- And of course my macho dad
threw a fit, and he started calling
the house collect every day, threatening to kill
my stepfather, which I think is hilarious that
my poor stepfather had to pay for his own
death threats. <i> [dark electronic music]</i> - Welcome to
"This Is Not Happening." I'm Roy Wood Jr. We all come from somewhere,
from someone, who nurtures us, protects us, and teaches us. - Ah! [silverware clattering] - Some are better at it
than others. ♪ ♪ [girl giggling] ♪ ♪ - Ow! You know him from his book
"Free Roll," please give it up for
Brant Tobler. <i> [cheers and applause]</i> So this is a story about how
I tried to kill my dad. Trust me, it's hilarious.
Trust me. So you guys have heard the term
"Blood is thicker than water," right? I hate it.
My dad must have said it to me a thousand times growing up. "Blood is thicker than water,
son." "Blood is thicker
than water, son." And I just started to hate it
because I think it's what family members say to you when
they do something shitty, and then instead of
apologizing, they're just like, "Hey,
we have the same blood type, so you have to put up with
this shit." So I would hear it
all the time. My dad would miss, like,
basketball games and graduation and he'd always say, "Blood is
thicker than water, son." And he ended up missing
most of my childhood, 'cause when I was 5 years old,
he went away to college. Well, that's what my mom called
it. You guys could of course call
it maximum security prison. And every couple years on
spring break, he would get out and he would
come visit my little brother and I, and luckily my mom
remarried and we had a great stepdad who taught us how to
ride a bike and build a fire, stuff that you're supposed to
learn from your dad, because when my dad would come
to town, he would teach me the stuff
he knew about. So for instance, my dad taught
me three things in life I'll never forget. Number one, you never snitch,
no matter what. Number two, if you have extra
food at lunchtime, you only give it to
white people. Weird to tell a fourth grader.
I agree. And the craziest one of all, my
dad got out on spring break one year and he came back home
to visit us, and he took me and my little
brother swimming. We had a great day at the pool,
jumping off the diving board, playing Marco Polo, and I got out of the pool,
I'm in the locker room, and I'm taking a shower,
and my father comes in and he sees me showering. He's like, "Hold on, son. Get
out of the shower for a sec." I was like,
"Why? What's up, Dad? He goes, "Son, every time you
take a shower from now on, before you get in the shower, put the water on
as cold as it can go and then get in that cold water
and shadowbox until you count to 15." I was like, "Dad, why would
I do that?" And he's like, "Son,
the way your body reacts when that cold water hits it is the same way you'll react if
you ever get stabbed, so if you ever get stabbed, you'll be able to fight
for 15 seconds." That's what my
dad--that's what my dad tells a fucking
12 year old. And like an idiot, I do that
shit till I'm, like, 19, and I get a girlfriend
and she's like, "Why are we fake fighting in
this cold shower?" Like, you better be ready,
bitch. You could go down at any time. The shit is real. So that's my dad. So my dad only did one good
thing for me life, of course I had wonderful
stepdad, and before I was about to start
junior high, he sent me and my little
brother down and he said he wanted to adopt us and have us take his last name
like we were his sons. And of course my macho dad
threw a fit and he started calling
the house collect every day, threatening to kill
my stepfather, which I think is hilarious
that my poor stepfather had to pay for his own
death threats. But he would call and he would
remind us "Blood is thicker than water;
you're my son." And he eventually sent some
goons over to the house to, like, scare my stepdad,
and my mom made a decision, like, "Forget it, let's just
keep your last name." Which is the only good thing
that my father ever did for me, because if my stepdad would've
adopted me, I would've started
junior high school as Brandt Hufendick, which I think has got to be
the shittiest last name in the world. My poor little sister's named
Hayley Hufendick. I don't know why she didn't get
married at midnight on her 18th birthday,
but she didn't do it. So that was my dad. And then after that he
disappeared for, like, 8 years and I never heard from him. And I went to real college
in Phoenix. And then--
well, junior college, so kind of real, but I went. But then one day I got a letter
out of nowhere, and it was from my dad,
and he just said, "I'll be at the Phoenix airport
in three days, and I'd love to see you, and there's no time to write
back. Just--I'll be looking for you." I didn't know what to do,
'cause I was doing so good in life and I hadn't seen him
in almost a decade. But then part of me is like,
I got to go see my dad. So I went to the airport, which was one of the weirdest
moments in my life, because this is before 9/11, so
you could go from gate to gate. And when I got to the airport,
I realized I didn't even know what my own
dad looked like. So I'm in looking at the bars
and bookstores. I'm like, "Is that my dad?
