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Lewis Black is the spokesman for slow-burning comedic anger. Each undeniably true observation is another log on the fire. And soon, the room is ablaze.
“You’ve got people who don’t think science is real,” Black said, referencing the threat to common sense as posed by 'Flat Earthers.' Admittedly it's a small group of people, some of whom are in on the joke. Yet there are true believers who insist that the planet is not round, but a flat disc — despite what high-altitude photography might have to say about it.
“I mean, c’mon! They’re saying the Earth is flat,” Black said via phone from his hotel room in Boise, Idaho (a state where a lot of people claim to have spotted Bigfoot). “The Earth is flat?” Black repeated, his voice dripping with incredulity. “That’s the beginning of, ‘C’mere, we’re going to have to take you to a special place and have a discussion with you for maybe three or four weeks, until you come back to Earth.’”
Inspiration seemingly derived from institutionalization is a major driver of Black’s comedy. “I really don’t counsel stupidity,” he said. And yet, “Things upset me.”
Black, who performs his "Off the Rails" set on Friday, October 13 at Kodak Center, has made a career of things that upset him. Although, “If I was like that all the time, I’d be dead,” Black said. “I’d be dead after two days.”
So rage may drive his schtick, but you’ll find Black’s real drivers in his golf bag. “This is really sad, I play golf," he confessed. “Golf is a game in which you don’t think about anything else. And everything you think about when you’re playing golf is just… stupid. You know, it’s like, ‘I’ve gotta bend over, I gotta do this, I gotta do that, I gotta do this.’ Then you hit it. ‘What did I do? Why do I suck? How did it come to this?’”
Black admitted that, in his love of golf, he’s contradicting his hero, George Carlin, who had this to say about the sport: “Golfing is an arrogant, elitist game which takes up entirely too much room in this country.”
“I completely understand when people are appalled by golf,” Black said. But he finds “a weird Zen to golf," and suggested interesting new rules that add a little zing to the Zen; like a golfer who slices a drive into the trees — and while searching for his Titleist finds someone else’s lost ball — should take a stroke off of his score. It’s a temporary victory for a scorecard that will ultimately show defeat.
Golf, Black conceded, is only ephemeral relief that “really works to distract you from all the insanity around you.”
But insanity is source material for the comedian.
His career ranges from stand-up comedy to cable TV specials, movies, voicing animated characters, a recurring role as a commentator on "The Daily Show," and writing books. As a road comic, Black is a big fan of Rochester’s Dinosaur Bar-B-Que. He’s even been seen on The Weather Channel. (Most 75-year-old men like to talk about the weather, right?)
And they like to talk about politics. Yet Black’s recent 70-minutes sets have included what he estimates as no more than 10 minutes on God’s gift to stand-up comedians: Donald Trump.
“I’ve bashed everyone who has been the president. That’s kind of what I do,” he said, with a long emphasis on 'do.' “What’s established me as a comic is the fact that I’m kind of, I’m not big on authority figures.”
Yet after a recent show, Black said social media posts suggested his political commentary was a lot of 'doo-doo.' One person commented that “all I did was talk about and bash Donald Trump,” Black said. Another person claimed that Black didn’t mention Trump at all.
“And they were both at the same event,” Black added. “That’s psychosis.”
Despite his stage rage, Black seems somewhat in control of himself via phone on this particular morning. “From the moment I got some notoriety, it was really important to, no matter what, to be nice to the folks,” he said of his audience. “I had just enough notoriety that it’s fun.”
Until COVID, when social norms were locked up. And Black rises to take the bait.
“As a joke, I would say before the pandemic, we were evolving into two different realities,” he said. “And during the pandemic, it’s these two realities solidifying. You cannot have a democracy or a community unless you agree on reality.”
And in this country, a solid political divide fully emerged. Black wags his finger at Republicans.
“What do you think they’re getting out of it, aside from they’re allowed to say now anything they want?”
He hears racism, and a sense of entitlement that accompanies the idea anything a person can get away with is to be admired. Because that means they’re smarter than the people who didn’t figure out the game.
“What I find extraordinary is, I don’t know, how they continue to feel – if you allow the rich to get richer – how it really helps us?” Black said. “How does it help to create a middle class? I just don’t get it.”
This notion comes about from his monitoring of the Republican presidential candidate debates. And the moderators are as much to blame for this as the candidates themselves: When the question of inflation arises, Black said, all he hears is that inflation exists and something must be done. But, “Nobody is asking the question of how? How are you going to do it?”
Time is of the essence. What we need, Black says, is immediate fact checkers. He suggested a fact check on the side of the television screen that reads, as the candidate is speaking: “What you’re hearing is totally fabricated by this person.”
But the comedian's story is not purely a laughing matter.
A middle-class kid who grew up in Maryland, last year the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation in Bethesda put on its first fundraising golf tournament, the Lewis Black Invitational; next spring, it will be at the Ritz-Carlton Dove Mountain in Arizona.
