also got . . . you know, someone made a comment, going, ‘We don’t come to comedy to think.’ Well, gee, where do you go to think? I’ll meet you there! We don’t have to do this here!
Female Interviewer: Isn’t there a sort of halfway between?
Bill: But . . . but . . . but my way is halfway between. I mean, this is a nightclub and, you know, these are adults, and what do you expect? What you’re gonna see on TV? No! This isn’t TV live. And also it’s my show. What am I supposed to do? Change my . . . my . . . my own outlook and my beliefs? To be what to them? I try to talk to the audience the same way I talk to my friends, to take away the artifice of show business and actually have a feeling of a conversation going on. If some of the audience gets offended, then they’re saying to me, ‘I don’t want to be your friend any more.’ And that’s fine.
Female Interviewer: But what’s your background? Where do you come from?
Bill: I come from a Southern Baptist household. Does that make sense?
Female Interviewer: What do your mum and dad think of it?
Bill: They don’t like it at all.
Female Interviewer: They don’t.
Bill: No.
Female Interviewer: And it offends them.
Male Interviewer: Would you let . . . would you mind them going to see it?