"Hello, this is Lewis Black." "Ah, fuck you." "Let's try it again." "Hello, Detroit, I'm going to be shooting my next" "Well, why don't you tell 'em who you are, fuck-nut?" "Mister arrogant fuck." "Oh, yeah, just by the sound of my voice." "People have asked me," ""Why are you shooting your special in Detroit, Lewis?"" "And I say, "lf anybody is as angry as I am, it's the good people of Detroit."" "I'll see you there." "[jazzy music]" "# #" " Ladies and gentlemen, Lewis Black." "[upbeat jazzy music]" "# #" " l really believe it would be in the best interests of everyone if you could lower your expectations." "Yeah." "Yeah." "Yes." "About 20%/%." "I don't think that's too much to ask." "No, I'm serious." "The way the" "The U.S. economy is really down about 20%/%, and I believe we should live our lives accordingly." "Doesn't mean you don't wake up without a positive attitude;" "you do." "You wake up every morning." "You say, "lt's going to be a great day, less 20%/%."" "The question I've been asked over and over during the- really, the past year is, is now that President Bush has left office, what"- [cheers and applause]" ""Now that George Bush has left" ""the office of the presidency," "Lewis, what are you going to do?"" "And I've said every time," ""l guess I just won't be funny anymore."" "I certainly miss him." "He did make my life easy." "Basically, I would just come out in any city, read what he said that day, and go on my merry way." "It's amazing." "What kind of a fucking stupid question is that?" "Like, somehow because George Bush left office, stupidity fled the country." "When it comes to idiots, our country's like Whac-A-Mole." "You get rid of one, and three more will pop up." "They're asking me this question, and meanwhile, the new president picked a secretary of the Treasury who didn't do his taxes." "What am I going to do?" "I do think there are two important lessons that can be learned from his presidency." "The first: if you find yourself in a voting booth and you're looking at two names and you're thinking to yourself," ""Gee, I'd really like to hang out with this guy;" "boy, would he be fun to drink with,"" "you vote for the other person." "And if you're going to vote for someone because you think they're going to be fun to drink with, you be fucking sure they're still drinking." "Now, secondly, I believe- and I know this is simplistic- the reason- one of the main reasons that George Bush became the president is because President Olinton got a blow job." "And this upset a lot of people who didn't get one." "So the Ohristian right was motivated to find a candidate who they felt was religious and spiritual and had a great faith in God." "If you're going to vote for somebody because you think they have a great faith in God, you be really sure that God has faith in them." "It's a two-way street." "When President Obama was elected, I'll never forget the next day." "Everyone everywhere said the following:" ""l can't believe this could possibly have ever happened in my lifetime."" "Which made me wonder," ""Who voted for him?"" "Now, people were truly overwhelmed by his election." "I wasn't as much, and the reason is because he's a Democrat, and that didn't seem to me to be an improvement over Republican." "I don't know if you've noticed, but our two-party system is a bowl of shit looking in the mirror at itself." "[cheers and applause]" "Why would I be excited that a Democrat won?" "Seriously, over the past eight years, the Democrats didn't do shit." "Basically, the last eight years, I feel, the Republicans stood around farting, and the Democrats went, "Ooh, let me smell it."" "I find it astonishing that anyone is still a loyal Democrat or a loyal Republican." "What are you basing this on?" "How is it possible?" "What is it that you see?" "I don't see what you're seeing." "What is it that the Democrats or the Republicans have done for any of you in the past 30 years that has made any difference in your life?" "And yet people hang in." "Which makes me wonder, "What the fuck?"" "I believe you're delusional." "I believe you're seeing something that isn't there." "And we call that hallucinating." "And I know about hallucinations, because I took LSD when I was young just to prepare me for this moment in time." "I saw my refrigerator turn into a puma and run away." "And I tracked that son of a bitch for three days, mostly wondering," ""What am I going to tell my parents?"" "And when I finally caught up with it in the middle of the woods and I was cutting open its stomach in order to get a beer out, as crazy as I was at that point, I was less crazy than anybody in this room" "who's still a Democrat or a Republican." "The big change for me over the past eight years is that I became a mainstream comedian." "And I- [cheers and applause] I beg to differ with you." "I believe that is wrong, because I listen to the shit that comes out of my mouth, and I am appalled." "And I know that I've become a mainstream comedian because over the past two years, I did the USO Ohristmas tour in Iraq and Afghanistan." "[cheers and applause]" "I really don't know how representative I am in terms of entertainment for the troops, because if-you know" "And to tell you just how mainstream it is, this winter, I can't go and do the tour, so I will be hosting the benefit in Washington, D.O., for the USO." "And I just think- [applause]" "I think that's wrong." "I think it's very odd that we went in my lifetime from Bob Hope to me." "I also know that I'm mainstream because a few months ago, I performed at a benefit, Tony La Russa's benefit in St. Louis, Missouri, for Animal Rescue." "And I followed onto the stage Vince Gill." "And it doesn't get any more fucking mainstream than that." "Now, I know that some of you don't