"Hey, dad..." "You sitting down?" "I am." "'Cause I got some big news." "Okay, make it snappy, 'cause I got about 30 seconds here." "We just got a huge delivery..." "One huge box." " You know what this is?" " This is my..." "Remember I ordered an electric bike?" "I don't remember that." "Yeah, from the catalog." "What does that mean?" "An electric bike?" "It's a bike..." "Are there two boxes?" "One very big box..." "It's a big box, and then there's a little box." "Little box has a combination battery pack and motor." "Why did you buy this?" "I bought it because" "I'm gonna get to work on my electric bike." "Always wanted... even when I was a little boy," "I remember seeing pictures of..." "I think they were French paratroopers flying through the sky with their parachutes and a little aluminum, collapsible bike, which is what's in that big box." "So give 'em a croissant, and tell 'em to shut up, okay?" "I don't know how that inspires anybody to buy an electric bike." "I think that would do the opposite." "And then the Germans, when the French were sleeping, they would put baseball cards in the spokes, so they could hear the French attacking." "There's a whole technology that's become obsolete." "Is that how we won the war?" "Ben, we didn't win the war." "I mean, we won the war, we didn't..." "Yeah, we won the war." "Can't watch a game." "Well, that seems to be a theme in your life." "You watching sports, it seems to be a source of a lot of troubles." "Actually, a few weeks ago, I was watching the game." "I had some time to watch the game." "My wife was busy, and I invite my friend over, and he brought his fiancée with him, and he kinda ruined it now for us." "I mean, if the women would start talking to each other, okay, we could watch, but they weren't." "They had that, "Let's play Pictionary"" "look on their face." "I was starting to panic." "And then I tried something that actually worked." "You can actually jump-start a conversation, sometimes, between two women." "I just said to my friend's fiancée," ""Cathy, what color bridesmaids' dresses are you getting?"" "She says, "Oh, they're blue, they're off the shoulder,"" "and my wife, "Really, blue?"" "Boom... we're watching the game right there." "The hardest thing is when I'm in a department store during the big game." "Most of the time, I'm shopping with my wife, and then your only hope is when you walk by the TV section for a little while." ""Oh, honey, go try it on." "Try that on, I'll be right here." "No, you look fat in that one..." "Try another one on."" "That's cunning." "It's pathetic!" "We're all there..." "All the married men are just shuffling around the TVs." ""Hi, how are you?" "Yeah, hi." "Hey, you're new here..." "Get in the back, buddy!" "What are you trying to pull?" "You're on lookout."" "Hey, Laura, I don't know if you remember me." "Sure, I do..." "Dave Chappelle." "Oh, you do remember me." "Yes, I do." "Oh, okay, so you're just not interested or excited that I'm here." "Are those my only choices?" "You know, I used to live in a little town in Ohio, doc?" "4,500 people... my house was the black neighborhood." "You know, doc, I travel a lot." "I mean, really, I'm a racism connoisseur." "Really?" "You know, racism is different from region to region." "Have you ever been to the south?" "Well, years ago." "Doc, the racism down there is just "muah"!" "Magnifique!" "Unfortunately, Dave, it's not just the south." "I mean, I've seen racism in the north." "You go up to New England..." "I was in New England, man," "I saw two Irish dudes beating up an Italian guy." "I said, now these people are specific." "Okay, let me put down my bag, open it up, because I am..." "So you want me to do it?" "Yeah, watch out for the staples, 'cause you can cut yourself on those." "But save the staples, 'cause you know I collect them." "I remember..." "Along with corks." "Oh, my dear god." "Ben, this is..." "It's collapsible." "It's not a bike!" "No, it's in its collapsed position." "So how much did this baby go for?" "Not as much as you think." "50 bucks?" "Okay, more than you would think, but it's reasonable." "100?" "Add a zero." "200?" "No, Ben!" "A zero!" "This did?" "Dad, $1,000!" "I am paying myself back for a childhood where I never got any birthday presents." "You didn't?" "No, my parents didn't believe in birthday presents." "Why?" "I don't know why..." "They never..." "It was not a big deal, a birthday, in my family, and that's why I overcompensate on your birthday." "What did you get me last year?" "Shoelaces." "You overcompensated?" "I just gotta tell you the one thing that scares