Lewis Black Goes 'Off the Rails' (And No One Is Surprised)

When Lewis Black takes the stage this Sunday at Westhampton Beach Performing Arts Center as part of his “Off the Rails” tour, it’s possible some audience members “are gonna feel like I’ve insulted you on a level you never imagined.”

That’s the caution the comedian offers in his latest stand-up special “Tragically, I Need You” filmed in 2022, and released this past spring. Rage and outrage are his on-stage mien, and at 75, he hasn’t mellowed.

Thank God.

Black rants and rages, and tells audience members that, despite decades of F-bomb infused fulminations, “Never have I said anything on stage that has changed anything.”

Not true.

His bile-laced bits have become part of the lexicon among my family and friends since he first flickered across our TV screens in the 1990s, holding forth in his “Back in Black” segment on Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show.” Milk is not just milk in our Black-inspired vocabulary. It’s “moo cow f@#$ milk,” so dubbed after a hilarious tirade about soy almond, and oat milks that make ordinary milk feel bad about itself.

Moo cow f@#$ milk. That’s how we write it on the grocery list.

And, it’s one of the most family-friendly Blackisms.

“Oat milk, I thought they crossed the line. But now they’ve got cashew milk, macadamia milk. When they ask what I want in my coffee, I say ‘milk. Milk milk.” What’s extraordinary, he said during a recent interview, is since he did the joke about how big the milk section in the grocery store was, it’s gotten bigger. “And they don’t sell it in the small sizes. ‘Take home a gallon of almond milk.’ F#$% you!”

Black started out as a playwright, “I wrote plays till I was 40. And the reason I like to talk about this, is because I like to see the interest of the audience leave the room … I wrote a lot of plays, to the interest of nobody.”

Moving to stand-up he saw a similar style was working for other comics like Sam Kinison, and recalled, “When I started, I was told ‘You’re a little too angry.”

But it worked.

And it has, for going on 30 years.

Black achieved national recognition with his “Back in Black” segments that began to air in 1996. It became one of the most popular and longest running segments of the show, through hosts Jon Stewart and Trevor Noah. He crafted four specials for the “Comedy Central Presents” series, co-created “Last Laugh With Lewis Black” and presided over “Lewis Black’s the Root of All Evil.” His popular appearances on Comedy Central helped to win him Best Male Stand-Up at the American Comedy Awards in 2001. He filmed two specials for HBO, including “Black On Broadway” and “Red, White and Screwed.” The latter was nominated for an Emmy in 2007.In 2015, Black notably voiced the character “Anger” in the Academy Award winning film from Pixar, “Inside Out.”

The list of acclaimed specials and performances goes on and on and it’s irritating trying to detail it. Go look it up yourself.

Black’s manner strikes a chord with audiences, he said, “because it expresses frustration, a little anger, some rage and many of us carry that around. And what’s amazing to me is, there’s more of that around than when I started.”

“Tragically, I Need You,” and “Thanks for Risking Your Life” both carried sequestered audiences through the pandemic, “solitary confinement for 12 weeks.” Black speaks of his last in-person show, on March 13 in Michigan. He and lifelong friend Kathleen Madigan had been watching the developments as COVID-19 spread across the world. “We were the Fauci and Birx of the comedy community,” said Black, referencing doctors Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx who coordinated the U.S. government response to the pandemic. After that performance, he wondered if the old comic saw — “I killed ’em” — would actually come to life. Make that, death.

Black’s rants resonated with the audience when he started out and “in many ways it resonates more now; it’s really unbelievable.” In a recent episode of his “Rantcast,” he said the world gets crazier by the minute. And it does.

“The Republicans can’t figure out who’s the speaker, it’s ludicrous. It’s Civics 101!”

“I was listening to the president today and, you can’t hear him.” People say he’s too old, but for Black, “He’s gotta speak up!”

Black casts a jaundiced eye across the political spectrum — “Republicans are the party of no ideas, Democrats are the party of bad ideas.”

Biden and Trump both, he said, “They’re closing in on that age where, you begin to wonder if they’re tortoises that escaped the shell.”

While both “Tragically, I Need You” and “Thanks for Risking Your Life” focus on life during the pandemic pause, this time around, audiences can expect Black to point his laughter-evoking laser — and index finger — at new topics.

“I have a surprise announcement about Elvis,” he forecast. “It will stun them.”

“Where I’m trying to get the act to is: How am I supposed to make something funny that I already find funny and that they think is not funny, but it is funny? That’s really the thrust of the act,” he explained. “Banning books, artificial intelligence. We’ve got a two party system, that they’re basically defending their realities, not even ideas. REALITY. We don’t live in the same reality at all, and I know this because I took LSD.”

Speaking from California ahead of a performance in Escondido, Black noted, “Escondido means ‘hidden,’ so if we can find the place, it’ll be a good show.” Not a fan of the Golden State, he pointed to unbearable traffic. In fact he quit driving because he was experiencing road rage … as a passenger.

A rigorous tour schedule has put Black in front of audiences across the globe and brought him to local venues — he was a fixture at Monday night comedy shows at the Bay Street Theater years ago.

Throughout his travels, he says, he discovered the end of the universe. “It happens to be in the United States. And, oddly enough, it’s in Houston, Texas,” he told guffawing audiences in 2001. He left the club where he was performing and walked down the street, seeing a Starbucks. “And directly across the street from that Starbucks, in the same building of that Starbucks, was another Starbucks. At first I thought the sun was playing tricks with my eyes. There was a Starbucks across from a Starbucks. And that, my friends, is the end of the universe.”

Black rolls into the East End Universe on his “Off the Rails” tour on Sunday, October 15, at 8 p.m. He speaks, on a Facebook teaser, of preparing to perform at the Westhampton Beach Performing Arts Center. Hollering and gesturing as is his wonderful wont, he shouts, “There is no BEACH!”

Tickets are $176 to $210 (including fees) at whbpac.org. Westhampton Beach Performing Arts Center is at 76 Main Street, Westhampton Beach.