know who Vince Gill is, and that's because you don't listen to country music, and I know you don't listen to country music because a lot of it is shit." "A lot of it- a lot of it, quite honestly, is based on old Jerry Springer episodes." "But Vince Gill is a country music legend and icon." "And I thought that I'd followed possibly every type of act, because for 20 years, I toured clubs in the country, and comics performed before me that were just- some were just- they would scare the shit out of you." "People, who the audience- when I got on stage, the audience was still screaming, "Fuck you too!"" "The strangest act I ever followed onto the stage was in a club in Parma, Ohio." "This comedian ended his set." "He was talking about how he was in the delivery room when his wife gave birth." "And he said that he noticed that her- now, I'm quoting- her pussy got bigger and bigger and bigger." "And a couple of months later, he was thinking about having oral sex with her- or as he put it, "going down on her"- and he thought back to that moment in the delivery room" "and felt, "What if her pussy gets bigger and bigger"- hang in there;" "you're adults." ""Her pussy gets bigger and bigger" ""and snaps over my head and my head be inside her pussy?"" ""And now here's Lewis Black."" "I thought that was as strange as it could get, and then I had to follow Vince Gill." "Vince Gill is 6'7"." "But with his star quality, he's 1 2 feet tall." "And he strode onto that stage, and 8,000 people went completely nuts." "They were huge fans of his." "And he began to sing." "And I'd never, ever been in his presence while he was singing." "And let me just tell you this, that after 30 seconds, I felt exactly the way I feel when I'm taking a bath that is just the perfect temperature." "By the end of the song, I can't tell you what he was singing about, but I know I have never been that comfortable in my whole life." "And then he told a story, a really funny story, a really clean, funny story, a clean, funny story where he never said the word "fuck" once, a fucking clean, funny fucking story." "Son of a bitch, it was goddamn fucking funny." "I was laughing my tits off at his clean story." "And then Vince began to talk about his father... [sighs]" "His dead father." "Son of a bitch." "He's pulling out the dead father card." "That's a hard one to trump." "And his father was a great and wonderful man." "He was not only a redneck;" "he was a judge." "He was everything to everyone." "He was the greatest man that ever walked the Earth." "And all I kept thinking was," ""Shit, I don't have time to go home and kill mine."" "And Vince said, as his father got sicker and sicker, he pulled Vince aside and told him that he had an idea for a song that he always wanted Vince to write." "And Vince couldn't get it written before his father died, but after he died, he found the inspiration to write that song." "And now he was gonna sing it." "Who's not going to like that song?" "And it was a great song." "It was sad and- son of a bitch-it was funny." "It was really funny." "The refrain of that song was," ""How can I kiss those lips at night that have been chewing my ass out all day long?"" "If you didn't laugh at that, you're fucking brain-dead." "And now he's set the bar for the kind of bad words you can use." "And you can say "ass" in reference to your ass, your physical ass, as in, "He said the word 'ass."' [giggles]" ""l thought he was going to say 'heinie."'" "Now I'm standing offstage, and I'm going through my fucking act getting rid of all the bad words." "I've got about two minutes of stage time." "And then... his wife came onstage." "His wife, if you don't know, is Amy Grant." "And if you don't know who Amy Grant is, you should." "She is the greatest Ohristian singer in all of Ohristendom..." "And she is made entirely out of cream." "I know because I stood behind her and poked." "Bloop, bloop, bloop, bloop." "And she's perfect." "She's fucking perfect." "The only thought I had as I stood next to her was," ""Lewis, you're a despicable piece of shit." "You're a despicable piece of shit."" "Now, she comes on the stage, and she kisses him." "Oh, really?" "The two of you had to kiss?" "You fucking fucks." "Are you shitting me?" "Haven't you taken enough from me?" "You were just standing there." "She was just standing there." "He's been gone 1 2 minutes." "There was no fucking reason for that." "Now, when it comes to love, I am the most jaded fuck in the universe." "But I have to say, when the two of them kissed, you could feel their love." "It went in waves over the audience." "I was knocked over by a riptide of their love." "Son of a bitch." "How will I, a Jew, ever know Ohristian love?" "My friends, many have been married for years, and I've never seen that kind of love." "I thought, "l'm never going to feel that."" "And then I realized I did, but I felt it for just an instant, when I was on a golf course and I hit a hole in one." "And I still have the ball, but I don't kiss it, not in public." "And then Amy began to sing like an angel." "And as angels are wont to do, she was singing about Jesus." "[sighs] I turned to my friend Kathleen Madigan, a terrific comedian, yeah." "[applause]" "She had gotten me the gig." "And I said, "Hey, take a good look at the time" ""and remember it," ""because this is the precise moment that our friendship has ended."" "I actually had to leave while she was singing because I felt that if I stayed there, I would rush the stage and accept Ohrist into my heart as my one true savior." "And then Vince and Amy left the building on the wings of angels." "And now here's Lewis Black." "I came onto the stage, and I said that whoever had put together the order of the acts that evening, I wanted whoever that was to join