transcript for Real Time with Bill Maher. He does new rules at the end of each show April 22, 2005 All right, time for New Rules, everybody. New Rule: Don't pick a German Pope the day before Hitler's birthday. I'm not saying it's anything but a coincidence, but you've just given every conspiracy nut in the world a raging hard-on. New Rule: There's no such thing as flavored water. There's a whole aisle of this crap at the supermarket, water, but without that watery taste. Sorry, but flavored water is called a soft drink. You want flavored water? Pour some scotch over ice and let it melt. That's your flavored water. New Rule: Stop taking stupid polls. Every news program on every cable news network has their own dumb-ass, online poll, and it's always some ridiculous question like, "We want to know what you think. Is John Bolton too much of an asshole, not enough of an asshole, or just the right amount of asshole? Hey, this is America. Knowing nothing and choosing one of two options isn't a poll. It's an election. New Rule: Homeless shelters don't need gyms. Los Angeles just opened a new homeless shelter with a library, a hair salon and a gym. Now, I'm fine with the library and the hair salon. Like most people, I like my crack whores well-read and groomed. But a gym? Hey, you're pushing a loaded shopping cart around all day. You don't need a StairMaster. I know gay guys who became homeless just for the abs! And finally, New Rule: Because it's Earth Day, I get to ask this question: How come we have cars with global positioning systems, satellite radio and voice-activated web access, and we still power them with the black goop you have to suck out of the ground? Well, I hate to tell you this, folks, but gas doesn't cost too much; it costs too little. Ooh, I know, I know. I know you hear about gas prices over two dollars a gallon and it makes you nearly choke on your four-dollar latte. We bitch about gas, but adjusted for inflation, it's the same price it was back when the Pope was a Nazi. And that's not the fault of ExxonMobil, either. That's like Kirstie Alley saying her problem is that Arabs control all the fudge. Anyone who's been to Europe knows that the price of gas over there is just a picture of an arm and a leg. And that's because they tax it heavily and we don't. How come we Americans accepted that you could do that to cigarettes - overtax them because they were bad - but burning oil into the atmosphere is okay? You can't smoke in a bar, but you can drive through a restaurant? A little smoke from a cigar is intolerable, but a lot from a Hummer is no problem? Of course, the Hummer is made by General Motors, the owner of other gas-guzzling F***-You-mobiles - like the Escalade and the Suburban. And they just lost a billion dollars in one quarter. Because it suddenly got a lot less sexy to drive one of these fake macho vehicles now that it costs a hundred bucks to fill it up. Yeah, nobody's dick is that small. Plus, does anybody remember the '70s? GM did this before. They got filthy rich selling giant cars that suddenly people didn't want because gas went up. Cut to the Japanese gloating, as they are again. Because they own the patent for the hybrid car. GM could have had a piece of it, but they said it didn't make economic sense. Hey, you just lost a billion dollars in three months. You don't have any economic sense. So, here on Earth Day, let me remind everyone of this: the most vulnerable point of the earth is the atmosphere, which acts like a giant mirror, absorbing 95% of the sun's energy. Now, when I heard that, I said, "Honey, that sounds important!" And I'm not even married. If we don't protect the atmosphere, ultraviolet radiation will fry us like ants under a magnifying glass. I know these kind of facts aren't in the Bible- -but maybe - but maybe we should think about them. After all, it could affect Brad and Jen! It's not a real threat, like an activist judge. But it's kind of important. Because in the last half century, this precious atmosphere of ours has thinned by 40%. And this worries me, because in the exact same time frame, my hair has thinned by 40%. [insert photos of younger Bill Maher] It worked out for me, but the earth may not be so lucky. All right, that's our show. I want to thank my guests: Jane Fonda, Robert Kennedy, Jr., Joe Scarborough, Maureen Dowd and my friend, Senator Alan Simpson. Thank you very much, folks.
All right, it is time for New Rules, everybody. All right. Strap yourself in: New Rule: Get rid of the baby-changing station in the men's room. Let's stop pretending that it has been or ever will be used. You're only tempting a short homeless man to use it as a Murphy bed. New Rule: After the plane lands, airlines must stop saying, "Thank you for choosing us." There is no choosing anymore. I took the only flight that left within eight hours of when I wanted to go by the only other airline that went there. Choosing! Nobody chooses Southwest. Southwest chooses you! If I need to be in Spokane, Washington, by tomorrow morning, I either take the flight I'm given or I mail myself in a FedEx box! New Rule: Talentless teenagers who exist to amuse us must keep up in the battle to be the dippiest twit. It's been over a week since Paris Hilton's topless cell phone pictures ended up on the Internet. Isn't it about time Britney Spears did something trashy? Come on, honey, use your imagination. I don't know, let the wind blow your pants off-or have a miscarriage in a liquor store-or get a "dee-vorce" from Butt-head! The ball's in your trailer court! New Rule: Stop giving me that pop-up ad for Classmates.com! There's a reason you don't talk to people for 25 years. Because you don't particularly like them! Besides, I already know what the captain of the football team is doing these days: mowing my lawn. And finally, New Rule: Just because you've got a job for life doesn't mean you have to do it for life. It's well and proper that we venerate our elders, but give it a freakin' rest! To everything there is a season, turn, turn, turn! A time to reap, a time to sow, and a time to pack it in, put on a housecoat and fall asleep in front of the Golf Channel! Now, I know it must be hard to give up your job when your job is literally sitting on a throne or being on a Supreme Court or keeping women out of your priesthood to make room for the gays. But at some point it starts to look like you think of yourself as indispensable. And no one is indispensable, including you, Mister Infallible! I don't want to say the Pope is out of it, but last week, he said two "Our Fathers" and three "Proud Marys." And Queen Elizabeth, your son has been waiting so long to be king, even his mistress is a senior citizen. Boy. Queen for 53 years, that's a good run. Second only to "Cats." But now it's time to kick off those royal slippers, smell the English roses and spend some time with those Nazi grandkids. I don't understand, America. We work until you have a stroke; then we put you in a retirement home with a Haitian nurse, and after you die, we fight over your estate, turn you into Soylent Green and eat you. There's hardly any time to enjoy the Cialus. You know who knows how to live? Titans of industry. Ray Kroc, Colonel Sanders, Dave from Wendy's. None of them spent their golden years tied to a desk. They all died of heart disease from eating their own food. One more shot. In conclusion, there is a reason that names like Cary Grant, Joe Dimaggio, Johnny Carson, inspire a special kind of awe. Because they all did something that made them more beloved than anyone else: they left! They left! They didn't make us all pretend to yawn to get them to leave the party. They looked around, as all of us will someday, and said, "I've done my part, I've said my piece, and I'm finally deaf enough to stand being home all day with my spouse!"
