Native America Comic "Marc Yaffee", Full Comedy Set Show 232

On this weeks show, my good friend Marc Yaffee shares a full standup comedy set that was recorded many years back; but is very funny. Listen to how he combines life in general AND mixes in funny references to his Native America heritage. Listen, Laugh, and Share...Thanks!
Native American stand-up comedian Marc Yaffee brings his unique perspective to the comedy stage, humorously addressing the challenges and stereotypes faced by Native Americans in a predominantly non-Native entertainment industry. Drawing from personal anecdotes about aging, family dynamics, and societal changes, Yaffee's performances resonate with a wide audience while shedding light on the unique experiences of Native Americans. He humorously navigates through misconceptions and stereotypes, touching on topics like tribal events, Thanksgiving, and sports team names, thereby using comedy as a tool for social commentary. By amplifying Native voices and experiences, Yaffee's comedy not only entertains but also educates, contributing to the diversification of a traditionally homogeneous genre.

(00:00:22) Humorous Exploration of Native American Identity

(00:05:44) Stereotypes and Authenticity in Native American Portrayal

(00:12:11) Unconventional Relationships: A Humorous Perspective

(00:17:23) "The Rise of Nut Allergies in America"

(00:22:37) "Native American Comedian's Stand-Up Journey"

Transcript

Announcer: 0:04

This is another episode of stand up comedy. Your host and MC celebrating 40 plus years on the fringe of show business. Stories, interviews and comedy sets from the famous and not so famous. Here's your host and MC, Scott Edwards.

R. Scott Edwards: 0:22

Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the podcast. We have some great stand up comedy for you today. A really terrific friend of mine, he's one of the few native american stand up comics in the country. You've heard him many times on the podcast. He's done a few interviews, and I've used his comedy a lot because he's very, very funny. He started working for me in the nineties. He actually was a DMV employee and decided to get into stand up comedy. But luckily for him, it was a great career change and he's been making a good living as a professional stand up comic ever since the early nineties. It's great to have him back on the show. This is Mark Yaffe. Now, again, Mark Yaffe has performed on cruise ships, nightclubs, some television. Very funny guy on this. He's going to be talking about a little bit about being native american, but a lot about his parents and some of the challenges of life. I know you'll enjoy it, so let's sit back and enjoy some standup comedy by my good friend Mark Yaffe.

Marc Yaffee: 1:31

But my mom actually had an easy delivery cause I'm adopted. My friend's like, were you delivered by c section a, no court order? Navajo. Adopted by a mexican mother and a jewish father. I'm a bargain hunter gatherer. Illegal, too. I'm illegal too. Prover. Because you no longer adopt an indian child from their tribe. That is called the Indian Child Welfare act. And they pass that law to protect our people from Angelina Jolie. Excited, right? I got on one of these ancestry websites. I started researching my, my family roots. I found out my navajo grandfather had been a medicine man. I was all excited, like, oh, this is amazing. Grandpa was a medicine man. Turns out he was a pharmacist at CV's. People find out you're native, they got all sorts of questions. I got this here. Oh, mark, your name? Native American. I bet your children have beautiful, traditional tribal names. I'm like, uh, yeah, a little big mouth and ground until Christmas. Oh, you're native american. Can you share some of your ancient tribal wisdom? I'm not even from the reservation. I just make stuff up, like, sure. Ancient tribal wisdom. Ancient tribal wisdom. I've been through the desert on a horse with no name felt good to get out of the rain.

R. Scott Edwards: 3:30

Don'T stop.

