oh, god. oh, god. oh, god. i despised myself from pretty much close to getting out of the womb. i was always wrong. let s start with that. when you re always wrong, you seek an audience to disprove that theory. i was just hellbent on having to prove myself. i know i m right. i can t be always wrong, you know. i was the victim. my father was a very strange man. he was kind of a performance artist that was fueled by beer. i was very shy. and at home i was always quiet and didn t get to speak very often, just because other people were jibber-jabbering a lot. some people wouldn t clam up, mom. when i did different voices or different noises, people say, that s weird, or, shut up. i feel like there s a fear of seeming crazy. a lot of comedians are people that are very introverted, very shy, very sensitive to humiliation. a little narcissistic, a little damaged. and so the only way to combat it is to go to the one place where you are stripped bare. a big sea c
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His father was a pimp. and he was very aware of that situation growing up. i grew up seeing my mother go in the room with a man, and my aunties go in the room with men. who believed in you? who cared about you? richard franklin lennox thomas pryor iii. you. and magic dust. my dad s humor came from life. and i don t think dad had a choice. i think you either laugh your way through it or you die through it. thinking about death, though, i d like to die like my father died, right? my father died [ bleep ]ing. he did. my father was 57 when he died. right? the woman was 18. my father came and went at the same time. richard s comedy was funny. it was also therapeutic. it was almost like this guy was using the stage the way a therapist would use their couch. my grandmother is the lady that used to discipline me.
Right? you know. beat my ass. you know. get your ass out, put your hand out. don t you run from me! don t you run from me. as long as you alive, don t you run from me. what people took from him was a lot of the attitude and the over-the-topness and the profanity. the people that people don t give richard pryor enough credit for is what he brought to standup comedy was vulnerability. for me, the best night was having a woman who was sitting close to the stage beg me to stop. she was looking at me. and she was going in pain. her face was in pain. she was in pain. she went, please stop, please stop! please stop! you can t beat that. the one thing about hitler
Food, alcohol, and drugs. when you have that kind of brain, and i don t want to get into that stuff, except that you re wired dark. you can go dark real fast. dad couldn t take it anymore. and he wanted it to stop. he just was like, i want it to stop. richard pryor, the comedian and writer, was badly burned in an accident at his home in california last night. the burns cover the upper half of his body. they are severe enough to endanger his life.