John Mulaney Compares Raising a Three Year Old to Working on ‘Ellen’

Seems fair
John Mulaney Compares Raising a Three Year Old to Working on ‘Ellen’

This week’s episode of Everybody’s Live with John Mulaney featured a star-studded line-up of guests, including David Letterman, Hannibal Buress, Nikki Glaser and the interdimensional dumpster creature from David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive.

And since the theme of the episode was “height,” musical guest Randy Newman wrapped up the show by playing “Short People” two songs that were in no way “Short People.”

But before all of that, Mulaney’s opening monologue found him telling a lengthy story about his family, specifically, his son Malcolm’s debut stage performance at a school concert. While that premise may have been cause for concern in other hands, Mulaney proved that he can actually tell a “here’s a funny story about my kid” material that’s still in line with his comedic voice. Case in point: He compared his parenting style to Dennis Hopper’s Speed villain, and likened raising toddlers in general to dealing with a certain disgraced talk show host. 

Mulaney revealed that he let his nervous son bail on the ‘80s-themed school dance performance, telling the teacher, “Excuse me Ms. Inez, you have no idea how much you can disappoint an audience and still bounce back in this business.” Mulaney also noted that “it’s hard to get toddlers to perform together” because “every toddler at heart is the star of their own show.” 

“Do you know what having a three-year-old is like?” Mulaney continued. “Having a three-year-old is what I imagine working on Ellen’s show was like. Because people come over, you know, and they’re like, ‘How is it?’ And you’re like, ‘Oh it’s fun. You know? We have fun. There’s games, you know, but some days — some days are hard…’ Um, but it’s fun. We have dancing, so if he starts dancing, you dance — but if he stops dancing you fucking stop dancing right away.”

It’s unclear if Mulaney has any firsthand knowledge of what life was like behind the scenes at Ellen, but he did appear on the show as a guest one time. Judging from this video, the episode was shot roughly 1,000 years ago. 

Mulaney comparing the emotional roller coaster of parenting to the alleged anxieties caused by working on Ellen DeGeneres’ talk show actually seems quite apt, to be honest. Raising a small child really is a mind-boggling combination of joy, exhaustion and terror. And, come to think of it, heated arguments over who gets invited to whose birthday party aren’t uncommon.

But in fairness to toddlers, most of them have never punished union workers for striking. 

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