I just recently came across this bit by Bill Hicks<fn> again. It illuminates what for me makes a good comic. Observational humor is only the very beginning. What makes a comedian memorable for me---what puts him or her on my all-time best list---is a mixture of good storytelling and philosophy as well as a cynical awareness of the utter nonsense that is the human condition. If you mix that with an ability to deliver hope from the depths of eyes-open cynical awareness, then you've got gold. A pity he was cut down so soon.<fn> <media src="http://www.youtube.com/v/iMUiwTubYu0" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMUiwTubYu0" author="Bill Hicks" caption="It's Just a Ride" source="YouTube"> <bq href="http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Bill_Hicks" source="WikiQuote" author="Bill Hicks">The world is like a ride in an amusement park, and when you choose to go on it you think it's real because that's how powerful our minds are. The ride goes up and down, around and around, it has thrills and chills, and it's very brightly colored, and it's very loud, and it's fun for a while. Many people have been on the ride a long time, and they begin to wonder, "Hey, is this real, or is this just a ride?" And other people have remembered, and they come back to us and say, "Hey, don't worry; don't be afraid, ever, because this is just a ride." And we … kill those people. "Shut him up! I've got a lot invested in this ride, shut him up! Look at my furrows of worry, look at my big bank account, and my family. This <i>has</i> to be real." <b>It's just a ride.</b> But we always kill the good guys who try and tell us that, you ever notice that? And let the demons run amok … But it doesn't matter, because it's just a ride. And we can change it any time we want. It's only a choice. No effort, no work, no job, no savings of money. <b>Just a simple choice, right now, between fear and love.</b> The eyes of fear want you to put bigger locks on your doors, buy guns, close yourself off. The eyes of love instead see all of us as one. Here's what we can do to change the world, right now, to a better ride. Take all that money we spend on weapons and defenses each year and instead spend it feeding and clothing and educating the poor of the world, which it would pay for many times over, not one human being excluded, and we could explore space, together, both inner and outer, forever, in peace. (Emphasis in original.)</bq> It's just a ride. There are proponents everywhere. I remember when I was in High School, my Earth-science teacher, who assigned more reading in one week than a college course had in a semester, who drove her Volkswagen minivan named Beulah all over the country in the summer to sew leather at motorcycle conventions, wore a T-shirt on one of our innumerable field trips---we blew through the budget in no time, but she didn't care, there was so much to see---with the words <i>Non Illegitimi Carborundum</i>, which she proudly and with a grin told us when we, of course, asked, meant "don't let the bastards get you down". I wonder now whether she listened to Bill Hicks too. <hr> <ft>It's included at the end of Zeitgeist, but that's neither here nor there.</ft> <ft>Bill Hicks was cut down in his mid-30s by pancreatic cancer. I imagine he would have characterized it as having gotten out early enough before he ruined everything by selling out.</ft>