Lewis Black
Lewis Niles Black is an American stand-up comedian, author, playwright and actor. He is known for his comedy style which often includes simulating a mental breakdown or an increasingly angry rant, ridiculing history, politics, religion, trends and cultural phenomena. He hosted Comedy Central's The Root of All Evil and makes regular appearances on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart delivering his "Back in Black" commentary segment. When not on the road performing, he resides in Manhattan and also maintains a residence in Chapel Hill, N.C.
Black was born in Silver Spring, Maryland. He is the son of Jeannette, a teacher, and Sam Black, an artist and mechanical engineer. He was raised in a middle-class Jewish family in Silver Spring, Maryland, graduating from Springbrook High School in 1966, summa cum laude having the highest average of all males in high school. Black claims in his book that he scored highly on the math section of his SAT exam and later applied to Princeton University among others. Black matriculated at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where he studied playwriting and was a brother of Pi Lambda Phi International fraternity and a member of Student Congress. He earned a Masters in Fine Arts at the Yale School of Drama in 1977.
Originally, his career was in the theater as a playwright. He served as the playwright in residence and associate artistic director of Steve Olsen's West Bank Cafe Downstairs Theatre Bar in Hell's Kitchen in New York City, where he collaborated with composer and lyricist Rusty Magee and artistic director Rand Foerster on hundreds of one-act plays from 1981 to 1989. Also with Rusty Magee, Lewis wrote the musical The Czar Of Rock and Roll, which premiered at Houston's Alley Theatre in 1990.
Black's stand-up comedy began as an opening act for the plays as he was also the master of ceremonies. After a management change at the theater, Black left and began working as a comedian as well as finding bit parts in television and films.
Lewis Black's style of comedy is that of a man who, in dealing with the absurdities of life and contemporary politics, is approaching his personal limits of sanity. Sarcasm, hyperbole, profanity, shouting and trademark angry finger-shaking bring emphasis to his topics of discussion. He once described his humor as "being on the Titanic every single day and being the only person who knows what is going to happen." He claims that he doesn't write his jokes down, he merely starts talking about something that makes him angry until he has to move on before he has a stroke.
Black describes his political affiliation as such: "I'm a socialist, so that puts me totally outside any concept...the Canadians get it. But seriously, most people don't get it. The idea of capping people's income just scares people. 'Oh, you're taking money from the rich.' Ooh, what a horrifying thing. These people really need $200 million".
Black lists his comedic influences as George Carlin, Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor, Lily Tomlin, Bob Newhart and Shelley Berman.
In 1998, he starred in his first comedy special on the series Comedy Central Presents. He starred in two additional episodes of the series in 2000 and 2002. He starred in another special for the network in 2002 titled Taxed Beyond Belief.
In 2000, Black and fellow comedian Jim Norton were arrested for their involvement with "The Naked Teen Voyeur Bus", a specially designed bus with acrylic glass walls containing numerous (18 and 19 year old) "teen girls." This bus rode around Manhattan while being broadcast on the "Opie and Anthony" radio show. Unfortunately, radio station management did not inform the O&A show that the bus' route was also the route that President Clinton was taking that same day. Twenty-eight hours after the arrest, Black and Norton were released. Black appeared on The Daily Show the following night where he stated he was exercising his constitutional rights. He then joked that the location of
“Earth Day was created because we were doing a lot of drugs, more drugs than you could ever f@*! imagine. And so we came up with Earth Day, so we'd have one day that would remind us what planet we were living on.”
“Now I must leave you as you enter the world that is Fuck. You are fucking lucky to be here. It's almost utopian.”
“At seven p.m., hope is sparked again when some new chirpy airline employee announces that a new plane without that nasty mechanical problem - the aviation of the clap - will arrive around 9 o'clock. Apparently, the old plane would now be used as a decoy plane so that when a plane wasn't available it could be loaded with passengers who could sit there thinking that they would be leaving in fifteen minutes.”
“I don't know if watching Chaz Bono will turn your kids into transsexuals, but I'm pretty sure that letting them watch Keith Ablow will turn them into assholes”
“Who knew that the devil had a factory where he made millions of fossils, which his minions distributed throughout the earth, in order to confuse my tiny brain?”
“Just relax and breathe through your ass.”
