Name: The Time Louis C.K Went To Russia
Uploaded: 2022-10-29T15:00:09.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'The Time Louis C.K Went To Russia' from I'm Not Louis on Comedy Buff. Published 2022-10-29. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'The Time Louis C.K Went To Russia' from I'm Not Louis on Comedy Buff. Published 2022-10-29. Transcript available.

So I had nowhere to go, and I thought, maybe I'll go to Russia.
I really don't know why. I can't really explain any decisions I made then.
Because I have children now, so you don't have to search when you have children.
You're not like, oh, what could I do to enhance my life?
You're just sort of compelled to do whatever comes at you at a certain age in
life.
But I was in my 20s. I had no wife, I had no girlfriend even.
I just was this guy, and I had money from a TV job, and so I just said, I'm
going to go to Russia.
Because when I was a kid, I used to read Russian novels, and I loved them,
and I would open all the windows so I would be cold, and I wanted to be cold
like they were.
So I just decided I'm going to go.
And also, somebody told me that the wall had just come down in the Soviet Union,
and that Russia was a really crazy place at the time.
So I said, I'm going to go there.
I speak no Russian.
I can't even look at the alphabet and understand what I'm looking at.
There's no place more foreign to me than Russia.
So I went.
I went to Moscow, which is when you land in Moscow, it's just forest,
and there's a city in the middle of just forest.
It's terrifying.
And as the plane goes down, you're like, no, no, no, no, I didn't want to
really do this.
And the whole time there, I couldn't fend for myself.
It was already a country that was just broken in pieces.
And the weirdest things happened to me there, and they just became normal after
a while.
Like I was in a restaurant, and a waiter came up to me, not my waiter,
and he said, Coca-Cola, and I said, uh-huh.
He said, Coca-Cola, and I said, sure.
I don't drink Coca-Cola, but I had learned by that point to just don't, just go,
just do what they're asking to do.
Sure.
So he went to the kitchen, and he got a Coke, and a can, and he handed it to me,
and he said,
$5, because only dollars were worth anything there.
And I said, okay, on my bill, he said, no, $5, me now.
So I gave him $5, and he put on his coat, and he left.
He just sold me a Coke on the side, and then quit his job.
So those are the kind of confusing moments I was having there.
And I couldn't talk to anybody, and I was so lonely.
It's difficult.
I mean, I was alone, and I'd just sit in the room and go, okay, that was a
really fucked up day.
I hated that day.
And I tried to watch television, and the TV was American shows like Dynasty,
and the way they translate, they didn't have, what they did was the sound is a
little down,
and there's just one man saying all of the dialogue.
I was there for two weeks, and it just was crushingly, I had made no contact
with anyone.
And then one day I went into the subway.
Now, if you've never been to Moscow, the streets in Moscow during the Cold War,
they were made wider so that they could have missiles go down the middle of the
street for the parades.
And if you go there, you'll find out, if you go behind the big buildings,
they actually tore the buildings off of their foundations and dragged them back.
And a lot of the bigger buildings in Moscow, in the back, they're being held up
by, like, bricks.
It's really unnerving how unsafe the whole city is.
So the streets are very wide, and you can't cross the street on a green light.
You'll never make it.
So they made tunnels so you can go under, and those are connected to the subway.
And the subway in Moscow, you go down in an escalator, and you keep going until
you think,
this is, it just keeps going.
Like, this is so deep, this is really upsetting.
But anyway, everyone hangs out in these tunnels.
I went in the middle of December.
I went to Russia in the middle of December, alone.
And I'm standing in the subway, and I'm watching a violin player.
And one thing about Russia, still today, I think, is that no one has any money.
So when you see a guy playing the violin in the subway,
he's, like, the first chair violin for, like, the Russian symphony orchestra,
because that doesn't pay.
And at least he can get a few Kopecks in the subway.
So I'm watching him, and everybody, these other people are sitting on the floor,
and we're crying, everybody's crying.
Everybody.
It's just normal.
People are just watching, just wiping away tears.
And there's a young fella sitting here, and he looked my age.
I was 25 at the time.
He looked about 25, and he was tattered, and just watching this violin player.
And then this group of kids walked by, about eight children, ranging from five
to ten years old,
and their faces were dirty, like, you know, like an Oliver Twist, like they
were in a play.
Like, they had rubbed dirt on their face.
And they're all wearing men's coats that they're wearing as, like, you know,
from the neck down to the floor,
and none of them have sleeves, their hands in their sleeves.
Their sleeves are just flopping.
They were, like, street urchin kids.
And the coats, it just looked like these men's coats.
And you kind of knew all the men who owned those coats are dead.
And at least one of these kids killed those guys.
Like, I swear, I looked at an eight-year-old's face and thought, he has
murdered.
And that's what they looked like, just tough little kids.
And I could say, I'd seen them before in Moscow.
They work in groups.
The guy sitting below me that I identified with called out to the head kid in
the front.
I don't speak Russian, so I just knew he was going, uh,
he's appealing to him.
He needed something.
And the kid with his hands in his sleeve looked at him suspiciously and said,
like, what the fuck, why, what do you want from me?
And the guy went, explaining himself.
And he showed that his shoe had come apart.
And he showed that his shoe was like a flap.
And he showed the kid, and he showed him his shoe.
And the kid shrugged and said, like, okay.
And the kid's hand appeared from out of the sleeve.
And there was a tube of shoe glue in his hand.
He didn't rummage for it.
It was already there.
And he handed it to the guy.
And the guy fixed his shoe with the glue,
gave it back, and just, and then the kid from the other,
he took another, his other hand had a paper bag,
and he put the glue in, and he, and he huffed it.
And his eyes rolled back, and he got high.
And then the group kept going, and I couldn't believe what I just saw.
That the misery in this country at that time
was so calculable and so predictable
that this guy thought, my shoe's broken, oh, there's a child.
He's sure to have some glue in his hand
because the state of our nation is so wretched.
And I looked, and he looked at me, and I, and I was startled,
and then he laughed, and I laughed.
And he's the only person I had any contact with
in the whole of the Soviet Union.
And I realized this is why I came here,
to find out how bad life gets,
and that when it's this bad, it's still fucking funny.
That's all I got.
Thank you.