me onstage, because I was going to use the next 30 minutes" "to just beat the shit out of him." "I said, "Who the fuck comes up with that kind of order?"" "Here are two perfect Ohristians, and now let's follow it with the miserable, aging Jewish prick." "And I am aging." "I know that I'm aging because I turned 60 this year, and I'm not- [applause]" "Don't." "No need to applaud." "Seriously, there's no reason to applaud when somebody gets older." "The only reason somebody gets older is cause of dumb fuck luck." "It isn't like you were sitting out there going," ""Gee, he's really in tremendous shape." "I bet he's on a high fiber diet."" "And I'm not." "I don't go near fiber." "I had an oat muffin ten years ago, and I'm still shitting because of it." "But I turned 60, and it was not a happy moment, because you're not- You don't even get the joy of" "No one treats you as if you've grown old." "Nobody." "You tell people, "God, you know, I'm 60." "I'm a little depressed."" ""Why?" "60's not old."" "Fuck you!" "60's old, you piece of shit." "And how do I know that 60's old?" "Because when I was kid, people who turned 60 were dropping like fucking flies." "We had a neighbor, woke up, had a little bit of cereal, went right over into the bowl." "I said, "What'd he die of?"" ""60."" "Oh, I know that 60's old." "I know that 60's old because I can't remember shit." "My day goes like this:" "I wake up, and I think, "You know," ""l did something really, really important yesterday," ""and it absolutely had to be finished this morning," ""because these people" ""desperately fucking need to have it," ""whoever the fuck they are," ""whatever the fuck it was" ""l was doing yesterday fucking morning." ""Son of a bitch." "God damn it." ""What was I doing yesterday?" ""Fucking A. You've got to be kidding me."" "I go to sleep, and I wake up, and it's gone." "Now I'm wandering around my apartment looking for clues like Sherlock Holmes." "Have to have left a note, a picture." "Maybe there's a message on the phone." "I can remember precisely what my little league uniform looked like when I was 1 2 years old." "And now I can't remember what happened 1 2 hours ago." "You got to be fucking kidding me." "Just relax, Lewis." "Lay down." "And so I do." "Yeah, if I just relax, I'm sure I'll think of it." "[snores]" "Two hours later, I get up from my nap, and it's dinnertime." "Let's eat." "Nobody called." "How important could it be?" "Fuck 'em." "The weirdest thing is if I'm with a group of my friends who are my age." "If you listen to us talk, it's like verbal charades." ""l saw that movie." ""l saw that movie, you know, the movie you told me to see," ""the one you told me to see." ""l saw that movie." ""You know the movie, the one you told me to see." ""l saw the movie, the one you told me to see." ""You told me to see the fucking movie." ""The one with the guy." ""You know, the guy." ""The guy, we liked the guy." ""Then we didn't like the guy." ""Then we liked him." ""Then we don't like him, you know, the guy..." ""who goes out with the girl." ""You know the girl." ""Son of a bitch." ""Remember, there was a..." "No, no, not a moose;" "a bunny, you fuck."" "That conversation can go on for days." "To others, it sounds like," ""Holy shit, these people don't know what we're talking about."" "We know exactly what we're talking about." "We just can't remember any names anymore." "The saddest thing is when we're going," ""Does it begin with an A?" ""Does it begin with a B?" "Try a O."" "My generation can't deal with getting older." "The only thing that my generation right now is leaving behind, because my generation has done fucking nothing- what we leave behind, our message for the ages, is:" "60 isn't old." "60's the new 40." "No, it's not, asshole." "60 is 60, and 40 is 40." "That's why they're different fucking numbers!" "I've never liked birthdays." "I certainly didn't want to celebrate my 60th, but I've never liked birthdays." "I don't get it." "The celebration of mortality." "What the fuck is that about?" "Whoo-hoo, another year closer to the grave." "Birthdays make sense up to the age 21 ." "22, it's all downhill, fuckers." "Take a good look, kids." "This is the end of the line." "When you're eight, there's nothing better." "A great birthday when you're eight:" "you get a wagon, a red wagon." "And you can put shit in the wagon and pull it around." "God damn it, let's go get some more shit." "1 6, you get your driver's license." "21 , finally, finally, you don't have to hand the money to somebody else to get your liquor and you never know if you're going to see the fucker again." "I know that most people don't like birthdays, because nobody likes singing Happy Birthday." "Nobody commits to it, except some of my friends who are in the theater, and then those fuckers harmonize." "Oh, that's creepy and fruity at the same time." "But the rest of us, I don't even care if there's an eight-year-old there." "You don't even fucking- it's same sound every time." "# Nah-nah, nah, nah, nah, nah #" "# Nah-nah, nah, nah, ah, ah #" "# Neh-neh, neh, neh, eh- #" "What's his fucking name?" "I don't remember the kid's name." "So when I tuned 60, I decided that what I would do was perform in Las Vegas, and that would be fun, and that would mark my birthday." "We'd have some drinks." "That's it." "We'd fucking get over it." "And so I perform, and I finish up, and I turn to go, and there, there standing offstage is Ben Brewer, my tour manager, and John Bowman, and they've got a big, giant cake" "with 60 candles on it." "Not little candles, big fuck candles, so that the whole cake is like a torch." "I expected them to run by me and go into the village and look for Frankenstein." "Now I got to blow these candles out in front of about 1 ,500 