Denis Leary: My Kids

Yeah. Oh, my kids, my kids, my kids are into Hanson now. Ohhh, you have no idea. You know how kids like to play the same song over and over again. Mmbop, mmbop, mmbop. And the funny thing is I've actually come to love Hanson because of it, and I'll tell you why. You know why? Because these kids are a giant rehab festival just waiting to happen. Oh yeah. They are gonna crash and burn so quickly, it's gonna be fucking great. Their parents might as well call Liz and Gary Coleman right now and have a meeting. I can't wait... especially the drummer. What's he, six? Oh yeah, great, oh yeah. Oh, he's going down, mark my words, oh yeah. They're gonna find him in a motel room with a hooker and an eight ball, mark my words. Mark my words! Yeah. He's actually gonna be all the way up INSIDE the hooker's vagina, you know what I mean? They're gonna have to pull him out. "Come out of there! What are you doin'?" "I don't know! I'm six and I have credit cards, what the fuck!" Mmbop, eeumbop, eeumbop-ee...

"Boom-shaka-laka-laka, Boom-shaka-laka-laka, CAW, CAW, CAW, CAW, cock-a-doodle-doo!"
"Boom-shaka-laka-laka..."

I got good kids. I love my kids. I'm trying to bring 'em up the right way; not spanking them. I find I don't have to spank them. I find that waving the gun around pretty much gets the same job done, mm-hmm... Because they're trying to kill me, they are! You know, I try to explain the rules to them, but rules go in one ear and out the other. Close the door! How hard can it be to remember to close the door? You just open it, you close it behind you. I have a dog, I've seen him close the door with his nose! And he's a DOG! Apparently a kid's dream house is just a house with NO doors. The leaves blow in, there's bats flying around there, they don't care.

We started out with two kids, now we think there's twelve. I'm starting to think that other parents are dropping their kids off at my house so they can puke, shit their pants, break their house, and then leave. That's what the dog told me. They are unbelievable. You know, if you don't have kids, I don't know how to describe 'em to you, I really don't. I don't know how to describe it to you. It's like, uh, I don't know what it's like. It's like, it's like having drunken midgets around the house, that's what it's like, folks. It's like a rodeo clown car pulled up, and fifteen rodeo clowns got out, and they're running around, and you can't catch 'em. It's like there's monkeys on acid hanging off the lights, and you can't reach 'em. You keep thinking that they're gonna wake up one day and they go, "Oh, now I know the rules," but they don't. They just listen to "Mmmbop" over and over again. Every day, it's the same thing. It always starts the same exact way. "Close the door. Hey, gimme that bag of Oreos, you're not having Oreos for breakfast. No TV right now. Close the door. No, leave the dog alone. Would you please find your shoes? Gimme that bag of Oreos! Find your shoes, you put your shoes on. I don't know where your shoes are, I didn't have your shoes on. Close the door. Put that--no, don't cut the dog's hair right now! Come on... those are his shoes, go tell him you have his shoes and then find your shoes. Close that door. Put the phone down. Who are you calling, you're too young to call anybody. Don't feed Oreos to the dog, gimme that bag of Oreos! No! Close that door! No no no, those ARE your shoes. They have to be! Who are you? I want ID, let me see some ID."

And your life, immediately when they hit age five, becomes about quiet. You just want peace and quiet. That's all you want, you want the fighting to stop. "Can't we all just get along?" You turn into Rodney King, you do.

If you don't have kids, take this note down: don't buy the toys that make the noise. That's the key thing. If there's a toy with a button on it that makes noise, they're gonna press that button like Bart Simpson over and over again, for days at a time. BLAT BLAT BLAT BLAT BLAT BLAT! Their friends come over. "Hey, cool! BLAT BLAT BLAT BLAT!" Oh, my God! So you stop buying the toys that make the noise. Then you know what happens? The INLAWS buy the toys that make the noise, they drop 'em off at your house and then they LEAVE! And you're stuck with the toys that make the noise!

