What a TOOL
[Applause]
[Music]
[Applause]
hey everybody and welcome tedx
naperville
my name is mark lundholm and i started
doing comedy
in jails rehab shelters detoxes prisons
places i have lived a lot in my life and
today it’s a pleasure to work for people
who choose to be an audience
yeah that would be you i grew up in a
dysfunctional family that’s what they
they told me in court uh they said it’s
uh your family’s dysfunctional i said oh
i thought we had problems
you ever go to court and plead maybe
dysfunctional certainly yeah i’m the
oldest of five kids
in our house add stood for all different
dads
yeah my mom was a drinker she was an
alcoholic my dad drank because he was
married to my mom he was an alcoholic
with a reason i drink to take the edge
off
i drink to smooth out the rough edges
[Music]
dad wasn’t an alcoholic he was a circle
i’ll tell you what i’m a believer in
shortcuts straighter route more direct
approach from here
to hero from wrong to strong from now to
wow
i’m the guy who does the funny so that
we can get to the truth and the truth is
if we can laugh about it we can talk
about it if we can talk about it we can
start to heal from it
deal with it make it useful to us moving
forward we can get stronger
safer more solid the humor muscle we
were given from birth humor muscle
to develop for balancing unfairness and
raising truth and raising trust and
lowering shame and guilt
the humor muscle before you were able to
speak or walk or
clean your own frame or feed your own
face as an infant you had this
that was before medication you know i’ve
never had the luxury of perceiving
reacting seeing thinking like most
people
normal average uh i have a busted lens
and a dysfunctional kind of
fractured outlook on things i give you
an example normal people most people
they would look at a high school
yearbook
and say hey look at that that’s me
that’s me i’m on
i’m on six pages of this book for me
that’s the dsm five i don’t think like
normal people so i’m a comedian
at least that’s what it says on my tax
return every year on my tax return where
it says occupation
i write comedian what i could write
man with a mental illness who’s done a
lot of felony time
and has learned how to market all of
that stuff as a skill
so he could pay a bunch of child support
that’s what i could write on there and
i’ll tell you
shortcut number two here today
if you want a hundred percent help tell
a hundred percent truth
because the truth you tell
is equal to the help you will receive
first show i ever did was in san quentin
state penitentiary i’m a california guy
and uh i had volunteered to do this show
for the inmates
uh i’d never done stand-up comedy before
uh the inmates in there there were
about five six hundred guys and now i’m
standing behind a cyclone fence in the
prison gym there on the railing up above
on the second tier there’s two ceos
correction officers they got
a beanbag gun shotgun type things and i
don’t know if there’s bullets rubber or
otherwise in there but
everybody’s under threat and i’m
supposed to be funny
let’s be funny funny man i walk on the
stage with the cyclone fence between me
and the general population there and
right in the front of the inmates
section there’s a guy
he’s the man huge muscle-bound rip
buff cut he’s got muscles in his eyes
tank top tattoos from his ears down to
wherever else he has that i can’t see
but i look at him and i’m intimidated
and i said hey
look at look at you smooth head all that
ink you could be a ballpoint pen
nobody laughed on the railing up there
right here
the big guy stood up the man put his
fingers to the fence big old
sausage-sized fingers ham hock hands and
he said
hey funny man i’ve got friends on the
outside
they will find you tie you to a tree in
your yard
burn your house to the ground i remember
thinking
this is a heckler oh yeah you ever have
the joke show up late
you were on time for what you’re
supposed to be you were at the joke but
the joke’s not there now
nobody there was that the joke and you
got it just then you go
sorry your honor yeah that’s funny now
as is this truth be told here so the
help will show up here
i was a four-point restraint mental
patient in the 80s
uh i was in a hospital in oakland
california my hometown
four-point restraint ankles and wrists
strapped to a platform you cannot get up
from
until the staff at the hospital is ready
to let you up that’s the part they don’t
mention in the lobby during questioning
right four points ankles wrists
ouch scared angry livid
loud i said you’d let me up or i’ll kill
everybody in this place i’ll find out
where you live i’ll hurt your families
i’m gonna ah that won’t that won’t get
you up
as it turns out i got an extra day for
that little statement that verbal vomit
i threw at them
i decided that i would never tell the
truth as long as i lived ever again
because it was expensive
but i needed the help after a couple
