I probably couldn’t watch Sam Kinison everyday, but I really couldn’t watch anyone every day for that matter. He was good at what he did, but I understand he’s not going to be everyone’s cup of tea...too raw for some. I liked the anger. There’s a place for it. Reading your mentioning of him, I watched a clip of his on You Tube. Oh my was it filthy, but it was funny as heck. I know he had something about drunk driving too...about how was he supposed to get his car home from the bar. I don’t know. Not many of us escape this life not having to deal with some kind of tragedy or cosmic injustice, but it’s still good to have a laugh too. If I find that I can’t, I just move on. And guess what...Kinison got his in the end. Some people would probably gloat over that. I can’t be happy about the man meeting a tragic end. He wasn’t evil in my eyes.
This is sad to me reading about his last moments with his friend at his side. I hope he made it to a better place.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Kinison
On April 10, 1992, Kinison died after his white 1989 Pontiac Trans Am was struck head-on on U.S. Route 95, four miles (6 km) north of Interstate 40 and several miles west of Needles, California, by a pickup truck driven by a 17-year-old boy who had been drinking alcohol. The pickup truck crossed the center line of the roadway and went into Kinison’s lane. At the time of the collision, Kinison was traveling to Laughlin, Nevada to perform at a sold-out show.
Immediately after the impact, Kinison did not appear to have been seriously injured, as he got out of his car with what appeared to be only cuts on his lips and forehead and then lay down only after his friends (who had been traveling in a separate vehicle) begged him to do so. According to Carl LaBove, who had been traveling in the separate vehicle and who held Kinison’s bleeding head in his hands, Kinison then said, “I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die.” Kinison paused, according to LaBove, as if he was listening to a voice that LaBove could not hear, and then asked, “But why?” After another pause, Kinison then said, “OK. OK. OK.” LaBove said later, “The last ‘OK’ was so soft and at peace. . . . Whatever voice was talking to him gave him the right answer and he just relaxed with it. He said it so sweet, like he was talking to someone he loved.”
I actually live less than 15 miles as the crow flies from the spot it happened and know the story well. At the time, that road was a deathtrap for the soberest of drivers. And the Reservation around it and the politics of the area back then had more than a contributing factor.
That aside, Un PC as he was, Kinneson had a gift for cutting straight to the heart of the matter because of his ‘un-PC’ approach.
Many people get bent out of shape about famine in Africa. “Move to where the food is” really torqued a lot of people. But historically, before there was a government project to give away money, what did people do? They moved to where the food was.
His AIDS material was viscous. But was it wrong? No, it was accurate. Homosexuals knowingly infect each other to this day. It did not begin, nor is is mostly spread by infected needles. And the cases where it is trace back to contact with a needle shared with a homosexual who was carrying the virus.
If memory serves, he lost some friends to it. But that didn’t stop him, nor should it have. It is indeed ironic that he was killed by a drunk driver and yes, some say Karma caught up to him. But death takes all kinds regardless of their comedic commentary.
Historically people developed gallows humor out of a fear of death to begin with. To take some fear out of the ultimate ‘scary thing’. And PC will never change that. Hard as it may try. It’s part and parcel of human nature.