So a big round of applause for Aida Rodriguez!
What?
Thank you.
Thank you. I'm so happy to be here tonight.
- Yes. - Yes.
In the boogie-down Bronx.
In the food stamp building.
What?!
Poetic justice. I've come full circle.
Those of you who... I see the way white people are like,
"The food stamp building? Are we in danger?"
You absolutely are.
There's a bunch of Puerto Ricans and Dominicans in here
that owe you.
Man, I see you're excited.
Everybody is so happy to be outside.
Are you happy to be outside? Man: Yeah.
- Yeah! - Yeah!
The animals are pissed, though, right?
Right, white ladies?
The white ladies talk to them. They know, they know.
Listen, people of color always get weird
when I say something funny about a white person
because y'all have Stockholm syndrome.
But...
But when I tell a white woman, "You talk to the animals,"
they're like, "Yes, bitch, we talk to the animals
and they talk back
because we all got a little Ace Ventura in us."
The animals were pissed that we're free,
right? The animals are mad.
They've been so upset about us being free
because when COVID first started,
do you remember how happy the animals were?
The animals were like, "Yes!
They are sick and they're dying!"
Yo, they were celebrating. Mountain goats
were running through the streets of Wales.
Did you see them?
People were looking at the animals like,
"What are you doing outside?"
And they were looking at the people like,
"Bitch, what are you doing outside?
You supposed to be locked up in the house."
Man, monkeys in India, they took over the streets
outside of the presidential palace.
Did you see it? They were, like, daring people
to come outside. They were like,
"Oh, you big and bad now. Come outside, bitch. Let's go.
Come on out here."
All the animals got together.
They were in peace and harmony. They were not eating each other.
They weren't fighting.
They all poured out a little liquor for that bat
that took one for the team in China.
They're like, "Let's hear it for the homie!"
Oh, man, that's an urban joke. I love it.
I'm urban as fuck. You see me?
Woman: Yeah!
Puerto Rican flag.
Dominican flag.
No fighting.
We need to take note from the animals, people.
We need to take note from the animals,
let me tell you, because if we don't get our shit together,
when the aliens come...
when they come, they gonna fuck all of us up, okay?
When the aliens come,
you're gonna see the KKK and the Proud Boys go get
them Black Lives Matter march people and be like,
"Come on. We got to go get these purple motherfuckers.
Let's hold hands and sing...
♪ We Are the World" ♪
I'm talking about white supremacists
wanting to be friends with us
because, you know, they can't fight that well.
They ain't got no hands.
People are always asking me what I think about white supremacists
'cause I do a lot of political commentary.
Or I used to. I retired from that shit
because you people are exhausting.
But I did. I did. And, listen, people were like,
"Hey, how did you feel about all these marches?"
And I'm like, "What am I supposed to say?
I masturbated to it? Like, what the fuck?
I thought the shit was wack. It's disappointing."
They're like, "Racism is disappointing, isn't it?"
I'm like, "That's not why I was disappointed."
You saw all them white boys, they got together.
They all put on the same outfit.
They all had on the khaki pants, same shirt.
They all looked like Doug from Nickelodeon.
The world is watching.
They went and bought all those tiki torches.
It was dynamic. It was explosive to watch.
And then when they started marching, no rhythm.
No rhythm. And that's why it got violent,
because they kept bumping into each other, right?
I was like, "That's what happens to a man
who doesn't get any pussy.
When you bump into him, he wants to beat you."
That's kind of my humor.
I see some of y'all got weirded out.
It's probably because you're a white supremacist.
Or you're fucking one.
I will say that, you know, liberals who pride themselves
in being liberals can also be problematic,
and I think as a woman of color, it is my job to point that out.
You know, woke people.
Where the woke people at?
Y'all still admit that shit in public?
That shit is corny as fuck. Real corny.
Remember woke people walking around
with the "woke as fuck" shirts on?
"I know my pronouns."
I was homeless, and one of the woke people
was tweeting me and told me,
"We don't say 'homeless.' We say 'unhoused.'"
I was like, "Bitch, did you tweet that
from the comfort of your own home?"
She was like, "Home is where the heart is."
I was like, "The heart ain't under a fucking bridge."
I hate woke people. Woke people.
The woke people are always
getting beat up by the asleep people.
You notice this? They're always crying.
And I don't want to be woke. I'm a revolutionary.
I'm tired of people beating us and us praying for them.
They're always, "Oh, words hurt."
I'm like, so do uppercuts, bitch. Learn how to block."
The fake-ass woke people in Los Angeles,
where I live, were throwing up those Black Lives Matter signs
during the marches,
and they only put up them signs
so that nobody would break their windows.
They were like, "They're marching up our street, Lucille.
Throw the sign up. Hurry up. Hurry up.
Not the rainbow. That's next month.
Not the rainbow."
Y'all fake asses.
I'll tell you a story about a woke person.
There was this Chinese lady in San Francisco
who was attacked by a white supremacist.
This dude got up one morning and said,
"I'm gonna go fuck some Asian people up."
He put on his white supremacist uniform.
