Thanks to quarantine, celebrities are going all-in this year on delivering virtual commencement speeches for graduates, so Adult Swim has decided to organize its own series of virtual speeches, too. The first speech, featuring Eric Andre, was released on May 18 (you can watch it here), and the latest speech, featuring Maria Bamford, just dropped. The speech is split up between the typically vulnerable and realistic Maria and her seemingly perfect and mentally stable alter ego “Brittany,” who doesn’t quite “get” Maria’s speech and cuts in to give graduates the tired clichés usually found in these speeches, like “You just visualize success and you take steps toward your goals. Live, dream, have!”
Despite all the distractions from Brittany, Bamford gets through her speech, laying out her struggles over the years and how she managed to get “free shitty-ass help: free 12-step programs, library books, online support groups, county hospitals, suicide hotlines, AT&T. I once called an operator, and I got them to tell me they loved me. Call Domino’s — they have to pick up! Call anyone for help until you get it — even if it’s a shitty help, just call back; see if you can get somebody else on the horn.” After running through some mistakes she’s made over the years — as well as a mistake someone else once made that led to Bamford losing her cervix — she wraps up with this: “Anyhoo. Brittany, I know you’re fine, but just in case everything goes tits-up, just know there’s one shaky white comedian lady with 40,000 Instagram followers who thinks you’re amazeballs. Lower the bar! Are you drunk yet? Did you shoot anyone today? Our gun laws make it almost impossible not to shoot loved ones!” Thank you, Bamford, for giving today’s quarantined graduates the perspective that matters.
