-<i>I became the most
sophisticated masturbator</i> <i> on the planet.</i> <i> I did--I jerked off to Rubens,
Seurat, Botticelli.</i> <i> I painted the Louvre daily
in semen.</i> <i> [dark electronic music]</i> <i> ♪ </i> [man roars] [both snarling] <i> [dark electronic music]</i> <i> ♪ </i> [man grunting] [gunshots] <i> [dark electronic music]</i> [zombie growls] [gun cocks] [zombie growls] [gunshot] <i> ♪ </i> -<i>Ladies and gentlemen,
very, very funny man.</i> <i> He's got his own podcast
you got to check out.</i> <i> Please give it up for
Mr. Pete Johansson, everybody!</i> <i> Let him hear it!</i> <i> ♪ </i> - I'm gonna do a little story,
kind of about my family and love and stuff like that--all those
sweet ideas right there. I don't think I could have
told this story before, like, had he asked me to do this
in my 20s, 'cause the only person I loved
was myself back in my 20s. I really did. I really did. I actually--the only thing
that made me cry in my twenties was thinking of
myself dying. I, um--I discovered that
in acting class. I was serious.
I would think of myself dying and I'd think about myself
departing the earth and think how sad it was for
everybody else, and I'd cry. And, um...
I know! [laughs] That's twisted, right? But I grew up, so now that
I'm in my 40s, something-- And now that I'm older,
I can, uh, talk a little bit more honestly
about stuff like this. So--I don't have a table. Um... [laughs] But I was-- I've recently gone through
quite an experience with my mom, and this story's gonna deal
with a lot with my mom, and she's an amazing woman. She's the coolest.
She's the coolest. Say anything bad about my mom, I'll kill you.
I will. I love my mom. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh, raised me as a--
she was an artist and a nurse. Mainly an artist. From a very young age,
she exposed me to art, trying to get me to understand
the finer things in life and be really sophisticated,
understanding-- sort of value the beauty in
the world and stuff like that. From like five or six,
she'd have me up in her studio in her room and uh, just watching her paint
and stuff like that. And first nudes I ever saw.
First nudes I ever saw, uh, were my mom's paintings,
which is kind of cool. Like, and, uh... Not really good nudes. I mean, this is rural Canada. Not a lot of great people posed
for art. Uh, you didn't have the sexiest
people you've ever seen in my mom's art shows,
but they came in handy when I started
going through puberty. And um--
I know. Isn't that gross? And I'm not even making that up. The first thing
I ever masturbated to were sketches my mom's made. Um...
I know! I know--
it's-- it's horrible. [stammering]
I--I-- That lasted until I found
her art books, and then--oh, her art books
were amazing. I became the most sophisticated
masturbator on the planet. I did--I jerked off to Rubens,
Seurat, Botticelli, uh, Gustav Klimt. I--I painted the Louvre daily
in semen. I, um-- Love masturbating. And all my mom saw was me
walking up to my room with art books.
"Oh, my little boy loves art. Look at him." I loved art back then.
I did. Then a weird thing happened;
we moved. I was raised in a very...
religious family and my dad lost
all of our money. Not through bad business,
but because he became religious. He became a Lay Franciscan monk
and without telling my mom or anybody else in the family, he donated all our money
to charity, and we went broke.
[laughs] And we had to move. And so we moved. And I quickly put my stuff
in boxes, and I had acquired
a little porn by that point. And, uh, I remember writing on
a box "do not look inside. This is mine."
And I put it in the truck, assuming
nobody would look inside. Uh, I was a naive child.
I really was. So, uh, I didn't think much
about it. When we got to the new place,
the box was missing. About a month later,
before school one morning, about 6:00 a.m.,
my mom walks into the room. Door opens.
Light flips on. I was like, "What's going on?" Mom drags a chair behind her. Under her arm is that box. I'm like, "Oh, shit." And she sits down
next to me in the bed, and she goes, "Pete,
I'm a little concerned. "I know how much you love art, "but I found these magazines
and I-- "I think the best thing to do
is for me to sit here and go through them with you." [audience groans] Ohh. The very top magazine was
a "Hustler," I'll never forget. It was the first one
I ever bought. And it had this blonde-haired
Chinese girl on it-- I don't remember her name,
but oh. And my mom picks up the magazine and she flips it
to the first pictorial and there's a picture
of this naked girl, and then she goes, "Well, look--
look at her. "She's a beautiful woman.