He put on some fatigue pants and a backpack.
He rolled out and started harassing Asian people,
and he beat an Asian man.
Then he ran up on
this 70-something-year-old Asian woman,
and he punched her in the eye, and he hit her so hard,
her eye was shut closed,
and that lady pulled out a pipe and beat the shit out
of that white supremacist guy."
I don't know if you saw it.
She whupped... First of all,
that lady had been in a fight before
because ain't nobody walking around
with no pipe in their purse.
And she won a fight before, too.
She beat the shit out of that man.
You hear me?
And look. The camera was on the lady
and... and her eye was shut closed.
It was so pitiful. You felt sad for her.
Then the camera pulled out, and he was on the stretcher, crying.
And he was like, "No! Keep it away from me!"
And she looked into the camera
and started speaking Chinese.
And I was like, "That's an old gangster bitch.
I want to be friends with her."
I was like, "Yes!
I want to be friends with her."
I tried to get her to come here tonight.
I admire people who fight for themselves
because I always didn't fight for myself.
I remember being an old punk-ass kid when I was in kindergarten.
I'm still mad about a fight that I lost.
This bitch named Eve kicked me in my throat.
And I should have known because she was 5 and her name was Eve.
Kicked me in my throat. And I've always been tall.
She had a vertical leap out of this world.
And I didn't fight back. I didn't fight back
because my family was so ghetto and they were all...
My uncles were always in the streets,
and I thought that I was taking the high road.
At that young age, I knew. You know what I'm saying?
I was like... I was being indignant.
I didn't fight her. She put her hands on me.
I looked like a dumb-ass, and I'm still mad about it.
I haven't let it go.
And I'm gonna fight this bitch when I see her.
I've looking for her all over the place.
Like, I check for her on Facebook and Instagram.
I check prison logs in Florida.
I check all the cashiers at Walmart and Big Lots.
'Cause I'm-a beat this bitch's ass.
And when I fight her, listen,
I don't care if this bitch is in a wheelchair.
It's going down. You hear me?
First... I hope she's in a wheelchair
so when I kick her back in the throat,
I ain't got to lift my leg that high.
I saw some of y'all got uncomfortable with that joke.
'Cause you don't think an abusive bitch that ended up
in a wheelchair for karma
deserves getting her ass beat in a wheelchair.
And that's why woke people ain't shit.
Ah. I can't stand y'all.
Listen, when I was a kid, I was a punk,
and I'm honest about it.
I didn't even play the dozens.
For those of you who don't know what the dozens are,
it's like snapping, cracking, roasting for street cred.
And nothing is off-limits
because ghetto children are cruel.
So your mama's not off-limits. AIDS is not off-limits. Cancer.
And I was tender. I would be like,
"That's why you got on those dirty Payless shoes."
And the kids would be like,
"That's why your uncle sucked a dick for a crack rock."
I'd be like, "Oh, shit, I think I lost.
I'm not good at this game.
And how you know about my uncle?"
Man, I couldn't even seek comfort in my mother
because my mother was a savage beast, right?
My stepfather used to call my mother La Fiera, right?
That means "wild, savage beast." Think of a wolverine.
That's Margarita, right? I can't even go to her.
My mother used to... Listen,
my black American friends would say to me,
"My mama beat me with a switch," and I would be like,
"Oh, yeah? My mama said to me, 'Mal rayo te parta.'"
That means "may lightning strike you in half."
I'm like, "Who are you... 50 Cent, bitch?"
I'm 7.
Yeah, I couldn't even go to her for normal shit.
Like, if somebody called me ugly...
Like, a normal person would say, "Mommy, Sophia said I was ugly,"
and their normal mother would say,
"Honey, consider the source."
Now, Margarita...
I'd like, "Mommy, Sophia said I was ugly."
She'd be like, "You talking about the bitch
whose mother fucked her own brother?
You let a product of incest make you feel bad about yourself?
You on the honor roll, bitch. What's wrong with you?"
She was hard. But I'll tell you what.
I know my mother loved me.
My mother had her situation, like many of us
who come from the situations that we come from by design.
So my mom was a little rough around the edges,
but she would show up for me.
My mother used to do my hair like this
when I was little... part it in the middle and do two ponytails.
I still do it like this because I have Stockholm syndrome.
And she was doing my hair one time
and I kept complaining about it hurting.
And my best friend said, "That's because Ms. Pagliaro
is always hitting her in the head
with those big, fat pencils."
And I knew in that very moment that the next day of school
was gonna be the most embarrassing day of my life.
100%. The next day of school, I'm pacing, my stomach hurts,
diarrhea because I'm a Virgo.
The whole time just messed up in my stomach.
And I thought we were home free, and I'm lining up for lunch,
and I hear in the background, "Where she at?!
And all the kids in my class pointed at Ms. Pagliaro.
They didn't even know my mother.
They just knew she was the solution.
Like, they're were like, "That's the bitch who keeps hitting us
in the head with a pencil.
That's the lady you want right there."
My mother walked up to her, and she's like,
"I heard you like hitting little kids in the head with pencils."
