Introduction
Happy throwback Thursday from 2013!
Video
I thought it would be great if I could tell an old story that was from years ago that never made it to a one-hour, special and uh.
The cool part about this story is that it it now has a different ending.
The story is called the gift basket.
Some of you know it.
Some of you don't know it, but after this you're never gonna forget it.
All you have to know about this story is that all the people involved have always been and will continue to be friends.
That being said, martin and I all the good ones start like that.
Martin and I are scheduled to perform in northern california.
Usually we fly, but this particular day I was having a problem with southwest airlines.
They wanted me to pay for an extra seat for someone who wasn't traveling with me.
Take your time, you'll figure it out anyway.
I tell martin I'm not paying for an extra seat, let's just drive at six hours, so we headed north three hours into the drive, we're passing through a city called fresno and as we're passing, hey fresno.
Five.
Five, nine give us away anyway, as we're passing through fresno.
We start seeing billboards off the side of the freeway that said performing this weekend at the radisson hotel directly from bet's comic view and showtime at the apollo comedian g riley, and I look at martina.
Go oh shoot.
She's in town and martin goes yeah.
I haven't seen g in years so we're like: let's stop by the hotel and say hi, so we pull into the parking lot we walk in.
I tell martin, he doesn't know we're here.
I'm gonna crank call his room, because what are you gonna say? I said: I'm gonna tell him that I'm the front desk and that he just received a gift basket.
What's so funny about a gift basket, I said: I'm gonna describe it over the phone and I'm gonna make all the items that are in this imaginary basket become items that stereotypically a black person might like, because you're crazy.
I said I'll tell you what we got two hours to kill how about this? How about we go to the supermarket and we make an actual racist gift basket and we'll have it delivered and we'll wait outside to see what happens? I said: are you down? We go to a store and we start to design the sickest practical joke.
Ever I get a shopping, cart and I'm like all right.
We need a basket, so I find one I take out the grass, the plastic eggs and the chocolate rabbits and we start hitting the aisles first item.
I grab is a fried chicken about that big, okay, see how quick that laugh was there's a few black people in here like mother.
This better be funny.
It's hysterical.
Let me just finish the story and then you could judge me in the parking lot so anyway, then martin hands me a miniature watermelon and I put it next to the fried chicken here's where it gets interesting.
Employees of the store find out what we're doing and they start volunteering to help us finish.
The basket half of the employees were black, which made it so much more accurate aisle after aisle, one guy was stalking a shelf.
He was an older white guy and we're like sir.
Can you help us? What do you need? My buddy martin and I are trying to make this messed up racist gift basket for our black friend as a practical joke? Can you think of something we can put in there without even blinking an eye? The guy was like? Ah, you gotta have kool-aid it's at the end of the aisle on the right malt liquors in excel over in the back of the store in the freezer section, it's on sale, two for one by the time we get to the register.
All these different employees, plus us came up with the basket that had fried chicken watermelon kool-aid grape soda bbq, potato chips, sunflower seeds, an ebony magazine, a chris rock dvd called bigger and blacker.
Magnum condoms, newport cigarettes, a rack of ribs the recipe for cornbread.
It was getting bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger icing on the cake.
We find a greeting card, that's on clearance from halloween, and it has a picture of three ghosts on the cover wearing sheets.
I tear off the half that says happy halloween and on the back of the card, I write welcome to fresno love the chamber of commerce and we stick it to the basket.
We made it all nice and pretty and we haul ass to the hotel we pull up.
We walk in the basket is hot as hell, so I'm racing in I get inside and I put it on the counter as fast as I can bro it's too perfect, there's a black girl behind the front desk.
As soon as I put the basket down, I hear is that chicken, oh, let me say, hold on what is it? Let me explain: my name is gabriel.
This is martin, we're a couple of comedians and we're about to play a really crazy, practical joke on a friend of ours, who's staying here tonight by the name of g riley, who's.
Also a comedian, oh the one that sounded signs on the freeway yeah, the one.
That's on the signs on the freeway.
So as a practical joke, we went to the store and we made this messed up racist gift basket.
That's that's why you can smell fried chicken and she was like you need jesus, that's a true name! Kiki girl, you better! Hang up that phone! You ain't, gonna, believe what I'm looking at over here girl.
Listen.
We think it would be hysterical if we could have you deliver the basket for us.
She lost it.
Oh the hell you didn't.
I know you didn't just ask me to take that to a black man.
You are out your damn mind.
Oh lord love.
Give me the strength to not kill this big ass mexican over here.
Lord okay, look here, nacho libre, I don't care who you are.