me about the manual, Ben, it's the photograph of the owner of the company with his fingers crossed." "That's a bad sign." "Also, I've never seen this before." "It says that it's warrant..." "For parts and labor for three days." "Isn't that unusual?" "There's already air in the tires and everything." "Yeah, but you don't know where that air has been." "We've gotta get new air." "All right, good." "I think you're gonna look silly riding that, dad." "Plus, how long has it been since you've actually ridden a bike?" "Well, that's the beauty of it." "You know, it's like riding a bike." "Is that the best way to take a message?" "With the label maker?" "It's the most fun way." "No, the label maker's good for files, it's good for shelves." "Dr. Katz, I have to tell you something, but I have to tell you via label." "Well, just... what?" "What does it say?" "See how fast I am?" "You are getting good at that." "Here." ""I'm a little teapot"?" "No, I was never a normal kid, doc." "I hated comic books growing up." "That's the thing." "I don't believe in the whole idea of a superhero." "I mean, man, I mean, look at superheroes." "They're bad role models for kids, anyway." "My favorite superhero growing up was the Hulk." "He's green, I'm black..." "It's close enough." "This guy is my hero." "Did you ever see his TV show?" "Uh, yeah." "Same dilemma every week." ""Don't make me angry." "You wouldn't like me if I was angry."" "You remember what would happen after that?" "They'd piss him off." "They would beat his ass like an animal, doc." "Then he'd get mad and turn into a monster, and beat them up and keep on walking like nothing happened." "What kind of role model's gonna fight that much?" "After five episodes, I was like," ""Hey, man, maybe it's you."" "You know what?" "I'm gonna..." "Seeing that my dad's in the office, maybe I'll just take a quick spin around the office with the bike right here." "I don't think that would be a good idea." "Watch this." "There we go." "Hello!" "Hey again!" "Laura, hey!" "Okay, Ben, that's enough." "You know that scene from Butch Cassidy," "Paul Newman, and he does some tricks, and they play, "Raindrops keep fall..."" "Hey!" "Are the tires flat?" "Look at Wonder Woman." "Look at how she dresses." "Blue underwear with stars on 'em." "What made her put that on?" "Look at the weapons they give her." "She has a golden lasso that makes you tell the truth." "What is she gonna do with that?" "She's gonna catch a bad guy..." ""Gotcha!"" ""Damn, you got some big breasts." "I wasn't gonna say anything earlier, but this lasso has squeezed the truth right out of me."" "I was reading this old questionnaire when I was little, and it asked us, if we could have the powers of any superhero, who would it be?" "It had the "a," "b," "c."" "Superman, the Green Lantern, and I'll never forget this..." ""c" was Aquaman." "Now, who's gonna pick "c," doc?" "Who would wanna be Aquaman?" "I mean, the powers are only good underwater." "What can you do under..." "Okay, okay, I can see you're swimming underwater, that's nice, and you can breathe underwater." "Okay, that gets a little boring after awhile, but then he can talk to the fish." "What the hell would you wanna say to a fish, doc?" "Aquaman swimming around..." ""Hi, fish!"" ""Hi, aquaman!"" ""Have you seen anything unusual under the water?"" ""Hi, Aquaman!"" "I think some superheroes are prejudiced." "Not really racist, but just, you know, prejudiced." "They only fight crime for the real rich." "Well, I don't know if that's true." "You never see Batman in the housing projects wasting his time." "Yeah, that's true." "Could see him now..." ""Robin, didn't we park the car right here?"" "You cannot label everything." "I can try!" "It's an expensive habit." "Dr. Katz, I'm working really hard at this, at getting good at this, because this is a piece of office equipment that I have to master." "I know, but we've just spent $350 just on the tapes for you to learn this craft." "We need more." "I need to label the magazines." "Now, why would you do that?" "See, that's a good example of a waste of..." "To update them, because they're old." "You can't change the date." "Well, what I'm doing is I'm going through them, and I'm updating the information." "Oh, Laura, Laura, Laura." "But my fear is that I would be on my way to work, and the battery would die, and I would have a bike..." "Couldn't you just pedal?" "It's hard to pedal with the battery attached." "Really?" "I'm sorry, just asking." "The bike weighs nothing, but the battery weighs quite a bit." "Wow, interesting design of this." "And the