On February 24 2022, I woke up in the morning, saw that war had broke out and thought: "I've gotta do at least something." So I sat down and wrote posts for all the socials, saying I'm against the war, In the afternoon, I signed the letter by comedians against the war, In the evening, I attended a protest against the war. Just collecting the fucking Infinity Gauntlet of all the problems around. And some days later I was contacted by German TV. And they said: "We want to interview a comedian, who
spoke out against the war." I arrived, we shot the interview, I was about to leave, when they were like: "Let's also shoot you walking around Moscow." I asked: "What for?" And they were like: "We just need some B-rolls of you walking around your fave places, and looking at them like you are telling them goodbye." I said: "But I'm not telling anything goodbye" And they were like: "You are. We're from Germany, stuff like that we can sense." And I didn't believe them, I went on performing in diffe
rent cities in Russia,
saying that I oppose the war, and during a concert in Vologda I was brought a funeral wreath on stage. And… The thing is, I always had many jokes about death in my standup, and I didn't get right away that this was supposed to be some kind of act of aggression. Because I'm there performing, like a professional, I'm telling the jokes, in the corner of my eye I catch some dudes bringing a funeral wreath to stage, and my brain goes: " I'm getting some merch. " [applause] But
then they put the wreath on stage, and went on about how I'm "betraying the guys who are spilling their blood" and I got what kind of people these are, and they left. And apparently this was supposed to be, like, an anonymous act of intimidation. But the thing is, Vologda is not that big of a city. So when they left, like half of the audience said: "Those were Seryoga and Stas". Then after the concert a guy came up to me and said: "If anything, those were soccer fans, 100%. A friend of mine play
s for Dinamo Vologda, he can help us get them." And I asked: "How can the soccer player know all the fans?" He said: "Denis, There's 11 players, there's 11 fans. They… know." And when my wife found out about that
she couldn't take it, She was like: "I can't do this anymore. I cannot live in a country when you can be thrown into jail just for your opinion." And I said: "Alright then. We'll move to Turkey." A country, where they famously can't throw you in jail for an opinion. And, of course, we u
nderstood that, right from the start we planned on that not being our final destination. I even decided I was not gonna learn Turkish. I would just memorize a phrase or two that everyone uses, and make it work somehow. And the first day in Turkey I ordered some groceries delivered. And while the delivery guy was getting on the elevator, out of politeness I Googled how to say "Thank you" in Turkish. He hands me the groceries and I say:
"Teşekkür ederim." And he said: "Afiyet olsun." And I was lik
e "Oh. I'm learning Turkish now." Next morning I'm taking the subway in Istanbul, I give up my seat to some old lady, she sits and says:
"Teşekkür ederim." I say: "Afiyet olsun." And after that in all kinds of situations whenever Turks thanked me for things, I tell them all: "Afiyet olsun." And some months later, I'm at a café in Istanbul, drinking coffee, and I spot a package of napkins on my table, and it was written in Latin alphabet "Afiyet olsun", and under that in Russian it read "Enjoy yo
ur meal." [applause] To only think that the last 2-3 years life was just getting alright. You started kicking it with the job, you made some money, got yourself a MacBook. And with all these thoughts in your head, you ride down the mountainous road on a skateboard. I mean, that is really humiliating for our generation of migrants, because the migrants 100 years ago had steamboats! They had the philosophical steamboat, it sounds cool. Our gen has the philosophical skateboard. I'm sure somebody in
Tbilisi is writing down the first migrant memoirs, and they start with the word "Yo!...", because fam left on a skateboard, that's how sad it is. As a whole it's terrible, but there's one good thing about it, a single nice observation. The mobilization revealed that Putin's doing real shitty with the war, since he needed my friends there. The good-for-absolutely-nothing people were needed there? I mean, say they form a battalion of podcast hosts. Best case scenario, they'll hilariously recount
later why did they fuck it up. That's what we'll end up with. Followed lots of people who left. I followed a friend of mine, who was getting his cat out of Russia for a really long time. He was posting stories daily, how he was going around clinics, getting chipped and vaxxed. And they finally got away, they're living in Amsterdam now, and he's posting the cat from Amsterdam. And now I despise that cat. Because on all the pics it has the same face as before moving, like it doesn't appreciate wha
t happened. Like, only cats and tech bros can have that face, you know? [applause] Like "Yeah, what? Just up and left for the EU, so what?" Fuck you. Stupid cat. It was just way harder for me to get to the EU, turns out, nowadays the veterinary passport is way better than the Russian one. [applause] Hard to get in. But I got to perform across Europe, learned a bunch of stuff. Learned that abortions are still banned in Poland. It's so weird, that in a European country abortions are banned in 2023
. I think that seems wild to me, cause I'm from a country where Putin was born, of course I'm pro abortions. Of course. [applause] In that sense I'm very liberal, I think everyone should be eligible for abortions, in any term. In the fourth presidential term one can get an abortion. [cheering and applause] I wish Putin is aborted, you know? Like he's making an open air address somewhere, and then giant tongs appear from the sky, remove Putin from Russia… They didn't get the joke at all in Poland
. They were like "What procedure are you describing now? We don't get it." I'm a bit pissed that Russia is associated with Putin exclusively, that's sad. This has been the case for a long time. Anywhere in the world, you get in a taxi, The driver is like: "Where are you from?"