people." "I have to do an emphysema test." "[splutters]" "That's the other great thing about turning 60." "You pee like a four-year-old." "I've still got winky in my tinky!" ""Why'd you pee on the cake, Lewis?"" "Because it's not fucking chocolate." ""Did you make a wish?"" "Oh, yeah, yeah." "I wished for a pony." "Maybe this year, a pony to pull my little red fucking wagon, asshole." "I've had the same wish pretty much for the past five years." "My wish is that I'll live forever." "Yeah, a lot of people don't understand that, and I don't understand, what the fuck are you wishing for?" "A new appliance?" ""Oh, boy, I hope I get a Roomba this year."" "What fucking planet are you?" "It's a wish." "Fucking go big!" "I've had audience members actually shout out," ""Why would you want to live forever?"" "'Oause I don't want to fucking die!" "How simple is that?" "I have no interest in dying." "I like it here." "I get it." "As fucked up as it can be, I get this." "But out there?" "I don't know what's out there." "It's unknown." "This is known." "That's unknown." "I'm sticking with the known." "Many Ohristians would say that," ""Lewis, if you had faith," ""you should know that angels will come, and they will take you to heaven."" "[sighs]" "Well, I tell my Ohristian friends," ""Until there are photographs, the legal system would say that's hearsay."" "I lean toward reincarnation mainly because you get to come back." "But it gets sticky, because there's a karma thing, and you don't know- you may not come back as a human." "I mean, I could close my eyes and open them, and now I'm a tick sucking the blood out of a Saint Bernard's ear." "And then I'm getting bigger and bigger, and then somebody takes a match" "What kind of a fucking day is that?" "I'd really like to come back as a monkey." "Yeah, any kind of monkey, because I believe, in my heart of hearts, that monkeys are more evolved than we are." "And I'd like to find out." "They were so fucking smart, they didn't leave the jungle, did they?" "They didn't leave fun land." "No, not like the rest of us idiots who go off into a concrete jungle that we create to work in an office with a group of dipshits that fucking give us eczema and a boss who, like, pees in the wastebasket" "when he talks to us." "Really, do you have to do that?" "But you can't say anything to that son of a bitch." "You work your fucking ass off." "Some of you even have two jobs." "It's a fucking pain in the neck, but every so often, you get a little time off." ""Hey," you call your friends," ""Let's go out to dinner this weekend."" "Well, we can't eat at that restaurant, because Stewie's now a vegan." "Well, fuck him!" "Fuck Stewie and the vegan shit." "I'm going to get him a loaded potato and shove it up his ass." "If you're a monkey, you just have your pal turn around, and you pick a whole fucking buffet out of his back." "You spend the whole day shitting and masturbating." "It's fucking heaven, I tell you." "I fear I shared too much." "I used to... I used to want to be cremated, and now I'm not so sure." "As I get older, I like to hedge my bets." "So I'm thinking maybe burial, because if my Ohristian friends are right, maybe that's why people get buried, because that's how the angels find you." "Knock, knock, knock." ""You ready to go?"" ""Yeah." Ha-ha." "If I'm cremated, fuck, I'm all over the place." "The angels look at me and go," ""Well, that's the hardest jigsaw puzzle" ""l've ever fucking seen." ""lt'll take an eternity to put him back together." "Fuck it."" "People say, you know," ""lf you live forever, your friends are gonna die."" "Well, I'll just have to get new friends." "When you compare 60 to somebody who's 20, it's old." "When you compare 60, my age, to my parents, who are 90 and 91 , I'm still a kid." "My mother still thinks she's my mother." "How fucking good is that?" "They've been married-actually, this week-for 64 years." "[applause]" "And those of you who didn't applaud, how bitter are you?" "Dr. Phil would ask," ""What's the secret of their long and successful marriage?"" "And I'd say to Dr. Phil," ""Fuck you, fatty!"" "And I will say to you, if you at any time find yourselves watching Dr. Phil, I want you to get up off the chair or the couch, put your head down, and run at the TV as hard as you can." "And I guarantee, when you come out of the coma, you're gonna thank me." "I watched Dr. Phil for seven minutes." "That's all it took." ""You know, what's good for the dog isn't necessarily good for the frog."" "Well, because they're different species." ""You all have seen the Alien." ""Remember, the alien goes in your mouth," ""comes out your chest." "I want you to think about that."" ""We'll be right back."" "I won't." "I won't be back, Dr. Phil, because I am going to spend the rest of the day looking for heroin." "I'd never seen it as an alternative, but after spending just seven minutes with you, I think it may be the way to go." "Who knew you were the gateway drug?" "The secret of my parent's marriage is very, very simple." "The reason that they've stayed together so long is, they have never heard a word the other one has said." "I realized this when I was ten, and my brother Ron and I were in the backseat of the car going from Maryland to New York to see relatives and my parents were talking in the front seat as we listened to them." "Don't cry." "Don't cry." "They're talking to imaginary people." "I've been lucky." "My parents are great." "And they've given me a number of gifts, one which is a sense of humor which people seem to enjoy but which scares the fuck out of me." "To give you an idea of where my sense of humor comes from, my mother, when she turned 90, I called, I said, "How do you like being 90?"" ""How do I like it?" "It's like overtime."" "Happy