7th BGJ Blog Entry

Lewis Black And Americans In General - March 6, 2005 - 09:08 AM.

Well, Scott and I went and caught Lewis Black doing his routine at Massey Hall last night. I won't get too deeply into the particulars of the Hall itself, except to say never sit in the fucking nosebleeds. It isn't that we couldn't see or hear or anything, but the seats are wooden, and the leg room is missing so much that your average midget would have trouble finding a place to put his fucking legs.  Enough about that, since the front-of-house guy, noticing our plight - okay, we went and told him - changed our seating to 8th row orchestra, without even paying for the upgrade. Classy. Of course, the damage had already been done, but such is life.  Anyway, the show was great. Longer than expected, but great. Thing is, if you haven't seen Lewis perform, you might not be ready for the hatred and anger spewing from the stage, so the rest of this entry might seem a little over the top for you. Feel free to stop by (again, this was originally written for a close group of people.  If, however, I start having my readers from the UK and Russia asking to stop by, you never know - we do have a spare bedroom...) and request the viewing of his 'Black On Broadway' DVD. It is a great hour of his stuff, and makes Denis Leary look positively tame.  Now, he covered a lot of topics last night, but was mainly discussing the election last year (that would be Bush's win over Kerry) and the subject of gay marriage. In fact, I think it is safe to say that about an hour of the 1 1/2 he was performing concentrated on the gay issue, discussing the Bible, the differences between the old and new testaments, and how well his material is received in the Bible Belt of the southern United States. While a lot of it was funny, it was surprising just how much I was hearing my own views being presented on the stage, and the fact that he reiterated at least two times that he is not the only person in America that feels this way. In fact, he said a large amount of the population south of the border feel this way, and the numbers grow daily.  So, here are my opinions, based on my viewing the news, and absorbing any information I can find anywhere online or in hard copy. Keep in mind that anything in the following paragraph is what he agreed with and took a step further with last night. Any places that I can quote him, I will do so, but will not actually use quotes, in case I get the wording wrong. This, in a nutshell, is what he touched upon:  How the hell, after 9/11, can people be giving the tiniest shit about gay marriage? Shouldn't there be more important things to deal with? Terrorists - the only way to fight the Al Queda is to commit an act that is even crazier than what they are doing and scare the hell out of them, not a small feat when you consider that whether they die blowing Americans up or die being killed by Americans, it still results in martyrdom to them. Having Ronald Reagan serve as the U.S.'s first Dead President might've been a good way to go on this one. The Super Bowl Halftime Show is watched by many just hoping something terrible happens, and every year it doesn't is a huge disappointment. :: Remember, this is an American stating this :: We were right in not joining the missle system Bush is promoting, since when Iran gets the nuclear missle to launch properly off of the seven camels' backs, it would be ridiculous to think it would be aimed at us. The seperation of Church and State means that the discussion of gay marriage has no effect on the Constitution of the United States, and if anyone would take the time to actually read the damn thing, there wouldn't be any more discussion about it.  Now, that wasn't all he said, of course. He discussed evolution versus creationism, and had a great finishing line for that bit - and this one I can quote verbatim: "Fossils, fossils, fossils, fossils, fossils, fossils, fossils. Fuck you, I win." Simple as that. I won't get into what followed, but suffice it to say that strict adherers to the Bible reacted, oh, let's say slightly put out by that one.  So, all-in-all, it was surprising to note that a lot of how I view the world by simply being a relatively well-informed individual is the way a lot of people being directly affected by these topics see things: the same way I do. Of course, the man doesn't speak for the entire populous, and nor do I, but it is nice to know that somewhere, deep in the world's currently most distrusted country, there are those that look at their country and say, "Shit! We suck!"  Until next time, Dear Readers, try to stay north of the border. Can't really say that much has changed since I wrote this, except America has a new president, "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" has just been repealed, but their government is still a big pile of steaming crap.  If anyone doubts this, consider just one fact:  The United States Senate was holding up a vote on granting 9/11 first responders health benefits that may in fact save some lives because the president wouldn't let the richest 2% of the country continue to receive Bush's tax breaks.  The Senators (Republicans, specifically) are willing to kill people, their OWN people, to help the rich stay rich.  End of line.

Gutrend Returns, Now Less Zombie-like

Morning again, Good Readers.  Went back to bed at around 7:15 this morning, and am back online as of now.  Just enough sleep to get through the day, not nearly enough sleep to feel rested.  However, I shall not let that interfere with my self-prescribed blogging duties, and later today I will in fact post the next in the series of past entries.  For now, however, I gotta try and get focused enough that I don't need to rely on Firefox's spell check ability to get words out onto the blog.

Back in a while.  Make yourselves at home, and feel free to talk amongst yourselves.

Late Night, Or Early Morning?

Guess it's all how you see things.  The Einstein theory that time is relative to where you are and all that.  Well, since I haven't been able to get any sleep, I'm experiencing an illness that came on all sudden-like just before heading to bed, and I'm back at the computer to allow the wife to sleep so that at least one of us can be coherent tomorrow, I'm going to call it late night.  Of course, this will all be moot if I'm still sitting here in five hours when the planet revolves far enough to get the sun back overhead a bit.

Of course, those reading this in Asia or Eastern Europe will be doing so at a normal hour, so good morning to you all in that neck of the woods.  Neck?  Right arm?  Whatever, hope you have a good day.

With that, I'm off to pass some hours playing some hidden object games until my eyes go crossed.  Back later with more posts.