And a very touching tribute it was, too.
Hicks was a Texan autodidact, and his line about being reading a book
in a waffle restaurant and being asked by a waitress what he was
reading for ("not, what was I reading? What was I reading
*for*?...well, I read for a lot of reasons, but one of them is so that
I don't end up as a fucking waffle waitress") always cheers me up.
If your capacity to enjoy this joke is inhibited by twinges of
compassion, or perhaps the hot fires of PC victimology, it's worth
bearing in mind that the point of it isn't just to make Hicks looks
super-smart and super-funny and super-male and super-superior to dumb
waffle waitresses, although it is partly funny because it shows him
being a prick in precisely that way, and he knows it (so in fact if
you don't have the empathetic capacity to see what a prick he's being,
and knows he's being - if your response is just, "ha, ha, funny wise
guy, dumb waitress" - it's not *as* funny). It's funny because it
tells the whole story about how being a book-reading smart-arse
"intellectual" in a small town means that people constantly say really
dumb and insulting things to you, and don't get what you're about at
all, and you end up turning into somewhat of a prick as a result
because it's just so dispiriting...
There are I hope smart, curious, intellectually-engaged teenagers in
small-town England and America who even now are discovering Bill Hicks
for the first time, and feeling the burden of isolation just lift
right off their shoulders.
Dominic
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