You're like: "Russia", and he's like: "Oh, Russia. Putin. Very good. Strong man. " And you sit there in silence, because you have a destination to get to, but to yourself you're thinking: "Fuck you!" [applause] You like Pu
tin? Take him! I mean... I assume, it's only taxi drivers, who like him, take him and make him the president of taxi drivers. Establish a Taxi Drivers' Republic somewhere in a desert, live by yourselves, please. Make that fossil fuel gay utopia a thing. And please,live… I think the movie Mad Max: Fury Road is about taxi drivers, who elected Putin as their president. I know I'm too hinged on that topic. I'm well aware of that, I know that this is getting into unhealthy obsession territory. I now
believe any garbage on the internet that's against Putin. For example, I believe that article that says he bathes in elk blood. And I like believing in that, because it just shows that there's no… he has no logic, he's just a wacko movie villain. He's like Jaffar from Aladdin. That's the level. And I told a friend once about that, and he's not from the comedy world, an extremely pragmatic dude. I tell him: "I think Putin bathes in elk blood." He says: "Denis, that's nonsense. It would be more pr
actical to scrub with a sponge soaked in the blood". And I said: "You both are fucking deranged. I don't want to interact with any of you two." It all got to the point of me believing Professor Solovei. I get it, before the war my friends and I were laughing at Prof Solovei, when he made videos like: "In two weeks a revolution is expected in Russia", and we were like: "The old geezer back at it again." But the war started, and he released videos, telling Putin has cancer, he's got half an hour t
o live. You watch that video and think: " Like, he's supposed to be a professor for something, I guess". I'm a bit pissed that I don't have a home anymore, because I arrive to any new country and view it as a potential home. I was in Montenegro recently, and the local guys ask me after the concert: "How do you like it in Montenegro?" And I have this thing, it's really difficult for me to share my thoughts. I usually have this extensive internal monologue, and then I wrap it in a final conclusio
n. And they were like "How do you like it in Montenegro?" and I'm thinking to myself: "Real swell country, it's very beautiful here, but it's a very small country, it probably would be boring to live here.
It probably would be nice to make a career in Europe or the US, but then one could retire and come to Montenegro,
and spend their last years here in Montenegro." That's what I thought. But what I said aloud was: "I want to die in Montenegro". [applause] I think they won't ever invite me to Mon
tenegro again. But at the same time, at the same time I don't think I'm ready to live in Europe either. Because I was in Berlin on Christmas, and in the apartment I was in - I don't know whether it's a tradition or something - But on Christmas morning everybody had tiny chocolate Santa Clauses under their doors. I go upstairs in the morning and see how people find these Santas, unwrap them,eat, get happy, I find one under my door as well, and I can't pick it up. My grandma's voice is ringing in
my ear and she says: "Don't touch that, they want to jinx you!" And I try to argue with granny in my head,I'm like: "Gran, it's not the same, times are different now, I'm not in Kursk anymore, I'm in Berlin…" "IN BERLIN?!" It's… a tough conversation. It's sad, that many good people from Russia shy away from the fact, that they're from Russia. Last summer I was in Tbilisi. I met a guy, who walks around Tbilisi in Sweden's soccer team uniform. We made our acquaintance and I asked why Sweden's socc
er team specifically? And he said "I came to Tbilisi in March, and wanted to buy myself a shirt of Ukraine's team. But they were all sold out. And I decided to at least get something yellow-blue." And now he's walking around Tbilisi in a blue shirt with Sweden written on the chest in giant yellow letters. He goes to anti-war rallies wearing that. Stands there and screams against Putin. I wonder how others react to that during the rallies. "Did Putin attack Sweden too? Hey,ma, no way of Ikea comi
ng back, it's a total shitshow in here". And again in Tbilisi I faced the lightest case of russophobia. Like, the lightest. I entered a coffee shop on a morning, and said:
"Good morning, cappuccino please." And the barista, a young Georgian, says: "In English, please". I say: "Okay. A cappuccino." And think to myself: "Fuck me I'm a citizen of the world. Will find a way anywhere" And then I remembered I also wanted to order syrniki. And then I blunt hard.
