Lewis Black: Tragically, I Need You

Ladies and gentlemen, Lewis Black!

Now that's the... sound of an audience

that hasn't been out for a while.

I'm really thrilled...

at the level of excitement you're bringing this evening.

Tone it down.

You know, I... 'cause I really...

really wish I was...

even half as excited as you are.

But I think...

I think that music, you know... is...

Eh!

It's... I mean, it's great, but it's over the top.

It creates an expectation in this room that,

you know, you hear this and you get fucking pumped

and you think what's gonna come out.

You know, jugglers and sword swallowers

and fire eaters and gymnasts

and fucking wild animals even.

Jaguars and tigers and...

and then...

and then just one aging Jew wanders on the stage.

And let me just say, I know that for those of you

who came here tonight and don't know me.

You were probably just a bit shocked.

You thought...

"I came all the way for this?"

And if you don't know me,

I'm just going to tell you upfront.

This...uh...

This could be a long night.

It really could.

And if you get upset tonight...

uh... it's on you.

It's... It's not on me.

OK?

All right, you had ample opportunity, OK?

Including the pandemic which gave you a fucking ton of time.

So do a little research

and kind of see who you were coming...

Oh, I'm gonna go see this person.

But you fucking didn't.

You didn't do your homework.

If you had children

and you went to a movie you'd read the review, wouldn't you?

And you'd sit there and go, you know,

so that when you ended up at the movie with your kids,

you didn't find yourself in the middle of it going,

"Fuck, they killed everybody!"

So what's gonna happen is...

I'm gonna say some things

and you're not really gonna hear them.

What you're going to hear

is that you're gonna feel

as if I have challenged your basic belief system.

You're going to feel that

somehow I have fucking insulted you

on a level you never imagined.

And...

what I've said, all I said was a joke.

That was it.

Just a joke.

But what you're going to hear is,

"Your mother sucks cocks in hell!"

And that isn't what I said.

OK? It's not even close.

And you have to understand, OK,

that I have been doing this for a long time, and...

never have I said anything

on the stage

that has changed fucking anything.

Thousands and thousands of people have come and watched me

and the next day woke up and went,

"It's still the same."

And you should know that since I started doing it,

things have gotten worse.

So realize that there...

and I know this will shock some of you,

there are people who actually came out tonight to see me, OK?

And they... they overpaid.

And so I really need you to make this evening,

don't fuck up their evening, OK?

Don't... Just sit there, all right?

If I say a joke and you don't think it's funny,

you get to nail me.

And the way you get to nail me is you don't laugh.

That's it. All right?

And you let your nipples turn bright red...

and you shut the fuck up.

'Cause if you mess up this evening, OK?

I'm gonna tell my mother.

And when she finds out, your life is gonna be fucking hell.

OK? And I mean this.

You don't fuck with my mother, all right?

She's 103. So she--

My mother's 103.

Sometimes I feel like she's a tortoise

that's escaped her shell,

I mean, it's kind of remarkable, 103.

I am blessed really to have spent all of that time with her,

but... she's 103.

And to give you an idea, just how tough,

I mean she practiced on me, OK?

And this is how, this is one of the last things she said

when I saw her recently.

Just to give you a taste of what's coming for you.

She said to me...

Actually, to the caregiver there,

"He...

He just put me to sleep.

I can't imagine what he does to an audience."

She's good.

103, so sometimes she's here...

and sometimes... Ooh, she's there,

but I'm lucky and so is she

that we she does not have Alzheimer's, no dementia.

What she has is something that

doctors haven't given a name to yet.

She just makes shit up.

When the fuck were you in Thailand?

She's claimed that she raised an entire family,

another family.

And the son, who is as old as I am,

apparently is nicer to her than I've ever been.

She's, uh...

in competition now with the Bezos

and Musk and Branson.

Those are the three who were, you know, you know them.

They're launching their penises into space.

They are whacking off into the universe.

They're spending billions, billions to get out there.

My mother has been orbiting the earth

on a regular basis for 12 years.

And I wouldn't even call where she lived assisted living.

I call it a launchpad.

And she doesn't spend billions

because her rocket fuel is oatmeal.

It was a long time.

It was about three, it was more than a year,

just a chunk more than a year that it took from me.

I didn't get to see my mother for that long.

You know, she was in this place she's living.

It was in a lockdown. I could not get to visit her.

It was 500 days

from my last performance

till the time I performed again. Five hundred days.

And the last time I performed,

in front of an audience before the whole thing shut down,

was on March 13th,

and I was in New Buffalo, Michigan

at a casino there.

And I knew that things were coming to an end.

I knew that we were moving into a shutdown, OK?

Because myself and a friend of mine, who many of you know,

it was another, really a great comic, Kathleen Madigan.

She and I...

She and I, from the moment that that virus hit,

from the moment we heard about it,

we tracked that son of a bitch every day, every fucking day.

We were like the Fauci and Birx of the comedy community.

We were on the phone. "Did you hear that?

Did you hear what's happening?

They fucked up, somebody left the door open to the lab.

Somebody got on the goddamn boat, it's coming our way.

Close the harbors.

Those fuckers have to close the harbors."

Nobody listened.

But we knew it was out there.

We knew it was coming.

And luckily I was at least in a position,

I kind of knew this was gonna be my last show

because the show on March 14th

that I was gonna have had been canceled.

She, however, was on her way

to the airport to get on a plane to Reno.

I said, "Turn back!

You don't wanna get on that fucking plane.

You don't wanna end up in Reno.

Son of a bitch, they're gonna hold you there

for God knows how long, 'cause they're gonna need

at least one person to gamble."

They talked about closing my show on the 13th.

They said, "We may not go through with it."

But they were kind of stuck

because 1500 fuckers had shown up.

And we knew this, I knew it because they were in the casino,

standing shoulder to shoulder.

That did not bode well.

There they were.

And I was there.

I was at a very safe distance.

I was, well, fuck I was watching 'em through binoculars.

That night I went on stage.

It was a sold out house.

I really didn't know what to say.

I'd never been in this position before.

Nobody knew what was coming next.

And I stared out at them and the first thing that came

into my mind was, "Well, woo, thanks for risking your life."

I got a bigger laugh that night.