FWIW, I never got the Bill Hicks worship either, so to hear Tom say "not that good" was minor redemption. I understand why he's important and why he's popular, but to me, it's more like brilliantly phrased political spoken word, and not as much comedy. In fairness, I've heard clips friends have sent me, and I haven't listened to an entire album. Is there a Bill Hicks album that, for lack of a better term, is the least political? For the time being, I file him next to Penn Jillette: has amazing moments, always loud, often aggravating.
Worst moment was the South Carolina guy. After a while, it seemed clear he was doing that on a dare from his friends, and he was so boring and bad at it. I was wondering why Tom was getting so upset instead of laughing it off, zinging the guy to oblivion, then POW with the .45 GOMP.
As a teenager in rural Tennessee surrounded by zombified hordes of the willfully ignorant, listening to Bill Hicks for the first time was like a revelation. He was the first ever comedian I ever got into on a personal level. (Bill Cosby I liked too, but he was just accessible to my childhood. Not a real personal connect.) As an angry young man, hearing Hicks talk about how shitty the world was made me think that perhaps the world wasn't really that shitty if someone like Hicks was around to rip into it. I've grown out of most of that bitterness, and Hicks was a big help in that.
The real problem with Bill Hicks (two problems if you count his crappy guitar playing on "Arizona Bay") is that everyone wants to hold him to some super high standard. They want to make a messiah out of him, which leads to crappy comics (as Tom mentioned: Rogan and Carolla) thinking they are his disciples. He was only a comedian, and that was enough. I can't relate to a messiah. I prefer human beings. Overblowing the Hicks mythos also leads to people making unfair comments like saying "Had he lived he would have done comcast commercials". Sorry Tom, but that was an unfair statement to make about a guy who made it a point never to do that. He died holding to that standard. To say he would've done something that he can't possibly do (being that he is dead) is just cheap. I only heard part of South Carolina's call, and from what I could tell he wasn't bringing it.
I understand why someone wouldn't want to be bogged down with social/political commentary. I like being able to go to the Best Show to escape the world's bitter trappings. Patton Oswalt did plenty of political material during the Bush years. Louis C.K.'s comedy constantly satirizes the social concepts of family and personal ethics. Both of these men have been praised by the Best Show, as they should be. If a political comic annoys you, maybe it's the comic more so than the material. It just seems insane to shut out all comedy that is political/social in nature, or to say that style really isn't comedy. When our own citizens vote away the rights of homosexuals to be legally united, doesn't that piss you off? Don't you want to say something about it? When we trudge along in Middle Eastern wars that only serve to make even more people hate us, doesn't that piss you off? Your opinion may not change the world, but it's the first step to doing anything. Being able to talk about that stuff AND make people laugh is a rare talent.
Now Sam Kinison? That guy sucked. I don't understand the attachment to him at all.
can we hug now?