 
|
LEWIS BLACK
Rules Of Enragement (Comedy Central Records)
Reviewed by Rusty Pipes
Lewis Black's Rules Of Enragement is the best stand-up album I heard in 2003. If you've been living under a blanket of comedy-proof insulation somewhere, Lewis is most famous for his five minute rant, Back In Black, on Jon Stewart's Daily Show each Thursday, where he shoots down the many targets of opportunity he finds in the world of politics and society. Shoots down? It's more like shouts down; he has an apoplectic delivery that makes you think he's going to burst a blood vessel. Of course on Rules we're treated to the real Lewis Black, undistilled, unbridled and uncensored. That doesn't mean a lot of sexual material, he just curses a lot.
Like his last record, The End Of the Universe, which found Black making fun of Atlanta, this release finds him in Minnesota where he first berates the locals for living in a deep freeze. He then goes on to praise the enlightened attitude towards drinking he found in Ireland before he gets down to some serious invective about Enron ("the guys are so greedy the word greedy doesn't even apply to them!"), Homeland Security ("the only way duct tape would help in a chemical attack would be if you could get enough to wrap yourself up and die before the chemicals got you!") and Iraq ("only 30% of us vote and we're going to teach the world about democracy!?").
He comes from the Left but he's really speaking out for sanity; his special appeal lies in the gusto he does it with. A friend of mine says that Lewis says what he'd like to say except that he says it louder. He rightly shouts down the way Bush took us to war, saying, "I didn't fucking spent my time coming through the era of Vietnam, to come around to this fucking time and [us] not having learned that the goddamn situation boils down to this -- if you are against the war it doesn't mean you are for the other side!"
I will always salute him for that in this era of rule by aw-shucks good ole boy klepto-plutocrats. In fact I'd love to have Lewis debate Rush Limbaugh or Bill O'Reilly sometime. He may not displace Bill Hicks from his hallowed spot in my Pantheon of Comic Genius, but Lewis Black comes really close and that's mighty high praise in my book. And of course Black's not dead, so he may still have a chance!
© 2004 - Rusty Pipes