At 18 years old

Funny backstage clip

In Chicago, 1992, he anti-performs his act. He had sort of a dada quality to him live.

Put another way, he had balls. Balls to go against the government, the entertainment world, the mentality of the place where he came from, the audience, and consensus reality itself. (“It’s just a ride” was his mantra, his radical view of reality.) He went out on the high and risky balancing act between politics and humor armed to the teeth, and came off funnier than any other comedian.

Sometimes, laughing at the world is the only way to maintain your sanity. Humor is the superior weapon for shattering the shimmering aura of self-righteousness surrounding all the world’s biggest hypocritical assholes. Also, it is the preferred power tool for puncturing public lies.

Even though he left us way too early (cancer, at only 33 years old), we can be grateful that his work is still among us. It is indeed needed, especially these days when all the comedy we get is either all fart jokes, or racial stereotypes (Dave Chapelle, Ice Cube, and so on). I can spend hours on youtube, digesting all the great  material related to him that people have uploaded. As a matter of fact, I’m about to do that right now. If there existed a better way to blow away them cobwebs in your cranium, it would surely be illegal.