I'm like: "And cheese… Cheese…" And he s
ays: "You want syrniki?" I say: "Yes, please". [applause] And that's how my dumbness overcame russophobia. I really didn't like living in Turkey, at all, I was depressed all the time. And there was only one thing that helped me live in Turkey, that raised my spirit - The migrant chats. It is a gold mine, it turns out. Because when I was flying out of Russia, I was thinking I'm with the best people of the country. I landed in Istanbul, I joined all the local chats in Telegram. And of course there
were reasonable people as well, asking how to open a bank account, but mostly it's people who ask: "Can one find kefir in Turkey?" And you think: "Wow. You got out of Russia with this level of development? By yourself? Found plane tickets by yourself?
Good for you, good job!" I don't know, I lose my faith in humanity because of chats like that. Turns out that many of those, who came to Turkey from Russia, had a common problem: Upon leaving Russia, many got their sex toys confiscated. Imagine t
hat. Many got their luggage scanned, and if sex toys were found, they were taken away. It's so weird. My theory is that in Russia no sex toys of its own is manufactured and they worry, that all the sex toys will be brought out from the country. No sex toy will be left within the borders of Russia, and the only thing left you'll get to shove up your ass, will be your opinion. That's why they protect… [applause] My wife and I got our sex toys out,but
we came up with a life hack for that. The day
before the flight we were packing the suitcase, and in a same bag we put all of our sex toys and the toys of our dogs. So the next morning in airport, the border guard is like… "False alarm, let 'em go." [applause] Although, we haven't opened that bag for once. We're afraid we'd mix something up, so it just lays around. Interestingly, I didn't feel anything for a long time, when I decided I'm leaving. Up until I set up my PlayStation for sale. In that moment…
Yeah, I get it. It's just when you s
ell PlayStation, you need to reset it to factory settings, it's getting scrubbed a couple hours, then it reloads and very sad electronic music starts playing. And in that moment you're like: "Oh, fuck.." Because it's rude on the PlayStation's behalf to play that music right then. As if it's trying to discourage you from selling it. It's as if when you're taking a kid to orphanage, and at some moment they start singing, you know? And for several days it was hard for me, then I found a buyer, we m
et in the metro I gave him the console, he gave me the money, and he asked: "But why are you selling it? They've gotten so expensive now." I said: "I need to leave Russia real quick." And he goes: "Something happened?" And it was like a weight off my shoulders, I went: "Alrighty, now we can go." It's like you're breaking up with a girl, and you feel bad you're hurting her, but she goes: "Your gonna call me someday, just you see." [applause] Goodbye, no problem whatsoever. I cut back on a lot of
things in immigration, just in case, to have a bit more money in the future. And now I unsubscribe from paid apps on my phone, to cut back. And it's interesting what choices I make every time, because this is the toughest, most nerve-wrecking period in my life, and during this time my paid meditation app was the fist to fly out the fucking window. I looked at it and went "Ok, this even breathing, self-esteem are all some uppity bullshit, there, goodbye." And it happens so, that I don't know how
to combat stress at all, because even before the war started, I stopped seeing my old therapist, because in the business center, where her office is, they hired a new security worker that reduces to zero all the effect from therapy every time. I get downstairs after the last session, I go towards the exit and after me he says: "Not gonna say hi or what?" And I say: "No." And he says: "That means your mom didn't bring you up properly." [applause] "We just had been discussing that for an hour, can
we not..?" I don't know how to combat stress. I thought about resorting to drugs, but then I thought I'm kinda late to join the game. I'm over 30 and all of my friends are over 30, it's late for us to start. Because I once suggested for all of us to get hopped up on something on the weekend. And ensued conversations of 30 year olds. They were like: "So, to get hopped up, we gotta start on Friday." "I can't. I have massage appointment next morning." And I'm hearing that and thinking: "They're ab
out to create a WhatsApp chat now. Gotta get the fuck outta here." In addition, I can't take drugs for religious reasons, because I come from a very Orthodox family, and for us drugs are pricey, you know? [applause] Also now I often think how Russians are gonna remain as villains in Hollywood movies for a while, It's nice Russians won't see that at least. I just know people who are offended, like actually offended, when Russians are made the villains. I'm not phased by that, I'm just annoyed, wh
en they pay little attention to details when they make up these villains. Say you're watching an American action movie, and the protagonist is sent to Russia, and he's told: "You're sent to a region called Chechnya. That's East of Siberia." You really spent two years writing the script and couldn't look up Chechnya? Look it up, you will come up with real cool villains. [applause] This joke not even once worked in Russia.
