Thank You Lewis Black for Keeping Me Sane
I've been surviving through a lot of this pandemic by two means. First, by keeping busy with various creative ventures. Second, by finding things that make me laugh, and where better to turn to for that than Lewis Black?
Ever since I watched Lewis Black's second special, Red, White, and Screwed on HBO for the first time, I've been a fan. His facility for comic tirades leaves my sides aching every time. Why? Because he takes the nonsense that pisses us all off--our frustrations at polarized politics, the shrinking of our worlds due to the pandemic, or just dealing with our parents--and spins it, like some enraged Rumpelstiltskin, into comedy gold.
Each Wednesday, as I walk home from work, I open Spotify, I put my headphones in and I listen to an older gentleman rage against the dying of the light, saying what I wish I could say.
My favorite episode thus far, for sentimental reasons, is the 9th episode of the show, titled The Idea Seemed Thrilling at the Time. It features the Rant is Due broadcast from the St. Louis Stifle Theatre (formerly the Peabody Opera House), which my friends Val, Will, and I attended last fall. It was the last live comedy show we got to see together before the shit called COVID hit the fan.
(Assuming we all live through this, which we will because the three of us are just stubborn like that, one of the first things I'm going to do is buy tickets to see another show with them.)
It was a great show, one I'd been waiting to see for a long time. Though, I have to say, I didn't get to enjoy it as much as I wanted to because that very night, I was sick with some 24-hour bug. However, I'd lost one chance, the previous year, to go see him (he came during Easter weekend and I couldn't go because...family), so I was dammed if I was going to miss this show.
This past week though, I was able to relive that night because of Black's latest special Thanks for Risking Your Life. 
Since his last Special, Black to the Future, which came out just before the 2016 election (his threat that Trump voters would go to hell doing nothing to stop the rise of Darth Grapefruit the Deplorable), I've been waiting to hear from Black again. And with this, he was back with vengeance.
In a well-crafted, funny hour of stand up that is equal parts funny and poignant, Black takes swings at the ridiculousness of present pop culture and present politics. Out of all his material though, the stuff that got me laughing the hardest was his material about his parents, both of him lived to be Centenarians. "There's a good chance that I'm a reptile," he said.
It's also a very intimate special. Most of the time, the camera is entirely fixed on Lew, while he's on stage. There are no sweeps, cuts, or reaction shots of the audience between jokes. Put that down too the fact that there was no second show from which they could cut and splice things together in the editing. It's one long close up. And thus, it feels like, we a viewers truly get to share in his comic indignation of the world in which we find ourselves.
I hope Lewis Black stays well through the rest of this pandemic, however long that may be. I want to see him live again the next time he's in St. Louis, preferably with my friends. Between the Rantcast and Thanks for Risking Your Life, it's pretty clear to me that he's got plenty more to say and thus plenty more laughs for us.
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