You heard about the Darth Vader bank toy? Ohhh, ohh, let me tell you about his toy, son. Don't buy this toy, mark that down too. The toy is this big. It's bigger than the kids. It's Darth Vader; he's standing like this... He's got that super, duper Oakland Raiders helmet on. Here's the gig with the toy: the kids put money in the front of the mask, and here's what happens immediately after the coin goes in, "[Darth Vader breathing] Use the Force, Luke [breathing]," for fifteen fucking minutes! And they bring the other kids from the other houses, and they put money in, so it goes on for hours! "[breathing] Use the Force, Luke [breathing]." The third day, the mechanism breaks. Yes, so now it doesn't need money to go off, it goes off randomly in the middle of the night! And in my house my kids and my wife, they sleep like wood; not me, I'm an insomniac! I find myself forty years old, naked and creeping to go to the bathroom, just so I don't have to hear James Earl Jones' fucking voice. And right at the last step, right before I have to go to the bathroom I hear, "Denis, I'm on again. Come here and tell me off, ha ha ha." I've given the finger to Darth Vader in the middle of the night. It's not right! Shut up! Now he's full of money and we can't get the money out and he's still talking to us. "Ha ha, I have the money!"

I just want some peace and quiet. I don't want the dangerous quiet, you know what that is, right? That's the one during the day when the kids are in the house, you're in the kitchen reading the paper. You're reading the paper for about fifteen minutes, and it slowly dawns on you... "Hey... wait a minute... hello... uh oh." Go in the dining room, no, look in the living room, no, I go by the bedrooms and by the bathroom and I hear voices in the bathroom. It's my daughter, I'm thinking, "She doesn't like to take baths at all, never mind at three o'clock in the afternoon. What's she doing?" I open the door, you know what she's doing? She's giving the dog a bath, IN THE TOILET! Oh yeah, she's soaping him up and singing away. And like some weird Vegas magician, I gotta pull a dog out of a toilet. "It's the Great Learytini, look at this! I've pulled a dog out of a toilet!" I get no explanation from her. "What was that about? Go to your room. Don't touch Darth Vader, please. Thank you."

My wife and I bought a home theater system. If you don't have one of these, you should get it. It's unbelievable. Big, giant wide-screen TV, there's like sixteen speakers so you get the surround sound, you get the big woofer on the ground that makes the floor shake when you listen to "Jurassic Park," and it's got that big rack of stuff that"s got the VCR, the DVD, and the laser disc player and a bunch of other stuff that you don't know what it does but it looks fucking great, it's really shiny. Had it for eight hours. Okay, eight. Count 'em. Actually, it was only four hours because the guy was installing it for four, so I had it for four hours officially. Put the kids to bed, get a copy of "Apocalypse Now." Yeah, Denis Hopper hopped up on coke in sixteen speaker stereo sound, that's great! I go to put the tape in, CLING CLING CLING. Won't go in, CLING CLING CLING. Won't go in. I reach inside the VCR, you know what's inside the VCR? Peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Peanut butter and jelly sandwich! Smuckers' Strawberry, I tasted it! Now, I would like to believe that I don't have retards in my family blood line, I'm hoping it wasn't as stupid as, "Ahm, ahm, I'm done with this, it goes in here." I'm hoping it was more thoughtful like, "Hey, maybe if I put this in here I can watch the peanut butter and jelly movie, so I can really here the crunchy parts!" So, I wake 'em all up and have a little People's Court session down in my TV room at 2:00 in the morning. "I'm your host, Ed Koch. Exhibit A, the sandwich. Exhibit B, the VCR. Does anybody have an explanation as to how this could have happened?" You know what I get? I get a sea full of dumb-founded faces. My oldest one, my son Jack, steps forward. "Dad, um, maybe... the sandwich was flying around the house, and central headquarters called them and told them to duck, here in the VCR, they ducked." "No they didn't! Food does not duck! Pull up your pants!" I look over in the corner, the dog is eating the peanut butter sandwich and it's stuck to the roof of his mouth. These are the people I live with. What happened?

