I've been very busy and am only now getting around to reporting on what I did last Saturday night. Some friends and I went to see Lewis Black at the Orpheum Theater in downtown Los Angeles. He was very, very good.
This was, I think, the fifth time I've seen him perform live. The first was in a tiny theater and he was great. The second was in a way-too-big theater with bad sound and I'm not sure how good he was because I couldn't hear half of what he said — and we did not have bad seats. Since then, he seems to be working venues that are large but not too large.
As with most of the past times I've seen him, the show was opened by comedian John Bowman, who is very funny. When you're an opening act, a certain percentage of the audience tends to treat you like Muzak. They talk or check their cell phones and some are in no hurry to get to their seats before the headliner takes stage. Bowman was good enough that most people paid proper attention but when four people strolled noticeably to their second-row seats, he got a big laugh by saying to them, "Nice to have you here but you missed Lew. He went on first tonight!"
I liked John Bowman a lot. So apparently does Lewis Black. From our third-row seats, we could see him in the wings, watching the first half of Bowman's set from backstage. I thought that was nice. A lot of headliners don't treat their opening acts with a whole lot of respect.
The audience erupted when Black took stage. If you haven't seen him live, you haven't seen him. He's truly a great monologist and he always seems to have not only new material but timely material. About half of his act was about Donald Trump and his cabinet picks. As you might suspect, Black thinks Trump is an idiot and that the people who voted for him could not possibly have understood what they were getting. (If you haven't watched MSNBC lately, they seem to be finding a lot of Trump voters who are saying, "I never dreamed he'd really do most of those things he said.")
Black covered other topics, as well. He shares my dislike of Candy Corn and delivered an update on his previous rant against the stuff. He spent a lot of time talking about religion. His time on stage was not too short and not too long. It was just right.
You may be wondering how I got such good seats…third row center! And for face value. I'll let you in on the secret. Black has a fan club and you can join it at his website for $20 a year.
You get all sorts of perks and special offers but it's worth it just because you get early access to tickets for his concerts and you get great seats for face value. I paid $75 apiece (plus some handling fees) for the four seats a few months ago. Comparable tickets (or worse ones) were being scalped in the last few weeks for $150-$300 each. Go ahead. Tell me the fan club fee isn't a helluva bargain.
Among the other perks you get is access to the full online library of The Rant Is Due. I've explained about this before here but just in case you weren't paying attention…
Black closes each live show with a little webcast he calls The Rant Is Due. It's 20-30 minutes of him answering questions that have been e-mailed to him and on Saturday night — and this is a new addition — it also included an opening theme song by John Bowman and a few minutes of Bowman doing standup as well.
Everyone can watch these live at his website but that kinda means guessing when he's going to finish the main show. His Twitter feed may also tell you. It's easier to watch them several days later when they're posted to his site. The one I saw Saturday night has not yet been posted as I post this.
They only seem to ever have the five or six most recent ones available in the "free" part of the website. Anything older than that is in the section which can only be accessed by fan club members. There are well over a hundred there and some of them are very good…and those too are worth the $20 membership fee even if you never buy tickets.
However…well, I might as well post a small complaint here; not that Mr. Black or anyone close to him is likely to read this or heed my advice. I wish he wouldn't close the proceedings with these segments. The one he did Saturday night was fine but it was nowhere near as fine as what preceded it…so the evening didn't end on its highest note. If I were him, I'd do a half-hour, stop and do his webcast, then shut down the cameras and finish the show.
This is a very small gripe since everyone there, myself included, had a great time anyway. If he comes your way, join the club, score some good seats and go sit in them. He may be the smartest, funniest makes-you-think comic working today.