days i don’t know i wake up come to
and i’m in this fog and this in this
funk and i’m in the
detox and i look over next to me and
there’s a guy in five-point restraint
and i’m thinking oh my look at him
i said look at you buddy
what a loser i’ll never be as bad as you
i could puke on either shoulder winner
if i don’t know 100 of the truth to tell
i can’t get 100 of the help i need
uh not necessarily because i’m dishonest
it’s because oh yeah
i don’t know how to tell the whole truth
when it’s going to help me
or benefit us i’m selective in my gifts
you know
i’m the kind of person i’ll get a whole
bunch of tattoos and then tell someone
i’m afraid of commitment
yeah that’s the truth clearly the
message here is
after 32 years sober i’m not quite right
still
sober doesn’t mean serious and it
doesn’t mean
sane sane no
i still suffer from what i call first
thought wrong
ftw first thought wrong answer wrong
direction
wrong solution uh unkind uh cruel
criminal uh inappropriate inaccurate
whiny ungrateful you know
ungrateful uh you ever run a yellow
light and the guy in front of you
doesn’t
wow what’s the resentment there what’s
your first thought right there hey buddy
we run yellows in this car yellow means
step on it and part of the red
belongs to me too sucker i’m on my way
to church i’m
late move it now
in that last bit i had a chance to curse
to spice it up a little bit there
i did but i didn’t because
shortcut number three today profanity
reduces credibility at least at this
level
there was an hr guy from silicon valley
asked me one time listen
uh you’ve been asked to present here and
we know you’re pretty good but you’re
not going to use adult language are you
i said oh yeah lots i’m going to use
words like
401k retirement responsibility
grandparenting skills
he said oh no no no what i mean is i
said i know what you mean
hell depending on who i’m working for i
curse like a kindergarten teacher on a
smoke break
i could use the f word today all i have
to say is the f word really
did you think first thought wrong did
you think fatherhood
freedom friendship philosophy any of the
other ones
no probably not wait what
philosophy
philosophy there’s two f’s in philosophy
man
i try to listen to the people who’ve
been on the path to professional before
me
right jay leno said write faster than
people can steal from you man
sam kinnison said hey it’s not getting
everybody in the room to like you it’s
getting a small percentage that
really love you bill hicks said
the joke doesn’t need to be funny it has
to be interesting
jerry seinfeld said hey you know if you
have to curse the joke is not finished
george carlin said seinfeld
and right there humor will disarm or
alarm
depending on who’s doing the listening
that’s its job comedy really that’s its
job
humor will highlight hurt it’ll
eliminate illness it’ll it’ll create
some kind of
oh impression of where we’re cracked
fractured that’s what it does comedy
does that so today
if you don’t laugh real hard it’s not
because i wasn’t funny
it’s because you are broken
shortcut here hey hashtag be first
hashtag b first if you don’t see some
where you’re at where you go where you
are be some where you’re at where you go
where you are
take it with you show up prepared grace
hope patience love kindness equality
that’s the stuff that we’re looking for
how about if we each bring some
hashtag be first if you don’t see some
be some
because what you give energy to will
continue where you
aim yourself is where you’re gonna find
yourself which put your toes on goes on
that’s the way it works
sometimes the shortcut we make is the
direct route from
hear hurt harm potential healing
humor can do all of that it’s the right
tool
about time for another shortcut right
yeah well shortcut number five today
if you have to keep it a secret don’t do
it
if you’ve already done it don’t keep it
a secret tell somebody because a secret
means
nobody knows oh yeah but i
knew that made me nobody i didn’t want
to be a nobody i wanted to be somebody
problem was in 1988 i was a homeless guy
120 pound shake and bake look and cook
tweak and peak thump and bump street guy
in oakland california my hometown i was
a street guy
homeless not useless not worthless
homeless and every once in a while
somebody will still inquire oh i read
your biography
i read your bio about you were a
homeless guy homeless really homeless
drug addict were you homeless what was
that like
well uh let’s see uh i had a lot of
liberty
homeless what’d you do with all your
stuff
first thought wrong second thought wrong
third thought wrong uh
my stuff did you look up the word
homeless right
oh oh yeah did you have like a storage
unit
no storage unit that would have been a
good home no secrets because
we’re only as sick as the secrets we
keep keeping
gladman hospital oakland california
psychiatric detox that was the
four-point restraint day