Is that my dad?" And then of course I saw a guy
with a ponytail, wife beater, brown khaki pants. I'm like, there's my dad. So I run over,
I give him a hug, and we both fight back tears. And he tells me how much
he missed me and how blood is thicker
than water. And he's determined to be part
of my life again, and he said,
"I'm moving to Vegas. I had this incredible cocktail
waitress girlfriend, and you're allowed--you know
you can come see us whenever you want." And I was like,
"Okay, Dad, thanks. I gotta go back to college." And I drove back to my dorm,
and when I got to my dorm, I called my two best friends
back in Wyoming who also had shitty dads
growing up, and I told him this story
and they're like, "We should go see your dad on
our spring break." And I was like,
"All right, cool." So they drove down
from Wyoming. They pick me up in Phoenix,
and we went to Vegas on our spring break and
spent five days with my dad, which was incredible, 'cause we
were just dumb kids from Wyoming. He taught us about, like,
hookers and craps, seafood buffets. We're like, holy shit,
this is incredible. So at the end of five days,
he's like, "You guys are welcome to come
back whenever you want. You can live with me and my
girlfriend in this trailer." And then we were like, "Sorry,
dad, we gotta go back to college." And they started driving me
towards Phoenix, and every mile we got away from
Vegas, we were just itching
to get back. And by the time we got
to Phoenix, the three of us idiots
made the decision that we were going to drop out
of college and move back to Vegas
to get our dream jobs as pirates
at the Treasure Island. We thought, what would be
better than wearing an eyepatch and jumping off a big ship
every hour while drunk tourist chicks
scream at us? We're like, "That's it.
That's the dream job." So we dropped out of college. Our families were furious
with us, and we moved to Vegas, and of course we don't get
pirate jobs. I don't--we didn't know
anything about casting or any of that shit. So my friends sober up and they
go back home to Wyoming and reenroll in college,
but I was enjoying hanging out with my dad,
and I didn't want to leave, so I decided to stay. And then one day I actually got
the dream job. I would go play basketball
every afternoon with a bunch of professional
gamblers, and one of 'em hired me
to be a runner. So my job was just to carry
hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of cash
up and down the Strip and bet on sports. So it was great.
