Shadowing Practice: The Gift Basket - Gabriel Iglesias - Learn English Speaking with Video
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226 sentences
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I thought it would be great if I could tell an old story
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that was from years ago that never made it to a one -hour special.
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And the cool part about this story is that it now has a different ending.
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The story is called The Gift Basket.
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Yeah!
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Some of you know it, some of you don't know it, but after this, you're never gonna forget it.
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All you have to know about this story is
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that all the people involved have always been and will continue to be friends.
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That being said, Martin and I...
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All the good ones start like that.
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Martin and I, are scheduled to perform in Northern California.
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Usually we fly, but this particular day, I was having a problem with Southwest Airlines.
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They wanted me to pay for an extra seat for someone who wasn't traveling with me.
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Take your time, you'll figure it out.
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Anyway, I tell Martina, I'm not paying for an extra seat.
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Let's just drive.
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It's six hours. So we headed north.
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Three hours into the drive, we're passing through a city called fresno and as we're passing hey fresno 559 anyway
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as we're passing through fresno we start seeing billboards off the side of the freeway that said
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performing this weekend at the radisson hotel directly from bet's comic view
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and showtime at the apollo comedian g riley
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and i look at martin i go oh shoot g's in town
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and martin goes yeah i haven't seen g in years
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so we're like let's stop by the hotel and say hi
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so we pull into the parking lot we walk in i tell martin
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he doesn't know we're here i'm gonna crank call his room
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because what are you gonna say i said i'm gonna tell him
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that i'm the front desk and that he just received a gift basket what's
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so funny about a gift basket i said i'm gonna describe it over the phone
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and i'm gonna make all the items
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that are in this imaginary basket become items
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that stereotypically a black person might like
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but you're crazy i said i'll tell you what we got two hours to kill how
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How about this?
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How about we go to the supermarket
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and we make an actual racist gift basket and we'll have it delivered and we'll wait outside to see what happens.
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I said, are you down?
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We go to a store and we start to design the sickest practical joke ever.
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I get a shopping cart and I'm like, all right, we need a basket.
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So I find one, I take out the grass, the plastic eggs and the chocolate rabbits and we start hitting the aisles.
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First item I grab is a fried chicken about that big.
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See how quick that laugh was?
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There's a few black people in here like, mother f*er, this better be funny.
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It's hysterical.
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Let me just finish the story and then you can judge me in the parking lot.
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So anyway, then
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Martin hands me a miniature watermelon and I put it next to the fried chicken.
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Here's where it gets interesting.
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Employees of the store find out what we're doing and they start volunteering to help us finish the basket.
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Half of the employees were black, which made it so much more accurate.
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Aisle after aisle, aisle.
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One guy was stocking a shelf.
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He was an older white guy.
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And we're like, sir, can you help us?
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What do you need?
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My buddy Martin
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and I are trying to make this messed up racist gift basket for our black friend as a practical joke.
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Can you think of something we can put in there?
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Without even blinking an eye, the guy was like, You gotta have Kool -Aid.
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It's at the end of the aisle on the right, malt, liquors, and XL over in the back of the store in the freezer section.
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It's on sale two for one.
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By the time we get to the register, all these different employees plus us came up with the basket that had fried chicken,
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watermelon, Kool -Aid, grape soda, barbecue potato chips, sunflower seeds, an ebony magazine, a Chris Rock DVD called Bigger and Blacker,
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Magnum condoms, Newport cigarettes, A rack of ribs, the recipe for cornbread.
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It was getting bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger.
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Icing on the cake, we find a greeting card that's on clearance from Halloween,
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and it has a picture of three ghosts on the cover wearing sheets.
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I tear off the half that says, Happy Halloween, and on the back of the card, I write, Welcome to Fresno.
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Love the Chamber of Commerce.
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And we stick it to the basket.
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We made it all nice and pretty and we haul ass to the hotel
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We pull up
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We walk in the basket is hot as hell
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so I'm racing in I get inside and I put it on the counter as fast as I can bro.
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It's too perfect
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There's a black girl behind the front desk
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As soon as I put the basket down I hear Is that chicken?
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Ooh, let me see.
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Hold on.
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What is it?
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Let me explain.
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My name is Gabriel.
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This is Martin.
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We're a couple of comedians, and we're about to play a really crazy practical joke on
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a friend of ours who's staying here tonight by the name of G.
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Riley, who's also a comedian.
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Oh, the one that's on the signs on the freeway.
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Yeah, the one that's on the signs on the freeway.
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So as a practical joke, we went to the store and we made this messed up racist gift basket.
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That's why you can smell fried chicken.
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And she was like, what?
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You need Jesus, that's what you'll name.
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Kiki, girl, you better hang up that phone.
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You ain't gonna believe what I'm looking at over here, girl.