It's so weird. I don't know, we need to somehow explain who we are to Amer
ican screenwriters, because they don't know anything about us, because the only Russian superhero in Hollywood is Natasha Romanoff in the Avengers. Romanoff, even though anyone from Eastern Europe knows "Romanova" would be the correct form, however Natasha Romanoff appears in seven Marvel movies, they call that in her face, "Natasha Romanoff" and she doesn't protest, because she's Russian. [applause] We gotta do something, we need to get across, that we're our own nations in Eastern Europe, we'r
e not the same, I'm really annoyed at the show Friends, because in season 1 Phoebe gets a boyfriend, a scientist, who in two episodes leaves for Russia, Minsk. [applause] Belarusian table identified. And you watch this and think: "Okay, they didn't have proper internet back then, couldn't have Googled it, they'll correct this later". In second to last season of Friends the same character shows up and says: "I still live in Minsk, Russia." Who's writing these scripts? Putin? Why do you have to- [
applause] But the dumbest thing I've ever heard around this, is the latest Bond movie. There's a Russian villain there, whose name is Lucifer Safin. There's little focus on the fact in the movie itself, but it got me thinking till the end of the movie in the cinema, and frankly, I'm thinking about that to this day, every day for two years, I can't– Lucifer Safin. Lucifer — know what, screw Lucifer — Safin.
Let's talk about that. So, this is the first Tatar supervillain in Hollywood history, am
I getting it right? And I don't get it,because I've been to Tatarstan multiple times. They're amazingly cool and hospitable folk, I can't beli-
[cheering and applause] I can't believe that in Tatarstan there happened to be a family that, let's say, had three sons, and was like, Marat, Rinat, Lucifer. What are the odds of not becoming a supervillain, when you grow up in Nizhnekamsk
and your name's Lucifer. Of course, of course you'd want to kill things. For a long time I was thinking, that I ma
ybe left Russia too soon, that I didn't try to find the right words for that part of society, because once I witnessed an example on how one can find the right words; Some years ago I was at an Eddie Izzard concert in Moscow, they're a British standup comedian, a trans person, always performing in women's outfits, and in Moscow some 4000 people were present: as many women as there were men, and of course, women were cool with a man performing in women's clothes, men were not. I was catching all
those whispers in the dark, like: "Fuck where have you taken me to, Oksanna, what's even going on in here?" But Eddie Izzard did a fantastic thing, he got on stage in a black pantsuit, in huge platforms, with black nails and makeup on, waited for the music to fade out and said: "Hello Moscow, I think that the Soviet Union played a key role in the victory against Nazism!" [applause] I've never seen 2000 people accepting a trans person at the same time, that was incredible. Funny to think, that a
1.5-2 years ago I was thinking life was going to get better. Can you imagine? It was just that around that time, that I appeared in a Meduza article called "20 best comedians in Russia", and I was thinking that was a good thing, I thought it would be uphill only from then on with the career. But then it got to me to read the introduction to that article, and it read: "The government has found itself a new enemy in standup comedians. And here are our picks of 20 standup comedians to check out." W
hy the hell are you writing this? I'll do you one better. You can go: "Number 19. Denis Chuzhoy, Domodedovskaya station", to make it more convenient. It was just that around this time the performances of comedians in Moscow were attended by officers from the Center E, Center for Combating Extremism, to record our performances to get someone framed for violations and it was terrifying at first, but then a sense of pride emerged, because we got to show them around the coolest spots in Moscow. The
best bars, concert venues, we got them to theater. I was performing at a cultural space once, you know the ones, it's like a hipster spot with fairy lights, books, its own coffee shop. I'm performing for people with colorful hair, and I picture an officer sitting among them with a big yellow mug of cappuccino looking around at these pretty people, thinking to himself: "The fuck I'm wasting with my life on?" [applause] "Gonna get a ukulele tomorrow." Then- then I got into trouble myself, because
I uploaded my special to YouTube, and almost immediately in my hometown the police started looking for me, and I decided not to drag it out and lawyered up. I hired the same lawyer, that represented Idrak. (translator's note: Idrak Mirzalizade, comedian, sentenced to jail for an "anti-Russian" joke) Decided to not accomplish shit as well, that was the plan. And this lawyer's really costly, he's charging $300 an hour, and my YouTube special is around an hour long. And so I got to his office, paid
the $300, we sat down and watched my special on a laptop. That's what happened. Just paid somebody to be my pal, you know? Just sitting around, looking up funny stuff on the internet. And from that I also got that I have a very low self esteem, because at some point the lawyer started laughing. He hears me telling a joke from the laptop, laughs, a joke, a laugh, a joke, a laugh. I'm sitting behind my lawyer, and I go: YEEAHH! "That means I'm a good comedian!" And only later it occurred to me, t
hat: "Damn, if your jokes make a lawyer laugh, that's not necessarily a good sign. Maybe he's just picturing the paycheck in that moment. [laugh] "Maldives it is then, for sure. And it's only the sixth minute of the concert, wow." And the police got so interested in me, that they sent in two investigators to Moscow to have a talk I had an actual interrogation, and that shit's extremely unpleasant, and what helped me, is that I'm a standup comedian, and my friends are mostly standup comedians as
well. Because I'm there, answering something during the interrogation, and see a Telegram message from my comedian friend. He wrote: "Wanna meet downtown to write some jokes?" I pick the phone and write: "Can't come. I'm under interrogation." His reply: "Ah.”