birthday." "My book made The Times bestseller list, and so I called- l called my..." "[applause] I called my mother up to tell her." "And she said, "Wow, who knew there were that many idiots out there?"" "My father's very quiet, and it's- you have to be around him for a while to get to his sense of humor." "He is most noted for his smile." "He's always smiling." "He has since I was a kid." "As a matter of fact, when I was young, I thought my father's smile was Zen-like, beatific, almost as if he were in harmony with the universe." "And as I grew older, my friends took me aside and said, "You know, I think your dad's smile is perverted, like he's watching a dirty movie or something."" "And as I've grown older, I've realized my friends are right." "I called my dad after the Sarah Palin debate, and I said, "What did you think of Sarah, Pop?"" "And he went, "Did you see her winking?" "How'd she know I was watching?"" "They got an HDTV, you know, in order to see the closed captions more clearly, and I called Pop and said," ""What do you think of the HD?"" "And he goes, "Ha!" "I love it!" "The cleavage is crystal clear."" "The strangest..." "The strangest moment I've shared with my parents was, I had gotten a gig at Oaesar's in the Poconos of Pennsylvania." "It's a resort area there." "Oaesar's has these four kind of honeymoon getaways, lovers' retreats, no gambling." "It's-what it is, is, it's like a group of fuck huts in the woods with names like Titty Titty Bang Bang," "Spread Eagle, that kind of thing." "These are serious fuck huts, okay?" "I mean, you walk in;" "there's a heart-shaped bed." "Fucky, fuck, fuck." "Indoor pool, got to fuck, fuck." "Sauna." "Fucky, fuck." "Go upstairs, champagne glass, bubble, bubble, fuck, fuck." "If you're still going at 5:00 in the morning, open the closet." "There's a ball gag and a swing." "I told my parents I got the gig there, and my mother- they're 83 at the time- goes, "We're going with you!" "I've always wanted to see that place."" "Now I'm in the woods with my 83-year-old parents." "They are in one fuck hut." "I am in the fuck hut next door... alone, which is as close to being gay as I ever want to be." "I opened up my refrigerator that they have in the room, and there's some cut-up vegetables and dip, so I bring it next door to my parents, because they come out of the Depression, and free food always makes them cry." "They have a refrigerator in their room, so I say, "l bet you got something in there, a surprise."" "And, yes, it was." "Now I'm standing in front of my 83-year-old parents, and in one hand, I have a bowl of strawberries and in the other, a bowl of whipped cream." "And my mother looks at the whipped cream and goes, "What's that for?"" "And my father, without missing a beat, goes," ""lt's for my balls."" "I, um...." "l began therapy that next Tuesday." "It was the beginning of my great depression or great recession or whatever it is we're fucking going through at this point in time." "They call it whatever they want." "Nobody knows what the fuck's happening." "Nobody has a clue as to what's going on economically." "I don't know what they want to call these economic times, but I've never seen anything like it or been through anything like it in my entire fucking life." "We went right into the shitter, and nobody, not one leader, warned us, not a one, not a Democrat and not a Republican." "I think another lesson that can be learned from this is fairly simple, that you should expect from your leader the same thing you'd expect from an experienced canoe guide." ""We'll be going down that fork in the river" ""because if we go down that one, there's a fucking waterfall."" "I knew that we were heading toward the shitter, and I know nothing, and I knew." "And I can guarantee that everybody in this room who had a job and for 40 hours, working 40 hours a week, I can guarantee, a year before the shit hit the fan, you were sitting in the office," "and either you said it or someone in your office at some point turned to you and went," ""Uh, I think we're fucked."" "And the reason- the reason was because we- and what made it so obvious was the housing bubble." "It was, like, the 47th bubble of my lifetime." "And every time, the bubble bursts, and everybody goes, "Wow, how fucked-wow, why?" "Gee, who thought?"" "Everybody knew there was a housing bubble." "You'd-fucking- You'd be in a neighborhood." "You'd go, "Gee, that" ""That house cost $60,000 last year," ""and now it costs $600,000?" "What did they do?"" ""Well..." ""they put a gazebo in the back," ""and it's made entirely of human scrotums." "It's the most comfortable place to sit in town."" "The amazing thing is, is that no one, not one leader, talked about it." "Not one leader discussed where we were headed, not a one." "They all said it was going to be okay." "All I heard through the course of the campaign was that everything was going to be all right, because capitalism is the most wonderful economic system ever developed, because it was developed by God himself for us." "There's nothing more splendid than capitalism." "It is a beautiful garden, a garden that irrigates itself and fertilizes itself, and it needs no sunlight, because it basks in the glory of its own reflection." "There's nothing more wondrous than the garden that is capitalism." "And if it is left entirely unregulated, that garden will grow and grow and grow until all of us share in its beautiful fruit." "And so I went to bed every night dreaming about my beautiful fruit." "And then I woke up one morning, and there was the Secretary of the Treasury standing behind the White House, at the back door, as if he was trying to get away." ""Holy fuck!" "We're fucked!" he said." ""We're completely fucked!" ""Son of a bitch!" ""l don't know what