"I'm missing you already, man..."

This last Saturday we lost a great stand-up, human being and honest soul when Richard Pryor died in a Los Angeles hospital after having a heart attack. I've been listening to Richard's material since I was a kid, and although I didn't understand a lot of it until I hit puberty, I had to marvel at the sheer dexterity of his vocabulary.

I re-discovered Richard's comedy collection around five years ago, while I was quitting drinking and smoking cold-turkey (I've since started both again since, but that's okay), and it helped me to relax... constant laughing can be an exhausting exercise to undertake. And if laughing is exercise, Richard was the Burgiss Meredith to my Rocky... he kept me in great shape by telling me all the things that scared him as well as the things that brought him joy.

I guess that a lot of the things that make up the greatest comics of our country is their almost obsessive need to talk about their most personal and secret of truths. In order to get you in the mind-frame of a human being not all that different from you, this person - who is unafraid to tell a room of complete strangers every embarrassing fact about themself - shows you that we are all flawed, and makes us all laugh at no matter how much education, money or clothes we have, we cannot hide that on the inside, we're all just hurt and lonely kids that experience the same shit growing up.

And those little things about Richard that made him an addict later in life are also what made him one of the most revolutionary comics in our country's history; the people that go through their lives eating healthy, exercising everyday and never smoking and drinking tend to be dull... a sad truth, but also an important truth. How can you take advice about sex from a man or woman who's never been laid? The same goes for drug use, it's hard to listen to an old man who's never gotten high telling you that if you smoke pot that you'll never go anywhere in life, and end up a hobo, riding trains... since your Dad went to High School with Bill Gates, and he tells you all of those funny stories about how they used to get high under the Football field bleachers during Lunch.

When I found out that Richard had M.S. I knew that wouldn't stop him, just slow him down a little... but I didn't expect him to die so soon. Sure, he was 65 when he died, but for a talent as deep and honest as his, 200 is too soon. He experienced a full life, made millions of people laugh and had a good go at his life, so I doubt he died with any regrets beyond what we all regret, and I hope that if he meets God, God leans down and says, "Mudbone was always my favorite... come on in."