They wanted a dog. They had a union meeting, apparently. When they came out of the union meeting, they picked a spokesman; it was Jack. "We want a dog." "Great idea, I love dogs." You know what I pictured. I pictured a big, giant, seven foot tall, 350 pound Irish wolf hound, huh? Named Buck! "Grrr!" Gotta have three leashes to keep him down. "No, Buck! Put that mailman back!" Buck, the scourge of the upper west side! "Grrr!" But, of course, they got the dog while I was away. So, we got a tiny, little, black, faggy, half-Pomeranian/half-French poodle, pound-and-a-half, little thing that's supposed to be a dog. I could throw this dog sixty yards, I guarantee you. "Run a post pattern, go out, go-go-go!" "Ar ar ar ar!" So I go, "Okay, we can keep the dog, you guys like him, but you know what? We're going to have a democratic vote thing on the name. Me and your mom are going to stay out here, we'll come up with some options, and you kids go in that room, come out with some ideas." You hear their three ideas that they came up with? I swear to God... Number one, Chicken Head. I swear to God! Chicken Head! Number two, Pizza. Number three, Fish. Not a bagoda, Fish. So I go, "You know what, go back in the room and come up with some other choices. When we get a chicken, we can call him Chicken Head, okay, but we're not calling the dog Chicken Head!" Chicken Head... oh, boy.

So they come out about fifteen minutes later, they really worked hard, and they've had an agreement amongst themselves. They have one choice, and they want to name the dog Pongo. The dog from <i>101 Dalmatians</i>, Pongo. My wife goes, "That's a great idea," and I go, "Whoa-whoa-whoa... Hold on a minute with the Pongo. Hold on! Let's face the facts here. Saturday night at midnight in the middle of the winter when it's snowing outside, you guys are all gonna be asleep, and guess who's going to be walking Pongo down broadway? Me! Running around on Broadway, 'Come here, Pongo! Come here!' No, it's not happening. We're not naming the dog Pongo. Out of the question." Then there was a fifteen minute cry... "We want Pongo... [whimpering]." So his name is fucking Pongo. Of course it is. Me and Pongo on Broadway on Saturday at midnight, "Come on, Pongo, shit for daddy. Shit for daddy, please. Oh, that's a big one, thank you, Pongo." Then I get my plastic bag out and scoop it up!

The phone is something you cannot explain to children. I don't know what age it is that they finally pick it up, probably when they start dating, but so far, none of the kids in my family have figured out the phone, not even the idea and the theory of the phone. It's always when you're on the phone that they want to talk to you. You're probably talking to some distant cousin in Colarny, it's probably seventeen million dollars a nanosecond, that's when they start talking to you when you're on the phone. "Dad, dad, dad, dad, dad." "I'm on the phone." "Oh. [pause] Dad, dad, dad, dad, dad, dad, dad, dad, dad, dad dad dad dad dad--" "WHAT?! I'm on the fucking phone! I know 'fuck' is a bad word, but you're fucking making me say it! How many times do I have to explain this thing to you? Are you going to grow up, when you're thirty-five, go into your boss's office, and start saying, 'Boss, boss, boss, boss, boss, boss, BOSS, BOSS, BOOOSS, boss boss boss boss boss boss boss boss!' 'What?' 'Can I have a cookie?' 'That's Leary's kid, fire him. I want him fired. He's the one that put that sandwich in my VCR last week, fire him.' "

Me and their mom have been together now for fifteen years. [applause] Yeah, yeah, well... you can applaud the pain. It's very difficult, it's hard. Let me tell you the key things you need to know to stay together for that long: love, honor, respect, and stay the FUCK away from each other, really. As much as you can. Get separate bedrooms if you can, that's the way to do it. Just come out, eat, talk, fuck, go back into seperate rooms. That's the best system I've come up with so far, folks. Don't fucking bump into each other too much, that's what I'm saying. Key thing. And for guys, learn this: even if you're just living with a woman, you're not even married to her, give up any thought of being involved in the interior decoration of the place you're gonna live in, okay? Just give it up! And all your stuff, put it in a storage place, places you're not going to see, just go by to see it occasionally. All your fucking sports mirrors and your beer mirrors, put 'em in storage! I've been to Wayne Gretzky's house. He's got five MVP trophies, you know where they are? They're in the fucking garage! I go into stores with my wife, and I go, "Forget about it." She'll say, "What do you think of those chairs?" "I think they suck." "Too bad, we just bought eight of 'em, asshole. Let's go." "They're not that bad..."

I'd like to tell you more about my wife, but I'm not allowed to. Not allowed! It's one of the rules!