1.
Guys, you ever do that thing where your girlfriend is out of the room, and you think she’s not going to be back for a while, so you’re kind of relaxing and not really thinking she’ll be back anytime soon, so you start to envision the entire rest of your lives together, and you feel this huge heavy weight in your chest and you want to cry for some reason, but you also feel happy and glad to have crossed paths in this life? What’s up with that? You’re thinking about life and love and everything, and you can see the both of you from the point of being innocent kids, then teenagers, then adults, then middle-aged adults, then aging, then gone and only photos of your lives left behind? And you’re wondering who will be there to look at the photos? Like, will you have kids? Will the photos just end up at a flea market? (Start goofing around with crowd a little bit. Do the thing where you make up a name: say, “I mean, hello? What is my name? Saddy McSadders?”) Yeah, you guys in the crowd know what I’m talking about! Don’t act like you don’t know what I’m talking about! And you feel like you’re going to cry or drink or both, but then she comes back in to the room way sooner than you thought and you’re, like, kinda freaking out and trying to hide it? (Point at a couple sitting in audience and say, “Yeah! Look at this guy! He knows what I’m talking about!”)
2.
What’s up with death? It’s like: Hello? My body’s going to stop working entirely at some point and nobody knows where you go after you cease to exist in this physical realm? And there may even be a chance that nothing at all happens and you don’t “go” anywhere? What’s up with that? Hello? (Make silly “confused” face and hold hands up like you need crowd to help you understand death.)
3.
I feel sorry for married guys. (For some reason, this opening line almost always gets a little laugh. So wait for it—and two, and three, and pick [beat] it [beat] up.) I mean, what’s up with being married when you could be drinking and comparing your life to a wealthy actor’s life, then going to bed and having super-vivid fantasies of what it would be like to have sex with the girl that works at the bar down the street from your apartment? (Then do this: knock on the top of the microphone with a loose fist so it sounds like somebody knocking on a door and maybe make deadpan face and say, “Bueller? Bueller?” or maybe yell in an angry voice, “Fact: Brian Wilson lost his mind when he was 28.”)
4.
(Time to interact with someone in crowd a little bit.) Hello there, where are you from? Ah, New York. Born and raised? And how about your date there, the handsome gentleman you’re with this evening, New York as well? Well … you’re both the kind of people I wish I could be, or could have as friends. Oddly enough, I will think about you two pretty often over the next few months from time to time, not even knowing your names, just remembering what you two look like. And I’ll ascribe characteristics to each of you, values and qualities that I long for and fail to see in myself. I will, strangely enough, start to actually base my self-worth on what I think you would or wouldn’t say about what I’ve done with my life. In some of the moments when I ponder the two of you, I’ll imagine a breakup scenario that allows you (gesture to the woman) and me to start dating and reminiscing about how we met in a comedy club when I was onstage. If I think the fantasy all the way through, I’ll realize that, more than making love to you, I want to simply be you. It won’t figure into my sexuality at all, which is to say, it’s not that I’m a man wanting to be a woman so he can make love to men.
(Ask crowd if they’re having a good time tonight, and if they could make some noise. Then resume bit.)
It won’t even register as some sort of fetish—it’s not like I want to dress as you or anything. It’s just that I’ll realize I want to have these qualities that I’ve given you in my mind; mainly, this sort of innocent freedom of spirit without the trappings of guilt or paralyzing self-analysis. I will, for a moment, think that you were quite possibly the love of my life, and that, most likely, I missed my chance at taking the risk to tell you so. I will resolve all of this internal struggle by purchasing a modest secondhand motorcycle and riding it in the Rocky Mountains near Basalt, Colorado.
That’s my time, you guys!
I’ve been Dan Kennedy and you’ve been great!
Put your hands together and keep it going for (name of next comedian on list)!