happened to the garden," ""but it's a piece of shit now." ""Watch that hand coming up your ass." ""lt's looking for quarters." ""Put straws in your nose." ""The river of shit is rising." ""Start pulling out your gold fillings" ""and put them on eBay." "I'm getting the fuck out of here."" "Then he ran around the White House three times with his hair on fire." "And all I- l wondered was," ""What happened that night?"" "I guess he was sitting in front of his computer finishing his last online math course from Phoenix University..." "When he reached that eureka moment." ""Son of a bitch," he cried." ""60 isn't 40."" "Many" "Many people blame what happened economically on the people who they say- who couldn't afford rent and bought homes." "Those are the fuckers." "Those fuckers are the ones." "Those broke fuckers fucked everything." "Really?" "It was them?" "What bullshit." "It takes a lot of balls to blame them, because you got to be out of your fucking mind." "You're going to tell me, if you were broke, and somebody came to you and said," ""Look, I know you can't pay rent." "Want a house?"" ""No, I'm going to continue" ""to live on the grate in my box." ""Spring is coming." "I hate to miss it."" "Many congressmen said that they felt the problem was created by those who- those sons of bitches who didn't read their mortgages." "Um..." "Who ever has?" "You don't read your own mortgage." "That's why we have lawyers." "You hire a lawyer or a paralegal." "Or if you're really broke, you hire somebody who's fucking a paralegal." "But you're not gonna read your mortgage." "That's why we have lawyers." "They study a language for three years that- and they learn it, and it's a language that if a normal person read it, they'd have a stroke." "I tried to read my own mortgage." "On the last page, there was actually the outline of a boat with a squirrel in it." "What the fuck is that about?" "Well, I got to color it in." "Well, keep it in the lines, fucker." "I've tried to read my mortgage." "It's a 1 00 pages long, okay?" "And it's 1 00 pages, and there's no punctuation." "It's just like- it's a run-on sentence." "It's like driving a car without brakes." "You go, "Whoa, whoa!"" "I got through the third line, and I had my first out-of-body experience." "I hovered over my body, and I had to promise myself I wouldn't read the fourth line, and then I could reenter my myself." "What caused this economic crisis is greed." "It's purely and simply greed." "That's where you- that's where it lies." "There is no discussion of that." "That's what, you know, we've done over the course of my lifetime." "If I- one of the great- one of the things that my country seems to have done is perfect greed." "You think Enron and WorldOom, you think, "Wow, it can't get any more fucked up than that."" "Ha, ha-ha, ha, ha." "Bernie Madoff, that reads like fucking fiction, and if you read it as fiction, you'd go, "Well, his last name's Madoff." ""That's bullshit." ""You got to be kidding me." "I'm not going to finish this book."" "It's greed." "There was one of the great financial houses that sunk like the Titanic, it was run by this guy named Thain, and just before the boat sunk, he gave those who worked in his office bonuses, like a month before." "Like, "Here, here's a bonus for blowing up the engine room."" "And he spent $1 .5 million just before his- the whole thing goes to ruin on his office, on redoing his office, redecorating it." "Really?" "$1 .5 million?" "Are you fucking kidding me?" "If I had $1 .5 million to do a financial house's office- if I ran a financial house, which I'm fucking thinking of doing, 'cause it's easier than this shit" ""Yeah, sure, give me that check," "Don't worry about a thing."" "[laughs]" "So I'd have a chair for who I have to talk to, a desk, my chair, and then the rest of the office would be filled with a giant aquarium, and in the aquarium would be a huge white shark." "And I would have an intern, very cute, up on a ladder with chunks of meat, and throw it at the shark." "And the shark would go...[gnashing]" "And when he finished eating all the meat, the intern would dive in, eat the shark, and then rub my back." "How good is that?" "That'd certainly fuck with the guy sitting in front of me, wouldn't it?" "So he spent $63,000 on a credenza." "By your silence, I realize none of you know what the fuck that is, and few people do." "I'm 60, and no one has ever called me and said, "Lew, you must come see my new credenza."" "Apparently, it's a glorified office file cabinet." "I always thought that the credenza were the two bones just above your ass bone, as in, "My credenza's acting up." "I must see the chiropractor."" "And if they had a piece of furniture made entirely out of bones, that might be worth $63,000." "$87,000 for an area rug." "I know what an area rug is." "It's a rug that covers an area." "If I spent $87,000 on an area rug, that rug should be woven from the pubic hair of virgins." "Yes." "And I should have a leather-bound book with photos of the women who contributed to my rug, and I would keep that leather-bound book in my credenza." "The big argument now is, how do we regulate capitalism?" "Should we?" "There are many people who still argue that there should be as little regulation as possible." "And I say that those fuckers are full of shit." "And the reason that I say that- and I will not argue with them or discuss it with them, or when they talk, I go, "Ahh."" "No, because the SEO- the people who are supposed to be watching over this whole thing and who are obviously playing a game of who's got the biggest cock..." "They..." "They came out with a list of what they thought the first rules might be." "And the first rule that was discussed- and I wish the fuck i was making this up- the