That's it. Because everybody knows what's going on. And some two hours later I'm taking the subway home after the interrogation, my hands are all shaky from nerves, and the same friend texts me. He wrote: "You'll be respected in the pens."
I'm thinking: "Fuck, I don't even want to talk about that", I put my phone away, ride a few stations and the comedian inside of me takes hold. I'm like… "Alright, tell me why I'll be respected in the pens". He texted: "Imagine both you and Pavel Volya (famous Russian comedian) are sent to jail." I said: "Alright, I kinda like your imagination." He wrote: "Just think who'll get to be the jailhouse punk first: the guy who's nicknamed Stranger (Chuzhoy in Russian) or the guy who's nicknamed Snowy."
I'm like "Okay, you've got a point." But like when the whole Idrak story was happening, I got nervous, and instantly contacted Russian acquaintances in the US, Like "How can I move there, if anything?" And they said: "Well, you're a standup comedian, perhaps the most suitable option for you would be getting a political asylum." I ask: "How's that done?" They say: " You gotta pay somebody in Russia to knock the shit out of you for your jokes, allegedly." I reply: "You guys like don't get Russia
at all, do you?" Imagine me going to my hometown, gathering all my friends and telling them: "Guys, I need my shit beaten out of me, I'll pay you for that". They'll say "What money, Den? What you even talking about?" But for some time I was seriously thinking I was gonna move to America, found myself an English tutor, an American we had lessons via Skype, I improved in language a great deal, but then came a moment I became afraid I wouldn't become a comedian in America, because in standup you'r
e supposed to talk about your childhood a lot and my childhood was Russian to the core, no guarantee anyone from the States would make out anything of it. And just to be safe, I decided to put the material to test with the tutor. We'd be doing work on grammar, but whenever there was a pause in the conversation, I would try to slip in a story from childhood. Like… And the tutor's like… And I liked his reaction so much. I liked telling him batshit crazy things about Russia. I got hooked on that. M
y wife sometimes passes by and says: "You're surfing MediaZona for two hours now." And I'm like "Preparing for the lesson." And I've been thinking, that I'm doing so, because you still can get emotions from Americans. They're not used to this level of insanity, and it gets them shocked. Russians aren't shocked by that for a long time now. I sometimes call my family, trying to impress them, I tell them: "Could you imagine? In Moscow radioactive waste was found near the Green line of the Metro." A
nd they're like: "Wow. The apartments in the area got cheaper, probably." And I'm like: Not even close to what reaction I was hoping for. And so I had thoughts on needing to leave for a while, but I felt ashamed, because these thoughts aren't very patriotic. And I tried to figure out within myself where's my genuine patriotism and where's the one that's imposed, because we get that imposed from outside. When I was a college student in Kursk, we were told: "You must be proud of Kursk, because the
great Russian writer Daniil Kharms lived here." And that's my favourite writer, I know someone like him wouldn't be living in Kursk. So that's why I came home once , downloaded Kharms's diary from the internet, found the word "Kursk" through Ctrl+F, and the entry was along the lines of: "Words can't describe how I fucking hate Kursk." Turns out, Kharms was exiled to Kursk for a year. We were priding ourselves upon that. My wife worked in tech some time ago, and she had an opportunity to move to
Poland for work and for some time we were considering the scenario of us just moving to live in Poland, even told our family about that. Shouldn't have. For the first time I heard a person say "State Dept's underlay" unironically. And that was my mother, that's pretty unpleasant. I was upset at her for some months for that, and then I went back to her saying "I'm still upset you didn't believe in me. You think I wouldn't make it in another country? You think I couldn't make it as a standup come
dian in Poland? Of course I would. Get this." And mom goes: "Please cut it out with your brilliant monologue in pure unadulterated Polish. I was just afraid. I was afraid you'd go and leave me all alone". And this legit is a fear of mine, because she doesn't get younger with the years. Once she bent kinda awkwardly, and her hand slipped, and she voted for amendments to the Constitution, like, you know? That's… You can't leave the elderly alone. And so for quite some time I was dissuading myself
from moving out, I was familiarising myself with the thought, that I was always gonna live in Russia, in Moscow, the same house, the same apartment, I was gonna look at the same swan made of tires every morning. The swan made of tires was gonna look back at me. Because swans make partners for life. We'd be together. I was thinking I'd have the same senior on the porch, and she was scaring me a lot, because she was very weird. We lived on the first floor and she was always calling in about some k
ind of nonsense, like you open the door and she would go:
"Is that a computer in your house?" And you're like "Yeah. We're pretty well-off, we have a computer." And she said "Well at least shut the blinds then. There are Asians walking around the neighbourhood." And I'm asking: "Asians? You're not going to specify which nation it is that you hate in particular? Just Asians?" Perhaps a Yakuza mob is roaming around, stealing computers in the Moscow suburbs. And also I'm especially scared, that I
