Lewis Black: Black on Broadway

How you doing, Mr. Black?

How the fuck do you think I'm doing?

Ha.

Check, check, check.

Fuckin' check!

Ladies and gentlemen, Lewis Black!

That is...

That is way too much excitement.

Son of a bitch...

I mean, this is all fun for you guys,

but I gotta fuckin' work here!

I'm thrilled to see you all out here this evening, I...

I really didn't think that the audience that...

I kind of...

Am lucky enough to have...

Gathered...

Could afford Broadway prices.

It really is...

Nice that people are...

Are actually coming out to see me now.

I'm kind of...

Well, I'm amazed and...

And I...

I am.

And I...

And I think it's terrific.

But, you know, you bring your friends...

And I don't really need them.

You know, you and I have developed a relationship.

I don't need these fuckin' strangers

hanging around.

You know, you...

You spend...

You know, you're...

Two weeks...

Before you see me, you go, "oh, you got to see this guy!

He's really funny!"

How do you think that makes me feel?

That puts a lot of goddamn pressure on me.

Because if I'm not funny, you're fucked!

It was a really special winter, wasn't it?

If you're a fuckin' moose!

If you got fur on your nuts, it's been a fuckin' festival.

It was the coldest winter ever!

I thought last winter was the coldest winter ever.

But I was fuckin' wrong, wasn't I?

You see, because I travel all the time.

So last winter I'd be in the Midwest

and the blizzard would hit.

And then I'd fly home, and the blizzard would hit again!

But it has been...

Way too cold this winter on the east coast.

I mean it's un...

The, the, the...

The temperatures have been ungodly!

Where the fuck is global warming when you need it?!

I think the people of this city should literally every day

have been on the streets with aerosol cans.

Nobody should have to live like this.

And even if they hadn't told me,

I would've known it was the coldest winter ever.

Because I have not had one thought.

I have not been able to complete a sentence in my own head.

I find myself walking around going,

"you know what I should really...

Fuck it's cold!"

We don't need to live like this.

I had a tremendous idea.

A way to change the climate.

And we had the money to do it.

Just a few years ago,

our country had the largest surplus ever,

two trillion dollars.

And now, just a few years later,

we have the largest deficit ever,

three and a half trillion dollars.

That means we went through five and a half trillion dollars

in just a few years

and nobody explained where the fuck it went!

If we actually went through five and a half trillion dollars,

you know what?

Each one of us should have gotten a goddamn coupon.

For shoes or a coat or whatever you need.

So, the federal government decided the way to make

this money up was to have a 350 billion dollar tax cut.

Okay?

And by the federal government, I mean republicans

and democrats working together.

And the only thing dumber

than a republican or a democrat

is when these pricks work together.

We have a two-party system.

The democratic party, which is a party of no ideas.

And the republican party, which is a party of bad ideas.

And the way it works is...

The republican stands up in congress and goes,

"I got a really bad idea!"

And the democrat says, "and I can make it shittier."

These guys believe that a 350 billion dollar tax cut

will stimulate the economy.

And they're full of shit!

Because they don't know what stimulates the economy.

The economy goes up, it goes down, it goes up,

it goes down, it goes up, it goes down.

Nobody knows why the fuck it happens.

And I know this...

Because I took economics.

And I'd explain it to you,

but I flunked that course.

It's not my fault.

They taught it at eight o'clock in the morning.

And...

And there...

Is absolutely nothing that you can learn

out of one bloodshot eye.

After I flunked the first two tests,

I grabbed the professor by the throat and I said,

"why you teaching this shit at this ungodly hour?

Are you trying to keep this stuff a secret?"

So they come up with a 350 billion dollar tax cut...

At a time in which every city and every state

that I've been through

is broke.

Is broke!

And you're gonna cut taxes.

They're so broke that they've actually cut essential services.

In many places, they've cut policemen 'cause...

Who the fuck needs them?

Or firemen.

Son of a bitch, it's much more fun watching something burn down.

In our city, New York,

they cut after-school programming.

And if anybody needs to be distracted,

it's those little pricks.

So I said, "you know if you're gonna cut"

"after-school programming, it seems to me the least

"you could do is give each one of those kids a knife.

"And they could whittle.

"They could whittle.

And sell their crafts at the fair."

But...

But if you're a parent,

hold onto your hats.

The federal government is gonna give you

$400 for each child you have.

So if you've got 1,000 kids,

you're on fuckin' easy street.

You might want to start adopting 50 at a time.

Just pick some up off the street and take them home with you.

$400.

That's the...

That's where you go, "what...

What's the federal government thinking?"

I mean what...

What, what do...

What do congressmen's children eat?

Mites?

All $400 does is remind you how fucked you are.

You would have been better off if your congressman just came

to your door and pissed on your foot.

It's a dollar a day.

One dollar a day.

Um...

You know, you know how to stretch that kind of money?

Put your kid in a box and send him off

to a Sally Struthers country

where a dollar goes a long fuckin' way!

And he can have all the dried milk he can choke down.

And at...

And at the end of the year, you've got $35.00 left over.

So at Christmas, you can give your kid two nice boxes of shit.

See, what I think...

You logically do with the 350...

Instead of having a 350 billion dollar tax cut,

what you do with that money is do a public works project.

See, what that is...

Is you pay a lot of people...

To build something.

Okay?

And that way you employ people who are unemployed.

And...

And then they get money, and they spend it.

And that stimulates the fucking economy too!

See, you pick a place that really needs something.

You know a state that could really use it, like...

Mississippi.

Of course Mississippi.

Because that's the place that no one has ever thought,

"boy, I got a vacation.

I need two weeks in Biloxi."

And you go down there and you find a place

that's totally in the shitter.

You won't have to go far.

And what you do is build a big fuckin' thing.

I don't care what it is as long as it's big

and it's a fuckin' thing.

And then the economy will explode,

because people will say,

"I gotta see the big fuckin' thing."

And then there'll be a big fuckin' thing restaurant,