With Lewis Black, it's a mad, mad world

Lewis Black
At: Berklee Performance Center,
Saturday night

For Lewis Black, comedy is not about what he finds amusing, it's about what he finds infuriating. And pretty much everything sets him off: the budget deficit, Justin Timberlake, health care, weathermen, airplane seats, milk. And filtered through Black's Yale-educated brain, sharp tongue, jabbing fingers, and cheeks flapping with bewilderment, his seemingly boundless rage comes out as humor. His act isn't polished, his tirades don't always build up to punch lines, but somehow he taps into our collective anger and allows us to release it as laughter.

As opener John Bowman -- whose impersonations of the pope and Chewbacca brought the Berklee Performance Center crowd to life -- introduced Black by saying there was a sense of love behind his comedy, a groan could be heard from the headliner offstage.

Black, slightly slouched and dressed head to toe in many shades of black, came out to the fierce opening chords of AC/DC's "Back in Black." The "Daily Show" regular started off conversationally enough, reminiscing about the four rainy months he lived in Boston. "Nice to come back and see that this Dig is rolling along," he said. "Sure it looks like Beirut, but it's home."

But it didn't take long for his raw, gravelly voice to explode with startling ferocity, his arms waving, fingers outstretched and wiggling. The Pledge of Allegiance flap over the words "under God" really gets under his skin. Who cares, he said; kids don't understand what they're reciting anyway. " `Indivisible' -- that's a word that took me until I was 14. `Justice?' I'm 9!"

He went on for more than 10 minutes about the Super Bowl halftime debacle and fumed about the Olsen twins. Democrats and Republicans alike were subjected to his wrath, but he saved his most biting vitriol for the Bush administration. The $400-per-child tax break for parents was quite an idea, he said: "If you have 1,000 children, you'll be on easy street." Why not let your congressman come to the door and urinate on your foot instead, he said. The image is ridiculous, of course, but it somehow conveys the indignity and futility of a $400 pat on the head.

People who've never left the United States but call it the greatest country in the world are "[expletive] stupid," he said, adding that going to Epcot doesn't count as leaving the country. And what about trying to teach Iraq about democracy just as California elected the Terminator? Even bottled water didn't escape his ridicule. He held up his bottle of Poland Spring water and proclaimed: "There are two guys in Saugus in a bathtub who fill this."

Black has said that he has learned to play angry rather than be angry, but he certainly appeared to be incensed onstage. Maybe it's all his theater experience. Maybe he means it. Whatever the motivation, as he vents, he lets us vent along with him, and sometimes that's just what we need.