Marc Yaffee: 3:31

Believing hold on to that feeling. The doo doo doo, the da da da. That's all I have to say to you. So I was working in Las Vegas. Guy came up to me after show. He was dead serious. Is it true, you natives, in your travels, you're guided by outer voices? Like, yes, sir. It's called a Google navigation system. You know, you can change the voices on your gps. I do it. I get bored on the road. I do that all the time. Put on the british guy the other day. He's all formal, right? He's now entering the motuway. Put on the french guy. He was a little sippy. He goes, you want to go to Waco, Texas? Why do you want to go to Waco, Texas? They added a nigerian man to the GPS voices. This nigerian guy tripped me out. He goes, you will go 3.1 mile. You will make a right turn into your bank parking lot. You will withdraw $7,500 and mail it to my uncle in Lagos, Nigeria. Get to do a lot of tribal events. I actually went to Cherokee, North Carolina. I didn't know about Cherokee, North Carolina, home of the eastern band of Cherokee Indians. And they dressed indian, and they walked in and they started talking. They did not sound indian at all, like, how y'all doing, mister Mark, welcome to the great Cherokee Nation, cherokee, North Carolina. I'm like, man, these are some redneck redskins out here. They're like, we're gonna take you to the powwow. We're gonna head over to the tribal supper. We're gonna have some succotash, sweet corn, sweet potato, sweet tea. You've been to north carolina? I had so much sweet tea in three days, I almost lost a foot. I think the state motto in North Carolina, come for the sweet tea, stay for the insulin. Then we went to New York City. Tons of Indians in New York City, tons of Indians. Yeah, there's the other Indians. Microchip, not buffalo chip. Tech support, not child support. Code writers, not code talkers. People always very curious. They find out I'm native, they go, oh, Mark, do you celebrate thanksgiving? Like, sure, I eat the turkey and watch the football. Yeah, my buddy's a cowboys fan. He was giving me a bunch of grief. He goes, hey, Mark, the cowboys beat the Redskins again on thanksgiving. I'm like, uh, not at the indian casino, they didn't. That redskin honors a knucklehead. He vows he will never change the name of the Redskins. He says he wants to honor Native Americans. I'm like, really, sir? You want to honor Native Americans? Have a winning season. Will you please? I love it. Honor Native Americans. Well, no one has to be honored. I don't remember any of our great warrior chiefs in the 18 hundreds. We will only sign this treaty if you agree to honor our warriors by naming five mediocre sports franchises after them. We're the only warriors they honor. They don't honor any other enemy warriors. Right. You'll see the Chiefs against the Redskins. You won't see the Boston blitzkrieg against the Cleveland Kamikazes. You want to honor people who have dealt with unrelenting adversity and overwhelming odds? How about the Denver driving instructors versus the Minnesota math teachers? I got honored in Alaska. I was up there in Alaska. Honorary name up there. A shivers like, baby went up there twice. Last time I got to go to Fairbanks, Alaska. We performed for the world Eskimo Indian Olympics. I call my buddy Gilbert down the hill. I say, hey, Gilbert, you want to come open for me? We're going to do a show in Fairbanks, Alaska. He goes, sure. Are we flying or driving? You know what, Magellan? I think we'll kayak this one. You looked at a map there. La to Fairbanks. That's two countries, two time zones, and three oil changes. We get up there to Alaska, it was crazy. It's the first week of summer, bright as day at 130 in the morning, it's the land of the midnight sun. I didn't know about this. I thought back to the beginning of summer when we were kids. Remember our parents would tell us, go outside and play, just be home when it gets dark. Yeah. You tell your kids out in Alaska they won't be home till October. Trying to take better care of myself. Getting a little older, getting hit in the middle age. Anyone else just turned 40, like 14 years ago. Anyone? You start to have some physiological changes. Like, you know, when I used to go to the bathroom, I'd have that laser stream. Now I'm like a rain bird sprinkler trying to irrigate an acre of corn. Ooh, sad. I used to eat whatever I wanted to. Now I look at spicy food. I get gassy. I didn't care. When I was 2025, I would eat whatever I would hold in a fart for weeks, like Fort Knox. Now I'm ripping them like Looney tunes. I went to shake this guy's hand the other day. All I was like, fist bump. I'm pretty sure I'm the third leading cause of global warming. Used to work out to stay in shape. Now I gotta work out just to stay alive, get your physical get checked out? I went to my annual physical. I was complaining to my doctor, my doc. Look at me. I used to have a six pack. No, it's just a sat sack, said mark, you need to do more crunches. Now I'm doing nestle's crunch and captain crunch. Try to get to the gym. I like the gym. They have some awkward things in my gym, like when you work out on the bikes and the cardio and they put a bank of televisions in front of the cardio machine so you can watch tv news and sports while you're working out. What they do, though, they turn down the volume on the Tv they put on. Closed captioning anyone here ever paid close attention to closed captioning? I don't know what. Three fingered english is a fourth language ged reject they hired to do that job. I'm. I'm at the gym the other day. I'm trying to watch the news. The CMM is retorting that President don Juan trumpet would be marinating with rushing ladder. Bad mere pudding over the situation in cereal and whooping crane. I promise I will not get political on you, but I do think we're going to get a native american president someday. We had two natives, women, just elected to Congress. If we get an Indian in the White House, that'd be crazy, right? Yeah. You get an Indian in the White House, the White House would become the longhouse, the rose garden become the corn garden. Columbus Day, everyone has to work a double. Be honest. Come on. Saying Columbus discovered America is like saying the Titanic discovered icebergs. He sails the wrong way, he discovered America. My cousin drove the wrong way. He discovered jail. But unfortunately, like a lot of Native Americans, I did lose my land and home to the white man. In my case, it was my ex wife's divorce attorney. Second worst treaty ever. Yeah, I was in a mixed marriage. My ex wife and I, we had a mixed marriage. She's paranoid schizophrenic. I'm obsessive compulsive. Yeah. She'd invite over imaginary friends. I'd make them take off their shoes before they came into my house. But I'm bummed. Our marriage literally went to the dogs. My ex wife became a dog hoarder. We end up with 14 dogs, these little dogs called Maltese. You familiar with Maltese? Yeah, it's a french word for poops all over my carpet. What the heck? Five pound dog, ten pound dookie. We had two beautiful daughters, though, and they were awesome. We actually homeschooled our daughters for four years. Yeah. Let me tell you what, homeschool worked out great. One of my kids, student of the month. Every time I recommend homeschooled, you guys, because