Joe DeRosa: I Never Promised You a Rose Garden

Um, this is an entirely negative show.

There is nothing positive whatsoever.

It is a hopeless affair from front to back.

Not a speck of hope.

Um, because I'm telling you, people,

I'm at that age...

I'm at that age where I want to spit on most people

that I interact with throughout a day.

Um, if spitting were not assault...

I say this without exaggeration,

I'd be spitting on and then running away from

seven, eight people a day, easily.

- -Easily.

And only running away out of fear

that they might recognize me as a comedian.

Not for safety,

because I'd only spit on children

and men and women smaller than me.

And here's why.

Because it's all shit.

The whole thing is shit.

And I'm glad.

I'm glad it's shit.

Because I knew this is where we were headed, okay?

And I've known for a long time.

That's why it bothers me that my progressive friends

have now adopted that perspective.

That's now a progressive way of thinking, you know?

They're all walking around.

These are the people that always called the apathetic

and pessimistic and negative and whatever.

Now they're all walking around going, "Oh, there's just no point to any of it.

Don't you get it? Like, it's all hopeless.

Like, fuck it.

I microdose. That's what I do."

"That's how I get through it.

So just, you know, that's just what it is now."

Fuck you!

Fuck you!

I felt that way since at least '96.

At least.

You're not teaching me anything.

Yeah, sorry I didn't need Trump getting elected to go,

"Something's not right around here.

Something's off."

I like that joke because it works for Trump haters and supporters.

Yeah, if you hate him, you know, you're like,

"Yeah, I know! He's a psycho, right?"

And if you like him, you're like, "That's how fucked up everything was!

We needed him!"

So this show is based on my perspective of the culture.

And it's not good. It's not a good outlook.

But I noticed something. I noticed something.

All of our perspectives are based somehow in religion, okay?

Uh, and even if you're not a spiritual person,

your perspective comes from some sort of theology.

For example, I have a lot of friends that'll say to me,

"Joe, just be positive.

Put positive energy out, you get positive energy back.

It's that simple. It's an exchange of energy.

You just be positive and it all works out."

That's a very Wiccan way of thinking.

That's what Wiccans think. Just be positive. It's that easy.

And they used to murder Wiccans...

...by the dozens.

I didn't look it up, but it was a lot that they killed.

And you'd think, oh, that's weird.

Why would you murder somebody just because of their outlook on things?

And then you meet a Wiccan at a party.

And they're like, "Do you want to read my moon poetry?"

Were you talking like this back in the 1600s?

That's probably why they killed all of you.

You're at a party with like a magistrate.

"My period is in sync with the trees."

God, put her in the fucking pot!

I was not raised Wiccan.

So I do not have that perspective.

I was raised Roman Catholic, okay?

So I have a very worst-case scenario perspective.

That's the Roman Catholic way of thinking.

Tell me how bad it's gonna be. I'll accept it.

And then we get on with our day.

That's it.

You're gonna be crucified.

It's happening.

All right, fine.

Let me just eat dinner with my buddies,

and then we'll go do it.

So this show's about my perspective on the culture.

And I just got to tell you, I'm tired, okay?

I'm tired. It's coming from the fact that I'm tired.

It's a hustle.

You're hustled from sunup to sundown.

It's exhausting. I can't do it anymore.

Everything is a hustle.

Quality.

Quality is a hustle. It's fake. Doesn't exist.

Everybody in this room, all of you,

you spend great money on shit

every day of your life.

Great money on shit.

Now here's how they get you to do that.

What they do is they take utter shit, okay?

Utter shit is worse than regular shit.

There's a shit scale.

And utter shit is the worst kind of shit.

They take utter shit, and they tell you it's pretty good.

And you'll spend pretty good money on utter shit for so long,

eventually, you'll spend great money on regular old shit.

First class is a perfect example of what I'm talking about.

First class sucks!

It sucks-- It's a chair you can fit in.

That's it.

That's all it is.

But they make coach class so utterly shitty,

that by the time you get up to first class, you're like,

"Oh, my God, this is fantastic.

My kneecaps aren't turning inside out from the seat in front of me.

I get free orange juice before takeoff? What am I, a princess?

This was definitely worth an extra 1,700 to Tampa."

If you work Monday to Friday, if you work Monday to Friday,

you are a victim of the greatest quality hustle that has ever existed.

The weekend.

The weekend.

You think it's good, don't you?

Friday night rolls around, you feel blessed.

That's how utterly shitty

they make your work week.

They make it so fucking unbearable

that Friday hits and you're like, "Oh, my God, what a treat.

I have just under 48 hours

to tend to everything...

...that I was too dead in my soul to tend to all week long.

And I get to do it hungover?

This is tremendous!"

Quality is a hustle.

But it's not the filthiest hustle.

The filthiest hustle is progress.

Progress is a complete hustle.

And here's how that hustle works.

They make you think they're making change happen,

and they're not doing shit, all right?

And here's how they do that by showboating.

Progress people, they like to put on a big show.

What a big show does is it distracts you from the fact that they ain't doing shit.

All right?

Protesting. Would you stop?

Stop with the protesting.

Let me tell you about protesting, okay?

All protesting is, it's like laying on the horn in traffic.

It pisses a lot of people off,

makes a ton of noise,

doesn't change a fucking thing about the situation.

But people love to put on a show, man.

Victoria's Secret did it. That's a great example.

Victoria's Secret, they made headlines a few years back.

They made headlines because they hired the first-ever female model

with Down syndrome.

All right? Everybody's very proud of Victoria's Secret.

"Oh, this is so great."

Victoria's Secret was patting themselves on the back.

"Look at what we've done.

We're breaking down the boundaries of beauty here at Victoria's Secret.

We're creating progress."

It was bullshit.

It was a hustle.

I felt bad for that girl.

Because Victoria's Secret did to her what they do to every woman they hire.

Because they didn't go out and find any old gal with Down syndrome.

They went out and found the hottest gal

with Down syndrome.

And that meant one thing.

She didn't look like she had fucking Down syndrome!

And that's not progress.

You're going to give me technicality Down syndrome right now?

"She doesn't look like she had it."

"She's got it. It's in there.

Look at the recipe. It's in there. It's...

The notes are subtle, but it's there."

You got to stir some shit up if you're going to do it.

Make some people uncomfortable.

They did it right in the '80s. They did it right in the '80s.

In the '80s, there was a TV show. It was called Life Goes On, okay?

Life Goes On was about a kid who had Down syndrome

who was named Corky, okay?

The actor that played Corky,

he had that shit.

All right? He had four-on-the-floor, pedal-to-the-metal Down syndrome.

They didn't go find a kid that looked like Brad Pitt with puffy eyes, all right?

They got a kid with Down syndrome.

They put him in your goddamn face every week.

I remember, I remember,

because I used to watch the show and I laughed for all the wrong reasons.

Because that's what you do when you're young

and you feel uncomfortable.

You laugh.

And progress needs to make you feel uncomfortable or it's not happening.

Hollywood does this shit all the time with racial progress.

By the way, everybody, Hollywood--

Hollywood's going to fix all the racism.