John Mulaney
Ghosts
[Audience Applause]

Good evening. Hi, I’m John Mulaney, nice to meet you. Jon Brion, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for coming to see me at Radio City Music Hall. I love to play venues where if the guy that built the venue could see me on the stage, he would be a little bit bummed about it. Look at this. This is so much nicer than what I’m about to do. It’s really... it’s really tragic. What a historic and beautiful and deeply haunted building this is. I keep walking through cold spots being like, “I wonder who that used to be.”

I’ve never seen a ghost, by the way. I asked my mom if she’d ever seen a ghost. That’s where we’re at conversation-wise in our relationship as a mother and son, because I’m 35 and I don’t have any children to talk about and she doesn’t understand my career. So I was home for Christmas and we were just eating Triscuits in silence and I was staring at the floor and I was like, “Well, here goes nothing. ‘You ever seen a ghost?'” And my mom said, “Yes.” Which is the best answer. She said, “I never told you this before but our house, when you were growing up was haunted.” I said, “Say more right now!” She said, “Outside you and your brother’s room, I used to see the ghost of a little girl in a Victorian nightgown and then she would walk down the hallway and then she would evaporate.” And then my dad said, “Let’s change the subject!” And I think he was just doing that dad thing of, like, “This is a weird topic and I want to talk about a book I read about World War II.” But the way it came off was that he definitely killed that little girl. “Let’s change the subject! Why are we even talking about Penelope, or whatever her name was? I didn’t kill her! Whoever did kill her only did it to protect her from this world.”

None of us really know our fathers. Anyway, my dad is so weird. I’d love to meet him someday. You know, my friend was telling me that his dad used to beat him with a belt and that’s just the setup to my story, so... Forget about that poor son of a bitch. Anyway… He was talking and I was waiting for him to be done so I could talk. So he’s “talk, talk, talk.” It’s my turn next! And… I said, “My dad never hit us.” My dad is a lawyer and he was a debate team champion. So he would pick us apart psychologically.