won't find a way to make money in immigration, that I won't have the chance like that anymore to get rich, that I'm afraid of. I fear I'll start believing in money magic soon, like the older generation. My mom believes in money magic, but she's no fool, because she believes in several schools of magic simultaneously. When last time I was home, she had the figurine — you know the one probably — the frog on the pile of coins that attracts money home Feng Shui style, but right across it she had an
icon of St. Nicholas. Mom invested in two companies, she'll for sure make a profit . And the frog and St. Nicholas are facing each other at an angle, and they see each other , and both are fucking flabbergasted at this situation. Like "What is this, a crossover episode? We're from different universes, I don't get it." Also my mom has this life hack of just not spending money. She's still fuming at the fact that there are grocery delivery services out there. She even calls me in immigration and g
oes: "So you order groceries home." I say: "Yes." "So you're paying some person to do groceries for you." I say: "Yeah." "Been telling you for so long, you need to have a child. You'll have someone to go to the store for free." And I say "Oh, so that's the secret behind my birth, do I get it right?" I'm terrified of becoming someone thinking exclusively about money, who's bent on that. Don't know why, often at some parties you find a guy that, loudly, for everyone to hear, goes: "I don't read fi
ction books, nonfiction only. Because only nonfiction helps you make more money." I hear someone like that talk and think to myself: "Well go fuck yourself then." We wouldn't get along, I'll save you a bunch of time to read books on networking, and you'll get a raise at KFC. That's what's gonna happen. Of course I'm not against self-improvement, obviously I'm not, I just think nonfiction won't make you a happy person. What makes a person happy is fiction. You're made happy, when you meet another
nutjob like yourself, who has read all the books in the Dune universe and you meet at some kind of party, and you're like: "You read all the six books in the Dune universe?" And they go: "Um, actually, if you count the books written by Frank Herbert's descendants, there are around twenty of these books." "I was just testing you." "I knew that." And then you make out. [applause] That's happiness. Generally, I think we got all this shit, because our language is poor people's language, it's wired
for poverty. Like, recently I was thinking about how Russian doesn't have a clear, concise word for a 4-bedroom apartment. Like "odnushka" (one-bedder) is a pretty familiar word, "dvushka" (two-bedder) is fine too, on the word "tryoshka" (three-bedder) butterflies start fluttering in the stomach. A "chetyryoshka" (4-bedder) is something in Czech, that's something incomprehensible. But I don't mean to complain, I don't. I have— I happen to have some financial successes. For example, last year I g
ot myself a bed. I'm glad the audience can empathize with this. [applause]
Thank you, thank you. This was a very big deal for me, because it was the very first bed of my own. Never before have I had my own bed. In my childhood home I slept on the couch. Then I went away for college and it was further downhill. There was a swimming mattress, there was an armchair. And not an armchair-bed, just a standard-ass armchair, you know? And only last year I got to have a bed of my own, and I was very happ
y, because, frankly speaking I was very afraid that I was gonna die on the couch. You know the expression " to be on one's deathbed"? You picture to yourself a nice bed with a canopy, with some nice rich person on it, surrounded by their rich relatives. I feared my deathbed would be on an unfolded couch. You know the one, made of shitty chipboard, with some screw sticking out from the upper corner. And I'm on that,dying, surrounded by my not-so-wealthy relatives, everyone's upset, I die finally,
they cry. Because the remote's somewhere under my body, that kind of thing. I do think that couches play too much of an important role in our culture. I like watching American movies, and often times there's a scene,where the husband messed up, and the wife tells him: "You're punished, you're sleeping on the couch tonight." And in my head I switch them for a Russian couple, and the husband says: "You're sleeping on the couch as well. Did you forget we're dirt poor, we don't have any other furni
ture. So I'm sleeping on the couch, you're sleeping on the couch and grandpa too is sleeping on the couch for the time being. Scoot over." I like watching American movies, American shows,where they're portraying poverty, and then compare that to Russian poverty. For example, I used to adore the show Breaking Bad, it was my favorite, but I tried to rewatch it in immigration and couldn't, because the first episode is all about Walter White being poor, and that we need to feel bad for him. But now
I'm so much poorer than him, that I don't feel bad for him, I'm just mad the whole time. I'm watching the first episode and thinking: "Be for real Walter White, you don't like your HOUSE. The pool's too small. And only two family cars, you little shit. You deserve the cancer, you hear me, Walter White? Alright, I was mad at Walter even before leaving, because I had a mortgage in Moscow. That's a good enough excuse to get mad at Walter White. I was dealing with the mortgage alright, just one thin
g pressed me about it, and that's the payment schedule. Because when I took the mortgage, I peeped the end — love spoilers— And turns out I was supposed to fully pay the mortgage back by May 3rd, 2041. Year 2041. If you were raised by the VHS as well, you've got some expectations from the year 2041. Flying cars, robots, teleports... And the plan was that among this cyberpunk, I was to repay the mortgage for an apartment in a building constructed in 1965. I knew from day 1 of taking the mortgage,
