Mark Normand: Thank God for Drugs!

Yeah, I moved to New York with $400 and I got bed bugs the first year, landlord died of AIDS. Whoa. And I got mugged three times in the first year. Oh my god. It was hell, man. Like what, knife point, gunpoint? Well, it was mostly my fault. I'm victim blaming here, but I was always such a blackout drunk that I was just like, ass gonna be mugged. I would fall asleep and wake up and guys were going through my shit. One time I fell asleep on Hell's Kitchen. Remember the bar, Rudy's? No. You got a free hot dog with every beer, so it was a hot spot. But I remember being so drunk, they threw me out and I was walking down 9th Avenue and I was like, I just gotta lay down for a minute. I'm so tired. Because I had to go, when you had that haul to Brooklyn on the subway, that would take two, three hours sometimes. Really? Oh yeah, at four in the morning, yeah. Two, three hours? Because the trains change and they never show up and then the garbage train comes. It takes forever. And I lived in Crown Heights, man, which is like way out. So I fell asleep in this little alcove and I woke up and four or five guys are going through my shit. They're block busting. And I'm like, oh shit. And I was like, and he goes, he's getting up. And he hit me and I went out again and they took my keys, my phone, my joke book, I mean, and my wallet. And starting from scratch with no money, you gotta buy, somehow get a metro card, but you have no wallet to get the metro card. You got no credit card to get the wallet. I mean, it's brutal. How'd you get by? What'd you do? I just had to walk home, which took forever. And then I think I jumped the turnstiles, got home and then, you know, you find your roommate, you call your mom and she helps you. Wow. I fell asleep. Oh, this is a crazy story. I fell asleep on the subway. I went like four stops past mine in Brooklyn. I got out and I was like, oh, walk it. It's a nice night. I see five guys in the corner, right out of Stencil casting, shooting dice, thugged out guys on the corner, drinking 40s. And I go, ah, I'm going to cross the street. These guys look a little shady. And I walk across the street and now an older guy is coming to our white beard, big older black guy. And he gets up to me and I had an old iPod. He goes, give me that radio. And I go, it's not a radio. Thinking that would like, you know, turn him away. And he goes, just give it to me. And I go, I don't think so. And he grabs at it. So I grab at it. Now we're tugging and he picks me up and he's slamming me against a business. Like, you know, when the metal gate closes. Pow, pow. And I'm kicking him. I'm punching him. And I can't, I think he was on PCP or something. And before I know it, those five guys run over and just beat the shit out of him. I'm talking, he hits the ground, they're kicking him in the face. And I'm just like, I grabbed my iPod and I get out of there. So those five guys helped you. They saved my life. Yeah. Holy shit. I talked to a cop about it like a month later and he was like, oh, those were drug dealers and they can't have some white kid getting killed in the neighborhood. So they had to make a choice. And I was like, wow, thank God for drugs. Yeah, you can't judge. I totally judge those guys.