lender should be absolutely sure that the borrower has the financial assets and resources and income in order to repay the lender." "A lot of people who ran banks seemed to have forgotten that." "So they needed to have it written down." "And if you're going to write that rule down, the second one should be:" "if you're turning blue, remember to breathe." "One of the major ways that President Obama sees us coming out of this economic decline is through alternative energy." "And I have been fighting for alternative energy for 40 years, and I will tell you, it's not going to happen." "And I know it's not going to happen, because everything- l've wanted a lot of things." "None of them have fucking happened." "So I'm pretty sure this isn't going to happen." "I'm sure it's not going to happen because we don't seem to get it." "You know, one of the first responses to the fact that gas prices was going up was this," ""Hey, I know what we're going to do." "We're going to make ethanol."" "Mm-hmm." "And the way we made ethanol was out of corn." "Mm-hmm." "Okay, do you want to know when your country- if you want to know when your country- there's no more clearer sign that your country is in the midst of a massive nervous-fuck-breakdown is when they're turning food into fuel." "Food." "Mmm, yummy." "Fuel." "Oh, Jesus!" "I can never get that oil down." "You don't turn corn into fucking fuel." "God damn it." "Many congressmen have said," ""People don't eat a lot of corn,"" "and I say, "Fuck you!" "I need my niblets, you son of a bitch."" "Go to the store." "Oorn's in fucking everything." "It's in green beans, for fuck's sake." "We're not going to have alternative energy." "When they finally raised the requirement of miles per gallon on a car, after, like, 25 years, they finally voted for it." ""Yeah, now we're gonna raise it, so that the cars are more fuel-efficient."" "The argument against that was that," ""Now the roads will be dangerous." ""lt's going to be as dangerous as hell out there."" "Why?" ""Oh, because the cars will be lighter."" "So?" "They're not going to be magnetized, fucker." "That's bullshit." "That's a bullshit argument." "It's nonsense, you know, and that's why it's difficult sometimes to argue with some people, because they say something like that, and you go..." "They might as well have said," ""Giant Kodiak bears will rule the Earth."" "I started fighting for alternative energy during the first Earth Day, which was 40 years ago, because Earth Day was created by my generation." "It was created by my generation." "It's not the Earth Day that exists now, when people are wandering around trying to sell compostable nipple clamps." "Fuck you." "Earth Day was created because we were doing- oh, whew- a lot of drugs, more drugs than you can ever fuck imagine." "And so we came up with Earth Day so we'd have one day that would remind us what planet we were living on." "I know we can have alternative energy, and I know it because when I was a kid, my president said we were going to get to the Moon." "And he said we were going to do it in ten years." "And we all thought he was out of his fucking mind, because the only fuel that we had to get us there, at that point in time, was fireworks." ""Let's strap these sparklers on the back of this Schwinn" ""and push it over the cliff." "Son of a bitch."" ""Strap a monkey on there." "Shove a cherry bomb up its ass."" "We're closer now to having alternative energy." "We're much closer." "And I know that we can have it." "I know that we can have it because I have this." "I'm holding a phone in my hands, an iPhone." "And-don't." "Don't." "No, no." "This, in and of itself, is an amazing instrument." "However, it's attached to ATT, which makes it a fucking rock." "I can call anyone, okay?" "Look at this." "If I'm in the right place." "I can call anyone." "And see this?" "Look at this." "Anyone, anywhere on the planet, and there are no wires, none." "That's fucking unbelievable." "And we act like this- just, you know, it's been around for years." "It fucking hasn't." "It wasn't that long ago that the phone you had was the phone in your house." "And it had a wire, and it was a piece of shit, but it was so heavy that if anyone attacked you, you could kill them." "And it wasn't that long ago that if you wanted a cell phone, it was actually the size of a walkie-talkie, and you had to dig a foxhole to get reception." "And we hold these things, and we don't even know where the fucking- we don't know where the fucking magic- how does it go in?" "We don't know." "You dial a number." "You don't know where the fuck- you don't know where it's coming out." "You have no idea where it comes in." "It's in my pocket, and I know it's doing something to my nuts that isn't right, eh?" "Every time I get a call, I go," ""Oh, fuck." "1 0,000 sperm have died." "But the other seven are still snappy."" "So..." "You can take photos with this." "It's a camera." "You can take a photo of your friend, and they will look exactly the way they'd look if they had hepatitis." "You look swell in yellow." "You can download music and movies and apps." "They have applications." "I don't even have to fart any more." "It farts for me." "It farts for me." "I'm holding a computer in my hand." "We are living in Star Trek time, fuckers." "It's a computer, purely and simply." "'Kay?" "Years ago, and not that long ago either, if you wanted to take your business laptop on the road with you, you had to strap it on a burro." "I can download 3 million vaginas in a minute into this." "Don't tell me we can't have alternative energy." "But what was more important than anything else- the reason that we don't have alternative energy, I believe, is because, what was vital to us and, really, all peoples of the Earth was the