She was like, "Excuse me?" She took off her shoe,
jumped up, and popped her in the head.
And all the kids started cheering.
I was, like, watching. Like, I was embarrassed.
Then I started cheering, too,
because I realized that that bitch was going to jail.
I was like, "I'm about to get a break!
I'm going to foster care with the white lady
that has an apple pie and a cat in the house."
That principal came and got my mother and said, "Ms. Rodriguez,
we need you to come with us."
And she grabbed Ms. Pagliaro, and she said,
"Come on, bitch. You coming, too."
She said, "I'm going to jail for assault,
but you going to jail for child abuse."
And just like that, all my dreams down the drain.
She didn't go to jail. They let her go
because they don't want that problem, right?
The only thing I learned about that experience
was that kindergartners are some old snitch-ass bitches.
Ms. Pagliaro.
That was the first white lady in my life that abused me.
Speaking of white ladies...
white women had a tough year.
A tough couple of years.
Am I right?
♪ They call me Karen ♪
It was a rough year for white women.
White men turned on white women. I'm a comedian.
You seen all the comics talking shit about white...
White men are clever.
White men colonized everybody on the planet,
including white women. They were like, "No, bitch.
You sit in the back of the bus, too."
One white woman ruined the barbecue,
and then she became the problem.
I'm like, "Well-played, white men.
That's chess, not checkers."
White women have been standing on the front line
for abortion forever.
We don't even know that that is an act of allyship.
They're like, "Yo, these white men are evil,
and we ain't making no more of them."
They tried to warn us.
I knew the world was changing when I saw a white woman
get her ass beat by the cops.
I did. I was like, "That's the America Martin Luther King
was talking about."
And there was a perfectly good black man
standing 6 feet away from her 'cause he was social distancing.
And she looked at that cop like, "You gonna beat me
with this perfectly good black dude standing right here?
I'm calling your manager in the morning."
Yo, white women stood in front of black people
during the Black Lives Matter marches.
I don't know if you saw this. One white woman did naked yoga.
Google it. She did naked yoga.
She was standing there. She was like, "Yo,
I'm gonna show him this pussy. You all run that way. Go."
She was, like, Downward Dog. She did the whole thing.
It's amazing.
But the white people were also getting beat up in L.A.
They got on their knees,
and they put their hands behind their back,
and they served as a barrier between the police
and the black people...
until the police started shooting.
Then they ran to the back. They were like, "You know what?
Black people been in the back too long.
Y'all go to the front."
I do want to, you know... That's enough about white women
because I have to talk about something very important,
and it's here tonight... Latinos.
Latinx people. Latine people.
I got to make sure I call everybody by their proper label.
Did I miss one?
Thanks.
No, we got issues.
We flex on each other over that dumb shit.
I'm half Puerto Rican and half Dominican.
And I didn't know I was half Dominican until I got older
'cause they didn't tell me. They broke it to me
like it was bad news.
No. Serious.
They were like, "We got to talk to you. Um...
You're probably not gonna like this,
but you're half Dominican. Yeah.
You don't have to tell nobody."
So I went to Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic,
so... 'cause I wanted to embrace my roots
'cause that shit will fuck with your self-esteem,
when you have people telling you stuff like that.
And I went there, and I went to Puerto Rico,
I went to the Dominican Republic.
There was a white girl on our crew.
And she said after we went to both places,
"Y'all kind of the same."
And then I was like, "No, we have very different...
You know, we have different customs."
And she was like, "No, you're all the same."
And I was like, "No, we... Don't we look different?"
She was like, "No, y'all are the same."
She was like, "I don't know what you guys are talking about."
And it was funny because I was like, "Well,
language, you know, because we all have our own dialect,"
and she was like, "Oh, well, you know, maybe,
but y'all kind of the same thing."
And we do. We do with language.
Because Latinos like to flex on other Latinos.
Nobody holds us down like we hold each other down, right?
So with language.
"Oh, those Puerto Ricans are ghetto.
They don't know how to speak correct Spanish
because they say, "Ohh!"
The Puerto Ricans know what I'm talking about.
Right? They be like, "The Dominicans,
they all sound like they singing un merengue."
Scaring people all over the place, right?
Nobody scares them like the Cubans, right?
The Cubans be like,"
You be like, "Oh, shit. Is he mad?"
No. He's actually saying, "Happy birthday."
Some Latinos didn't teach their children Spanish
because they wanted them to assimilate,
and, you know, they let white people convince them
not to learn how to speak the language
that they were gonna need to get a job.
And Latinos were like, "Okay."
And then there are the people like my parents
who made us learn Spanish first
and then sent us to school to speak English.
And then they put us in ESOL and called us special.
Right? They be like, "Yo, this bitch is 12
and don't know how to say 'butter' in English.
Put her in the back. Put her in the back."
This kind of flex all the time, right?
We have all this flex, and it's so stupid, right?
Know those people?
Oh, they're so regal.
But you spitting on me.
Back the fuck up.
And put some sunscreen on.
