Bill Hicks C or D

Would think Oswalts rants about SW prequels would resonate with Shakey considering how much time he's spending doing the same thing in the SW thread on ILX, but YMMV.

It's weird that Bill Hicks has gotten all the love from hipsters.

On an apples-to-apples comparison of late 80s mulleted comics who tell us the truth and died before their time, I'll take Sam Kinison any day. His bit about Ethiopia and the desert is one of the funniest things ever.

No it isn't, it's racist claptrap.

Oh come on. Don't even...

OH WHY DONT WE MOVE TO WHERE FOOD IS I GUESS BECAUSE WE ARE DUMB AFRICANS THANKS FOR SAVING US MR KINISON.

(And yes, I laughed at it at the time, because I was dumb then too.)

As opposed to now, when you're an enlightened laugh riot :)

Making fun of famine victims and victims of political violence = not funny, generally speaking.

It's weird that Bill Hicks has gotten all the love from hipsters.

On an apples-to-apples comparison of late 80s mulleted comics who tell us the truth and died before their time, I'll take Sam Kinison any day. His bit about Ethiopia and the desert is one of the funniest things ever.

― kornrulez6969, Thursday, February 27, 2014 1:40 AM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

congrats on the stupid post. "hipsters like bill hicks!" "racist fuck much funnier than anti-racist fuck!"

His 93 (iirc) show in Norwich is still the joint funniest stand-up I've ever seen (the other being Louis CK last year)

His pure funniness is, I feel, underrated today. People say "He spoke the truth, man" which is sometimes true, and often not. But goddamn he was funny. The whole "Do you think, if Jesus ever comes back, he ever wants to see a cross again" routine is all-time classic.

[also my response to kornules above was really douche-y, apologies for that]

You people are mischaracterizing the Sam Kinison bit. He isn't making fun of famine victims. He is making fun of their geology. And besides, who appointed you as the arbiter of what is appropriate to deem funny, anyway? You're all a bunch of sexists if you ask me.

Never mind....just saw the apology. Rewatch the bit. It's making fun of the land, not them.

And besides, who appointed you as the arbiter of what is appropriate to deem funny, anyway?

It was Vishnu The Destroyer, and I love my job.

His bro stans are offputting because they overrate the soft-target rockism the just-did-acid philosophising and, like you say, the "truth-telling", none of which would mean shit if not for the lols.

A mark of how good his jokes were is how often I see them quoted, often without attribution, eg "How do we know what weapons Iraq has?" "Er, we looked at the receipt." I remember the Shane "pick up the gun" riff being dynamite live, even though I've still never seen Shane.

Oh yeah, the Shane riff is godlike - as a performer, he was blistering.

The first two posthumous albums were so praised on their release, but I think the whole anti-Leno spiel and sheer negativity of those routines don't really represent his best work - but again appeal to a kind of rockist anti-establishment vibe that doesn't do his larger body of work justice.

That documentary from a couple of years ago was great, though.

One thing I remember - and this is something Louis CK does too - is his ability to flip between comedy and seriousness and back again with unsettling speed. It was like he could control the atmosphere in the room minute by minute.

Rob Newman's tales back in '92 of seeing him at The Wildcat in Edinburgh were amazing. He went back 4 or 5 times to see him and he just kept adding new bits, riffs night after night; whole new chunks of unscripted stuff that were better than most people's honed material. I read Brendon Burns say the same thing this week. This interview shows his innate funny-ness when totally unscripted.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYPgs8aICt0

Sam Kinison was a hateful homophobic asshole who hung out with LA hair-metal bands, what's not to loathe?

Would think Oswalts rants about SW prequels would resonate with Shakey

the difference between me and Oswalt is that he is a true believer, he loves those original movies like nothing else. that, and I'll bet Patton continues to give Lucas money (I didn't bother seeing the last two prequels, somehow I bet Patton brought himself to buy the DVDs)

Bill Hicks died of cancer 25 years ago today. The Guardian ran a piece asking English comics born after Hicks' death what they thought of his act. After watching some clips, the consensus was -- you guessed it! -- negative. pic.twitter.com/jM51MpcRgu

— Dennis Perrin (@DennisThePerrin) February 26, 2019

Now, I'm not gonna shit on these kids. Their comic sensibilities were shaped in a very different time. But it's sad to see Hicks reduced to a toxic white mansplainer, lumped in with Dice Clay and Sam Kinison.

— Dennis Perrin (@DennisThePerrin) February 26, 2019

I'm sure he has some material that elevates him above Clay and Kinison, but "toxic white mansplainer" just about sums up my impression of Hicks.

Kinison is obviously Bill Hick's biggest influence.

And his material has aged terribly in that it isn't funny, and is very "trenchant"

See last year's actually trenchant Hannah Gadsby special on the "angry white male comic."

"hey, you don't like drugs? the beatles did drugs man!"

