Name: Joey Diaz Respects How His Mom Raised Him
Uploaded: 2023-05-14T04:00:10.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joey Diaz Respects How His Mom Raised Him' from Theo Von Clips on Comedy Buff. Published 2023-05-14. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joey Diaz Respects How His Mom Raised Him' from Theo Von Clips on Comedy Buff. Published 2023-05-14. Transcript available.

My mother was a bookmaker, so she worked with men.
And I used to admire how my mother walked into a room
and the respect she got from men.
Wow.
It wasn't a respect that she got because she had big tits
because she laid the law down in that room.
Yeah.
I came from a very interesting backhood that I didn't know.
When my mother was 16, her and her sister went to a dance in Cuba.
Mm-hmm.
And my mother couldn't find her sister,
so she went outside and some guy was raping her.
Mm-hmm.
And my mother broke a bottle and cut the guy,
stabbed him from one side of his back to the other.
He died.
Wow.
So I had to get my mother out of Cuba into the States.
So my mom went to, like, Curacao first.
Curacao, yeah.
Curacao first.
Yeah, we have a military base there, a huge military base.
Huge.
And then she went to the States.
And then she went back to Cuba with a fake identity
and everything disappeared.
Wow.
So I look at my daughter and I think about me
and I know that that's in my blood.
It's in there.
That that's a possibility.
Yeah.
My mom had to think quick.
I never knew the story until she died.
Wow, she was fearless.
I never knew the story.
I saw her in action.
In fact, yesterday I was writing.
Man, she must have been a strong woman, huh?
Yes, that was writing a fucking thing.
Mm-hmm.
Because I usually, like, when you go write jokes, sometimes you can't write
jokes.
So just sitting there licking a pen, I'll fucking just write a story.
Yeah.
You know?
Like, let's write it.
And I wrote a story about me and karate and how I got into karate.
I got into karate because I played hooky and I got hit in the head with a lunchbox.
And I got stitches and I told my mother.
And the next day she walked me to a black karate school.
All black.
Black people doing karate?
Oh, yeah.
No way.
1969, 68, New York City.
How's that not a documentary?
As a matter of fact, you know L'Aranja Orange?
This guy's one of Eddie's black belts.
Wow.
He has a show, the L'Aranja L'Aranja.
He's a black dude, but he makes believe he's Brazilian.
That capoeira boy, huh?
Yeah, he insults everybody.
His father was my first black belt.
And his father would walk around with a fucking wooden sword and hit you.
There was no giggling allowed.
That's crazy.
And I remember I got kicked in the stomach one time and got the wind knocked
out of me.
And I'm like, I'm not going back.
And my mom grabbed me.
She goes, you don't go back in there.
I'm going to kick you in the stomach 50 fucking times.
So get back in there.
That's no big deal.
You got kicked one time.
He would make you run on the streets with your gi on barefoot in 1968.
So you would be running past all your friends.
And then the next day you go to school and your friend's like, hey, karate man.
Yeah.
Come on, show us some karate and shit.
So then you'd be put on the spot.
You kind of had to respect your art.
You had to show your art to your friends.
And then you decide for yourself, do I respect my art?
Am I going to show it?
Or what am I going to do in this moment?
That's why I love the martial arts so much.
Because at that time I was so fucked up.
But they brought me into something.
And I used to get bullied by this kid, Rudy the Haitian.
He was a Haitian kid.
Yeah, Haitians can be wild, man.
It's risky.
It's 50-50 shot every time with a Haitian.
And this is the 60s in New York.
I don't even know what a Haitian is.
Yeah.
But the whole neighborhood called him Rudy the Haitian.
And he was about my age.
And he would beat me up like once a month or whatever.
And one day I got the karate down.
I lit this motherfucker up, Jack.
I lit him up with kicks.
Some fucking double drag, you know?
Oh, yeah.
I got him with like 20 kicks to the stomach and shit.
And then the next time I fought him, his father came downstairs and grabbed my
arms and pinned me and let him hit me.
And then his father took me upstairs.
It was a cheat code.
And my mother would wake up in the mornings, take me to school.
But my mom would have a bar.
So she wouldn't go to bed till 4 in the morning.
So she would do all this shit and then come home and take her afternoon nap.
And this one particular day he came upstairs, knocked on my mom's door, which,
big mistake.
Yeah.
My mom opened the door like, what's going on?
And he's like, the next time your son hits my son, I'm going to hit him and I'm
going to hit you.
