their damn pills..?
Don’t they want to get better…?
It’s complicated, to be fair…
Perfect-10 :
One request -- Tell Me :
The Human Race back
in The Future - Why does
Everyone think They're right?
Geppetto :
So that They Win. I made
every opinion supreme.
That's The Game of
The 21st Century --
They shout and they
type and they cancel.
So I fixed it. Now,
everybody wins.
Perfect-10 :
And everyone loses.
Geppetto :
The Never-ending Game --
[ which is exactly what HIS existence is like -- ]
Now, name your challenge.
Dave Chappelle - Closing Joke (The Dreamer)
"I’m gonna close the night with a long story. Do you mind?
All right. It’s a long one. So pretend that I’ve finished. ‘Cause I gotta go get a cigarette. All right? I’m not done, but just act like it. I’d prefer standing ovations since we’re acting. Thank you very much. Good night.
Thanks for not giving me a standing O, motherfuckers. This is the worst. It’s all right. I just wanted to smoke. You like that, don’t you?
Okay. Before I did Killin’ Them Softly, when I was 22, HBO gave me the biggest opportunity of my life at that time. They gave me a half-hour special, but this shit was not like a special, you know what I mean? It was like, generic. It didn’t even have a title. It just says “Dave Chappelle.” And I shot it in San Francisco, at a place called Broadway Studios, which is on the second floor of a building. And beneath Broadway Studios is a nightclub. And the special was only supposed to be 30 minutes.
And I got ready. I practiced. I did all the shit I was supposed to do. And the night that I taped, 20 minutes into my 30-minute set, I’ll never forget this music. Music started blasting from the nightclub underneath. You could hear it real loud and it fucked my whole show up, and I was devastated. I was a young man. I really believed in what I was doing. And I thought that my dream had been killed. So when I got off stage, I ran down the steps to the alley behind Broadway Studios, where the control trucks are parked, and I kicked that motherfucking door open. And I started yelling at all the producers. I was nobody in show business. Just a guy that believed in myself.
I said, “Man, you fucked everything up.”
“That fucking music. What the fuck were you thinking?”
And there was a guy who was a big-time producer. I ain’t saying no names. He stood up and he said, “Hey, kid, sit the fuck down.”
He said, “We didn’t ruin anything.”
He said, “We made a deal with that nightclub to not play music, and they didn’t honour The Deal.”
And I said, “Who didn’t honor the deal?” And he pointed to a guy. I’ll never forget it. It was an old white man sitting in a Ford Taurus by himself. And he said, “That guy right there.” I didn’t waste no time or ask no questions. I went to that Ford Taurus and I beat on that window, I said, “Open the door, motherfucker. I want to talk to you.”
That old man looked at me for one second and wisely drove the fuck off. And left me in the alley cussing at anybody who would listen. And two minutes later, literally 120 seconds later, it couldn’t have been any more than that, the doors of the kitchen in the alley of that nightclub underneath Broadway Studios swung open. And that old man was standing there, that same old man with reinforcements. He had two big goons with him, and he looked at me… He was calm as a cucumber. He said, “You, come here. I want to talk to you.”
I didn’t know anything about streets at this age. But I found out later in my life that these men were Russian mobsters. I don’t know what you guys know about the Russian mob, but these are the n*ggas that killed Denzel in Training Day.
All the producers knew what I was up against. They said, “Dave, do not go in there.” And I said, “Fuck y’all.” And I walked right into that kitchen and they closed the doors behind me, and it got the dark as fuck in there, and I knew. I’m not dumb. I knew I was in a bad situation. But you have to understand, I believed in what I was doing, and I didn’t give a fuck. Just kept cussing at these motherfuckers. Tell them how they ruined my life. And that old man couldn’t believe that I was talking all of this shit.
And as soon as I took a breath, he stopped me gently. He said, “Hey, kid, listen. Your friends lied to you.” He said. “We made a deal. But your friends never paid me.”
And when he said that, I realised I was locked in a kitchen. I realised he was telling The Truth, which would make me wrong. And the moment, the very moment that I realized I was wrong, for the first time, I was afraid. You see, it’s a funny thing if you believe you’re absolutely right. You can get drunk off the feeling of how right you are. That’s why gay people are so mean…
But I didn’t buckle. You guys would’ve been very proud of me. I was scared, but I didn’t buckle.
I said, “Well, then, sir, I owe you an apology. But I believe that no matter what reason that music was playing, it ruined my life.”
And that old man looked at me with sympathy in his eyes. And he walked over to me and he gently placed his hand on my cheek. Which I gotta tell you, it is a very emasculating thing to do. I was standing there looking at this n*gga’s hand on my cheek, like…
And he said, “You are a real man.”
And he tapped me on my cheek. Real soft. And just like that, the doors open back up. The light from the alley flooded into the kitchen, and I just walked out alive.
I lived to fight…
another day.
And in that moment, I learned
one of the most valuable
lessons of my life, and
I have to share it with you :
And that lesson is this :
In Your Life,
at any given Moment,
The Strongest Dream in that
Moment wins that Moment.
I am a VERY powerful Dreamer.
Yeah, I’m not lying.
I Dreamed tonight,
this very night,
as a 14-year-old boy,
and I am Living it
as a 50-year-old Man.
My Dreams are very strong.
Today, I walked all around Washington. I used to be poor in this city, and all day, people just said, “Hey, Dave. Hey, Dave.” Like they knew me personally, and I felt like I knew them.