I was making a ton of money. Everything was good, so I told
my dad we're moving out of this trailer and I rented
this beautiful house on a golf course. And I started calling my little
brother who lived in Portland at the time, just a little
stoner dude that ran a Subway. And I told him you got to come
to Vegas. It's me, you and dad;
we can finally be a perfect little family again,
and he's like, "All right." And he moved to Vegas,
and we had a great time the first six months. We'd sit on the back porch
every night, just get drunk, tell stories. He'd tell us about prison riots
and shit and we'd tell him about
scoring 8 points in a JV basketball game, or whatever shitty stories
we had. He obviously had
much better stories. But he was always just waiting
to get off parole. He's like, "I can't wait to get
off parole. I can be my own man again." And he'd talk about it
every day, and we counted down the days till he finally got off
parole. And I remember I threw
a big party at the house, invited all our family
and friends over, and we just got wasted. And I remember about 4:00
in the morning, it's just me and my dad
and brother in the kitchen, and we're just telling him
how proud we are and we're just drunk and it's
this incredible moment, and then--but that is the last
good moment I'll ever have with my dad, because the next morning he
woke up, got back on drugs, started bringing around, like,
little 20-year-old meth heads to my house, even though
they're younger than me. My dad's, like, 48
at the time. And he starts just acting like
a drug addict, you know, stealing my
friends' wallets, forgetting my birthday,
just being a shitty dad, and I knew it was going bad, but I didn't know how
to get out of it. And you know, it's hard to yell
at your own dad, and I knew it was going to
happen. And then on a Saturday
during football season I'd have to bet
college football all day, so I'd get to the Strip at 8:00
in the morning. I'd run up and down and bet
till, like, 9:00 at night. Then I'd go home, go to bed, and then do the same thing
for NFL on Sundays. So on the Saturday
I worked my ass off, I come home, I'm exhausted. When I get home, my dad's there
all cracked out, and I tell him, "Hey Dad,
I'm going to bed. You can come down tomorrow
and get everything comped if you want to watch football." He's like, "Okay, son." And I went to sleep
about 10:00. Around midnight, my little
brother busts in and he's like,
"Hey, Brandt, Brandt, someone stole my money." My little brother had saved
up $350 to fly to Portland to watch his girlfriend
graduate college. So I jump out of bed,
like the big brother, and I run downstairs to try
to find my dad and tell--to find whatever
little shitty kid took my brother's money. So when I get downstairs,
I don't see him, I'm telling for him, and I go
look in the garage, 'cause my white trash dad has
this stupid convertible Camaro that he thought was,
like, the dopest car in the world, and it always had
to be parked in the garage. So when I got in the garage
and I looked and his Camaro was gone,
it hit me: Oh, shit, I got all my money
upstairs. And I ran upstairs and my dad
had stole $80,000 cash from me. And now, I worked for guys that
you don't want to be $80,000 short for,
not that there's any job you could $80,000 short for. But I'll never forget that, and
I see my little brother crying, and I'm like, you stole 80,000; why would you go steal your own
son's $350, you know? And it just drove me crazy, and
to watch my little brother cry, you know, I brought him from
Portland, he was doing good, and I brought him
into this shit. So in that moment, I made
the decision, I'm like, that's it; I'm gonna fucking
kill my dad. I'm gonna fucking kill my dad. So the next morning I wake up
and I call my cousin Kato who lives in Phoenix,
and he's like... [laughter]
He's like a real gangster and the most loyal dude
in my life, and I tell him what happens. He says, "I'll be there
in five hours." And he drives straight
from Phoenix to Vegas, and when he gets there,
doorbell rings, I open the door,
and there he is. He's like, "Where's he at?
Where's he at?" I was like, "Hold on.
I got a plan." Now, in my defense,
I was 23 years old. I'd never killed anybody
before. This is before "Dexter,"
"Breaking Bad." This is obviously
a fucking stupid plan, but this was my plan. My mom had told me a story
that when I was young, my dad had cheated on my mom
and got chlamydia and he had to go to the doctor, and the doctor prescribed him
penicillin, not knowing that he was deathly
allergic to penicillin. So he took that penicillin
and he almost died. So in my head, I was like,
"That's it." You know, almost every morning my dad would go to
the Jamba Juice, like, three blocks from my
house, get a Jamba Juice. I mean, that was, like,
his favorite thing, so I figured, fuck it, if
I just get some penicillin, put it in a Jamba Juice, give it to my dad,
he'll drink it, he'll be dead, perfect.
