We're All "Screwed"

Growing up near Washington, D.C., comedian/commentator/screamer Lewis Black was surrounded by the federal government. Every day, he'd see something that "would fuckin' piss me off," he growls in his standup routine. So Black would go to the White House or Congress, and "find whoever it was who bothered me and scream at them, 'Fuck you!' Then, I realized, 'You can't make a living doing this.'"

Can't he? For years, be it on The Daily Show, his comedy acts or in his book Nothing's Sacred,Black has been our collective scream (literally) against the insanity coming out of our nation's capital. For his latest show, "Red, White and Screwed," Black rants on Dubya, illegal immigration, Dick Cheney ("That's all I need to say -- Dick Cheney!") and Katrina ("I thought FEMA was a bone in the ass.")

Sure, some of his material isn't exactly breaking news, but Black's frenzied, "I'm about to lose my shit" delivery keeps things fresh. On the elections, Black notes that the Dems not finding someone to beat George W. Bush in 2004 was truly an amazing feat, "like finding a normal person who would lose in the Special Olympics." He questions Dubya's henchman, Dick Cheney, and the skill required of one of his favorite pastimes: "Hunting quail is like saying, 'I'm going fishing,' then going to a goldfish bowl and saying 'I got it!'" He points and shrieks, and the stupider the idea, the more likely he is to have a coronary. "Catch 11 million people?" he yells against the planned illegal alien roundup. "Are you out of your fucking mind!?"

Yes, the stupidity of our current life isn't as scary as it is funny when Black describes it. "We don't know what we're doing anymore," he says of our society. Good thing he's here to show us how it's done.
Fri., June 23, 8 p.m.