you can motivate your kids in homeschool. I'm like, hey, you want to be on that honor roll, you better get out there and mow that lawn. And when you're done, get over the whole Mec room. You make daddy another sandwich. I'll be in the teacher's lounge watching tv. And get that garage cleaned out for the winter formal, will ya? My daughter's in their mid twenties now. They both just got out of college a year apart. I had two daughters in college at the same time for three and a half years. Yeah, for a while there I was old enough to be the dad and broke enough to be the roommate. It's craziness. Anyone else you went south on your credit? And anyone bounce a check at the dollar store here? For a while my cholesterol level was higher than my credit score. One time my credit card company calls up. Hey, mister Yaffe, we haven't received your last payment. Like, sir, trust me, you've received my last payment. Yep, life marches on. My oldest daughter just got married. She married this man, an egyptian man from Saudi Arabia. I didn't see this one coming. I'm a little upset. I'm happy for them, but I'm a little upset because I just finally got cleared by TSA. I don't have to take my shoes off at the airport now. She married this guy. I just went from preferred flyer to person of interest. I show up at the airport now like, excuse me sir, is anyone suspicious? Packed your bags like your son in law. Seems like a good guy, sharp, you know? So like I said, he was raised in Saudi Arabia. He's egyptian. I don't even know what he does for a living. He works on one of those, what do they call, multi level marketing where you sell someone something and they try to sell to people. What's that called? Yeah, pyramid scheme. He's an Egyptian working in a pyramid scheme. Yep. They're awesome though. I'm a little worried about my dad though. My dad, he's exhibiting some gang member behaviors. He just keeps driving slower and slower. His pants just keep getting lower and lower. Forget toys for tots, we need straps for paps. Still driving? He had his first accident last year after like 73 years of driving. Check this out. He had a patch of ice while driving in Palm Springs, California. He had a patch of ice while driving the Mojave desert my dad. How did you manage to do that? Did you run over a jaywalker hole down an icy. To be honest, I can't believe he didn't crash sooner like every other 91 year old man. He can't see anything. Cause he has eyebrows like a woolly mammoth. Have you seen the old guys with the lobster brows going on there? He looks like he gave birth to a pair of brillo pads. It's like, mom, don't kiss them. You'll put an eye out. And ear hair like chia pad. Yeah, that's why those 90 year old guys don't turn their head when they change lanes. They can't see through that shrubbery, man. 91. What do they say? 50 is a new 40. 40 is a new 20. Well, 90 is the new nine. You ever put a 90 year old next to a nine year old? Same thing. They eat whatever they want to, they say whatever they want to, they wear whatever they want to. I show up at my parents house the other day. My dad was wearing dress shoes, sweatpants, a sweater vest and a dodger cap. I'm worried I'm going to show up one day. He's going to be wearing spider man pajamas and a Raiders helmet. He's awesome, though. World War Two veteran, this great guy, and, yeah, it's amazing. I think back now, since world War two, we've had the most powerful military on the planet. Most powerful military in the history of civilization. But as a people, America, we might have the weakest immune systems of anyone on the planet. You see, we suffer from now lactose intolerance, gluten intolerance, peanut butter allergies. Who knew nuts were the new anthrax? Let's hope al Qaeda or IsiS doesn't come out with a dirty bomb made out of ground cashews, powdered milk and whole wheat flour. We're in deep trouble. All right, they might be working on that one right now. Farouk, I have the perfect weapon to use against the Americans. I'm listening, Aziz. Nerve gas. Is it shoe bomb? Guided missile? No, no, my friend. Fresh baked peanut butter cookies. It's true. You want to terrorize the school now? You just show up with peanut brittle, they'll go into lockdown. We have a man approaching the office with peanut butter clusters and a jar of peanuts. This is not a drill. Evacuate the children to a peanut free location. And I feel bad for school aged parents. How do you even have a birthday party now? All the kids all have allergies. The bounce house has to double as a medical tent. The clown has to be a trained paramedic. The gift bags or epi pens and defibrillators. I can guarantee you anyone here over the age of 40 didn't know one kid growing up that had a peanut butter allergy when we were kids, you know why they all died? We didn't have a chance. With no diagnosis, there was no treatment. We had to eat everything on our plate. Oh, it's a shame we don't know. Timmy was sitting there watching the flintstones, eating a PB and j. He just dropped. There was no epipens. All we had was a bic pan. No one would get stabbed by that. Food allergies. Horrible food. My four basic food groups back in the 19 hundreds. Frozen, dipped, fried, and battered. Right now, kids eat a well balanced meal with fresh greens. The only time we had fresh greens when the neighborhood bully was stuffing grass in our mouths. Food. Terrible. Cars. Deadly. My, if anyone else. Your family owned a Ford Pinto station wagon. Yeah. Known for exploding on rear impact collision. Yeah. Guess whose family had the pinto station wagon with the faulty brake lights? They put me in the back as the spotter. Mom, you better speed up. He's coming quick. Latchkey kids back in the 910. They locked us out of the house. Right. Thirsty? Find a hose. Need to use a bathroom? Find a bush. Injured? Walk it off. Well, my leg's pointing the wrong way. I don't know if I can walk this one off. Raised on violence, even our cereal. Violent kicks. Sugar smacks. Kaboom. The parents were allowed to hit us. The aunts, the uncles, the teachers, the neighbors. I think a mailman might have taken a couple swings at me. Not only did they hit us, they hit us with our own toys. Really? We can't do that to our kids. Number one, CPS. Number two, we're not wasting a perfectly good dollar 300 Xbox. Come on. Back in the day, we had no Xbox. We had cardboard box. There was no weed. It was just us. Was no add either, because we had to play in the street. That'll make you pay attention. I couldn't wait for the streetlights to come out. I was the worst live frogger game ever. Toys that would kill and maim. When I turned seven, my 7th birthday, they gave me a set of lawn darts. Yeah. Basically, if you some of you too young, this was basically a metal spear with wings. There you go. Knock kneed, big headed, nearsighted goofball. Go throw these at your friends. We're gonna be inside watching tv. Hey, Chris. Oh, man. Don't tell my mom. I'll get a timeout. The most dangerous toys like lawn darts, slip and slides, bb guns, slingshots, firecrackers, they had these things called click clacks, two glass balls on a string. What could go wrong there? Everybody knew at least one kid with missing fingers or a glass eye. So by round applause, first time seeing a Native American doing the stand up? Probably.

