LENNY BRUCE b OCTOBER 13 1925

naturally, bruce appealed to me during my adolescence. he talked dirty. he was funny when he talked dirty. he had left-leaning(kind of)politics. i read "how to talk dirty & influence people" in high school. i memorized his monologues. i STILL live by his sage advice that if caught in flagrante delicto you deny it, even if they have pictures. deny it. his routine about aides trying to teach lyndon johnson how to say the word "negro" was classic & reminded me of bobo. i don't think bobo ever said that word correctly. he was much happier when we all moved on to "black" to reference african-americans.

who the hell could say where lenny would be today if he'd survived the cops & the government & himself, primarily, himself. i see the surviving greats from back then, dick gregory, mort sahl, etc, & they're not hitting it anymore. it could be that great comedy is a young man's game like rock & roll. he was as good as it gets when he was young though. he didn't deserve his shitty death but who the hell does?