ability to type that," ""l am going to meet you and Bob" ""down at the Hooters for a big batch of chips."" "Smiley face, emoticon," ""Suck my dick, ha, ha, ha."" "That's what we needed to do." "We needed to text." "That was what we wanted more than alternative energy, the ability to type a message, to command someone." "I don't want to talk to this fucker." "That's exhausting." "If I talk to him, he's going to argue with me." "Just be at the Hooters, you fuck!" "That's it." "It's that simple." "We're not discussing it." "There isn't a person in this room who enjoyed learning to type, no one." "There isn't- there's no one who ever said," ""l must get to typing class." "It is transcendent."" "But all of a sudden, they made the keys smaller." "Oh, this so much fucking fun." "Oh, this is the greatest thing ever, 'cause nobody will know that I can't really spell." "And if you're twittering, fuck you." "Where do you get the massive ego to think that anybody gives a shit what you're doing?" "Where the fuck do you even get that much interest in your own fucking life?" "When I'm buying shoes, I don't go," ""Oh!" "I am buying shoes." "I must tell the world."" "What the fuck?" "What level of goddamn insanity are you at?" "And if you're describing" "If you're describing what you're doing, then you're not doing it." "I'd just like to take a moment to tell the kids in the audience that as an adult, I want to- l'd like to apologize for my generation, because you are fucked." "We tried, but it just..." "hasn't worked out." "As regards Social Security, forget it." "We'd like to get it done for you, but it's math, and that's really hard." "And so since you're not going to get truly what is rightfully yours and you should have, I say, you start- well, start stealing shit from your parents." "You have every right." "You have every right." "Go for it." "Not the big-ticket items." "You know, that stuff that's lying around the house, you know, the stuff that they don't use, the stuff- and you know what?" "When you grab it and send it off to eBay, they won't even fucking- they won't even remember." "They'll be going- they'll be going around the house going," ""Where's that thing?" "That thing?" ""You know, that thing?" ""The one the guy had in the movie, you know, the guy."" "And you also deserve a lot of credit for this past election, because you really were the engine behind the election of Obama." "The adults can't take credit for that." "If it was up to my generation, we would have slept fuck through it." "But his appeal to you is understandable, because he is the first president, certainly in my lifetime, who's filled with hope." "His..." "His nipples are actually bursting with hope." "He is lactating hope." "And when you're young, son of a bitch, there's nothing better than hope." "Really, it's the best drug there is." "There's no better drug than hope." "That's for sure, and I tried them all." "But I'm 60, and fuck hope." "I mean, to be honest, I'm not even sure I believe in Bob Hope." "Hope was the greatest thing on Earth when I was young." "Hope's what allowed me to craft a little basket, and I filled it with my dreams and my visions of all the things I wanted to be and I wanted my country to be and I wanted the world to be." "And my father and mother said," ""Take that down the street," ""and those folks down there, they'll help you." "They'll help you see all of this come true."" "And I took it down there, and they- they took the basket, and they said, "Wow, that's the- that's the most lovely little basket of hope we've ever seen."" "And then they put it on the ground and shit all over it!" "But that- that didn't bother me, 'cause I had hope." "And hope's what allowed me to wash that basket off, and I filled that basket up again and again and again." "And as I grew older, I became more specific." "You know, I felt that in a country as rich as ours, no one should ever go to bed hungry and that there certainly should be an educational system that allows every child to pursue whatever dream they have," "and no one should have to choose between finances and their health, and for fuck's sake, there ought to be flying cars." "But..." "But none of the things that I've wanted, none of the things that I've hoped for have come to pass, and that doesn't bother me anymore, because I know exactly when it will happen," "and it will." "Everything that I've ever dreamed of is going to happen." "And it will happen..." "[laughs] the day after I die." "I can guarantee it." "I can guarantee it." "You'll wake up and read the paper:" ""Noted comic Lewis Black has passed away." "Funeral services Friday, room for flying cars."" "Hope, to me, is a very, very simple thing now." "Hope, to me, boils down to this, that when I wake up tomorrow morning and I open the door to my hotel room, there'll be a little bowl of whipped cream there." "Thank you, Detroit." "Thank you." "[jazzy music]" "# #" "[cheers and applause]" "My parents couldn't make the trip this evening." "They've been in both my other specials, and so they sent a picture." "This is my parents when they were married." "And they look exactly the same now, because they're vampires." "The weird thing is, is, if you do two shows, during the second show, I actually thought that these things were moving." "I did." "Every so often, I'd go, "What the fuck?" ""Oh." "Oh, shit, it's okay."" "And-and I really would like to thank- oh, it's that fucking- it's that jib." "That's what it is." "It's that goddamned fucking camera." "It throws a shadow over it, and I'm going, "Ooh."" "It was an unbelievable evening." "The place is so haunted that when they actually took the film and then tried to develop it later on," "Mr. Black did not appear." "Ohh, ohh!" "[horn bleating]" "John, come on."