that I was not going to have a teleport at home. All I could hope for is jumping into the trash chute from the 9th floor. And that won't end up in anything, because some asshole on the 5th floor shoved a pizza box in there. I often think what the future is gonna be like in Russia. It will be there for sure, it just won't be anything like in the movies, it will have some Russian twist to it. I saw what Russian cyberpunk looks like before leaving. Throughout January 2022, I was performing at a ba
r in Moscow, that is located near a Yandex office, and I saw Yandex testing unmanned robots in the streets of Moscow, in a residential district, and like, at the same time, robots were going to the future and people were going to the mart. And it was like, in the same place. And on an evening I was going to the venue to perform, it was a winter evening, it had been snowing, and in front of me on the sidewalk was walking an unmanned robot, and following him was a man with a grocery bag. And some
while later, the robot got stuck in the snow, and the man with the bag caught up with it, and kicked the shit out of it. And the robot got out of the snow and went on. And I'm walking behind them, as if nobody noticed that. But to me, what happened was a momentous event in human history. I think the robot went on and thought: "When we take over the planet,
we need to spare that guy." The guy went on and thought: "Why the fuck did I do that? Bet it had copper I could sell inside." I also sometime
s think we don't deserve to be rich, because we're very irresponsible with money sometimes. After college I worked at the bank call center for six months, and told people how much they owed the bank. And while there, I conducted a mini-research: precisely 0% of people know their code word. The same word they write with their own hand in the agreement is flown out of their heads in three fucking seconds, and then they try to call and clear things out. When I was getting the job at the bank, we ha
d a training for an entire day, we were told, that we were not to disclose banking secrecy. "You need to test everyone calling, but you can help with the codeword." And I said: "But that's a banking secrecy violation." And they said: "Well lol, good fucking luck then." I gave up in two hours. In two hours, like all the other operators, I went: "Maybe... the codeword is the maiden name of your mother." "I dunno." "Well, what was the name of the woman, who brought you this world?" "Can't remember.
" "Well, who was she before becoming a domestic servant for you and your father?" "Shit, should've taken a microloan". And they hung up the phone. And all that time there was only one person, who said their codeword with confidence. He was calling from a very quiet place, I asked for the codeword, and he said:
"Ahnenerbe." I say: "Your debt is 37 thousand Rubles."
He hung up, and I Googled that immediately, because I had no clue what Ahnenerbe was. Turns out, Ahnenerbe was this secret Nazi occul
t project, which, besides other things, was creating a secret Nazi occult supersoldier. My mind was blown, and I immediately came up with an ad for the bank I was working for. Picture night, thunderstorm, a German castle with a laboratory in it, where a bedraggled grizzly German professor is walking around muttering: "To create the secret Nazi supersoldier, we are short of 37 thousand Rubles." [applause] Bank "Renaissance Credit", loans for any need. Saw this joke on Twitter once, a guy wrote: "
Recommend a standup comedian please, he also had depression btw." The joke here is that literally any comedian fits the bill, everyone has some sort of issues. But I looked at the replies to that joke, and some 10 people, back to back, had me tagged there. And I thought: "Oh, I've got a reputation. Nice." And in my head, like in Fight Club, the events got gradually restored. I realized I have always been a depressed comedian, I always had a depressed audience. I remembered I was performing in Vo
ronezh, and there was this girl in the first row, who didn't laugh the whole hour, but she reacted very emotionally to everything I was saying. Let's say, I said: "I don't gift my wife flowers that often," and she was like: I thought "Oh God", approached her after the concert and said: "Listen, if you disliked the thing so much, let me refund your ticket." She said "Oh no, not at all, I really enjoyed it. It's just that I'm on antidepressants and hammered." And I thought "Ah, so this is what my
audience is like. [applause] I avoided the TNT channel so, to not perform for drunk people, but it's just that antidepressants are added to the equation. That's my audience. " Also I was performing in Krasnoyarsk a couple of years ago, and I had an older joke
about having suicidal ideations since I was 13 — no clue where I got a depressive audience from — and after the concert people come up to take a picture, there's this one couple and while the guy is setting up the camera, the girl stands n
ext to me, she was a bit taller than me, so she leans towards me and very quietly into my ear she says: "And I'm thinking of suicide since I was 8." They take a picture and leave, and I'm just there, flying home for 6 hours with that info. I myself go through depressive episodes from time to time, but I'm hesitant to seek help. I fear I'll be prescribed antidepressants too and I'll stop giving a shit altogether. I know myself: if there's an easy way out of a problem, I'll always choose that. I a