You're gonna die in the sun, bitch.
And there's a myth, right?
They say, "Oh, they talk like that
because King Ferdinand had a lisp
and they speak that way to honor him."
But that shit isn't true. That never really happened.
It just turned out that they're just a bunch of assholes.
We have this ethnic spectrum
that contains all of the races.
We have white, we got black, we got Asian,
we got indigenous, we got everybody.
You got Latinos walking around flexing
their Spanish blood on us,
saying, "I have pure Castilian blood."
Have you ever heard them? I'm like, "We all do.
The Spaniards fucked everybody.
You ain't saying nothing.
Sure, dumb-ass. Get the fuck out of here."
Our families got people of all colors,
right? Like, my mom has a whole bunch of kids
that look all different, right?
Like, my siblings are here.
My brother Chino.
I ain't got to tell you how he looks.
I got my sister, the white one, Yasmin, right?
She gets us in the club.
I have my brother who looks Latino.
His name is Carlos, of course.
And then there's me, right? The indigenous, negra,
depending on who you're asking.
Right? And I have a really good friend of mine.
My white friend came to my house and saw my siblings,
and I could see the confusion on her face.
She was looking at us. She was like,
"Yo, you all got the same father?"
And I was like, "Are you trying to call my mama a ho, bitch?"
I was like, "Yeah, we got the same father.
As a matter of fact, we do, and his name is Colin."
And that confused her even more.
She was like, "Colin?"
And, listen. She was percolating.
She had... It sat with her for a while.
She sat around. She couldn't take it.
Pacing. She's like, "Aida, your father's name is Colin?"
I was like, "Yeah, 'colin-ization, ' bitch."
I was like... "Yes."
If your great-great-great- grandfather would have
kept his dick to himself,
we wouldn't look like a Benetton ad."
And I say black and indigenous when it comes to me
because identity is very different,
and we like 20 years behind in the Latino community
'cause I can't say that I'm black because I'm light-skinned.
But then to black American people,
I'm just one of Quincy Jones' daughters.
We got all this shit going back and forth.
And we have code words for black, right?
We say "morena." Black.
Taína. Black.
Mulatta. Black.
Mestiza. Black.
Hala.
Black with freckles.
And it's all black nonetheless.
I grew up in a black and brown neighborhood,
and my black American friend says to me,
"You think you cute because you light-skinned
and got good hair."
And I'm like, "I'm light-skinned and I got good hair?
What?!"
I'm rolling with these bitches."
She was like, "You know, if we were in slavery,
you'd be in the house," and I said,
"You know, if we were in slavery, we'd be in slavery.
What the fuck does my location matter?
What the hell do you think was happening in the house?
You thought we was turning up?"
I'd rather be out in the field with LeBron James.
Right?
Than in the housing getting fucked by the Quaker Oats man.
Woman: Yeah. Yeah.
Yes.
Yo, have you seen the Quaker Oats man?
Even the white women are like,
"We don't want him either, bitch.
We want LeBron, too."
I was dealing with this shit my whole life.
Listen, my... my family was "religious."
"COGIC." "Pentecostal."
"Seventh-day Adventist."
Super-religious. Anti-abortion.
Until I got pregnant from a black dude.
Then they became pro-abortion in the name of Jesus.
They were like, "He'll forgive you."
Too much truth for you tonight?
Woman: Bring it.
Tell the truth.
Good.
Tell the truth and shame the devil.
Not my mother, though. My mom... My mom don't have...
She don't have the tools to be a racist
because her whole family looks like that Benetton ad
that I talked to you about. My mom had a problem with him
because he was Muslim, not because he was black.
Because if you ever want to piss a Puerto Rican mother off,
you come home with somebody who doesn't believe in Jesus
or eat pork.
That's how you get kicked out the house.
She'd be, "Qué? Qué?"
That's how you get kicked out the house.
And my ex, he spoke in the...
You know, he converted to Islam.
And he did the whole thing.
He'd be walking around... "As-salamu alaykum.
Allahu akbar."
You know, do all of that.
And she'd be like, "Hello, Dylan."
"Sit down so you can have a meal."
And she served him a pork chop.
And, yo, he was like, "Sorry, Ms. Rodriguez.
I'm Muslim. I don't eat pork."
And my mother was like,"
She was, um...
That means, "Look at this dumb-ass.
He don't eat pork, but he eat ass. Okay."
She was, "As-salamu alaykum, Dylan."
They laugh because they know these people, you know?
They like, "She really telling on us."
I also... Listen, through this journey,
I had an opportunity to go to the Dominican Republic
and meet my father for the first time.
And it's funny because we sat in a restaurant,
and every time a woman walked in, he would be like,
"That's your sister."
It happened a few times.
He was so generous, he gave us each our own mothers.
He was like Oprah. "You get a mother! You get a mother!"
Oh.
And it's funny because he was trying to relate to me,
and he was like, "Mami, tu sabe.
You know, you are a performer
because I used to be a performer.
I used to sing." He was like,
"I used to sing about the 'beaches.'"
And I was like, "The ocean?"