And I say to myself, “My God, Dave, what a powerful dream.”
But then, sometimes… Sometimes… I feel regular. I just feel like myself. Maybe I’ll smoke some weed and be at some nightclub and feel shy.
But I’ll look across the nightclub, see some guy that no one’s ever heard of. But this n*gga worked all week and got bottle service, and this bitch is bringing Moët and sparklers to ’em. I picture, in my mind, he’s Persian. He’s doing some kind of weird Persian dance. He got six bitches at his table because he got so much liquor. And they all just saying, “Go Cena! Go Cena!”
And I was looking across the room like, “Oh, my God. I’m in that guy’s dream.”
I can hear him telling his friends. “Hey, how was the club last night?”
“That shit was fantastic. I had bottle service. I seen Dave Chappelle across the club, looking at me like, ‘Who is that?'”
And that’s the trick to life. You have to be wise enough to know when you were living in your dream. And you have to be humble enough to accept when you’re in someone else’s. That’s why… That’s why I don’t judge between Will Smith, and Chris Rock. Because you guys look at them as big ideas, but I look at them as fellow dreamers. I can’t judge between them because I see myself in both of them.
I am Will Smith. I am the man that cannot take it anymore and will slap the shit out of the next person that says a cross word to me or somebody that I love.
And I am Chris Rock. I am the man that can get slapped in front of the whole world and keep my composure so I don’t fuck anything up. That… is what… men do. Men make boundaries. Men enforce boundaries. And men tests boundaries. And no man test more boundaries than a trans man…
When I see a fellow dreamer, I give them my utmost respect, even if I don’t understand what their dream is. I know A Dreamer when I see one. And I’ve met many powerful dreamers in my life. None more powerful than a man who calls himself… Lil Nas X. I met this n*gga at a party. I had no idea who he was. But the minute he walked in that party, I knew I was in his dream. Everybody in the party was another dreamer. Everyone was famous. But when that n*gga walked in, he was dressed like C-3PO. He was shining.
And everyone was like, “Oh, my God, there he is. That’s Lil Nas X!”
I didn’t know who he was. For some reason, out of all of them dreamers, he walked right up to me. And he said, “I tried to get you in my video.”
I didn’t know what the fuck he was talking about. I said, “What?” “What video?” And he was just looking at me like… “You know what video,” and walked away.
And I watched him walk away. I said, “Man.”
I said… “This n*gga’s having a very powerful dream.”
You know what it reminded me of? It remind me of when we was in grade school. Remember, the teacher would ask everybody what they want to be. “Timmy. Timmy, what do you want to be when you grow up?” Timmy acted like he had an idea. He’d stand up and he’d say, “I want to be a fireman.” And the teacher would say, “Timmy, that is a beautiful dream.” But Timmy didn’t mean it. Timmy said he wanted to be a fireman because deep down, Timmy is attracted to fire. And by the time he’s 14 years old, this n*gga is a full-blown pyromaniac, playing with kerosene and matches like a goddamn expert. Then one night he goes downtown with his buddies fucking around with fire, burns a warehouse down. He doesn’t know it, but there’s 13 migrant workers from El Salvador in that motherfucker. They get trapped and then they die in the fire. Isn’t that a tragedy? Well, it was an accident. He’s only 14 years old. But he’s Black. So they try him as an adult. Timmy ends up spending the rest of his life in jail. Dream deferred.
[mimics buzzer sound]
“What about you, Billy? Billy?
Billy, What do you want to be when you grow up?”
Billy stands up and he says,
“I want to be President of the United States.”
And the teacher says, “Oh, my God, Billy.
Billy, that is a wonderful dream.”
And Billy means that shit. Billy does everything right. That motherfucker gets his grades up, he joins student government. He even does extracurricular activities like show choir just to make his resume look good. He’s on track to be president. But junior year, he wipes. When he’s 16, he gets his girlfriend pregnant, and has to drop out of high school to make ends meet. But lucky for him, the local Walmart’s hiring. By the time he’s 20 years old, this motherfucker makes assistant manager at Walmart. He’s the youngest one in the district. He says, “Oh, my God, if I can keep this up for four more years, I could be a manager. If I can keep this up for six more years after that, I could even be a regional manager and have as many as three Walmarts under my control.”
And he’s a big-picture guy. He sees where this path is going.
So he kills himself.
[mimics buzzer sound]
“What about you? What do you want to be when you grow up?”
“I don’t wanna say. Because I don’t want the other kids to laugh at me.”
“Who cares if they laugh? Your dream is yours.
Own your dreams so they can come true. Say it loud and proud.
What do you want to be when you grow up, Lil Nas X?”
That n*gga stood up in front of the whole class.
“I want to be the gayest n*gga that ever lived. I want to do a music video, slide down a stripper pole, all the way to the depths of hell, and suck the devil’s dick at ten o’clock on BET while all the kids are awake and can see me.”
Shockingly, that was the only dream that worked out.
That’s why I’m here. Tonight. In the city where I built the dreams that I live. ‘Cause I wanted to tell you all that they came True. And I wanted to thank you all for making The Man that I am today.
Yes, I am living a very powerful dream. Every time I come to this city and I stand in front of you, I realize that, “My God, man, this is not my dream at all. It’s yours, and I am honored to be in it.”
Thank you very much, Washington D.C. I’ll see you next time."
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