Dear Pals,
I love Lewis Black.
He cracks me up.
I love his comedy...his physical persona...his panache and elan...his dissheveled, yet somehow oddly tasteful, wardrobe that is reminscent of a drunken Funeral Director after a night on the town in Reno at the annual Embalmer's Convention.
He is as far out on the acidically angry loopy looney LEFT, as I am on the informed and impeccably correct and righteously angry RIGHT.
Back in February, I began sending Lewis Black's publicist, Glenn Schwartz a series of emails to see if I could get Lewis Black interested in helping the people in Haiti, who had just had their country knocked flat by a huge earthquake.
I challenged Lewis Black to a mano y mano Left vs. Right faceoff starring Lewis Black aboard a Caribbean Cruise Ship, with me, a poor simple Midwestern Schmoo as his foil - Lewis Whyte.
I called it:
Cruisin' For A Bruisin'
Lewis Black vs Lewis Whyte...Watch Them Duke It Out For Haitian Relief in a One-Two Comedy Punch - Angry Left vs. Angry Right - It will make you laugh all night!
It's a battle of a Politically-Correct Twit and a Commonsense Conservative Wit, where they get to offend everyone, including each other.
Here's how it would work:
Lewis Black would just be his angry-Andy Rooney-look-alike, irrational ranting Left Leaning-self and I would be Lewis Whyte, my smooth and sagacious alter ego representing the ribald rational Right.
Lewis Black can stride the Cruise ship stage ranting and raving like Captain Queeg-Bligh-Black.
I would serenely roll onto the stage in a Country Club Golf Cart sipping a Grey Goose Gibson. (This is a great sponsorship opportunity for this wonderful vodka)
If Lewis Black drinks EFFEN Vodka, which is likely given his propensity to say the "EF-word," then we might have dueling vodkas too...with the audience participating in a multi-shot "taste test."
In a nightly "Stand-Up and Rant vs. Sit Down and Shut Up" - Left vs. Right - match for the ages, we would each tackle the following topics in alternating you-go-first-positions, in point-counter-point style.
1. Illegal aliens - the new Arizona Law makes that a hot topic
2. Glenn Beck - Lewis thinks he has "Nazi Tourette's"
3. Barack Obama and the 40 Czars - I think they are Commies to the Core
4. How to deal with problem nations: Iran, Afghanistan, North Korea and Alaska
5. Best Blind Date: Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton, Sara Palin, Joy Behar, Elizabeth Hasslebeck or the incredibly sexy/brainy Greta Van Sustren- in our dreams, or nightmares?
6. Topic du Jour - selected by the audience from the news of the day.
Then we'd open up to take LIVE UNSCRIPTED questions from the audience.
It would be great fun. The entire Cruise ship would sell out in no time flat! And we could tape Cruisin' For A Bruisin' for a Comedy Central Special and for a DVD-release.
It would also go a long way to help keep the Haitian crisis in current public consciousness and raise some serious money to help the folks there who have lost so much.
But it is now mid-May and I haven't even had the common discourtesy of an explitive-filled negative response from Glenn Schwartz, Publicist to my personal idol the great kosher comic genius Lewis Black.
Maybe Lewis is still contemplating my challenge/offer?
Or, must I sadly conclude that something has gone awry, amiss or terribly wrong with Lewis Black KKK (Kooky Kosher Kibbitzer)?
Why hasn't Lewis Black responded? Here are the possibilities of which I could think --
1) Lewis Black is simply afraid of the razor sharp rapier-wit of yours truly. I suspect that Lewis knows - that in an unscripted, unplugged and tele-prompter free venue with live questions from the audience - that I would make a schmear of chopped liver out of him.
2) His publicist Glenn Schwartz has been short-stopping my emails and keeping The Cruisin' For A Bruisin' challenge from Lewis Black's limited-attention span and fragile ego.
3) This email address is wrong: Glenn Schwartz(publicist@lewisblack.com).
4) Lewis is just a pretentuous portly progressive poltroon or a pompous puffed-up poppin' jay, who is too boorishly rude and unschooled in manners to even tell me to go EF-myself. I also sent him my phone number in this size type to facilitate contact with me 24/7.
5) Lewis Black knows that I can think better and faster sitting on my big fat butt than he can rationalize, rant and rave on his feet. Lewis Black simply realized that he would be intellectually over-matched and wanted to spare his fragile ego and well-deserved low self-esteem any further trauma and/or reaffirmation...especially at the hands of a simple Midwest Schmoo like me.
6) Lewis Black is totally booked through 2055, or he's tragically ill, M.I.A. at Mustang Ranch et al or too stuck up*** to take on the razor-sharp wit, rapid-fire repartee and devastating physical charisma and charm of the old Birkster.
7) Lewis Black gets sea sick.
8) Lewis Black does not like WASPs (Witty American Schmoo Patriots) like me.
9) Lewis Black's Mom and Dad won't let him come out and play, because he might get hurt.
10) Lewis Black has forsaken comedy to become "The Rantin' Rabid Rabbi" - the Jewish equivalent of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright.
If you'd like to see this Yin & Yang battle of Comedic PC Left and Bittingly Witty Right, send an email to: Glenn Schwartz - publicist@lewisblack.com
Or try this gal/guy - he/she can't be less responsive than Glenn Schwartz.
Agency for the Performing Arts
Jackie Knobbe
jknobbe@apa-agency.com
310-888-4291
Ask her/him - very nicely - to pass on the word that you want to see Lewis Black go Cruisin' For A Bruisin' on the briny mer with the old Birkster!
Birk, Commonsensetarian, Citizen of the Republic, Mob of One, in the buff, ruff, tuff and taking no guff
PS: ***There is no truth whatsoever to the mean-spirited rumor (attributed to the late great George Carlin) that Lewis Black's head or any other body part is "stuck up" John's Stewart's butt.
