Bobcat Goldthwait commencement address: don't be afraid to quit, success is overrated

In case you need an antidote to commencement speeches that tell you to follow your dream to attain success, here's Bobcat Goldthwait's 2009 Commencement address to Hampshire College, in which he exhorts his listeners to abandon success and never stop quitting (and then he says that doing this made him happy and successful). The good stuff starts around the 10-minute mark. Around 14:30, he reminds them all to bathe. It's actually a very nice talk.

Commencement 2009: Guest Speaker (via Beth Pratt)

• [jgs]

  I once advised a high school student that if he was averaging higher than a B+ he was probably not making good use of his time. His parent ushered me away quickly.

  • [Calvin Jae]

    As a Tiger son I fully endorse this piece of wisdom.

• [Arielle Soutar]

  Check out Eugene Mirman’s 2012 Hampshire College commencement speech while you’re at it. He’s an alum so it’s a little heavy on stories that make more sense to students, but it has this little nugget of wisdom: “Having a backup plan is the first step towards failure”.

• [derek prowse]

  I scoff at this slow-loading video.

  • [user1234567]

    Yea, I was thinking “if their site is so slow why don’t they just put it on youtube?” then I noticed that the new stuff -is- on youtube and this is from the dark ages of the internet and never got converted :(

    • [falnfenix]

      2009 is “the dark ages?”

• [A]

  Goldthwait, not Goldthwaite.  You guys keep spelling it wrong. :)

• [Crunt]

  Loads way too slowly. Stuttering video is no fun to watch.

• [Aaron Bockelie]

  URL to download video for watching later through your favorite player (vlc?): http://www.hampshire.edu/multimedia/mediaTest/video/Bobcat.CMM09.2.flv

  I think their video server is connected via a 28.8k modem, since that’s about how fast it downloads from their site.

• [ludd]

  This is some of the funniest stuff.  I have just become a Goldthwait fan.  Nothing wrong with a small footprint.  ” Success” is overrated – and money…pah..I’ll be glad when I’ve had enough of it.

• [Kimmo]

  Loaded fine for me.

  <3 Bobcat

• [obscurica]

  The  most inspirational speech I’ve heard was Ken Kesey speaking at my high school graduation.    After four grim years of my parents drilling into me, “get involved, go out for sports.  Go to the prom.  These are the BEST YEARS OF YOUR LIFE”.  My parents went to sock hops in the early 60′s and were drowning in nostalgia.   I was playing in punk bands in the 80′s and didn’t give two shits about what my supposed peer group was doing socially.  I figured, if these are really the best years of my life, please just kill me now because its all downhill from here.  I was a depressed, misanthropic, dystopian, drug addled little shit who figured if Reagan didn’t drop the fucking bomb, I’d at best be flipping burgers the rest of my useless existence. 
  Then here comes this washed up old hippie Ken Kesey who gets up in front of his thunder machine, and says these words:

   ”For the last four years everyone has been telling you these are the best years of your life.  Well, I’m here to tell you that’s all bullshit.  It only gets better from here.”

  It was as if the room darkened, a spotlight shone on me, the choir sang, and Ken was speaking directly into my soul.  I thought, “maybe there really are good times ahead”.  And you know, he was absolutely right.  It only got better from there. And decades later, though I still hold the same bitter grudges I had in high school, life continues to improve.

  Lucky me, I guess.

• [fergus1948]

  I thought the funniest part of this was the guy with grey hair on his left.
  He just looked like someone forcing an occasional smile whilst thinking ‘who the hell’s idea was it to give this guy the gig???’

• [Kevin Cline]

  The video is on youtube!

  http://youtu.be/NLIj5encpPQ

• [Kitzmiller]

  YouTube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLIj5encpPQ