R. Scott Edwards: 22:37

Yeah.

Marc Yaffee: 22:37

Yeah. I suspected as much. Yeah. There's only like seven of us out of like 17,000 comedians. People forget Native Americans were only 1% of the population. 1%, I believe. One time we were like 100% of the population. Gets a little awkward. We go places. People have never even met an indian. They don't even know how to react when they see. We did a show, a couple native brothers and myself went to Columbus, Ohio. We did a show at Ohio State, finished the show, went back to our hotel across the street. The housekeepers heard we were there. They wanted to bond with us, but they weren't quite sure how to make the approach. So my housekeeper came knocking at my door. 730 in the morning. I hear this, knock my door, hear this. Housekeeping. Housekeeping.

R. Scott Edwards: 23:39

That was Mark Yaffe live on stage. I know you enjoyed that comedy set. Mark is a very talented stand up comic and as I mentioned, and is obvious from a set, one of the few native american stand up comics in the country. But he performs everywhere, done some tv and as I mentioned previously, a major regular on this podcast. Why? Because he's funny and we're good friends. So thanks to Mark for sharing his set, ladies and gentlemen. We'll be back next week with one of our comedy interviews. We sure appreciate you listening. If you get a chance, tell your friends or rate us on Apple or Spotify and have a great day. Thanks for listening. Bye.

Announcer: 24:19

We hope you enjoyed this episode of stand up comedy. Your host an emcee. For information on the show, merchandise and our sponsors, or to send comments to Scott, visit our website at www.standupyourhostandmc.com. look for more episodes soon and enjoy the world of stand up comedy. Visit a comedy showroom near.