He was like, "No, the 'beaches.'"
He was saying "the bitches."
But, oh, Papi doesn't do that anymore.
You want to know why he don't do it no more?
'Cause he woke.
On God. He's woke now.
And he sings about the environment.
He does. He sings about the environment, global warming.
He sings bachata about the environment.
And he let me hear his first single.
He played it for me when I was there.
It's about the turtles, because, you know,
there's a crisis in Puerto Rico
and in the Dominican Republic with the turtles.
And he played the song for me.
And that shit is trash.
Filth.
That song is so bad, it made me want
to go throw straws in the ocean.
I was like, "Man, fuck them turtles, man.
You need to go back and sing about the 'beaches.'"
That was weird.
That's how we deal with this shit, comedians.
We talk about the shit that hurts sometimes.
And I think it's funny
'cause I'll stand by that song being trash.
You know what I'm saying?
I've talked a lot about the differences
of Latinos and some of the things that are divisive
and make us complicated. But I do want to
praise us because we are beautiful people and I love us.
And as complicated as we are...
As complicated as we are,
we are fucking phenomenal.
We're beautiful.
And I'll tell you this. One thing that we all have in common
is, we love food, and we love our grandmothers.
- Man: Yeah. - Man: Yeah.
Yes. Abuela is key.
I mean, many of us got raised by our grandmothers.
Right? So I love my grandmother.
And I'll tell you, a lot of people of color...
Like, Asian people love their grandparents.
Black people love their grandparents. "My dear."
Jewish people call their grandmothers Bubbe.
You know, regular white people... Meemaw.
They love their grandmothers.
It's just rich white people.
They lock them up.
They be like, "Keep talking shit.
You going to Shady Acres, young lady.
Keep fucking with me. I'll take your house."
They be locking them up.
They be like, "This one's for boarding school, asshole."
They fucking are hilarious. Not us, though.
We ride our grandparents till the wheels fall off.
We do. And we be fucking... Our old grandparents.
Yo, I don't know what's worse.
The home or the house of an ethnic person
and a poor grandparent. Grandma be on a walker,
just got a hip replacement, holding a baby.
She got to babysit because you want to be a ho.
They be like, "Aaaa!" walking around.
We be making them do shit they don't want to do.
"Wait a minute, my grandma gonna make her homemade biscuits.
Hold on." Grandma be like, "I'm coming, baby!"
It's so fucked up.
People come to the house and be like,
"Yo, you got a skeleton in the crib?"
We like, "That's not a skeleton.
That's the matriarch of this family.
You will not be disrespecting my abuela panza like that."
I'm gonna be a grandmother one day 'cause I have older kids.
We grew up together, my children and I.
The Latinos get it, right? They're like...
We kind of all grew up with our parents 'cause...
Right? You remember your grandmother turned 40?
I do. That shit was...
That shit was lit!
- Whoo! We turned up. - Whoo! We turned up.
No, my kids are older now,
and I talk to them. We have these conversations
and reflect on their childhood.
I remember when my daughter was a teenager.
She and I was talking about it, right?
My daughter... They grew up in the suburbs, alright?
And my daughter looked me in my eye in my own home
and said, "I hate you."
And I was like, "I'm so glad you said it first.
Like, thank you for releasing me of this burden.
Like, I've been holding on to this since you were 9.
Like, I've been waiting on the right time to tell you.
I feel the same way you do."
But I could never say "I hate you" to my mother.
That bitch was a lunatic.
My siblings... My mother would drop-kick me
like the bitch in kindergarten,
and I would sound like the lady
from the "no smoking" commercial.
You know that lady?
"I talked back to my mother.
She kicked me in the throat.
I've been talking like this ever since.
Smoke cigarets. Don't talk back to your mother."
Straight up.
As a mom, like, I always...
I feel like I need to talk about it
because my kids are older now, but they don't leave.
That was a joke.
They don't. They grow up, but they don't leave.
At least mine don't. They don't leave.
Look, Latino kids don't leave.
That's why we're dysfunctional. We got problems with the men.
Our kids don't leave.
I just got to get that off my chest.
And I adore those kids.
I mean, I fought third graders for my son.
That's when I started fighting...
When I had somebody that I loved more than myself.
I wasn't enough to fight for, but I fought for those kids.
My son got jumped in third grade by these future criminals.
And I threw all of them up against the wall,
and I was like, "Look, if you ever touch my son again,
I'm-a kill y'all."
I was so mad. And I was like, "And you can tell your mom
when she gets out of jail that I'm here every day
because I love my kids."
And the next day, the mom showed up.
One of the moms. And she was like,
"Did you touch my kid?" I said, "As a matter of fact,
I pushed all three of them up against the wall,"
I said, "because they jumped my son."
And she said, "Thank you. I can't give him to listen."
And I was like, "The first ass whupping is free.
But if you want me to keep doing this shit, bitch,
you gonna have to pay me because they going to jail.
They definitely going to jail."
I was one of those mothers
that was always driving around her kids.
Everybody knew me and my Camry.