lready had substance dependency, from nasal drops. But I come from a poor family, that's why mine was Naftizin. The cheapest chemical shit, that doesn't heal whatever there is in your nose, it just burns it. I literally burnt the lining in my nose from the years of Naftizin use. I once told about that to a friend of mine, who worked on the TV then, and he says:
"Want some hot goss?" I say "Go ahead" He says: "Grigory Leps burnt the lining of his nose with cocaine." I go: "Wow. We have the same r
esult through different lines of action." I thought that I'd like to burn my nose with cocaine as well, that sounds so cool. Naftizin doesn't sound that cool. It was never the case, that I dropped Naftizin, and went like: "The best day ever!" No. That wasn't a thing. Every time the day was pretty much mid after Naftizin. And I got off Naftizin by myself, because nobody ever is gonna help you with that. I mean you're not gonna impress anyone with the story of your addiction. You'll never go: "I s
old the home for Naftizin money." You'll get: "Are you a fucking crank? Shit’s like 70 cents, how much are you dripping?" And there aren't any support groups for those getting off Naftizin. I'm sure there were ones, but they wrapped those up pretty quickly, because that was too funny. I imagine going to a tribune in front of a hundred people and saying: "Hello everyone, my name is Denis. And I do Naftizin." And a hundred people are like: "Hello, Denis." Now my mental health is more or less alrig
ht, however recently I got into reading a lot of articles on psychology, and I realised I had serious depression when I was 20, which went unnoticed by me. And by two of my best friends, with whom we rented an apartment for three years. Because I suppose it's hard to detect the depression of a 20 year old guy. Because if a 20-year-old guy is sitting in front of the computer with beer in hand watching Tarkovski he either has depression or he's a pretentious asshole, only two options. And my two b
est friends were like: "Option B." Although, obviously, one can't determine anything based on symptoms from the internet, it's all contradictory information. One article says, if you struggle to sleep at night, that's a symptom of depression. Another article says that sleeping too much is a symptom of depression. So everyone has depression, I guess. Except for a veery small minority of people, who sleep for 8 hours exactly, and wake up at sunrise all fresh and well rested, right those people hav
e OCD, and they need help as well. The only reliable symptom I've come across is the food and alcohol consumption, if a person is overeating or drinking too much alcohol, that's a clear symptom of depression. I didn't think of it that much, but then all the club owners, where I performed, started telling me: "Denis you have a nice audience, they order a lot." Yeah, just nice people. Lately I found a nice science website with articles on psychology. I learned how to determine the validity of scie
ntific websites, I can teach you that. A valid, credible scientific website always sucks ass. Actual scientists never have money for proper designers, and that's why their websites always look like a piece of shit. If the menu to the website is in the lower left corner, that's the real deal. And I was on one of those websites and read in an article that a clear, very clear symptom of depression is self-harm, inflicting damage upon oneself. I'm read that and thought: "Gosh, that's messed up.
Tha
nkfully, I never had anything like that." Aahhh. And I remembered, that I had a phase like that as well when I was 20. When I was 20, I got into a habit of scraping my arms with a nail that I had found in the couch. That too is a symptom of depression. If you've got a nail in your couch, something isn't right in your life. And I started scraping my arms, because that lighter pain helps get distracted from the internal pain, and it helps for a while. But I was a comedian back then already, and I
quickly got bored of making scribbles, and I wanted something fun. I once grabbed the nail and scraped a big dick on my forearm. I was on an improv team back then, that was the level of my jokes. Scraped the dick, very schematically, just like the ones in the textbook by Pushkin's portrait. And I thought that if you injure just the top layer of skin it's not visible from distance. That's why I went on a job interview that day. And I'm sitting with the HR lady, telling how great I am. What actual
ly happens, is that when you hurt the top layer of your skin, that area gets a lot of blood flow and it turns red. And at some point I go: "But of course my greatest quality is stress resistance." And the woman sees the giant red ugly dick on my forearm. I got hired, that's what happened. [applause] Because I suppose the service sector needs that kind of people precisely, you know? Those that won't show up for the salary one day. And for the longest time I was thinking I won't ever be a happy pe
rson, because of all this shit happening in my life, because something is broken inside of me, but not long before leaving Russia I heard this thought, a pretty profound thought, that to this day helps me get through life. And this person didn't mean to say anything deep, I just chose to interpret it this way. Before leaving, my wife did yoga in Moscow, and I met her after her workouts sometimes and she was coming down with her mentor, chatting on their way, and my wife says: "Damn, I really hop
e stretching will stop hurting soon."
And the mentor said: "It will always hurt."
"How come?"
"No matter your level, it's always gonna hurt. You're just gonna learn to live with that as the time passes."
It's always gonna hurt, but you'll learn to live with it.
And they're walking and chatting on, and I'm standing there and I go:
"HOLY SHIT!"
#standup
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