There's nothing wrong with that. She takes good care of herself." And then
she flips the page over. "And look, that's a nice photo.
It's very artistically posed. "She's--leans over, that light
catches her very nicely. That's all right." And then
she flips the page over. And the next page...
is just two full pages of just a close-up
of her vagina. Just this massive pussy
just staring out. And my mom's just... "Oh." Just that delicate little "oh"
just crushed me right there. She's like, "Is that how we
should look at women? "Is that what women are,
just--just a vagina? "Just a part?
Just an object? "Is that--is that her? "Is that all we should
look at them as? "Just a utilized device
for your own gratification, is that what a woman is?
Is it?" I go, "No, Mom, I don't even
look at that page. I skip right over that one." She flips the page and she goes through
the entire magazine like this. And I love my mom, but, boy, she knew how to
fuck up a kid's puberty. And I thought it messed me up.
I-I really did. For the longest time, I thought
this might have turned me into a weirdo, but actually kind
of made me into a good person. That's kind of the amazing thing
about my mom. She had a roundabout way
of making me better, you know? My mom got cancer
quite shortly after that. It wasn't like--it was--it was
a weird type of cancer. I don't know if
anybody's experienced this, but it's a kind of cancer where
it doesn't seem to kill her. She got diagnosed with cancer
and she had it for 25 years. Twenty-five years of cancer. That's the Canadian
medical system, people. Um...
[laughs] Fight for it. But after a while of her
being sick with cancer, I didn't pay attention to it.
I didn't focus on it. I just took it for granted
that she was sick. And then about four
or five years ago, I was in Switzerland, doing gigs
and doing shows, and I got a phone call.
I was in Lucerne. I remember, 'cause
my sister's voice on the phone-- you know when you pick up the
phone, there's always-- you know there's something bad,
you know? I heard this cracking
in her voice, and she goes, "Pete,
you gotta get home." I go, "What's wrong?" And she goes, "Well, it's Mom. She's not--
you gotta get home." I go, well, my gig's finished
in three days and I'll catch a flight home. She goes,<i>"No,</i>no.
You gotta get home<i>now."</i> And you tell when you hear
that in your voice, like, this isn't--this--I don't
got time to fuck around. I gotta go now.
And I've never done this before. I grabbed my stuff,
I told the promoter I was leaving,
I got in a taxi cab. I had a little app on my phone
for plane tickets, and I bought a plane ticket, on the app on the way
to the airport. It cost me a<i>fortune.</i> But I did it 'cause I needed
to get home to see my mom, you know? And I got to the airport and the flight was leaving
in about an hour. I had a carry-on bag.
I go up to the counter. And I go, hey, I bought a ticket
on the way here. Here's my passport, here's this.
Gotta get on the flight. And the lady's, "Okay, okay. Do you have a printout
of the ticket?" And I go, no, no,
I did it on your app. Got no printout in the taxi
on the way here. And she goes, "Well, I can't
let you on the plane if you don't have a printout
of the ticket. And I go, that's crazy,
it's crazy, I have an app. I can't print out anything.
Could you print it out for me? She goes,
"I can't print it out; you need a printout
or you can't get on the plane." I go, well,
that's fucking crazy. And she goes--and she goes--
"If you swear, "I will have to
deny you boarding. You won't be getting on
any planes today." And I'm like, what?
Wh--my mom-- And I explained to her my mom's,
you know, she's really sick. I gotta get home.
This is fucking nuts. And she goes, "You swore again!
If you do this again, you're gone,"
and I didn't know what to do. And I was panicking.
And I did the craziest thing. And I don't know
if you've ever encountered this sort of
dehumanizing bureaucracy when people try to put you
in a place and limit your expression because they're
just following rules and not treating you
like a human. Like a little object.
But I just, [growls]. I growled at her. I-I-I--it just--
it came from my soul. [growling]
And I-- And people started looking
at the airport, like, "What's going on?" And I didn't know
what else to do, because I couldn't swear
but I had all this-- [snarls]
And the manager walked over. He goes, "What's going on here?" And I just--tears are coming
down my face at this point, and I go, listen, my mom's
dying, and I gotta get home, and she won't let me get
on the plane. And the guy goes, "Don't worry. I'll get you on the plane.