My daughter used to put safety pins to hold up the roof
that she destroyed in the first place.
And I learned to reconcile my road rage through my children
because I was always in the car and it would help you.
Like, I started making psychological assessments
about people according to how they drive.
It really helps. Like, people who won't let you in
will never let you in.
They're dark, evil people.
Stop rolling up to their windows,
begging them for acceptance.
They hate you.
They're never gonna let you in.
People who tailgate have abandonment issues.
That's why they driving so close.
'Cause they need a hug.
And people who switch lanes without signals
don't use condoms.
So...
stay away from them, ladies.
They'll ruin your life.
Yo, speaking of relationships...
it's funny because I have a friend named Cee Cee
who is paranoid and always on high alert.
Like, she always thinks somebody is trying to do something to us.
Everywhere we go, she's like, "Look, he's looking at us.
He's gonna do something to us.
Why does he keep looking at us?
I'm like, "Bitch, because he's trying to take our order.
He works here."
And she thinks it's funny to drop fun facts
about the places that I go to because women...
women are constantly under attack, right?
The femicide rates have gone up.
Puerto Rico got a problem,
Dominican Republic got a problem,
and America has a problem.
So women walk around scared because we have to be scared
because men are crazy, right?
And so everywhere I go,
like Montana, she's like, "You know,
they got a high missing rate of indigenous women,
and you one of them Taína bitches."
And I'll tell you, I went to Ohio,
and Cee Cee sent me some fun facts
because she thinks this shit is funny.
And she's like, "Yo, fun fact.
Ohio has the most missing women in all of America.
Fun fact... Ohio has the most missing women of color
in all of America.
Fun fact... Ohio has the most missing women of color over 35
in America.
They snatching old bitches, too.
Have fun in Ohio!"
And she always sends a little emoji.
And I get to Ohio, and what happens?
A serial killer
is apprehended for murdering women
that he was hiding in the back of his house
while his girlfriend lived there.
Yeah, he would go out and kill women and rape them.
Talk about side bitches.
His girlfriend actually had moved out
right before he was apprehended,
and... 'cause she... she felt something was going on.
You can't even go to the bathroom with me.
I be like, "Where are you going?
You got six minutes to pee and come back."
That's how much I trust men.
But this woman was interviewed by a reporter,
and you can see that she was in shock,
and I could see it all over her face.
Like, they asked her, "What... What are you feeling right now?"
And I'm thinking to myself,
"I know exactly what she's feeling. I'm a woman.
She's like, 'He never tried to choke me once.
All these bitches look better than me?
My boyfriend thinks I'm ugly.'"
Oh, wouldn't be me.
It's funny. We talk about relationships.
My mother, Margarita, called me the other day
and said she checked her husband's phone
and found another bitch texting him.
He's 78.
When does it end, fellas?
Like, when?
And he pees on himself.
I need to know the bitch that's texting.
You know, who's texting him?
He got toe fungus.
And he got a Depend on.
Like, I want to know, who is fucking
for a Social Security check?
Who is riding a dick that's popping out of a diaper
for Social Security money?
I need to meet this bitch.
'Cause she got a stomach of steel.
You know, the older men get,
the more they share their problems with us ladies
because they think we're getting older, too,
and that we're not worthy of more.
Like, they tell us all kinds of shit
that we don't need to know...
How bad their credit is, their living conditions.
You know, this guy was trying to talk to me.
He lives in an apartment that's so small
he can't stand up straight in it.
And he told me that.
And I was like, "You inviting me into your struggle?"
My girlfriends the other day were trying to tell me,
because they're... they're now getting me, like, back
into this dating game, and they were like,
"Yo, these are the two options of men that we got."
She said, "You could date a man who's gonna
sweep you off your feet and take you to dinner.
You're gonna have a good time.
He's gonna be your soul mate. You're gonna dance with him.
He's gonna be, like, your perfect Spades partner.
But he's gonna fuck your sister.
Or you can data a gargoyle who will never cheat on you.
You'll have a secure home. He'll follow you to the bathroom.
But you gonna want to stab him in his sleep."
And I was like,"
Fuck it. My sister fine."
Sharing is caring.
But I've noticed that the younger generation,
they don't subscribe to that cheating mentality.
They're like, "We're not doing that."
They're like people from the '60s.
They're having their own sexual revolution.
They're doing their own thing. I have a niece that told me...
She's like, "I don't know, you know, what I am,
but I'm a pansexual."
And I was like, "What's a pansexual?"
She said, "Pansexual is a person
who has sex with men, women, trans people, queer people."
I said, "Oh, you a ho."
Okay.
I got it.
Got you.
She was like, "Yes!
I'm sex positive!
We own the word."
I was like, "Auntie's not a ho."
She's like, "No, Auntie is delusional."
She was like, "You want to date somebody
who only wants to be with you?"
And she just laughed in my face.
She was like, "That's so '80s."
Comedy has become so difficult to do
'cause comedians are held to a higher standard
than motherfuckers in public office.
Straight up.
I was doing comedy in Arizona, baby Texas.
And I was being heckled by a blind man at a show.