“They're so broke that they've actually cut essential services. In many places, they've cut policemen, because, who the fuck needs them? Or firemen, son of a bitch, it's much more fun watching something burn down.”
“If you really think there's a Santa, why don't you sit on the front steps all night in the freezing cold and see if he climbs down any chimneys tonight. Good luck. And since we're a family that isn't lucky enough to have a chimney, how would Santa get into our house? Does he bring a locksmith with him? And it probably would have to be a Jewish locksmith, because a Christian locksmith is going to want to be home with his family. And how many Jewish locksmiths are there? None.”
“Ninety percent of a shirt that not only was bright purple and green but with a design on it that, if you moved too quickly, might cause a seizure in an unsuspecting onlooker.”
“Apparently there is no profit in the unique, or not enough to make it worthwhile to preserve. Ultimately it drains the life out of us, and existentialism starts to make more and more sense. ”
“All you had to say was, 'I am a writer,' and you became one. You didn't even have to write anything. You could just sit in a coffee shop with a notebook and stare into space, with a slightly bemused look on your face, judging the weight of the world with a jaundiced eye. As you can see, you can be completely full of shit and still be a writer...I also thought it was going to be a great way to meet girls, but it wasn't--probably because as I was staring into space, I no doubt looked mildly retarded. You see, I wanted to write plays, which in retrospect is a lot harder than learning Mandarin, I think. How I ended up in this delusional state shall be saved for another time.”
“Each of us is full of shit in our own special way. We are all shitty little snowflakes dancing in the universe.”
“I don't know if you've noticed, but our two-party system is a bowl of shit looking at itself in the mirror.”
“That's the funny thing about religion: it doesn't matter what you say, you're going to upset someone. ”
“They should have a store next to the bookstore called the shit store where you can get shit books to read while on the shitter. No one reads great literature on the shitter.”
“If you stop eating donutes you will live 3 years longer.It's just 3 more years that you want a donut. < . ) < . ”
“Jerry Falwell said that the reason that September 11th happened, the reason that God allowed it to happen, was because of certain people in our country. People like, and I'm quoting, 'the pagans,' which is a motorcycle group. Feminists; he brought up feminists. [...] And I couldn't believe it, he said that God had actually talked to him and said, these were the people. That was the reason. It was those people, and that was the reason God allowed this to happen. And I thought, 'That's odd.' Because God had called me twelve hours before, and He said the reason He was upset was because of people like Jerry Falwell.”
“sometimes i wonder does god just not care are is he to busy ignoring your prayers”
“A republican stands up in congress and says 'I GOT A REALLY BAD IDEA!!' and the democrat stands up after him and says 'AND I CAN MAKE IT SHITTIER!!”
“It’s absolutely stupid that we live without an ozone layer. We have men, we’ve got rockets, we’ve got saran wrap – FIX IT!!!”
“We are all shitty little snowflakes dancing in the universe.”
“In a series of wonderful essays, Evan Handler gives himself up to us - warts and all. To our amusement and bemusement we share in his emotional growth as he struggles to mature. I not only laughed along with him but felt that I too had grown a little along the way. Who could ask for more?”
“Anybody who likes writing a book is an idiot. Because it's impossible, it's like having a homework assignment every stinking day until it's done. And by the time you get it in, it's done and you're sitting there reading it, and you realize the 12,000 things you didn't do. I mean, writing isn't fun. It's never been fun. It's momentum, and once you get the momentum going, that's great, but it's a brutal experience in many, many ways. And when you're done, people tell you "Well, gee, I'm not interested." "Great, I'm glad I sat down and wrote this!”
“Writing is thinking and thinking is hard work.”
“Americans continue to rapidly homogenize ourselves into a neutered oblivion. For a country founded on the protection of the unique, we relish our sameness.”
“There's no such thing as soy milk. It's just soy juice.”
“Behind me, I heard a young woman of 25 say, "If it weren’t for my horse, I wouldn’t have spent that year in college." Now, I'm gonna repeat that, because it bears repeating. "If it weren't for my horse..." as in, giddyup, giddyup, let's go — "I wouldn't have spent that year in college," which is a degree-granting institution. Don't think about that too long, or BLOOD will shoot out your NOSE!”