I voted for Pryor. On the list, I think he’s got to be the top. Carlin is up there, as is Dangerfield and Kinison.

Shortly thereafter would be Chris Rock, Chappelle, Hicks, Regan and Seinfeld, all for wildly different reasons.

Jim Gaffigan sucks. Hot pocket.

Ron White should’ve at least been on the list.

But… I had to vote for Richard Pryor. He edges out George Carlin for my money.

So I guess I’d probably bump him up to the top of the list based off of that.

I mean, how pretentious was those musical intervals?

They probably fit considering Hicks’ obsession with music and they seemed used mainly as a segue. Although I agree that they were kind of distracting and I didn’t care for the original songs.

As for him being a desperate, angry man…well, you’ve just described most of the stand-up comics out there. Robin Williams was that way (he’s gotten a little better), Jim Carrey seems that way, Jonathan Winters was that way, Sam Kinison and Lenny Bruce were absolutely that way. Most comics are angry, unhappy, self-loathing cynics at some level or another…that’s why you see so many with substance abuse problems and/or multiple broken marriages. The humor is often a defense mechanism to cope with a world that shocks and horrifies them. It’s also why a lot of them become irritating bores as they get older…they get so angry and cynical about the bad things in the world that gradually they abandon the humor and just start whining about all the things that piss them off (which nobody except fanboys really want to listen to). Al Franken, to my mind, would be an example of that. Hicks definitely walked that line (and often crossed it) all through his career, but he kept the comedic edge. Granted that part of that was probably because he died so young. If he’d had another 10 years I could see him either becoming a huge sellout or becoming a burned out shell (kind of like Bill Murray).

Indeed it was inevitable good sir, I was just lucky to be the first here! :) And if anyone is a plagiarist, it is I for plucking his most memorable bit to illustrate my grief. Which is genuine, of course. I loved the class clown and he will be sorely missed.

Denis Leary stole jokes from Bill Hicks…not just style of delivery or genre (which goes on all the time among comics) but he actually stole jokes that Hicks used and tried to pass them off as his own…most infamously the Jim Fixx joke, which Leary actually recorded on his “No Cure For Cancer” album two years after Hicks released it on his album.

When asked about Leary, Hicks told an interviewer: “I have a scoop for you. I stole his act. I camouflaged it with punchlines, and to really throw people off, I did it before he did.”

Reportedly, upon hearing a tape of Leary’s album No Cure for Cancer, “Bill was furious. All these years, aside from the occasional jibe, he had pretty much shrugged off Leary’s lifting. Comedians borrowed, stole stuff and even bought bits from one another. Milton Berle and Robin Williams were famous for it. This was different. Leary had, practically line for line, taken huge chunks of Bill’s act and recorded it”.

As an actor, I find Denis Leary fairly watchable, but as a stand-up comedian he’s a hack.

Steve Martin’s best bit…

http://showhype.com/video/video_steve_martin_s_snl_christmas_wish/

I like Emo Phillips too, and agree about Martin and Cosby. Howie Mandel doesn’t belong anywhere near that list, though. He’s got his moments, but his best performances didn’t even exceed the mediocre performances by the guys Radley listed.

Bill Hicks was a comedian? Really?
I thought comedy clubs just paid him to stand there for a half hour to talk down to the audience and explain to them why he’s smarter because he knows that taking mushrooms is the only way to enlightenment to the fact that the CIA caused JFK assassination because the economy is a myth.

It depended what kind of mood he was in on any given night. Like I said, check out “Rant in E-Minor” and “Arizona Bay”. If you don’t find them funny…well, to each his own I suppose.

Don Rickles
Jackie Mason

Good catch with Robin Williams. I wouldn’t vote for him, but he deserves an honorable mention, at least. Rowan Atkinson and Lewis Black are hilarious when they are at their best, too, but I’d put them in the “also ran” column.

If you’ve got Sarah Silverman (she’s too young to rank among the rest on that list, IMO), you gotta have Lisa Lampanelli.

I never cared for Raw either. Eddy Murphy’s earlier routine (I think it was called Delirious) was much better.

Lisa Lampanelli has to be the funniest stand up comic that I’ve seen in recent years.