I am not doing it hell.
No I'll give you 50 bucks where that [ __ ].
We follow her to the hotel room.
She knocks on the door and I hide by the elevator on the floor.
She knocks she opens the door sees a beautiful black woman standing there with a gift basket.
This is for you baby.
He says thank you closes the door, she walks away and she sees us on the ground hiding right and she's like y'all still going to hell.
We get up and we walk over to the door and we put our ear listen.
This is what we hear inside chicken kool-aid he's getting excited over every single item he's pulling out of the basket he gets to the greeting card.
What can the fresno love the chamber of commerce hell yeah? Then we feel him flipping the card over because his voice changed he's like oh yeah man.
This is what the [ __ ] outside the door.
We heard racist bastards when we heard racist bastards we lost it.
Housekeeping is freaking out we're laughing we're crying.
We got boogers coming out.
We can't take it anymore.
We knock on the door, he yells, who is it too easy chamber of commerce? He rushes the door.
I put my finger on the peephole, so he can't see who it is right.
The knob starts to jiggle, then the door explodes open and he's like what and he sees us and he's like.
What's up g man, y'all give a brother heart attack.
Did you like your basket? Man that was messed up? Did you like it man? I love all that [ __ ] and now, ladies and gentlemen, a story that has been seven years in the making.
I would like for you to now hear for the first time ever the other side of that story.
Ladies and gentlemen, I flew him here to hawaii so that he can share this with you.
Give it up for my friend mr g riley.
I got to be honest.
I didn't know it was racist.
I thought it was lunch.
I thought it was lunch.
I didn't know it rained.
Until I got back to my neighborhood and brothers in my neighborhood looked at me.
They say man, I don't believe you let that mexican guy do that to you, man that was messed up.
I know you got him back.
I said well, buy him lunch.
I can't afford to buy that man lunch.
If I, if I buy him lunch he'll, be getting me again, but you got to understand.
It was the perfect set of circumstances when it happened, because I'm laying across the bed in the hotel I've never been to fresno before and I wanted something to eat and I didn't know where to go eat so I'm laying across the bed and I'm saying to myself: where could I go eat? I wish I had some food and all of a sudden magically there's a knock on the door and a black girl shows up with a gift basket, and I took the gift basket and I said they know how to treat their comedians up here.
Fresno and I'm walking to the bed, and I can feel the heat and I can smell the chicken from the gift basket and I'm like.
Oh, this is cool because nobody smells chicken and thinks of racism right right.
There.
I see the watermelon I'm like.
Oh, this is cool.
They know how to treat a comedian up in.
Here I get to the card and I look at the card and I go what the is going on.
I said- oh, my god, I'm working for the ku klux klan and I really I really started to panic because in my head, I'm saying to myself is this for real, because there were billboards all over the city.
With my picture and I started thinking, they were trying to scare me out of town.
So now I don't know what to do right and I start trying to call a promoter and the promoter's not answering the phone and it's festering in my head and I'm nervous and I'm pacing in the room and all of a sudden there's a knock on the door right and I go oh my god.
They come to get me.
So I so I ease over to the door right and I look through the people.
All right and all I see is a brown dot right and I go.
I hear somebody out there because I hear them breathing right out here, so this was about 60 pounds ago right.
So I gotta look down up under the door right, but I said, oh, my god.
It got to be about five or six of them out there.
Oh, my god, so I figure like this.
I figure.
Okay, you know what, if it's gonna happen, it's gonna happen.
You know.
If it's gonna happen, I'm gonna go there and swing it right.
So I'm putting my best black face on you know.
I I tried to look mean you know.
I look.
I look like this guy right here.
I look like that.
Guy right there right and I go.
Who is it and they go chamber of commerce? Let me, oh, my god.
The chamber of commerce is the ku klux klan and I'm panicking.
So I get to the door right and I pull her open the door open and when the door opens up, these guys are falling all over the hall laughing at me, they're rolling all into the cleaning.
Ladies caught, the cleaning lady didn't know what was going on right.
She scared the dust cause.
She sees a black dude with no shirt like this, so she grabs the lemon pledge, like his pepper spray, right, she's ready.
So everything now that I realize it's a practical joke everything calms down, because I remember now.
I remember how hungry I was.
I'm like okay, cool, practical joke right, so I go in the bathroom to wash my hands while I'm in the bathroom washing my hands.
I hear a commotion in the other room right.
I go back in the other room they're going through the gift basket.
The maid is leaving with the watermelon martina's drinking my 40, and this bastard is eating my chicken.
You.