And you can Yelp this. This happened for real.
And I know he was blind 'cause he kept saying,
"I'm blind. Make fun of me."
And he was facing the back.
Straight up.
And I was like, "Hell, no.
I'm not fuckin' with this man.
This man is gonna get me canceled."
So I just turned around and did comedy
for the people who could see.
And after the show, he made his way to me.
It took him a minute,
but when he got to me, he was like, "You're full of shit."
He said, "You made fun of everybody in this audience
and you didn't make fun of me.
And I think that's bullshit."
He was like, "I wanted to be in on the joke."
He said, "I come to this comedy club every week,
and next time I come back,
you better have a joke about blind people."
So I wrote a joke about blind people.
Because I believe in diversity and inclusion.
So I don't know if you know this,
but seven blind people climbed Mount Everest,
and I'd like to know who put that tour together.
Can you ima... That person is evil.
They were like, "Yo, you want to see some funny shit?
I'm 'bout to run these seven blind motherfuckers
up this mountain.
Bring your camera. Let's see who makes it."
I want to know what they did when they got to the top.
Don't you? Did they listen for danger?
Took a deep breath and inhaled death.
And how do they know they actually made it to the top?
Listen, if it was me,
I'd take them up the nearest canyon
and be like, "We made it, guys!"
Take a picture for the 'gram.
She hates blind people.
Yes. And listen, I will say this.
It's very hard to do comedy right now.
Everybody's uptight.
We all going through this collective trauma.
And those of us who are comedians,
we show up for y'all when we're in grief,
when things hurt, when we don't feel good about ourselves
because we get joy out of making you happy.
And, yeah, some of us are assholes, absolutely.
Everybody got assholes at their jobs.
Comedians are not exempt.
So I say all of that to say that, in closing,
if I said something that hurt your feelings,
if I offended someone,
I want to invite you to chomp on a dick.
I do.
Yes.
Like, really, chomp on that bitch.
Like, "Ah, ah, ah, ah."
It will release the tension in the jaws,
and it will help you with that thing that you have
that makes you think that everything is about you.
I'm gonna go now.
But I made a promise that I would close my show
honoring Anthony Carthan and Tony Baker's son.
So I said...
that the very last thing I'd say when I got off this stage
in honor of Cerain Baker is,
let's go!
Thank you.
I just want to feel the energy of the town and the people.
I once lived in this place, and now it seems so foreign to me.
This is all just part of the process for me
to get ready for that stage.
I'm standing on the shoulders of great people
who did a lot of things and made a lot of sacrifices.
So that I could be a stand-up comedian...
Not a nurse, not a doctor, not a lawyer, a judge,
a stand-up comedian.
And that's a privilege.
Truth be told, my mother was not in support of this.
No one was, but my grandmother said, "Go do it."
She told me, "Plan B is for people
who don't believe plan A is gonna work."
So this is for the culture.
Aida: I'm in the Dominican Republic.
This is the first place that I lived after I was born
with my father and my mother.
My mother took me from my father when we were living here.
I grew up not knowing him.
I wanted to come here and meet my father
and confront my issues in understanding
a part of me that I never knew.
All good for comedy 'cause all the trauma
made some really good bits.
But I can't help but to think about
the series of things that happened in my life,
if they would happen if my father was around.
Akaylah: It's really good.
Aida: But I like to make sure that when I'm talking about stuff
that is not about my life
and that has to do with my social commentary,
I try to be as informed as I can.
I have a relationship with books that's very intimate,
and also I would find my father in the books
because I didn't know who he was in real life.
I remember thinking every day
he's gonna come rescue me from this.
I would stand looking out the window,
saying, "He gonna come get me one day."
I used to tell them, "I will find you anywhere."
I just couldn't understand
why he didn't feel that way about me.
I didn't know I was half Dominican until I got older,
'cause they didn't tell me.
They broke it to me like it was bad news.
This reminds me of my childhood.
You watch these specials and these shows with, like,
comedians that go back to their cities
and they go back to wherever they're from
and they uplift the people from their communities.
So why not us?
Growing up, it was a disservice to me,
all of the tropes that were given to me
that affected my self-esteem, because I also am Dominican.
And I felt very disconnected from my people.
To be told that that part of me was less than
or something I shouldn't claim has been very hurtful.
And so coming here has been part of my healing,
not just about my father,
but just to see faces and talk to people,
and all of their beauty
and how they show up is very important to me.
So I'm just glad to be here.
And listen, it is important for me to talk about my people
because you don't see Latinos in comedy in these spaces.
I write it down or type it and then I write onstage.
And if it works, then I write it down as a joke.
How am I gonna tell those jokes on my father
and the Dominican Republic?
In a way that doesn't seem like
I'm perpetuating stereotypes about Dominicans.
That's how much shit I have to think about when I write a joke.
I have to manage my own experience
so that I don't offend somebody.
That's what happened in my life, and my story matters,
and I should be able to tell it.
I lean into it 'cause I'm not gonna let nobody bully me
into making me believe that my story doesn't matter
because it makes them feel a certain way.