“I knew no one with cystic fibrosis,” Black said. But he did know the foundation’s executive vice president and chief operating office, Rich Mattingly. And after Mattingly’s wife, Carolyn, was murdered by a man ultimately deemed mentally unstable, Mattingly created the Luv U Project, parent organization to the Lewis Black Invitational Golf Tournament. “Luv U” was how Carolyn often signed her name.
“Rich, to his credit, responded by creating this extraordinary foundation to deal with the mental health problems, and this was six, seven, eight, nine years ago,” Black said. “It was just before we finally started to realize, ‘Hey, we do have mental health problems, and better deal with them.’ And now, it is worse. Since the pandemic, it is worse. And for people to not realize how bad it is, is just appalling.”
Appalling material is Black’s inspiration, so he’s creating a new standup routine. “The benefits of slavery, followed by the banning of books. Followed by artificial intelligence. There seems to be a through line there," he said.
The through line is Florida governor and Republican presidential candidate, Ron DeSantis.
“Most of our headlines are punchlines,” Black said. “'The benefits of slavery' — to say that is a punch line in search of a set up. Because, if you read that the governor of a state, or the president, started talking about the benefits of slavery and it was in a book, you’d howl. You’d laugh and say, ‘God, that is the craziest thing I’ve ever read. And we don’t do it.’”
But earlier this year, the Florida the Board of Education did do it, approving a new set of rules requiring teachers to tell students that there were upsides to being enslaved. And DeSantis has defended that notion because, he insisted, the trade-off for slavery was that slaves learned job skills such as blacksmithing.
Black pointed out that he’s never heard of a slave who said of slavery, “I’d like to put that on my résumé.”
Perhaps instead, he suggested, there are lessons to be learned from Europe. And its streets lined with bistros and open-air cafés.
“They’re happier than we are,” Black said. “For all we try, we do not know how to build a community. At all. I’m sorry, you go to another country, and there’s not 10,000 Applebee’s. In Italy, you go from town to town, and they’ve got all of the places that these folks have set up. The little restaurants and businesses. And here it’s cookie cutter.”
For Black, the decline of American civilization is a comedic through line, from Flat Earth and book banning to restaurant chains and golf. For his eager audience Friday night?
“Really upbeat stuff!” he said. “Tell ’em by the time they get to the show, it’ll all be funny.”
Jeff Spevak is the senior arts writer for WXXI/CITY Magazine. He can be reached at (585) 258-0343 or [email protected].
“You’ve got people who don’t think science is real,” Black said, referencing the threat to common sense as posed by 'Flat Earthers.' Admittedly it's a small group of people, some of whom are in on the joke. Yet there are true believers who insist that the planet is not round, but a flat disc — despite what high-altitude photography might have to say about it.
“I mean, c’mon! They’re saying the Earth is flat,” Black said via phone from his hotel room in Boise, Idaho (a state where a lot of people claim to have spotted Bigfoot). “The Earth is flat?” Black repeated, his voice dripping with incredulity. “That’s the beginning of, ‘C’mere, we’re going to have to take you to a special place and have a discussion with you for maybe three or four weeks, until you come back to Earth.’”
Inspiration seemingly derived from institutionalization is a major driver of Black’s comedy. “I really don’t counsel stupidity,” he said. And yet, “Things upset me.”
Black, who performs his "Off the Rails" set on Friday, October 13 at Kodak Center, has made a career of things that upset him. Although, “If I was like that all the time, I’d be dead,” Black said. “I’d be dead after two days.”
So rage may drive his schtick, but you’ll find Black’s real drivers in his golf bag. “This is really sad, I play golf," he confessed. “Golf is a game in which you don’t think about anything else. And everything you think about when you’re playing golf is just… stupid. You know, it’s like, ‘I’ve gotta bend over, I gotta do this, I gotta do that, I gotta do this.’ Then you hit it. ‘What did I do? Why do I suck? How did it come to this?’”
Black admitted that, in his love of golf, he’s contradicting his hero, George Carlin, who had this to say about the sport: “Golfing is an arrogant, elitist game which takes up entirely too much room in this country.”
“I completely understand when people are appalled by golf,” Black said. But he finds “a weird Zen to golf," and suggested interesting new rules that add a little zing to the Zen; like a golfer who slices a drive into the trees — and while searching for his Titleist finds someone else’s lost ball — should take a stroke off of his score. It’s a temporary victory for a scorecard that will ultimately show defeat.
Golf, Black conceded, is only ephemeral relief that “really works to distract you from all the insanity around you.”
But insanity is source material for the comedian.
His career ranges from stand-up comedy to cable TV specials, movies, voicing animated characters, a recurring role as a commentator on "The Daily Show," and writing books. As a road comic, Black is a big fan of Rochester’s Dinosaur Bar-B-Que. He’s even been seen on The Weather Channel. (Most 75-year-old men like to talk about the weather, right?)