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Listen, we think it would be hysterical if we could have you deliver the basket for us.
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She lost it.
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Oh, the hell you didn't.
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I know you didn't just ask me to take that to a black man.
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You are out your damn mind.
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Oh, Lord!
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Lord!
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Give me the strength to not kill this big -ass Mexican over here, Lord.
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Mm -mm.
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Uh -uh.
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Okay, look here, Nacho Libre.
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I don't care who you are.
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I am not doing it.
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Hell, no. I'll give you 50 bucks.
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Where that mother at?
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We follow her to the hotel room.
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She knocks on the door.
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Martin and I hide by the elevator on the floor.
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She knocks.
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She opens the door, sees a beautiful black woman standing there with a gift basket.
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This is for you, baby.
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He says, thank you, closes the door.
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She walks away and she sees us on the ground hiding, right?
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And she's like, y 'all still going to hell.
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We get up and we walk over to the door and we put our ear, listen, listen.
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This is what we hear inside.
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Woo!
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Chicken!
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Oh, Kool -Aid!
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He's getting excited over every single item he's pulling out of the basket.
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He gets to the greeting card.
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What can the friends know?
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Love the chamber of commas.
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Hell yeah.
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Then we feel him flipping the card over because his voice changed.
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He's like, oh yeah, man, this is...
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What the ?
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Outside the door, we heard racist bastards.
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When we heard racist bastards, we lost it.
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Housekeeping is freaking out.
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We're laughing, we're crying, we got boogers coming out.
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We can't take it anymore.
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We knock on the door.
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He yells, who is it?
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Too easy, chamber of commerce.
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He rushes the door.
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I put my finger on the people so we can't see who it is, right?
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The knob starts to jiggle, then the door explodes open and he's like, what?
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And he sees us and he's like, ah!
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Ah!
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What's up, G?
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Man, y 'all give a brother heart attack.
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Did you like your basket?
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Man, that was messed up.
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Did you like it?
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Man, I love all that shit.
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And now, ladies and gentlemen, a story that has been seven years in the making.
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I would like for you to now hear, for the first time ever, the other side of that story.
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Ladies and gentlemen, I flew him here to Hawaii so that he can share this with you.
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Give it up for my friend, Mr. G.
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Rylou!
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I gotta be honest, I didn't know it was racist.
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I thought it was lunch.
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I thought it was lunch.
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I didn't know it was racist until I got back to my neighborhood and the brothers in my neighborhood looked at me,
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They say, man, I don't believe you let that Mexican guy do that to you, man.
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That was messed up.
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I know you got him back.
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I said, what, buy him lunch?
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I can't afford to buy that man lunch.
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If I buy him lunch, he'll be getting me again.
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But you gotta understand, it was a perfect set of circumstances when it happened.
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Because I'm laying across the bed in the hotel.
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I had never been to Fresno before.
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And I wanted something to eat, and I didn't know where to go eat.
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So I'm laying across the bed, and I'm saying to myself, where could I go eat?
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I wish I had some food.
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And all of a sudden, magically, there's a knock on the door
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and a black girl shows up with a gift basket
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and I took the gift basket
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and I said they know how to treat their comedians up here in Fresno
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and I'm walking to the bed and I can feel the heat
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and I can smell the chicken from the gift basket
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and I'm like oh this is cool because nobody smells chicken and thinks of racism right
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I see the watermelon.
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I'm like, oh, this is cool.
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They know how to treat a comedian up in here.
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I get to the card, and I look at the card, and I go, what the is going on?
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I said, oh, my God, I'm working for the Ku Klux Klan.
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And I really started to panic, because in my head, I'm saying to myself, is this for real?
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Because there were billboards all over the city with my picture.
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And I started thinking they were trying to scare me out of town.
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So now I don't know what to do, right?
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And I start trying to call a promoter, and the promoter's not answering the phone, and it's festering in my head,
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and I'm nervous, and I'm pacing the room, and all of a sudden there's a knock on the door, right?
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And I go, oh my God, they come to get me.
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so i so i ease over to the door right
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and i look through the people right
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and all i see is a brown dot right
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and i go i hear somebody out there because i hear the breathing right i hear
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so this was about 60 pounds ago right
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so i gotta look down up under the door right
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but i said oh my god it gotta be about five or six of them out there
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Oh my God.
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So I figure like this.
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I figure, okay, you know what?
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If it's gonna happen, it's gonna happen.
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You know, if it's gonna happen, I'm gonna go down swinging, right?
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So I put my best black face on.
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You know, I tried to look mean.
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You know, I look like this guy right here.
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I look like that guy right there, right?
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And I go, who is it?
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And they go, Chamber of Commerce.
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And I go, oh my God, the Chamber of Commerce is the Klu Klux Klan.