other thing about this bike that I should point out is because it's electrical, that it's totally pollution-free energy." "Wow!" "And I did some arithmetic, and I figured out that by riding my bike to work, over a period of six months," "I would save more than the cost of that bike on fuel." "That's considerable." "And I have to leave about an hour earlier." "That's ridiculous." "It's interesting, men seem to do this at a sort of..." "Forgive me for saying this, but kinda at the point of life that you're in right now..." "My brother did that." "When he turned 40, he had to have this red sports car..." "Had to have it." "There's a similar..." "I think the women are drawn to..." "A woman sees me on this thing, and she says, "Speed up!" "Passing you on the right!"" "I can't get enough of this baby, it's a beauty." "That's the engine on the back, what looks like a lunchbox, is actually the battery and the engine." "Handlebars are totally adjustable to height." "That's good." "The seat can be raised and lowered." "Laura, do you know how long it took me to get from the elevator to our office?" "How long?" "Six seconds." "How long does it usually take you?" "Eight seconds." "If I knock off two seconds every day, five days a week..." "You'll get an extra ten seconds." "That's ten seconds a week, 40 seconds a month, 80 seconds every two months." "It's just that we don't sleep." "Oh, sure." "That's the worst noise, the most disturbing noise a parent can hear in the middle of the night is..." "It's not a smoke alarm or a burglar alarm." "It's that little noise that means that your child is starting to wake up." "It's very subtle." "It's very quiet, and all of a sudden, he's like, "Nee."" "Oh, a chill goes down your spine right there, and at first, you're in denial." "You're like, "Could have been a car horn."" "About a minute later, it picks up steam." "It's like, "Neeeee."" "Shut the door and turn the air conditioner on." "It's hot, I'm hot." "Where's my walkman?" "I'm not getting up." "I'm just too tired..." "I'm just tired of the kids." "I can't snap out of it." "I fell asleep driving the car." "I did that little neck dip, that nanosecond of sleep behind the wheel of the car that just scares the hell out of you." "So terrifying." "I was just cruising, and like..." ""Ah, holy..." "I'm driving!"" "And the weird thing is, as frightening as it is," "I did it again a few minutes later." "You've had a brush with death, and I'm still drowsy after that." "How does that happen?" "If a bullet came through my window, would I fall asleep right after?" ""Tomorrow, I'll look at it, honey."" "You know, this bike doesn't ride as well as I thought it was going to." "I mean, the electric thing hasn't kicked in yet." "Maybe I have to take it outside." "Probably." "If you wanted to take 15 minutes, you could come out and watch me do it outside." "No, Ben, I hate to put a label on you, but you kind of asked for it." "Ow." "I like to go out to eat, which is even more annoying for me." "I like to go out for breakfast." "Breakfast can be the most annoying meal for me, because I need orange juice." "I like orange juice, but I need a normal-sized glass." "I don't know what kind of shortage we have in our country." "You don't get this... this'll never be your juice glass." "Trust me, this is how they deliver the juice to the restaurant." ""We have a juice delivery..." "Your juice is here." ""Get the hand truck, Fred." "You gotta bring that to the loading dock."" "I always tell the waitress," ""Please, I need a large, large, jumbo juice."" "I don't know how to stress that any more." "No matter what you say, it's a thimble, a thimble of juice." "My wife ordered a "small" once." "They came around with a damp rag." ""I should have got the large."" "You know, if you wanted, you could be my biker chick." "We could get on the bike together." "We could maybe..." "I don't think so." "We could drink out of a bottle that says "xxx."" "And we could go on the open road, and just go, you know?" "And say, forget it." "I don't think so." "Or we could just, you know..." "Okay, bye." "I almost broke my shower the other day, doc." "It's so frustrating..." "I have the shower where you can't get an accurate temperature setting." "My shower will be too cold, so I'll turn it just a millimeter, that's all, just a, bing... too hot, right there." "I've done nothing wrong." "You can't turn the knob any less than that." "I try..." "I tried every method of turning that knob as little as possible." "Sometimes, I just brush up against the knob." "Too hot... it's never the right temperature." "It's