I'll take care of this." And I growled my way onto
the fucking plane. I miraculously got home in time. I saw her.
She was still lucid. She was in a great deal of pain, but I got to talk to my mom before, uh, you know,
before she passed. But she was in a lot of pain
and my dad showed up, the joyous, loving man
that he is. My dad's incredibly religious
in a crazy way. He believes
all these crazy things, and one of the things he did
while my mom was suffering was he went to the doctors and told them not
to give her painkillers. I don't know if there's
any Catholics in here, but there's something called
Purgatory in Catholicism. And one of the things
they do is that, if you suffer a lot of pain,
you can offer that pain up to some poor souls in Purgatory
that will advance your admission
into Heaven. Crazy idea,
but my mom was in pain, and he was withholding
painkillers, and I was like,
no, you can't do that. And we got in this huge fight,
but the doctor came in, and goes, "Well, he is
her husband. He gets to decide what kind of
pain management she gets." So I can't give her painkillers. This is insane, you know? So I got my brother
to trick him outside, and I went to a nurse and this--
I fucking love nurses. And I explained it to her. It's like, my mom's
in a lot of pain. She used to be a nurse. She goes, "I'll take care of it. Your dad's an asshole." And I...
[laughs] Yeah, nurses!
Ugh, I love 'em. But my mom, she--
that was the moment, you know? And they give her a little bit
of a thing, and called me
her little fuzzy bear and she went into a coma. And that was it; that was the
last time I ever talked to her. She stayed in that coma for
a couple of days, though. She didn't come out of it,
and I was like... I couldn't--I wanted to stick
around, but I couldn't, 'cause I have a family
I have to support. I gotta keep doing shows
and it's, as much as it sucks, I flew away, and I landed and I
had to go on stage next night. I got a phone call
just before going on stage that she passed away. It was like 30 minutes
before going onstage. You know, I was just--
I was dying. I was dying,
but I went onstage. I got in front of people
like you, and I just got up there
and I... And people acted like, that's
horrible that you went onstage, told jokes the night
your mom died. No, it was fuckin' an oasis. It was the best thing
I ever experienced, 'cause it was everything that
she put in me to become this, to do comedy, to be in front
of people. It invigorated me. And I just--and I loved it.
I loved it. Now, in quick epilogue,
about two years ago, I was back home in my hometown. And I got a phone call
from my sister again. Oh, she's always bringing
good news. And, uh...
[laughs] And she calls and she goes, uh, "Listen, it looks
like Dad's dying," and I go, oh,
huh, that's too bad. And, uh...
[laughs] And she goes, "Well, there's
nobody there with him. "He's all alone and you're only
a couple hours away. And it's up to you." I remember staying up that night
and just going agh, ugh, and I ended up waking up at
five in the morning, and I drove and I drove and went
and saw him in the hospital. And there he was,
this bitter... Just bitter, frail, thin man,
lying in the bed. None of the awful stuff he did
really-- didn't look like he was capable
of it anymore, just lying there, emaciated,
just...and the thing... And I had all these things
I wanted to tell him, you know? All this--how his religion
fucked up my life and all this stuff
I wanted to say. I wanted to whisper in his ear
and tell him he didn't deserve the nothingness he was
about to encounter. Yeah, it's a fucked up thought,
isn't it, for a religious person? But I didn't.
I didn't. I saw him, 'cause I was raised
by my mom, not him. And I just held his hand
and I watched him. And the weirdest thing
fucking happened. Nurse came in.
My dad was in a lot of pain. And asked "What do you want?
Do you want-- Do you want us to give him
some pain medication?" And I was like...
[chuckles] You gotta be kidding me.
No! I want you to wake him up. I want him to feel
every fucking bit of this, is what I thought to myself. But I didn't. I told them to give him
the pain medication. Because there was a weird lesson
in my mom showing me that porn. There was! There's this
weird little lesson in my mom showing me this porn
where she told me not to look at
these little objects, to look at just a vagina
and think that was a woman. It's just like him; I can't see
him as just an asshole. He's not.
He's an entire person. And in that last moment,
I made the right decision, and we...and he passed away
without pain. And that's my happy
little story! <i> [dark electronic music]</i> <i> ♪ </i>
