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Good evening, Iceberg Lounge! It’s so good to be here. As many of you probably know, my name is Jason Todd, ward to Bruce Wayne. You’re probably wondering why the adopted son of the local billionaire is up on this stage trying his hand at comedy. It’s a coping mechanism. Growing up in Wayne Manor was always an interesting time, because Bruce Wayne is just a deeply weird person. Honestly, what billionaire isn’t? But I remember this one time, it was Take Your Kid To Work Day. Bruce was hopeful that I would take more of an interest in the family business than my older brother, so he would sometimes bring me into the office. Despite Bruce’s best efforts, I could not, to this day, tell you what Wayne Enterprise does. It seems to be entirely based around people making charts about numbers not even they understand. And Bruce Wayne is the CEO of Wayne Enterprises, which basically means he sits in a big office, pretends to understand the papers sitting on his desk, and makes phone calls to other people who pretend to understand paperwork. Capitalism at its finest, everyone!
But this particular morning, I think about, mmm, at least once a week. Every morning, Bruce would get up, eat eggs and toast for breakfast, he’d put on a ridiculously expensive three-piece suit, a silk tie, and a matching pocket square. I’m giving you more details than you need because I need you to believe that this really happened. Bruce also has a secretary. I don’t know why he has a secretary, he does not need one, except maybe to rearrange the papers on his desk so it looked like a different pile every day. So we’re walking into his office and it’s a gloomy overcast day, like typical Gotham, y’know. Everything I am about to say here was said in front of me that morning. As we’re passing his secretary, out of goddamn nowhere, Bruce goes “Ahh. In this weather, one feels like a bat! And when one feels like a bat, one is happy!” And the secretary goes “Ooo! Robins!” And Bruce goes “Too old to be a Robin, chirp, chirp,” then walks into his office.
Now I did that a bit quickly, let’s slow down a bit. Bruce Wayne, normal human being that he is, starts off this exchange like everyone does, “AHHH.” He then continues with “In this weather,” the ever perpetual Gotham smog that never leaves, “one feels like a bat! And when one feels like a bat, one is happy!” Now that’s debatable, especially when 40% of Gotham’s employment opportunities are in crime. But the secretary decided to bring up an entirely separate point, which was “Robins!” But Bruce, ever the realist about his age and agility, goes “Too old to be a Robin,” as if to say, “Don’t you see, my Robin days are behind me, I’m a bat now.” That’s the thing about crazy people, they have unlimited crazy currency. The things they say mean absolutely nothing to them, but they mean everything to me!
Those first few weeks after first moving in were some of the strangest times in my life. Bruce Wayne does not know how to have a normal conversation or how to interact with another human being in any sort of capacity. I had been at the manor about two weeks before I woke up one morning to Bruce standing over my bed, just staring at me. I’m a tiny, 9 year old kid who had grown up on the streets of Gotham, my first thought was not, “Oh, it’s my new guardian watching me or coming to wake me up,” no, it was “Oh, god, this is it.” I don’t know how many of you have seen Bruce in real life, but he is not a small man. So, I’m a small, malnourished kid, in a bed that is bigger than the room I had before all this, with an incredibly tall and imposing adult man looming over my bed, glaring at me as if I have just told him that I thought the Gotham police are competent at their jobs, and he says “When I was your age, I watched as my parents were murdered in front of me,” like I had something to do with it! Good thing I had a solid alibi, as I WASN’T BORN YET! And then he just walked out and went to work. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do with that! I still don’t! What would you do if someone, who just picked you up off the street and gave you the best meal you’ve ever had in your life, drops a bomb like that on you? Like, hey, here’s a hamburger, you didn’t cause the biggest moment of my childhood trauma, did you?
And it’s not just Bruce, take my brother, Dick. First of all, what kind of person voluntarily goes by Dick? Like, I know English is not his first language, but you would think after the first few years here, he would have changed it because of all the jokes! No, he just started making the jokes himself! The first time I met my older brother I didn't realize that he belonged in that house. He was dressed like an Elton John wannabe, eating a candy cigarette, and said, “I'm gay, I'm an acrobat, and I'm out of here.'” Only one of those things was true! He's pan and he stayed for two weeks! Every day, I’d go down for breakfast, and there’s Dick eating cereal in yet another horrible outfit. One morning, he was wearing nothing but a huge feather boa and a pair of very tiny shorts. This thing was so big, it took up most of his space at the breakfast table. Poor Bruce was sitting next to him and was, like, trying to use his newspaper as a shield, he just kept pushing back at this feathered monstrosity while trying to keep the thing from shedding into his eggs and coffee. He left the table looking like he lost a fight to Big Bird in a bubble gum factory that had also been hosting a rave, there were pink feathers and glitter stuck to every part of him. From then on, Bruce at breakfast in his pajamas so he didn’t have to go into work with any of Dick’s “fashionable additions.”
Honestly, the only reason Wayne Manor is still standing is because of Alfred, Bruce’s butler/dad. Alfred Pennyworth is the glue that holds that house together. Bruce likes to maintain the illusion that he is in charge of that house, but that man can’t even make pasta, let alone run his life. So in steps Alfred, wonder butler. Meetings? Managed. Laundry? Done and sorted. Small, orphan child is suddenly living in your house? Parented. Alfred is a 5’8”, very polite, British man, and to this day I still live in fear of his look of disapproval. Now I don’t know about you, but me, being that I had lived on the streets for 12 years of my life and was now suddenly dumped in the mansion of one of the wealthiest men in the world, I was going to mess with everything I could. I stole every pillow I could find in every room that wasn’t locked and made the formal living room into a giant pillow fort, I opened every closet and cupboard I could find and emptied it looking for Narnia, I hid Bruce’s Rolexes (he has one for every day of the week, every! Day!) around the manor in increasingly hard to reach places, I hotwired one of Bruce’s bikes and did doughnuts in the driveway. I would be having the time of my life…and then Alfred would show up, full of British disappointment. Sometimes Alfred would say “What do you think you're doing?” But that just meant stop. He never actually wanted to know my thought process. He didn’t want me to be like, “Well, I was going to throw this batarang I found at this carton of eggs, so that when I hit it, the eggs would esplode everywhere.”
“Oh and that’s very interesting, what brought you to this experiment?”
“Oh, thank you for asking. Well, you know how I’m filled with rage? I’m so angry all the time and I have no outlet for it, so…” *shrugs* “Eggs.” This man was a British Guard member and an MI-5 member, and he spends the later years of his life cleaning up after kids who want to make eggs explode and a man who once asked me what the ingredients in a grilled cheese are. Alfred is braver than Batman, and you can quote me on that. Thank you for coming out tonight!