the right temperature once, while it's on its way towards being the wrong temperature." "You soap up your body, and I have to wait for it to come around." ""There it is, okay, there it is." "La, la, la, ow!"" "And then it does something very weird." "I'll turn it hotter, and it gets a little colder first and then goes to hot." "It's like the cold water has to back up and get a running start." ""Okay, hot."" "Ben?" "Hey, dad." "What do you think?" "Couple of words about the bike." "Sucks... not good, bad bike, waste of money." "Looks bad, people laugh at it." "I go by, I ride, the engine doesn't kick in." "Couple of words about the son..." "Not supportive, unkind, peeing on my parade, maybe a little jealous of my bike." "I'm not jealous, dad." "I was riding it, and what happens is when the engine kicks in, it goes slower, because it, like, resists." "What I was also gonna say, dad, is it doesn't do well down sets of stairs." "No, it's not a..." "It's not, like, a mountain bike." "No, it's a road vehicle, it's not an off-road vehicle." "'Cause you know, when you do, the electric part..." " Yeah." " Snaps off." "You don't mean that it literally snapped off?" "Well, I mean, hypothetically, it would, and literally, it did." "Ben, we're gonna have to talk about this more tonight, and I'm hoping that you realize that you've made a..." "Hello, Ben?" "You know, dad, maybe it's just..." "This is a purchase that was more about you, and I'm not gonna necessarily jive with it." "Yeah, you don't have to..." "You know." "It's like when we got you that waterbed." "You wanted me to celebrate and roll around and ride the waves with you." "And you weren't into it." "Yeah, I was not into it..." "I'm not a waterbed guy." "Maybe you're not an electric-bike guy." "I have the feeling that when I wasn't looking..." "I was in there a couple of times." "That's what I thought." "You know what, though, dad?" "What I am sorry about is making fun of your purchase." "It's not the making fun of it so much as the mangling of it that really got to me." "I just think there's been a lot of bad inventions that have gone the way of the dodo." "No, actually, the dodo is coming back." "Is it?" "With a vengeance!" "That's an invention!" "Dad, I know you have your own agenda." "Yeah." "I just think it's stupid, that's all." "Okay." "Maybe it's not all bad, the whole racism thing." "Maybe I'm making too much out of it." "Sometimes, it's actually worked in my favor, doc." "Like the time I was on a plane, coming from London." "My plane gets hijacked..." "Very scary." "Everyone thought they were gonna die, except for me, doc." "I knew I'd make it..." "Not because I'm brave," "I'm just..." "I was just the only black guy on the plane." "We all know the facts." "A terrorist has never taken a black hostage in the history of the world." "I have never seen that." "These terrorists are smart, doc." "They know what they're doing." "I hate to say it, but black people are bad bargaining chips." "Well..." "You know, a terrorist would call up the White House." ""Hello?" "Hello!" "We have got five black people..." "Hello?"" "Who's the weirdest?" "Any weird guys sitting in this waiting room?" "Hmm." "Which patient smelled the weirdest?" "Um..." "Hello." "Hello, Ray." "I remember when we stopped last week, you were telling me about the roles you play in your household." "Yeah." "You were the noise checker, is that right?" "Noise checker and bug killer." "You got promoted." "I don't know why women think men like bugs." "I'm squeamish." "The other day, my wife screamed, and I ran up to the bathroom, and this thing frightened me." "I've never seen a bug that large... it was gross." "We had a huge bug..." "It had graffiti on it." "It was one of those rare bugs, and she's hysterical." ""Kill it... don't look at it, you kill."" "And I don't care how brave you are, you don't just rush in and kill a bug like that." "You gotta plan it all out." "You gotta, hey, what if I swing and miss?" "I don't know if he has the gift of flight, for one thing." "And then she told me, "Spray it!"" "Most women think any aerosol can can kill a bug." "Hairspray, deodorant, she's telling me..." ""I've killed bugs with deodorant!"" "Yeah, I'm trying to kill a monster with deodorant, and all I could find was the roll-on." ""No, this crap ain't working." "He likes it, he likes this!" "Look at him... oh, he wants his tummy done... beautiful!" "It's not working, honey..." "He shouldn't be purring."" "I'm sorry, Ray, we're gonna have to stop." "So you got the bug, right?" "Yeah." "What's that thing crawling up your leg?" "Oh!"