And my mom got a fucking kitchen knife and chased him up the stairs.
I was like five.
Damn.
I was like crying.
Mom's going to get there.
And then all of a sudden my mom came down holding the knife, said, that
motherfucker will never fuck with you again.
And we went inside.
But the lady next door had seen everything that went down in the apartment.
Everybody in the floor.
Everybody on the floor.
But it was the 70s.
There was no camera.
And Americans shut their fucking mouth.
There was no rats.
You were not allowed to talk to the police.
You were raised not to talk to the police.
And I'll never forget, like 10 minutes later, the cops knocked on the door and
they had my mom in the hallway.
They turned her around.
They were about to arrest her.
He kept saying that my mother had a knife and the little old lady came out with
a fucking, what do you call those things?
Knitting and probably knitting a cross or something.
Rosary beads.
Oh, yeah.
And she goes, I saw the whole thing.
She didn't have a knife.
And that was it.
She had a spoon.
She was stirring coffee.
Isn't that right?
And my mom goes, yeah, see, in Spanish.
The cops were like, all right, let it go.
And my mom was telling Rudy's father in Spanish that, all this shit.
And a week later, Rudy's family moved from the building.
We never saw the Haitians again.
Wow.
Now, with your mom being so tough, was it tough to feel affection from her?
Because sometimes, like, my mom's a hard worker, right?
My mom delivered, you know, she's a delivery woman.
You know, she delivered newspapers since when I was a kid.
She delivers magazines now.
She's always had a fucking van, you know.
Now, she's got her husband.
He has Alzheimer's.
She doesn't even know he's in the van.
He's with her every day just fucking bouncing around in the fucking passenger
seat.
She had to get a fucking second seatbelt installed for him because he fucking
would kind of slip.
He's getting little.
He would slip out of the fucking first one.
Now, she's got him just basically in a fucking straitjacket just bouncing
around.
He has no clue where he is.
Just delivering fucking news on wheels every day, you know.
I think he's about 90, you know.
Your mom still does this?
My mom still does it, dude.
And here's the worst part, bro.
She got a good deal on this van, right?
My mom likes a good deal.
She got a good deal on this van.
It has none of the side or back windows, bro.
So, her fucking GPS is the Lord, bro.
So, she's just fucking bouncing around.
He's got him in the thing.
But she's out there delivering all these things, man.
She won't not work, you know.
Like, I could tell her, like, look, you know.
I give her some money every month, but she wouldn't have anything else to do.
You know, it's like her identity.
But then for me, it was hard to, like – for me, that kind of mom was hard to
connect with, you know, because that she just had – you know, she – for me,
I looked at my mom as, like, the mom and the dad.
I didn't realize it when I was a kid, but, you know, do you find it was tough
to, like, have an emotional – like, a mother-son connection when your mom is,
like, such a – has to be such a bravado, you know what I'm saying, kind of?
I grew up without a dad.
I grew up without a dad.
I had a stepdad.
My mom was tough.
Yeah.
My mom was very tough.
In today's world, it would be light abuse.
But I'm thankful.
Yeah, same.
I'm thankful for everything she did because my mom prepared me for the world.
Today, I'm not raising my daughter.
I'm preparing my daughter just in case something happens to me.
My mom did a great job, but she left a lot of gaps, and that's where the damage
came in.
Right.
So what I did differently is I write all the damage down.
I write for my daughter.
So I write every couple days what I'm feeling, what my thoughts are, kind of
like Jack's teller on Sons of Anarchy.
Yeah.
So if something does happen to you –
She knows what's going on.
She has all the fucking answers.
She'll never – she'll know the truth.
You know, I don't tell my daughter I'm a comedian.
I don't show enough because if not, she's going to want to be a fucking comic
in front of the stage.
Right.
Don't tell them.
I don't even – like the pre-K teacher the other day said, have your daddy
help you write it, but it's got to be clean.
I don't want that shit.
Don't tell her because it's going to be all right for her to be the class clown.
Right.
I don't want her to be the class clown.
Yeah.
My mom dog made me fight.
My mom brought a girl home for me the first time.
What the fuck?
Until this day, I can look you guys both in the eye, and I don't even know if I
fucked her.
I think I passed out from fear.
Hope you enjoyed that video, and you can watch another.
And you can watch this one.
You can watch this one.
Different options, different choices.
Some guy just brings you one option, not this guy.
Two options.
Watch one.
This one or this one.