My wife and I don’t have any children, we have a dog. We have a little puppy named Petunia.

She’s a tiny little French bulldog puppy. I like having a puppy that’s a bulldog, ’cause it’s like having a baby that is also a grandma. Her body is young, her face is as old as time. She definitely saw the Nazis march into Paris.

She always gives me this look of like,

[French accent, smoker's voice]
“Oh, the things I have seen, you cocksucker. You have no idea. The Gestapo threw my printing press into a river. But, go, tell your fucking jokes. Bring me my dish.”

[Normal voice]
She said that.

Petunia… Petunia is my best friend in the world. I give her a million kisses a day. She does not like me, and barks at me and bites me all day long.

We had to get a dog trainer into the apartment because Petunia is a bad dog. We tell her that every day. We go, “Hey, you’re bad at being a dog.”

So, the trainer came into the apartment. Sorry, didn’t even walk into the apartment, walked into the threshold and went, “Oh, okay.” Like she was an exorcist or something. She said, “I see what the problem is.” She said, “Petunia has become the alpha of the house.” And then she pointed at me, she said, “You are no longer the alpha of the house.”

And in the back of my head, I was like, “I was never the alpha of the house.” I turned to my wife, I was like, “Let’s pretend. It’ll be fun. Yes… My title of alpha, which I once had, how can I reclaim it? Because that was a thing that existed at one time.”

She said, “You need to show dominance over your puppy.” These are things people say to me.

I said, “How do I do that?” She said, “Well, let me ask you this. Who eats dinner first, you or Petunia?”

I was like, “Petunia eats dinner first. She eats dinner at 5:00 p.m., ’cause she’s a foot long and two years old.”
She said, “No, you need to eat dinner first. Because the king eats before anyone else eats.”

Oh, yes, and what a mighty king I will be, eating dinner at 4:45 in the afternoon. “Ah-hahaha! Look upon your sovereign, Petunia, and tremble. My lands stretch across this entire one bedroom, and I eat dinner whenever I choose, as long as it works for the schedule of a dog.”

She said, “Now, you don’t actually have to eat dinner before Petunia. You just have to convince Petunia that you’ve already eaten.”

So… for the past month, I shit you not… before my wife and I give Petunia her dish, we take down empty bowls and spoons, and in front of her, we go, “Mmm, dinner. Mmm, good dinner.” Like we’re space aliens in a play about human beings that they wrote, but they didn’t work that hard on. “Mmm, we’re eating dinner.”

Meanwhile, Petunia’s just staring at us with her Paul Giamatti face, like…

[French smoker voice]
“You’re not eating dinner, cocksucker. Dish, now.”