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And I'm panicking, so I get to the door, right?
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And I pull the door open, and when the door opens up, these guys are falling all over the hall laughing at me.
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They're rolling all into the cleaning lady's car.
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The cleaning lady didn't know what was going on, right?
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She's scared to dust because she sees a black dude with no shirt like this, so she grabs the lemon pledge like it's pepper spray, right?
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She's ready to get...
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So everything, now that I realize it's a practical joke, everything calms down, because I remember how hungry I was.
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I'm like, okay, cool.
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Practical joke, right?
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So I go in the bathroom to wash my hands.
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While I'm in the bathroom washing my hands, I hear a commotion in the other room, right?
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I go back in the other room.
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They're going through the gift basket.
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The maid is leaving with the watermelon.
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Martina's drinking my 40 and this bastard is eating my chicken!
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I'm outta here!
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Thank you.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This speaking lesson is built on the video “The Gift Basket - Gabriel Iglesias”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: basket, door, gift, chicken, martin. This video has 226 sentences and 2145 words to shadow. The speech runs for 14:14. The speaker talks at a natural 151 words per minute, close to everyday conversation. Only 81% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English, so the vocabulary is demanding. 34 of its 226 sentences are questions, so it is good practice for question intonation and short answers.
Key vocabulary in this video
15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| basket noun | /ˈbæskɪt/ | A lightweight woven container, generally round, open at the top, and tapering toward the bottom. |
| racist noun | /ˈɹeɪ.sɪst/ | A person who believes in or supports racism; a person who believes that a particular race is superior to others, or who discriminates against other races. |
| practical adjective | /ˈpɹæk.tɪ.kəl/ | Relating to, or based on, practice or action rather than theory or hypothesis. |
| chamber noun | /ˈt͡ʃeɪ̯mbɚ/ | The private room of an individual, especially of someone wealthy or noble. |
| knock verb | /nɑk/ | To rap one's knuckles against something, especially wood. |
| comedian noun | /kəˈmiː.di.ən/ | An entertainer who performs in a humorous manner, especially by telling jokes. |
| aisle noun | /aɪ̯l/ | A wing of a building, notably in a church separated from the nave proper by piers. |
| commerce noun | /ˈkɑ.mɚs/ | The exchange or buying and selling of commodities; especially the exchange of merchandise, on a large scale, between different places or communities; extended… |
| fry verb | /fɹaɪ/ | To cook (something) in hot fat. |
| freeway noun | /ˈfɹiː.weɪ/ | A highway with grade-separated crossings (rather than level crossings) and designed (and only permitted) for high-speed motor-traffic running in two directions… |
| desk noun | /dɛsk/ | A table, frame, or case, in past centuries usually with a sloping top but now usually with a flat top, for the use of writers and readers. It often has a… |
| sudden adjective | /ˈsʌd.ən/ | Occurring quickly with little or no warning or expectation; instantly. |
| panic noun | /ˈpænɪk/ | Overwhelming fear or fright, often affecting groups of people or animals; (countable) an instance of this; a fright, a scare. |
| gentleman noun | /ˈd͡ʒɛn.təl.mən/ | Any well-bred, well-mannered, or charming man. |
| scare verb | /skɛɚ/ | To frighten, terrify, startle, especially in a minor way. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| mess up verb | To make a mess of; to untidy, disorder, soil, or muss. | |
| pass through verb | To go through, to travel through, to transit or lie across a place or from one place to another. | |
| calm down verb | To become less excited, intense, or angry. | |
| come out verb | /ˌkʌm ˈaʊt/ | To be discovered; to be revealed. |
| come up with verb | To manage to produce, deliver, or present (something) by inventing, creating, thinking of, or obtaining it. | |
| find out verb | To discover, as by asking or investigating. | |
| get back to verb | Return to (an activity) | |
| get up verb | To move in an upward direction; to ascend or climb. |
Sentences worth repeating
Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:
- Take your time, you'll figure it out.
- I said, are you down?
- Did you like your basket?
- I said, what, buy him lunch?
- I figure, okay, you know what?
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | is called · being said · are scheduled |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | have always been · haven't seen · has been |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 80 contractions and reduced forms, such as I'm, gonna, we're. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: rush /ɹʌʃ/, wash /wɑʃ/, sheet /ʃit/, shelf /ʃɛlf/, commotion /kəˈmoʊ.ʃən/
- Long words — get the stress right: comedian /kəˈmiː.di.ən/, elevator /ˈɛləˌveɪtɚ/, imaginary /ɪˈmæd͡ʒɪˌn(ɛ)ɹi/, supermarket /ˌsupɚˈmɑɹkət/, miniature /ˈmɪn.(i)ə.tʃəɹ/
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like basket, racist, practical.
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.