it was also the day i met the
psychiatrist he said
do you know why you’re in here young man
i said yeah cause i’m crazy i’m crazy
whoa
crazy wristband meds and that my
mother’s a pisces crazy he said
no you’re a drug addict i said doc can
you give me something for that
see we learned how to make that drop
from head to heart from smart
to heart from head to hear that one and
a half
foot drop from i’m thinking i’m keeping
i’m secretive to i’m including other
people we dropped from the attic into
the living room here
relationship humor the most awkward
probably the most fruitful
for comedy and humor and haha my
grandfather was married for
57 years somebody asked him one time
hey old timer how do you stay married so
long he said well
well you know he had fingers that are
bent like the roots of a tree
he would point at you like you’re around
the corner of a building it was awkward
you’d go
me really me he said let me tell you
something we stayed married a long time
she and i because because i make the big
decisions she makes all the little ones
big decisions little decisions and in 57
years of marriage we did not have
one big decision not one
that guy was the funniest man i knew
i’ve worked with professional comedians
my whole career and
grandfather was the funniest guy i’d
ever met in my life to this day
he died of alzheimer’s and parkinson’s
imagine
he would say sometimes i forget to shake
and that’s what you do right now what
you’re doing you go
can i laugh at that yeah because for him
old-timer that he was seasoned veteran
wise guy
it was a tool comedy was a tool humor
was a tool that’s how he coped
one of the people i admire most on this
planet is my ex-wife
the plaintiff that’s the most expensive
joke of the day
people right there but uh we were
divorced a while ago
actually we’re catholic so we got an
annulment and
an annulment is the catholic version of
the lemon law you just you just turn it
back in i got a bad one can i can i
trade
see parents are like passengers or
patients in a hospital
we all have this in common only rookies
panic and only bullies get loud
only bullies yell and only rookies
scream
i’m neither but i’ve been both and i
don’t choose to be either one
especially when it comes to conditions
that i can’t control
i still suffer from depression and low
self-esteem at times low self-esteem
uh joke coming at you let’s lighten it
up here a little bit you ever had such
low self-esteem i mean low
self-esteem that you’re making love to
somebody and you think
i can’t trust them look at the choices
they make
my favorite relationship probably these
days is with my son he’s a teenager and
god bless him he’s a little man he’s an
old old soul
in a young adolescent body and the
challenge is gosh i don’t want to screw
him up you know
i grew up a certain way he gets to grow
up a different way because
freedom starts with forgiveness and
grateful never relapses and
100 truth equals 100 help and
all the shortcuts we’ve talked about
today that’s what i get to pass on to
him
save him some time and i don’t have to
be
bullied and i don’t have to be a bully
to him
so here’s the thing i don’t get loud
when i’m talking to my boy i will lower
my voice
and raise my standards as a parent just
like that
because as it turns out volume doesn’t
substitute for content
and volume doesn’t substitute for
message or character you know
i can whisper and be heard i don’t yell
at grayson my boy because
well he’s ptsd for noise we we think it
was conception
and i don’t yell at my ex because well
it’s unproductive as it turns out yeah
a loud arrogant husband is the number
one cause of vaginal dryness
i’ll do that joke at a corporate show
and i’ll get men
writing it down putting it in their
ipads or tablets
whisper until monday she likes that
in this time of downsizing and all this
other stuff we’re doing corporate or
business-wise
i’m going to give you a little extra
shortcut today freedom starts at
forgiveness
freedom starts with forgiveness you can
forgive the perpetrator or become the
victim
anything happens to you today weather
illness
some kind of disrespect out there in the
real world
be first hashtag be first if you don’t
see some out there be some out there
healing and grace and hope
cause 100 truth here life is life
and you can take it personally ouch or
look at it truthfully
ah thanks for the lesson freedom starts
with forgiveness because
what you don’t forgive you will become
there’s the strength for today i’m the
most important person in the room today
just like you
if that’s true for both of us i’m first
you’re first
nobody’s even second here
i’m mark lundholm and i have a little
love task for you
if you don’t see some be some humor is a
gift
open it up today if you don’t see
some out there be some out there
patience love understanding kindness
humorous laughter ha ha if you don’t see
something be some
don’t hide it provide it now go go go
go