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LEWIS BLACK
TEMPERED TEMPER
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After decades of struggling as a playwright and in stand-up, comedian Lewis Black has reached the top of his game. He performs 250 dates a year, appears weekly on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, was the subject of a recent in-depth New York Times Magazine feature, has a new album in stores and a book on the way, and packs theaters like the Orpheum, where he appeared before a full house last Saturday. Black took aim at some of his favorite targets — the Bush administration, the religious right — but he made a few side steps to cater to local fans, going off about Boston’s miserable winters and the resurrection of the Red Sox. Mostly, the 56-year-old New Yorker tapped into his deep vein of righteous, liberal anger, walking a tightrope between measured incredulousness and fits of apoplectic shock — usually triggered by political stupidity, dishonesty, or hypocrisy — that transform him into a barking cultural junkyard dog. His wry observations included a breakdown of conservative legislators’ efforts to pass a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage: "On our list of national concerns, gay marriage should be on page six, right after ‘Are we eating too much garlic as a people?’ " He also compared the Dick Cheney/John Edwards debate to "watching a psychotic homeless person arguing with a ‘special child.’ " But his bark was a bit more subdued than usual. As he hinted, that may have been the result of his recent appearance at the Congressional Reporters’ Dinner, where he performed on a dais that included two of his biggest targets, Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz. All joking aside, Black hates both men. "Bush was supposed to be there," he quipped, "but the pope died and he had to attend the funeral. Talk about divine intervention." But while he was skewering almost everything the current administration stands for, he noticed Cheney "laughing at every joke. He’s howling. I thought, ‘What the fuck? I’ve sold myself out!’ " Worse yet, afterward, Wolfowitz told Black’s mother how much he liked Black. The comic’s reaction: "Holy God, I’m going to Hell." He went on to rage about everything from the inane campaign against TV obscenity triggered by Janet Jackson’s Super Bowl breast to the abject stupidity of creationists — "In Georgia, a man came up to me after a show and said, ‘Mr. Black, you’ve missed the point: fossils are the handiwork of the Devil.’ " But if Black himself ends up in the ultimate Hot Zone, it’s Satan who’ll be feeling the comic’s unstoppable fire.
BY TED DROZDOWSKI
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