Lewis Black has made a career of being angry. Bless him for it.
That Lewis Black is a native of Washington, D.C., makes sense, as doings in the nation’s capitol agitate the comedian like a lifelong itch.
Black made his mark in standup for routines built around the short path he traverses between muttered musing and spittlesoaked shout. At 69, he’s accrued more than his share of grievances and turned them into comedy sets. It can be hard to tell, though, if these are boom or bust times for Black. He certainly finds fault with the current presidential administration, but a photo on his website shows Black holding up a faux newspaper with the headline: “President makes comedians obsolete.”
He revisits Houston — the site of his famous Starbucks Coffee routine — for a show at the Revention Music Center on Saturday.
Q: How’s everything with you today?
A: Oh it’s just wonderful. Everything gets better every day. Every day it’s just more wonderful as I move closer to some kind of breakdown. (Laughs.)
Q: Years ago I was one of those dummies who asked if you worried you’d run out of material when George Bush was
out of the White House.
A: (Laughs.) Yeah, I never worried about that. I tell you, it’s like high school now. And I never really had trouble in high school. I came out of it OK. If you spend that much time with a bunch of people, even the ones you don’t like, you learn to deal with out of sheer exhaustion. But here we are with a guy tweeting about attacking another country. That’s basic high school behavior. The people who had trouble in high school, I can’t see them surviving this. I’ve seen therapists in the course of my life. Some people deal with it in other fashions. But this is a story about the quintessential high school bully. Everybody responds to it on a visceral level because it’s astonishing.
Q: Do you force yourself to follow it all? Or do you tune it out?
A: I don’t pay attention to a lot of it. You’re in the media, you’re stuck having to deal with it more than I am. Dealing with all the media today, I’ve just stayed away from it, and some of it isn’t media: Twitter and Facebook and Snapchat and Dog(expletive) and Fartlick. People call that media. Typing in space doesn’t make it media. So I’m ignoring that more and more. A friend got upset about some stupid thing the other day. I said, “You’re upset about something you don’t really know about. And now I’m upset because you’re upset.” I wouldn’t have cared before! Then he went and (expletive) up my day.
Q: With so much news to mine for comedy, do you have to be a more careful editor?
A: That’s the thing, that’s what makes it harder. Before he was elected, he’s standing there on CNN talking behind Sarah Palin, and it’s absurd. And I’m thinking, “I’m supposed to make this funnier? I can’t. My job is done.” The tweeting? I could literally go on stage and read five or six of his tweets. He keeps topping himself. Just read a paper. If you woke up and read this in a novel, you’d think, “This is the best (expletive) satire I’ve ever read.” Because it’s in reality, that puts it in a different framework. It’s beyond drugs. I guess that’s where it all comes back to roost in a sense. We spent years worried about LSD and pot and hallucinogens. Now they’d be helpful. Because they dumped these computers on people, turned a phone into a computer and extended the central nervous system. They load it up with this crap, it’s all drugs. If I get on my computer at 10 o’clock, by noon I have to take a nap.
Q: Do you have some sort of decompression space from the things that make you angry?
A: Yeah, spending time with friends helps. Having dinner with them. But that’s how come I don’t go to comedy clubs. If you do a bunch of shows, 90 minutes long, you don’t want to sit around and hear other people telling jokes. I also like to play golf. Before we roll into Houston, I’ll probably play some golf, if it’s ever spring again.
Q: Your Starbucks bit was set in Houston. Did you find the city’s comedy scene welcoming?
A: I did, the Laff Stop, I did that place a lot. I really like working there and in Houston. It was a great place to work. One of those formative places for me. And the Laff Stop is how I discovered that idiotic Starbucks across the street from Starbucks. I stumbled out of there for dinner and saw it. I was doing four nights there. So by the fourth night I had the beginnings of how to do that bit. But I remember it being a great room, and full of a lot of great young comics.