Tom Papa: Freaked Out

* now the time is right

* bright city light

* turn it up a little louder *

* calling out your name

* to come out and play

* before the midnight hour

* ooh

* everyone getting all dressed up *

* nothing's gonna stop us now *

* we're bringing on the night *

* we're taking on the town

* we're shining like the stars *

* tonight is our night

* yeah

*

Thank you very much.

Yes indeed.

You look great.

It looks like you lost weight.

Good for you. You look nice.

Sincerely, many, many thanks.

It means a lot that you're here.

A big round of applause for the Tom papa dancers.

Thank you so much.

Really means a lot. It really does.

Here's why I don't like the Chinese.

Not some of them, all of them.

I'm scared of the Chinese. I'm scared of the Chinese.

And I know fear comes from ignorance,

and I am ignorant of that culture.

But I'll bet most of you

are ignorant of the Chinese culture.

Go to Chinatown,

and go to a grocery store,

and look at what they consider food.

And you tell me you understand the Chinese.

Bags of salted squirrel faces.

Baby alligators this big, this big.

I've never seen an alligator this big.

Not on the Internet. Not on discovery.

Not in a museum.

It's like they don't exist.

Go to Chinatown, there's boxes filled with them

with scoopers like you're getting gummy bears

at the fair.

There's always a fish tank out front with black water in it.

You think nothing's in it.

You come up, tap on the glass.

Something comes up, spits at you, yells,

and goes back down.

Was that a fish or a man?

Are they selling it or does he work here?

All right, all right,

what other culture has buckets of live frogs

out front of every storefront?

Who? And not just the food store.

The bank, the electronics store.

Everyone in Chinatown is in the live frog business.

Well, let's educate ourselves.

Let's not be so ignorant.

Let's learn a little bit.

We'll take six, please. Give us six live frogs.

They bag 'em up for you. You get 'em home to your place.

What's your next move?

How are you killing six live frogs on your own?

Are you just gonna get little pillows

and put 'em over their face?

Let it go, froggy. Let it go.

I don't know. I don't have the answers.

Who you gonna ask for answers in those stores?

Who's there to help you in those stores?

One 2,000-year-old woman sitting on a milk crate

chewing on a bat wing.

A bengal tiger in a hammock

just swinging behind her,

eyeballing you the whole time.

You go to the register. No people at the register.

Just cats. Cats working the register.

Smoking cigarettes,

playing scratch-off lottery games,

eating fig Newtons with no labels on them.

Scary, scary people.

And we owe them $4 trillion.

Gay men scare me.

Gay men scare me because they care about

the same things that women care about,

but with the aggression of men.

It's a dangerous combination.

Like if my wife sees a friend of hers

who's gained a little weight,

she'll rip her apart but be very tactful about it.

You know, "looks like Barbara

"might have put on a pound or two.

Bah, bah, bah, bah."

Our gay friend's like, "please, she's a walrus."

"Look at her whiskers."

Like, women will redecorate maybe a room or two.

Maybe a half bath if they get excited.

Gay men will redecorate an entire city

if they don't like it.

I live in Chelsea here in town.

It was a hellhole.

It was rat-infested, graffiti-covered.

And when the gay community finally moved in,

they got to Chelsea looked around and said,

"hell no. This will not do."

And they dressed up like construction workers

in jeans and work boots...

Suspenders and no shirts.

And they tore that place to the ground.

And what has emerged is a pottery barn heaven.

Everywhere you go it smells like candles.

Gay men make everything better.

Yeah, that should be their slogan.

This is a pretty amazing time to be here.

It's probably the greatest time to be on this planet.

It really is. We are very lucky people.

But we don't always feel that way.

We always feel freaked out all the time,

'cause we're the first generation of people

who's had to watch news 24 hours a day.

No other human being

has had to watch a nonstop horror show

of other people's problems.

It's too much. You gotta turn it off.

It'll make you sick.

You gotta treat the news like a call home to your parents.

Shorter the better.

Right, you call, you make it short,

like, they tell you something weird

your dad did with a jar of mayonnaise and...

"I love you. I love you."

You hang up. How are they?

They're good, they're good.

They're doing just fine.

Because it skews our thinking.

This is an amazing time to be here, you know?

We're the people of the 21st century.

The 21st century, that's a pretty amazing thing.

But we have to own it. We have to own it.

We gotta let the past go. We gotta make some changes.

No more post office.

It's time to shut it down.

I can send a picture of my testicles

to all of Russia from my phone.

Shut it down.

Who's communicating like this anymore?

I've got to get a message to my friend in Virginia.

Get me some paper and my writin' sticks.

"Dear Mortimer, send help immediately."

How we gonna get it there?

I know, let's give it to the weirdo in the blue uniform

who wanders the neighborhood

and stares at the children too long.

He'll know what to do with it.

Shut it down.

Have you been inside a post office lately?

Even the people who work in the post office

can't believe it's still open.

It's like a haunted Scooby doo warehouse at this point.

Everything's covered in spider webs.

Old machinery run by enslaved oompa loompas.

You get to the front of the line,

they look at you like you're selling something

and you just walked into their apartment.

"What the hell are you doing here?"

"I wanna send this to my Nana."

Then they go into a list of stuff

they can't do for you.

"Well, I can't send it wrapped like that.

"I can't let you pay with that credit card.

"I can't make eye contact with you when I'm talking to you.

I can't stop eating funyuns when I'm at work."

Shut it down.

While we're at it, no more change.

No more disease-infested coins.

It's 2013.

I can go to Starbucks with my iPhone

and buy things like captain kirk with a phaser

just pointing at stuff.

I'll take a latte. Pew!

I'll take a scone. Pew-pew!

Why are we walking around like leprechauns

with pockets filled with golden trinkets,

jingle-jangling down the city streets,

teasing the homeless.

Why?

You run your errands,

you have to wear a belt just to keep your pants up

from all the treasure you're gonna accumulate

from your magic Mario brothers adventure,

'cause they love giving it out.

Nothing ends on the dollar amount, right?

5.15, bling, bling, bling.

6.29, bling, bling, bling.

You ever get 99 cents change?

That's a big f.U., isn't it?

'Cause you know they don't have to do it.

You don't have to do it. You're gonna do it?

Aren't you hilarious. Thank you very much.