(upbeat jazz music
and audience applause)
- I saw something very
interesting today.
I was driving in New
Jersey and I got lost.
I always get lost in New Jersey.
That whole state
looks the same to me.
I think they have seven
people and nine trees,
and they keep moving
it down the road.
(audience laughing)
And you know the male ego,
you know how a man
hates to get lost
when he's driving
a car with a woman.
He'll never admit to
her that he's lost.
Right, girls?
He'd rather have his left hand
suddenly turn into a foot.
Boom!
(audience laughing)
Lost, who's lost, what lost?
What are you giving me lost?
I know exactly where we are.
We're east of the Mississippi.
(audience laughing)
And I'm the same way.
I hate to ask anyone
for directions.
It's so embarrassing.
Whenever I stop to ask
someone for directions,
no matter what he looks like,
or how he's dressed,
I always roll down the
window and call him sir.
(audience laughing)
He could be standing there
picking his nose with a broom.
(audience laughing)
And I'll tell you the
worst thing is like
you get into a car
and you're driving
and you meet another
man in his car.
He's going to give
you directions,
(coughs)
excuse me, and he says to you,
"Oh yes, I'm going that way."
(audience laughing)
"But I have to turn off.
Follow me, I'll
give you a signal."
So you follow him
anywhere for hours,
Iwo Jima, Guam, anything.
(audience laughing)
And then, just as you
come to a traffic circle,
with eight 14-lane
highways feeding into it,
that's when he gives
you his signal.
(audience laughing)
And in a gasoline station,
the attendant's directions
always start out the same way.
They always go, "All right,
look buddy, here's what you do.
Pull out of the station."
(audience laughing)
No, I wanna drive around
the pumps nine hours.
I don't wanna pull
out of your station.
And if you have the
address you're looking for,
like 127 Chester Street,
written on a piece of paper,
he always takes it
out of your hand,
like you can't read.
(audience laughing)
"Let me see that.
127 Chester, you're right."
Oh, thank you very much.
(audience laughing)
And did you ever notice
that the same guy
works in every gasoline
station in America?
Right, it's always
that character
with the hunting cap
with the earmuffs.
(audience laughing)
Of course in July he
turns the earmuffs up.
(audience laughing)
And he wipes your windshield
with that filthy black rag,
which I'm convinced
is being mailed
from station to station.
(audience laughing)
And then I love
the map treatment,
when he gives you
the map treatment.
"All right, look,
here's the map.
You're right here."
And his hand covers New
York, Colorado, Nevada.
(audience laughing and clapping)
And I'm like, when I'm lost,
what I always do is I
pull into to a small town,
because the friendliest,
nicest people in America
live in small towns.
They always want to help.
But sometimes I don't understand
what they're talking about.
Like, they'll give
you, "All right, look.
Drive up yonder a piece."
(audience laughing)
"It's about a hoop and a holler.
And make a left at the house
where Elmer Boody died."
(audience laughing)
Elmer Boody's dead,
I'll be dipped.
I didn't know.
(audience laughing and clapping)
And in my hometown of
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,
everything's named after
Benjamin Franklin in that city.
"All right, look, you go over
to Benjamin Franklin Bridge,
out the Benjamin
Franklin Parkway,
past the Benjamin
Franklin Motel.
You can't miss it, it's
shaped like a giant kite
with a string and a key."
(audience laughing)
And in Los Angeles, you'd
better know your directions.
There's no one to ask.
No one walks in LA.
It's against the law
to walk in Los Angeles.
You'd get arrested if
you're caught walking.
"What's that man doing
moving his legs like that?
What are you, a pervert?
Get him in line."
(audience laughing and clapping)
Thank you.
(audience laughing and clapping)
Thank you.
And forget the bus
system in Los Angeles.
You must get discovered
for the movies, folks.
You're standing at
Hollywood and Vine nine days
waiting for the bus.
The bus every come here again?
You think it will ever come?
"We can use that man in a movie,
that sunburned freak over
there, come on over here."
And when the bus
finally comes, I swear,
they don't have any special
route that they follow.
Here's a bus driver in LA.
(grumbles)
"Hey, there's a
beautiful street.
I never saw that before."
(audience laughing)
The best place to get directions
is right here in New York City.
You always understand them.
No matter who you ask,
they're always the same.
Excuse me, could
you please tell me
how I get to 58th and Lexington?
"No, what do you think I
am, an information booth?
Get out of here with
that (grumbles)."
(audience laughing and clapping)
Thank you.
(audience laughing and clapping)
Thank you.
But the biggest problem,
the biggest problem in
New York City, folks,
we have too many people.
You know what it's like.
You ever go shopping
in Manhattan?
You get out there with
the millions of people
crushing and jamming
you down the street.
You want to go here,
they carry you there.
When you leave for work in
Manhattan in the morning,
and get into that crowd of
millions who are crushing you,
you have to announce
to the crowd
where you want to get off.
(audience laughing)
Can you push me off
at 58th and Lexington?
(audience laughing)
Try to throw me into
the next building,
I work there, thank you.
Boom.
(audience laughing)
So I figured out the way
you could commit
the perfect murder
and get away with it.
All you do is you take
the dead body with you.
(audience laughing)
And you just slip
it into the crowd.
They take him for
the rest of the week.
(audience laughing)
Right, because they
pick him up, boom,
there he goes into
Macy's department store.
Up the escalator backwards
through women's lingerie.
Boom, outside, down the street
past Cooke's Funeral Home
where they offer
him a job as a sign.
Boom, he's thrown in the
Army Induction Center
where he's classified 1A.
(audience laughing and clapping)
The body's taken out on the
street, it falls into traffic,
gets killed three more times.
Boom, boom, boom.
A high school class
trip picks up the body.
The teacher, "Who's talking?
Is it you?
The big boy in the back
with the blue face, you?"
Boom, they carry
him into Radio City,
he does 20 minutes
with the Rockettes.
Boom, outside, up Broadway
where he's mugged twice.
Boom, finally the body's thrown
on the 6th Avenue subway.
A cop sees him.
"Hey Harry, look at this guy.
Weird, huh?
Standing on his head holding
a strap with his foot."
(audience laughing)
"But we can't do anything
unless he spits, smokes or
carries a lighted pipe."
(audience laughing and clapping)
(lively jazz music)