Airtight plan. So I tell my cousin,
he's like, "All right, I mean, I can get penicillin." So I was like... He's like, he can get anything,
trust me. So he's like, all right. I go, one more part of this
plan, everyone will think, like, I'm the number one
suspect, so I'm gonna go to Colorado and you guys just take care of
this shit. They're like, all right,
you're kind of a pussy, but we'll do it. And I was like, all right,
good. I don't want to go to college
like my dad. So... I fly to Colorado, you know. Me and girlfriend go to
Estes Park. We go to a hotel, and I call
my cousin Kato. I'm like, "Yo, are you ready?" He's like, "We're ready. Extra-large mango
in the fridge just waiting for your dad to
come home." I was like, all right, cool,
call me when he's dead. He's like, all right. So I wait about a hour,
two hours, no phone call. I call him back, I'm like,
"Yo, what happened?" They're like, "Well,
your dad came home, but he wouldn't take it." I was like, "What do you mean
he wouldn't take it?" Like, we gave him
the Jamba Juice, but he just put it back on
the kitchen counter. I was like--and looking back,
I get it. You know, my dad was in
Leavenworth and real prison, so he knows you don't take,
like, a gift from your enemy, you know? I don't think he thought we
were trying to kill him, but he probably thought
we pissed in it or something stupid, right? So I said, you know what,
forget it. This plan's stupid.
Just go with the original plan. Pack up my brother's stuff,
go to Phoenix, I'll fly home, we'll just never
talk to my dad again. My cousin's
like "No, fuck that. We do it my way now." I'm like, "What's your way?"
He's like, "We do it my way. We'll call you in an hour,"
and he hung up the phone. And I just sat there in
the hotel like, what are they gonna do? And this is the plan
they came up with. So they knew my dad loved
that stupid Camaro and it always had to be parked
in the garage. So what they did was,
they opened the garage door and then they went out
and they cut the phone lines and the power lines
and the just waited for my dad to come home in this dark corner
in the garage. Sure enough, my dad came home
just like they thought, parked in the garage, hit the
button to get the garage to shut, it wouldn't shut. They said he was so frustrated,
he didn't know what was going on and he got out of
the car, went over, got the garage door, manually
shut it, and locked it. And as soon as he locked it and started to walk back
through the garage into the house,
my brother and cousin jumped out with golf clubs and tried to kill him in
the garage with golf clubs. But they were fucking idiots,
because there was no light. So they're swinging
their hearts out, almost killing each other. It's like we needed a better
murder caddy. They fucked it all up. But there was--the only light
coming into the garage was there was a side door that
led to the backyard, and at the bottom of that
side door there was a little doggy door, and there was a little light
coming through, and my dad saw that light and
he just put his shoulder down and ran and busts
through that door and fell into the backyard,
jumped over the back wall onto the golf course
and ran away. And that was, like,
17 years ago and I never saw him or spoke to
him since that day. So my brother and cousin go to
Phoenix. Three days later,
I fly back from Colorado, and I'll never forget I was
standing in the garage with this garden hose trying to clean up the mess
they made, and that's when it hit me. I was like, my dad was right
this whole time. His blood is way thicker
than water. I'm Brandt Tobler.
You guys have been awesome. Thank you guys. [cheers and applause] <i> - Brandt Tobler, everybody!</i>
Did it get a little long winded? Sure. The guy had had 9 beers in the 3 hours before this. Gotta cut a little slack for him being a bit all over the place. The story was great.
I just can't believe they asked him to tell the story again. Of all of the stories he prompted they just had to pick that one? lol
Dude is already rattled by a few twitter replies saying the story was too long. Don't think he's cut out for this world
This is why actually trying to do the 9/9/9 Challenge was a bad idea. I commend the guy for actually attempting it, but it’s not like he was funny throughout, and as a result of downing the 9 beers he didn’t tell the story very well and now is losing his mind on Twitter.
I didnt see Barstool Idol but I listened to this dude on Cousin Sal’s podcast. Didn’t he work on Kimmel?
This guy has some insane stories and I want to hear more. His blog lists like 20 ridiculous ones that he is going to blog about on there in the near future. The Vegas underground/high stakes sports gambling scene fascinates me.