Lewis Black walked on stage to a smattering of applause Feb. 2 at the Missouri Theatre.
Black opened the show by discussing how the media always asked about his agenda and people were always very excited to see him, as if he could impart some knowledge to them.
“Well, get ready for some fucking disappointment,” Black told the audience. “People say laughter is the best medicine. No. Medicine is.”
After warming up the audience, Black started a rant about how the 21st century didn’t live up to the expectations of a futuristic world with flying cars. He touched on topics such as how the current generation “knows every website, like snickysnacky.com” and doesn’t understand the concept of getting up to change a TV channel. Although the jokes went over well with the mostly older crowd, they didn’t come off quite as funny with the younger members in the audience. It was an odd choice of jokes considering the college-town location, but the jokes were humorous enough for Black to enter his rant about cell phones.
“If any object is ADD, this is it,” said Black as he held up his cellphone.
He then went on to rant about how AT&T is a carrier like “mosquitos carry West Nile Virus,” and how he had to buy a transmitter for his Times Square apartment to get signal, making his iPhone a landline. He then discussed how his Droid phone worked wonderfully until the warranty expired. These jokes were much more humorous and elicited laughter from all members of the crowd, young and old. If you have ever experienced cell phone problems, you would have found these jokes funny.
Black then delved into pop culture, especially Kim Kardashian. After “re-enacting” Kim’s sex tape, Black complained about how he doesn’t have a reality show, though he has a master’s degree in fine arts.
Finally, Black dug into the political parties, one of his trademarks. He discussed how still being a member of a political party is idiotic and slammed the Republican candidates. He added, “Barack is a stupid name? What about Newt or Mitt?!” and discussed how “Ron Paul is a brilliant person. But he also would want to line up all the tractors and drive them into the sea. He’s psychotic.”
Toward the end, the crowd was laughing nonstop as Black’s jokes got significantly stronger as the show went on.
“I thought it was great,” says Jason Kemp, who described himself as a big Lewis Black fan.
Students and non-students alike enjoyed the vintage Lewis Black humor the show provided.
“I thought it was really funny,” junior Melvin Wright says. “It was Lewis Black, smart and funny. He missed some jokes at the start, but then was funny. I’d give him a B+, A-.”