If you don't like it, pick up the mic,
pick up a pen, pick up a camera,
and go tell your own fucking story
and stop telling me how to tell mine.
Right now, I'm not centered, either,
so I just... I need help.
Trying to figure out, should I look pretty for him
to show him, like, "Look what you missed out on"?
Should I dress down and show him, like,
"You're not all that.
I don't need to be dressing up for you."
This is the first time I will have seen him.
I don't know how old I was.
The lies and the stories have changed so much,
but I know I was young enough that I don't remember him.
Am I supposed to open the door?
It was a very awkward exchange for me.
The reality of this idea of what it would be
to meet my father and my rescuer and my protector
and, you know, the king of my life.
And it's disheartening to finally meet your father.
Now he's frail.
You don't just see somebody
and then all these years of pain and hurt just disappear
because you meet somebody.
This is like the first step of the beginning.
It's not the climax of the story,
and there's a lot of work to be done
so that we can have a relationship.
He seemed like he was dealing with some accountability.
But I was most moved by the children.
And I think that was the hardest part for me,
just meeting them and then having to walk away.
I wanted to feel something, and, you know, today I felt it.
They were that emotional CPR that I needed.
Woman: You okay?
Man: She doing her best.
Some of the wounds...
will never heal, but we learn to live with them.
Even if it may seem off-color to some people,
as a comedian, being able to write about it
is how I'm able to process it and get it out.
I don't know where this is gonna end up in my set,
but it has to.
There's no way I could not write a joke about that dinner.
I came here to tackle some of the things
that were very uncomfortable about my life
and some of the cultural stuff that I gained from being here.
Elias: We got a good lineup for today.
Published the show Monday night,
and it was sold out by 11:00 a.m.
Aida:
tell us about your experience with comedy here.
It's been good, actually.
They have helped us. We all help each other.
Aida: How do you feel about going first?
I don't think any of you could be any more nervous than me.
I met my father two days ago,
and I'm about to talk about him onstage.
Whoo!
Let's go.
I just found out I'm part. Dominican.
I just needed to see my father.
You know, it is a part of who I am,
and that has a lot to do with who I am as a comedian.
Making these jokes blindly just feel hollow.
Being able to really feel it in my body
and experience it gives it a different life
that when I take it to the stage,
I believe, is what connects with other people.
Thank you, and I'm gonna do a video,
and I just want you to cheer, just celebrate...
like Walter Mercado gave you the best horoscope of your life
and 'cause I'm dressed like Walter,
so let's channel that energy.
And let's go!
I think a lot of times, girls are given this idealistic view
of what a man and your father is
and they're gonna come and sweep you up.
And I always felt like I missed out on that.
All of that happened because it was supposed to,
and it happened because it made me who I am today.
I am enough.
Even in spite of him not being there, I'm still here.
So I'm in Puerto Rico.
And that exhale was, "I'm home, bitches."
This is the most precious place on Earth to me.
This is where my grandmother was from and my great-grandfather,
who gave me my customs, my food, my religion.
Here, for me, it's about coming back to Puerto Rico
after my grandmother died, and I just wanted to honor her.
My grandmother gave me pana and taught me how to pray.
That's how I describe her... And everything in between.
My grandmother was shooting up the block.
My brother called me one day, and he was like,
"Guess where I'm going." I said, "Where you going?"
He goes, "I'm going to bail Abuela out of jail."
"The drug dealers threatened her.
She just started shooting everybody,
and they called the police on her."
She had on her bata and her house shoes.
With her gun.
Aida: So how does it feel for you to be in the presence
of these people who are also your people?
I don't know. It's like you feel like you know yourself,
but then you meet new parts of yourself, I guess.
Aida: How do you feel being here?
Have you seen yourself here?
Not quite, but not not.
I decided to have dinner in Puerto Rico.
Some of my friends flew out there, my chosen family.
People don't understand why we fight.
I mean, we don't fight because we want to.
We fight because we have to.
You have to continue to fight and work hard for what you need.
I'm glad that we fight.
I'm glad my grandmother wasn't a punk.
That's not 'cause she's perpetuating a stereotype.
That was 'cause she was protecting
what she believed was worthy enough to protect.
Our words are our swords. They're sharp. Yeah.
I'm very happy and proud that they did give me that fight.
What I endured in life.
I would not have been able to had I not had that fight in me.
When my grandmother passed away, it was like my hero died,
because she was, like,
the strongest person I ever met in my life.
I think about just the privileges that I've had
that my grandmother never had.
She didn't even go to school. She didn't learn how to read.
She didn't wear shoes until she got a little bit older.
The greatest sacrifice that she ever made
was leaving her homeland, because she loved this place.
She went out in search of a better life.
I'm standing on her shoulders
and the shoulders of the people who came before her.
You know, just writing the jokes that I tell about my truth
with regards to how I grew up.
The word has always been a way for me to defend myself.
And that's always me paying homage to my grandmother
'cause she always made me promise
that I will always fight for myself.
It's in my genetic code to fight for myself.