And they like to talk about politics. Yet Black’s recent 70-minutes sets have included what he estimates as no more than 10 minutes on God’s gift to stand-up comedians: Donald Trump.
“I’ve bashed everyone who has been the president. That’s kind of what I do,” he said, with a long emphasis on 'do.' “What’s established me as a comic is the fact that I’m kind of, I’m not big on authority figures.”
Yet after a recent show, Black said social media posts suggested his political commentary was a lot of 'doo-doo.' One person commented that “all I did was talk about and bash Donald Trump,” Black said. Another person claimed that Black didn’t mention Trump at all.
“And they were both at the same event,” Black added. “That’s psychosis.”
Despite his stage rage, Black seems somewhat in control of himself via phone on this particular morning. “From the moment I got some notoriety, it was really important to, no matter what, to be nice to the folks,” he said of his audience. “I had just enough notoriety that it’s fun.”
Until COVID, when social norms were locked up. And Black rises to take the bait.
“As a joke, I would say before the pandemic, we were evolving into two different realities,” he said. “And during the pandemic, it’s these two realities solidifying. You cannot have a democracy or a community unless you agree on reality.”
And in this country, a solid political divide fully emerged. Black wags his finger at Republicans.
“What do you think they’re getting out of it, aside from they’re allowed to say now anything they want?”
He hears racism, and a sense of entitlement that accompanies the idea anything a person can get away with is to be admired. Because that means they’re smarter than the people who didn’t figure out the game.
“What I find extraordinary is, I don’t know, how they continue to feel – if you allow the rich to get richer – how it really helps us?” Black said. “How does it help to create a middle class? I just don’t get it.”
This notion comes about from his monitoring of the Republican presidential candidate debates. And the moderators are as much to blame for this as the candidates themselves: When the question of inflation arises, Black said, all he hears is that inflation exists and something must be done. But, “Nobody is asking the question of how? How are you going to do it?”
Time is of the essence. What we need, Black says, is immediate fact checkers. He suggested a fact check on the side of the television screen that reads, as the candidate is speaking: “What you’re hearing is totally fabricated by this person.”
But the comedian's story is not purely a laughing matter.
A middle-class kid who grew up in Maryland, last year the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation in Bethesda put on its first fundraising golf tournament, the Lewis Black Invitational; next spring, it will be at the Ritz-Carlton Dove Mountain in Arizona.
“I knew no one with cystic fibrosis,” Black said. But he did know the foundation’s executive vice president and chief operating office, Rich Mattingly. And after Mattingly’s wife, Carolyn, was murdered by a man ultimately deemed mentally unstable, Mattingly created the Luv U Project, parent organization to the Lewis Black Invitational Golf Tournament. “Luv U” was how Carolyn often signed her name.
“Rich, to his credit, responded by creating this extraordinary foundation to deal with the mental health problems, and this was six, seven, eight, nine years ago,” Black said. “It was just before we finally started to realize, ‘Hey, we do have mental health problems, and better deal with them.’ And now, it is worse. Since the pandemic, it is worse. And for people to not realize how bad it is, is just appalling.”
Appalling material is Black’s inspiration, so he’s creating a new standup routine. “The benefits of slavery, followed by the banning of books. Followed by artificial intelligence. There seems to be a through line there," he said.
The through line is Florida governor and Republican presidential candidate, Ron DeSantis.
“Most of our headlines are punchlines,” Black said. “'The benefits of slavery' — to say that is a punch line in search of a set up. Because, if you read that the governor of a state, or the president, started talking about the benefits of slavery and it was in a book, you’d howl. You’d laugh and say, ‘God, that is the craziest thing I’ve ever read. And we don’t do it.’”
But earlier this year, the Florida the Board of Education did do it, approving a new set of rules requiring teachers to tell students that there were upsides to being enslaved. And DeSantis has defended that notion because, he insisted, the trade-off for slavery was that slaves learned job skills such as blacksmithing.
Black pointed out that he’s never heard of a slave who said of slavery, “I’d like to put that on my résumé.”
Perhaps instead, he suggested, there are lessons to be learned from Europe. And its streets lined with bistros and open-air cafés.
“They’re happier than we are,” Black said. “For all we try, we do not know how to build a community. At all. I’m sorry, you go to another country, and there’s not 10,000 Applebee’s. In Italy, you go from town to town, and they’ve got all of the places that these folks have set up. The little restaurants and businesses. And here it’s cookie cutter.”
For Black, the decline of American civilization is a comedic through line, from Flat Earth and book banning to restaurant chains and golf. For his eager audience Friday night?
“Really upbeat stuff!” he said. “Tell ’em by the time they get to the show, it’ll all be funny.”
Jeff Spevak is the senior arts writer for WXXI/CITY Magazine. He can be reached at (585) 258-0343 or [email protected].
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