Fun fact about Lewis Black: Apparently he took the bus to Tahoe.
“It was an adventure on the way here,” he said to open his show at the MontBleu on Friday. “Great weather you’re having. The wind blew our bus over one entire lane. I was in the hotel and was going to go outside, but I don’t weigh enough. I looked out and the snow was going up.”
You probably already know that Black is the World’s Angriest Man — and the recent windstorm was all he needed to get his blood boiling. It fed right into his schtick. And it’s a schtick that has served him well. He’s made a career out of unhinged rants as a guest on “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart,” numerous comedy cable specials, books, plays, and speaking gigs — among the latter his address at the National Press Club this past April.
And of course stand-up: his latest stop was the MontBleu. As one might expect, Lewis waded pretty deeply into politics — noting, for instance, that Mitch McConnell’s cheeks appear to be filled with nuts. Black: “I believe he’s the largest squirrel ever caught. Someone shaved him and now he’s a senator. And why not?”
On Sarah Palin. “I can’t watch her without an asthma inhaler.”
And on John Boehner: “He’s a mood ring come to life.”
But the vitriol wasn’t exclusively aimed at Republicans.
“I’m a Washington Redskins fan,” Black told the audience. “Our quarterback, Robert Griffin III, is like President Obama. Both of them sit around and don’t do shit.”
Black tried to explain his attitude toward the U.S. Congress: “It’s time to electroshock them. I really think that they have a form of mental illness.”
Black’s stand-up persona is more attitude than jokes — the written word really doesn’t do him justice. He is the long-suffering everyman; the befuddled guy next door who just can’t believe, for instance, that someone was able to fly a drone onto the grounds of the White House recently.
“Into the White House!” Black exclaimed, shaking his jowls. “Hello!? We’re always behind.”
He even found something not to like about Hawaii. And that takes some doing.
“My message to you tonight is, go to Tahiti,” Black said. “It’s paradise. I was in Hawaii recently, and compared to Tahiti, Hawaii is a shithole.”
But Black isn’t always unhappy. On a recent trip to Copenhagen, Denmark, for instance, he was driving to a show and saw naked breasts on a billboard.
“My mouth watered,” he said. “They were sublime. We could never have a billboard like that here in the U.S. Cars would drive into ditches.
“Then, on the third day driving by that billboard, I noticed that there was writing on it. It wasn’t in English, but you didn’t have to be that smart to figure it out.It was a breast enhancement ad. So they are like us.
“One thing I do know is that you’ll never see a billboard with a giant penis,” Black said. “Not going to happen.”
Black, who is 66, said that he couldn’t figure out why any woman would go in for unnecessary surgery. “I have never see a pair of breasts that has disappointed me.”
But he would consider breast enhancement for himself.
“That way, when I’m no longer funny, I can still have a career,” he said. “People will say, ‘I know he’s not funny anymore, but I love his rack.”
You can watch portions of Black’s MontBleu performance on his website, TheRantIsDue.com.
