John Mulaney
Lyrics by Me & Mick Jagger
I’m trying to stay nice though, because when I was a kid, I was raised that you should be nice to everyone in every situation because you never know their story. But now, at the end of my life, I don’t know, because a lot of people don’t seem that nice and they seem to be doing fine in the world. Or maybe they have different definitions of what it means to be nice. That’s something you figure out as you get older and meet new people. Not everyone thinks the same things are nice. You learn that especially when you get jobs. I had a very weird job in my mid-20s for about four and a half years. I was a writer right across the street over at Saturday Night Live. It was very exciting. Yeah. [audience cheering] It was great. I loved it. If you haven’t seen the show, you gotta check it out.

They have a host and a musical guest. Oh, my God, you’re going to love it. Real quick tangent. Okay, my favorite host ever introducing a musical guest was this. The host was Sir Patrick Stewart, the great Sir Patrick Stewart, and this is how he introduced the musical guest. “Ladies and gentlemen, Salt-N-Pepa!” Like he was surprised by Pepa. Like minutes before they’d been, “Sir Patrick, we can’t find Pepa anywhere.” And he’s like, “If we must go on with Salt alone, we will go on with Salt alone!” And they were like, “Three, two, one,” and Pepa burst through the door and he’s like, “Ladies and gentlemen, Salt and… what’s this? Pepa!”

Famous people are weird as shit. They’re all weird. Your suspicions are correct. And they would all come in to Saturday Night Live and they’d have to meet with me because I was a little rat writer and they’d have to talk about the sketches. They’d sit on my office couch that had like bed bugs and stuff. It was great. Like, they were famous, but it was my couch. It’d be like if you went into your childhood bedroom and Joe DiMaggio was sitting there. Yeah, he’s Joe DiMaggio, he’s a legend, he had sex with Marilyn Monroe, but only you know where the bathroom is.

Everyone always wants to know if famous people are nice. Like Mick Jagger. He came in to host the show. My friends were all like, “Is he nice?” No! Or maybe he is for his version of life. Because he has a very different life. He’s Mick Jagger. That’s his name. He’s played to stadiums of 20,000 people cheering for him like he’s a god for 50 years. That must change you as a person. If you do that for 50 years, you’re never again going to be like, “Um, does anyone have a laptop charger I could borrow?” None of that bullshit way we all have to talk to get through life. “Hi. Knock, knock. Sorry.” That’s how I walk into rooms. I am 35 years old, I am six feet tall. I lower myself, I go, “Hi. Knock, knock.” I say “knock, knock” out loud. Mick Jagger didn’t talk like that. Mick Jagger talked like this. He’d go, “Yes! No! Yes!” I pitched him a joke and he went, “Not funny!” I mean, people say that on the internet, but never to your face does a British billionaire in leather pants go, “Not funny!” I spent two hours alone with Mick Jagger that week. We were writing song lyrics, it was for a fake song in a comedy sketch. And he was sitting there, and we came to one point and he goes, “All right, ‘Let’s all go to the picnic, let’s all have a drink.’ Let’s see, what rhymes with drink?” And I said… “Think?” And Mick Jagger said, “No!” And then I said, “Sink?” And Mick Jagger said, “Yeah!” And I was like, “Motherfucker, is this how you write songs? Just one word at a time with verbal abuse?” “All right, ‘I can’t get no…'” Happiness? “No!” Satisfaction? “Yeah! All right! Next sentence! Space bar. Indent. Space bar.”

Mick Jagger would go like this, “Diet Coke!” And one would appear in his hand. Now that’s not nice, right? The way I was raised, you’re supposed to say, “May I please have a Diet Coke, please?” And then maybe you will get one. And I bet all of you were taught to say please and thank you. But if all of us could go, “Diet Coke!” and one would appear in our hand, we’d do it all day long. Even if you don’t like Diet Coke, you’d just summon ’em so you could chuck ’em at oncoming cars.