Lizzy Hoo: Hoo Cares!?

Alright, you know what to do!

Smash your hands together and welcome to the stage

Lizzy Hoo!

Ohhhh.

Thank you.

We're at the Athenaeum! What the fuck?

This is crazy.

Thank you so much for coming out tonight.

Ah, I've got... I've got big news.

Um, at the end of last year, I quit my day job

to do full-time comedy.

- (CHEERING AND APPLAUSE) - Thank you.

Thank you. Yes, thank you.

Ah, but my timing, my timing wasn't so great.

I quit in November last year,

just before the Omicron outbreak.

I was hopeful. You know, I was hopeful.

It was like, 95% vax rate, 100 to 200 cases a day.

I thought, "This is the time that I quit my day job

"and I do comedy full-time."

But, as we know, COVID can be such a fuckboy.

You think you're over him and then, bam, he's in your DMs.

I'm thinking about your lungs...

...and your grandma's lungs.

All your friends, they're sick of you talking about him,

"COVID this, COVID that."

It's like, "Get over him, babe!

"He's only using you for your body."

And I do believe that COVID is a dude.

I do believe that...

...because he's had two years to fix himself.

Two years.

Get some therapy, COVID.

Just comes back with a man bun and a beard,

calls himself Omicron.

It's like, "We know it's you, COVID."

Ah, speaking of cool guys, my dad, Big Chan Hoo.

- Anyone know him? - (AUDIENCE WHOOPS)

Oh, whoa, a few Chanactics in tonight. I love that.

A few Chan fans. He's a cool guy.

Loves to call me.

Loves to call me. Calls me all the time.

I've got Daddy issues, but good ones.

Ah, it's FaceTime mostly now or top-of-his-head-time.

Just a lot of bare-chested 83-year-old time.

It's never face. Never face.

Our phone calls are a lot of me saying,

"I can't see you, Dad,"

and him saying, "Well, I can't hear you."

And then he'll say something completely sane and normal,

like, "Hey, have I told you about the time

"I got the monkey drunk?"

I'm like, "No, Chan, but please, do tell."

I think my brothers and I,

we've been calling him Chan since high school

because we are nothing but deeply disrespectful...

...of hierarchy and culture.

My mum, my very white mum -

I want you to have the right picture -

ah, my very white mum...

I'll never call her by her first name.

I won't even say her name in this show.

- Ah... - (LAUGHTER)

But my phone calls with her, I think,

are equally as entertaining.

I remember last year I called her and I said,

"Hello, Mum, how are you?"

Fairly standard offering.

And she said, "Good, love. Just trying not to die."

That's the spirit, Mum!

She's just over it. She's lived enough.

There's nothing wrong with her, she's just... she's just done.

And, to be fair, though, to be fair,

for seniors, like, for the last couple of years

it's been pretty tough for them.

We've all been trying not to die and for seniors, more so.

For seniors, more so. It was tough.

It was tough. What were the options?

Go to Coles and get COVID,

or attempt an online shopping order and have a heart attack?

They were the options.

Mum said to me, "Well, what are you up to?" and I said,

"Well, I just quit my day job to do full-time comedy."

And she said, "Wow! That's amazing, Elizabeth!

"Life is about taking risks and living.

"You can be whoever you want to be."

Said no Boomer ever.

Never.

This is what she said.

"Oh, no!"

"Oh, no, Eliz-

"Oh, why can't you do something normal, Elizabeth?

"What about your superannuation?"

All very good, boring, valid points.

But I think I've called my mum with way worse news

than, "I quit my day job."

It wasn't like when I was 22

and I called her from an internet café overseas.

It's like, "Hey, Mum. Yeah, it's me.

"Just giving you a call now

"because you might not hear from me for a couple of months,

"because me, Liza and Sarah,

"yeah, we've bought a van for $500

"and we're gonna drive it from Canada to Mexico."

I even told her it was gonna cost us $1,000

but something went wrong with the car,

so the guy gave it to us cheaper.

And she was on board, she said, "Yes, go and have an adventure.

"Enjoy yourself."

I guess she was younger, I was younger.

You could say she was a little too unfazed.

I mean, she did hitchhike through South-East Asia

in the '70s.

That is how she met my dad. Yeah.

My dad was a travelling salesman

and his friend called him up and said,

"Hey, do you wanna take these two hot Aussie chicks

"to Penang?"

And he said, "Yeah."

You know, so having your own car

and travelling through a developed country

was, by Mum's standards, pretty lame.

If it's not gonna leave you

with a husband and three children,

eh, is it really that interesting?

I think she'd be scared if I was doing that today.

I would be scared if I was doing that today.

I've watched all three seasons of Narcos.

But my parents, they're getting older.

My dad's 83, my mum's 76,

and, look, nobody really prepares you

for watching your parents get older.

It happens really quickly.

It's kinda like watching kids grow up,

but in reverse and not as fun, you know?

Baby's first steps and Mum's first fall.

Not really the same camera-ready moment.

OK, some of you are on board.

- (LAUGHTER) - It's a room-splitter.

My point is that your parents get old quickly

and it happens, like, in the blink of an eye, you know?

And it was only 15 years ago that Mum and I,

we skydived to her 60th birthday party.

How cool is that? Yeah.

She said, "I wanna skydive to my 60th birthday party,"

and 22-year-old Elizabeth's like,

"Well, I can't let my mum skydive before me."

You know, I was meant to be the risk-taker

in this relationship.

So I stole some of her thunder and I went with her.

You know, other 60-year-olds though,

they might just organise a high tea

or go on a cruise with some friends.

My mum thought, "Get me to the drop zone.

"I wanna jump out of a tiny plane

"with a dreadlocked guy they call Dangerous Dan

"strapped to my back,

"yelling at me every 30 seconds

"to do shakas into a camcorder..."

"...so he can later sell me a VHS

"of my cheeks rippling in the wind."

That was the main difference between our videos that we got.

My cheeks, 22, hardly moved, supple, so good, so tight.

Mum's cheeks... (PUFFS)...

...like an umbrella in a cyclone.

I should say too that our car trip to Mexico,

it wasn't like your #vanlife

that you see on Instagram today.

We didn't have Instagram, obviously.

We hardly had internet.

We didn't even have a flip-phone.

We could have, it was 2006, ah, but we decided

we didn't need one on our 3,000km journey.

"We'll just go with the flow, man,

"reverse charge my parents if we need to."

The only personal insurance that we had

was leaving behind our rogue friend, Tracy.

Yeah, Trace.

Ah, she went out on a bender the night before

and she didn't turn up,

so we just left without her.

We didn't have a phone, we couldn't call her,

we didn't know where she was,

so as soon as she was about two minutes late, we're like,

- "Oh, yeah, we..." - (LAUGHTER)