"george bush is shitty!"

oh my god, genius

English comedians are probably the least qualified group in the world to talk about comedy though tbf.

this is also true

everything i've read about Hannah Gadsby suggests that while her material has other merits, it also is not funny.

that's true also

a main theme of late George Carlin was "George Bush is shitty... and so are YOU"

I've always liked this conflicted take on Hicks:

https://www.filmfreakcentral.net/ffc/2014/03/bill-hicks-sane-man.html

No amount of claiming context ever keeps an artist relevant when the moment has gone. Obviously as individuals we all still like what we wanna like but comedians more than most artists aren't well served by insisting on their value

I had learned from preliminary research that two of his main targets were advertising and consumerism, rather disingenuous things for a professional entertainer to rail against, wouldn't you think?

Hmmm, this writer seems somewhat stupid.

I mean, to a degree all entertainers who get paid are in the whorehouse, but why would they have to like it?

I agree that the statement you quote is incredibly simplistic, but I feel like he's working his way towards a larger argument of "good" and "bad" popular entertainment: why are the "feminine" Debbie Gibson and George Michael bad and "real men" like Jimi Hendrix and the Rolling Stones good? The reviewer's discussion of Hicks' misogyny basically reveals his rants against consumerism as bullshit.

anyone who says "mansplainer" with a straight face is a fucking idiot

I don't know if that was aimed at me, but I was just quoting Perrin's tweet. It's not the term I would have employed: "toxic white asshole" is more accurate, to me.

(also, I attended an education seminar a few years back in which "mansplaining" was discussed as an issue, and it took me a few minutes to figure out that the moderator wasn't joking)

i believe everyone uses the word with waggling eyebrows now

but thanks for your language policing, very privilege-neutralizing

God I am so over this century, kill me

I'm amazed anyone can even attempt comedy in this clenched-butthole cultural moment

theres still a huge audience for stuff that isn't woke.

like look at where bill burr is playing shows, look at how much cumtown is making on patreon per month, howard stern still has a career, dave chapelle is one of the biggest comedians on the planet and is really into talking about "trannies" in his sets, etc.

I can't imagine listening to Hicks again, but there was something cathartic about hearing his old political routines in the post-9/11-Iraq invasion era.

As utterly cheesy as it is, I can't imagine Kinison/Clay or even a Burr/Stanhope doing anything remotely as humane as his "it's just a ride" bit.

I'm amazed anyone can even attempt comedy in this clenched-butthole cultural moment

― a Mets fan who gave up on everything in the mid '80s (Dr Morbius)

"nancy" is pretty funny

There's a lot of great comedy out there right now. The whole "snowflakes" argument, re: stand-up at least, is generally the domain of the Bill Maher/Adam Carolla types who are bitter that they're not what's in anymore.

Keep culture wars out of comedy, say fans of bill hicks

read that guardian article the other day and thought the responses were predictable (not bad, just predictable). i relistened to all of hicks's stuff last year and thought the music stuff had aged badly, but i dunno, there was still a lot of funny material, and his timing was always sharp. to a certain extent you're going to run into offensive, dated material if you listen to any classic comedy -- i mean, there's sexist stuff in bob newhart's routines, or the marx brothers' movies. of course no one has to seek out any of that stuff if they don't want to, but not everyone is content to "get their funny fix from instagram." (and yes that's an actual quote from the article, lol.)

tbh, this part stuck with me more than the more obvious criticisms:

It’s not just the rock’n’roll stylings that seem quaint. It’s the things that got Hicks wound up: advertising, marketing, capitalism, and how they captured and sullied all things good. A generation later, advertising is the air we breathe, our selves are our product. It’s harder – for comedians and everyone else – to imagine how life could ever be otherwise. Bob seems to be understating things when she says: “Selling out has evolved in meaning.”

the hicks stuff that resonates with me most is probably also his most dated material: the anti-marketing/branding stuff. the amount of branding/self-promo that goes on basically everywhere now makes me queasy, and it's already hard to imagine life without it. i mean, someone who does a hicks-esque rant on a twitter thread now is probably trying to sell you their book.

well but we all know that's why modern life is rubbish

That very deliberate conflation of hating capitalist reality with calling out the mentality of privilege is the total MO of shitty defensive bigotry in 2019

The best bits of Hicks (anti-advertising, anti-nationist, pro-psychedelics) are out of tune with the zeitgeist of 2019, the worst bits (reactionary prejudice, violence, contempt, conspiracy theories) sound like standard kit for the iconoclastic libertarian assholes who seem to be all over the internet. Conclusion: 2019 not that great after all.

Solid material but his delivery was not as strong as it could have been. It is my firm opinion that this is why Denis Leary took his shtick (quite literally in a few cases) and parlayed it into much more success than Hicks ever had. It pains me to admit this because Leary is a Masshole tool, but there it is.