Lewis Black: Black to the Future

Ladies and gentlemen, please put your hands together

for the one and only, Mr. Lewis Black!

A survey from Public Policy Polling

revealed recently that 13% of potential voters

would prefer to have a giant meteor

crash into the Earth and destroy civilization

than to see either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump

in the White House.

Thank you... and good night.

Seriously, what-- what need more be said?

Thirteen percent.

That's not a small amount of people.

That's a lot of people saying, "fucking kill me."

This has been the longest election cycle of my lifetime,

and it began, I believe,

sometime during the middle of World War II.

I truly believe that by the time we actually have to vote,

I will be unable to make it to the door.

I will have been sapped of my will to live.

The only good thing that has come out of this election cycle,

quite honestly, is that it has made time seem longer.

I've been noting with interest the fact that really

none of the candidates, none who ran,

and the two that are now really left standing,

and none of our leaders, have any concept whatsoever

of what to do about ISIS,

and let me just say, oddly enough, I do.

I know it would seem strange that I,

someone of a limited military background...

would understand this, and let's note that I had

three years of service in the Cub Scouts.

I did three USO tours:

Iraq and Afghanistan during Christmas,

and I learned a great deal from that.

Twenty-one days, I know more than any of these people.

Many of them-- many of them have said

that we must bomb ISIS back to the Stone Age.

Obviously, they have never spent time there.

I've been to Ramadi, I've been in Fallujah.

They are... already in the Stone Age.

What are you gonna do?

Bomb them until they're dinosaurs?

I realized what to do when the blizzard last year

was coming to New York City.

And just as a side note, when a blizzard or a hurricane

is coming to anywhere in the United States,

every weather person must be given a rabies shot.

These fuckers, they're out of control!

Seriously!

It's not a blizzard and an asteroid shower, asshole!

It's snow! It hits your hand.

It melts.

So, as the blizzard was coming,

and throughout the entire winter,

I took note of the fact

that there was no mention of ISIS whatsoever.

They disappeared.

And it was then that I realized that ISIS is afraid of snow.

So I feel, as winter comes, and the snows form,

that we get out there and shovel them,

and we get them as quickly as we can

to every Air Force base possible,

and we bomb the shit out of them with snow.

Because even in Atlanta,

they don't know how to drive in the snow.

To be honest, having spent this year

watching what's going on, I have no idea what my--

um, my job is anymore.

Everyone in this room already has 30 Trump jokes

that are probably better than any one that I thought of.

What the fuck do you need me for?

I should have just come out and gone, "Tada!"

I've always felt that my job

was to be truly crazier than what I see.

That's what differentiates me from other comics,

that I am crazier than what I see.

Ballgame's over.

The first inkling I had of this was when I, um...

I heard Ben Carson speak for the first time.

When you're listening to someone,

and as you listen to them, you begin to think,

"Did I take a drug?"

Something's wrong.

But I believe we have something to learn from Ben Carson,

especially those of you who work in an office.

There's probably a douche bag you're working with,

your boss is, no doubt, a prick,

and you wanna say something to them.

All you have to do, in order to get across

what it is you wanna say, is to speak as Ben Carson does.

And by this...

I mean, you speak as softly as you possibly can,

and yet, still be heard,

so that the person listening to you

must use an inordinate amount of energy

just to hear the words coming out of your mouth,

and as you do that,

speak as slowly as you possibly can,

as if each and every word was being formed in your brain

for the very first time.

And be sure that your eyes are two-thirds closed...

...so that you resemble a lizard sunning itself on the rock.

And if you do that,

you can say any batshit thing you want to anyone,

as Ben Carson did when he said...

"It's amateurs who built the ark,

but it was professionals who built the Titanic."

He said that! In front of a lot of people.

And no one came up to him and said,

"Ben, you'll have to come with us now."

Another thing you must do, is as you're speaking,

you be sure that your hands are moving in a way

that has nothing to do with what you're saying at all.

Not a god damn thing.

Be sure that they're moving in a way like,

this is a nice way to do it.

Because the person listening to you

won't hear what you're saying, because they'll be thinking,

"Wow, what a great aquarium."

And when you wanna make your final point,

do as Ben does, and as he did, when he--

Be sure that your hands move

opposite to the meaning of the words, such as,

"We must raise the middle class by lowering their taxes."

The turning point came for me

when I turned on the television one morning,

and on the screen, on CNN-- and let me just say,

it is absolutely vital for every American

to watch CNN for five minutes a day.

Why?

Because it'll give you a good idea

of what it's gonna be like when you have a stroke.

It'll just be two people mumbling.

And the crawl will be going, "Wake up! Wake up! Wake up!"

There, on the screen, was Donald Trump,

in the background. In the foreground,

was Sarah Palin at the microphone.

And I thought, "How... am I... supposed to make this funnier?"

How do you satirize what is already satiric?

I realized that we were now living

at the intersection of reality and satire.

We are living, I believe, in fictional times.

And by that, I mean that if you took the reality

that we've been living through for a year,

and put that in a book, you'd read that book,

and you'd go, "Son of a bitch! Great book!"

And then she spoke.

Took my breath away.

I was clueless.

After just a few seconds, I wondered,

"Maybe she's talking to another species.

Or trying to guide aliens to come here and save us."

It made no fucking sense at all.

The longer I listened, the worse it got.

And then, that weekend, on Saturday Night Live ,

Tina Fey came on and did her brilliant Sarah Palin,

and they performed, really, the news conference that I saw,

and Tina Fey used about 85% of what Sarah Palin actually said.

Her writers didn't have to work!

And I thought, "My job is done."

I am thrilled to announce that I am moving on.

I really discovered that what my next job would be--

it came to me last, well, last Black Friday.

And it was at that point in time they announced that there were

more gun background checks done on that day

than in the history of the country.

More guns were purchased than had been

in a long, long time.

And when I saw this, I realized...

that if Christians were buying weaponry

as gifts for their loved ones

in order to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ,

their lord and savior,

then I, a Jew, knew a money-maker

when I saw one.

And so I'm thrilled to announce that I have found

an economically distressed area in Alabama,

and I will be able to help them out,

because it will be there that I will be opening

Jewey Jewey's Gun Store.

I could not be happier.

This is gonna be a tourist destination.

I mean it, 'cause just-- just, if I just had Jewey Jew's alone,

people from around the world and the United States

would flock there.

"Son of a bitch!" they'd cry out,

"I gotta get to Alabama and see who Jewey Jew is!"

Next door, I will be opening a theater

where my friend John Bowman

will be performing The Hank Williams Story.

Next door to that will be an Irish pub,

which is gonna be run by Kathleen Madigan,

a very funny comic,

who also needs to be around alcohol 24/7

or her hands start to shake.

I plan to build a giant Ferris wheel,

the biggest Ferris wheel in the world.