live show of the day--Lewis Black at the Palace Theater, Cleveland, OH 3/12/06

"the president has handlers? what is he--a bear?"

just one of the many nuggets of wisdom imparted by comedian Lewis Black to the packed house at the Palace Theater in Cleveland's Theater District (yes, we have one.)

let's get one thing about stand up acts that have made it big--there are always going to be a group of people who feel the need to scream a comedian's old bit back at them, like they are calling for the obligatory playing of "Freebird" at a Lynyrd Skynyrd concert. these people are beyond annoying. fortunately Lewis scored immediate points by telling one of these assholes who had screamed "wash your balls" (referring to an old bit) he responded by telling him "if you can smell them, it's you, not me." alas, the annoying cat calls from the gallery persisted.

here's the problem with a guy like Lewis Black. he pays the bills by making fun of the absurdity of politics. unfortunately, when you do that, you walk a fine line between comedy and ranting. i am sure at one point in his career Black had an act that was 100% funny...but last night he was 50-50 comedy to rant, and while most of the audience was big on drinking the kool-aid he was brewing, i came to laugh, and those seemed to be few and far between. that is not to say that Black's rants didn't skew toward hilarity, but as Black himself admitted "he can't make this stuff up."

i think if you asked Black, he probably wishes his audience didn't so fervently accept what he says when he comes out of his mouth--but people are lazy, and when they find that they have mentally connected with something someone says they don't need to think about anything they say ever again. and i think part of what killed the performance for me was the annoying audience. when i go to a comedy show, i want to hear new bits, not the stuff that i can watch on the Comedy Central Presents special that has been re-run 100 times.

and one final word about Lewis Black's opener, John Bowman. very funny, very irreverent (he made a joke about Natalee Holloway and "the poor douchebag that fell off the boat during his honeymoon" as well as telling the audience he was selling a calendar at the merch table that was called "the Adventures of Mohommad) but part of his act and his biggest laughs came from doing a Lewis Black impression. it's kind of a cheap laugh if you think about it, and is as cheap as the adulation a crowd gives when a comedian talks about a recent marriage or birth. his material was strong enough to stand on its own without having to pull out the cheap parlor tricks.