Taped live near the Wiltern Theater in Los Angeles, California.

Speech On The Babies
by Mark Twain

(AT THE BANQUET, IN CHICAGO, GIVEN BY THE ARMY OF THE TENNESSEE TO THEIR FIRST COMMANDER, GENERAL U. S. GRANT, NOVEMBER, 1879)

The fifteenth regular toast was “The Babies–as they comfort us in our sorrows, let us not forget them in our festivities.”

I like that. We have not all had the good fortune to be Ladies. We have not all been generals, or poets, or statesmen; but when the toast works down to the babies, we stand on common ground. It is a shame that for a thousand years the world’s banquets have utterly ignored the baby, as if he didn’t amount to anything. If you will stop and think a minute –if you will go back fifty or one hundred years to your early married life and recontemplate your first baby–you will remember that he amounted to a great deal, and even something over. You soldiers all know that when the little fellow arrived at family headquarters you had to hand in your resignation. He took entire command. You became his lackey, his mere body servant, and you had to stand around, too. He was not a commander who made allowances for time, distance, weather, or anything else. You had to execute his order whether it was possible or not. And there was only one form of marching in his manual of tactics, and that was the double-quick. He treated you with every sort of insolence and disrespect, and the bravest of you didn’t dare to say a word. You could face the death-storm at Donelson and Vicksburg, and give back blow for blow; but when he clawed your whiskers, and pulled your hair, and twisted your nose, you had to take it. When the thunders of war were sounding in your ears you set your faces toward the batteries, and advanced with steady tread; but when he turned on the terrors of his war-whoop you advanced in the other direction, and mighty glad of the chance, too. When he called for soothing-syrup, did you venture to throw out any side remarks about certain services being unbecoming an officer and a gentleman? No. You got up and got it. When he ordered his pap-bottle and it was not warm, did you talk back? Not you. You went to work and warmed it. You even descended so far in your menial office as to take a suck at that warm, insipid stuff yourself, to see if it was right–three parts water to one of milk, a touch of sugar to modify the colic, and a drop of peppermint to kill those hiccoughs. I can taste that stuff yet. And how many things you learned as you went along! Sentimental young folks still take stock in that beautiful old saying that when the baby smiles in his sleep, it is because the angels are whispering to him. Very pretty, but too thin–simply wind on the stomach, my friends. If the baby proposed to take a walk at his usual hour, two o’clock in the morning, didn’t you rise up promptly and remark, with a mental addition which would not improve a Sunday-school book much, that that was the very thing you were about to propose yourself? Oh! you were under good discipline, and as you went fluttering up and down the room in your undress uniform, you not only prattled undignified baby-talk, but even tuned up your martial voices and tried to sing!–”Rock-a-by baby in the treetop,” for instance. What a spectacle for an Army of the Tennessee! And what an affliction for the neighbors, too; for it is not everybody within a mile around that likes military music at three in the morning. And when you had been keeping this sort of thing up two or three hours, and your little velvet-head intimated that nothing suited him like exercise and noise, what did you do? ["Go on!"] You simply went on until you dropped in the last ditch. The idea that a baby doesn’t amount to anything! Why, one baby is just a house and a front yard full by itself. One baby can furnish more business than you and your whole Interior Department can attend to. He is enterprising, irrepressible, brimful of lawless activities. Do what you please, you can’t make him stay on the reservation. Sufficient unto the day is one baby. As long as you are in your right mind don’t you ever pray for twins. Twins amount to a permanent riot. And there ain’t any real difference between triplets and an insurrection.

Yes, it was high time for a toast-master to recognize the importance of the babies.

We Van Gogh-Goghs would like to take a moment to congratulate ANOTHER one of our own on the birth of his brand new baby daughter! Born September 12th, 2008 at 8:16 AM, weighing in at a nicely healthy 7 pounds, 1 ounce.

Congratulations, you are now officially old.

This ad is from a Kroger circular. Is the ad aimed at prison wardens? I guess I should applaud Kroger for promoting drinking water instead of sugar, but throw in a pound cake or a can of peas or something. Spice it up!

But maybe Kroger is working on a different level here. Water to represent the underwater theme and roasted chicken to represent that crazy seagull. If that’s the case kudos indeed. Very funny!

We Van Gogh-Goghs would like to take a moment to congratulate one of our own on the birth of his brand new baby daughter! Born July 3rd, 2008 at 4:08am, weighing in at a nicely healthy 8 pounds, 3 ounces.

Congratulations, you are now officially old.

Aw man, don’t you hate it when you have a back yard Fourth of July cookout, and you have that one uncle who you didn’t want to invite, but had to, and you didn’t think he’d come anyway, but he did, and then you thought “well, as long as he doesn’t get drunk,” but then he does, and then you think, “please don’t sing, please don’t sing, please don’t sing,” and sure enough he starts singing, and then, AND THEN he then tries to drunkenly cajole everyone ELSE into singing with him, and you think things can’t possibly get any worse BUT THEN YOUR DRUNKEN UNCLE PULLS OUT SONGBOOKS, and starts handing them out, you know, so EVERYONE can SING ALONG.

Well that’s what’s obviously happened on the cover of this beer company promotional songbook, only the uncle is… UNCLE SAM. And your back yard? It’s AMERICA. (Did we blow your mind yet?)

Man, Druncle Sam is sure feeling it up there, isn’t he? He is right at the supreme moment of drunkeness.

Did we mention your uncle owns HIS OWN BATON? You know, the better to conduct his not-so-spontaneous singalongs.

Why stop there? Why not just go ahead and ban the letter F? I mean it stands for FUCK doesn’t it? I don’t want my child seeing the letter F any more.  Cause if they see the letter F they may learn how to spell FUCK. We should ban C too. There’s several reasons for that letter to go away. How about B? A is out. D? Definitely D. Shit! We’ve got to get rid of S.  

My current car tag’s letters are XTK. What does that represent?  Xylophone Tit Kum or X-Box Twat Kock. Oh, my god my car’s a menace.

Letters are dangerous people. You better watch out for them.

Thank God George Carlin didn’t live to see this.

He’s also the first celebrity I pulled my universally-adored “call the famous guy by the wrong famous guy name” gag: I called him ”Slappy White“; and let me tell you, got big laughs. This gag was so big about 7 or so years later I had an encore to do it again, this time to Eric Idle, who I called “Benny Hill.” I’m hoping by 2014 I’ll get to call Jon Stewart “Jimmy Fallon.” 

Opening for George Carlin really was a huge honor, and I think the biggest crowd I’ve ever been in front of without brandishing a weapon. So thanks, Mr.Carlin, and have fun using the word “Cocksucker” in front of Ghandi and some saints.

Recently a picture was posted to the Inside Carolina message board which purported to show the contents of Coach K’s trashcan. The picture showed printed pages with ESPN’s prediction that “Tar Heels will be overwhelming favorites to win it all,” apparently discarded in disgust. A number of us UNC fans enjoyed a good laugh, but almost immediately the guy received a ton of pressure from some shadowy Duke figures to remove the picture and story, and in less than a day he did so. [I have been asked to shroud even the story behind the picture in secrecy.] Thus only the most IC-addicted fans knew about it. I had saved a copy of the picture, but the guy asked me to remove it.

However, this was too much fun to let disappear. So, I mocked up my own version of the trash can picture. Note to shadowy Duke boosters: I guarantee that this picture does not show Coach K’s trash can, nor any of his actual trash, although there may be some resemblance.

Click to see it larger.

Note to ICers: yes, I know the proper spelling of Duke is “dook,” but I decided it was important to get this story indexed by Technorati and Google with the school’s own improper spelling.