Bill Hicks: Another Dead Hero

17 years ago last Saturday, we lost a man who I believe was one of the few true heroes of this age. It wasn't that he was funny (he was), and it wasn't because he pointed his finger at society and showed us what was truly important, or how ridiculous most of our lives truly are (he did). It was that he did both at the same time, with his finger raised high in the air at corporate power dons and a conservative establishment that tried to censor and mute him constantly.

Comedians like Dane Cook make me sad. Not because he riffs about puerile shit like a five-year-old off his Ritalin. It's because he's so extraordinarily popular. It staggers me that he's held up as some kind of comedy icon, while a guy like Bill Hick suffered in obscurity for most of his tragically short life. It's even worse when you consider that Bill has been dead for nearly 20 years and the stuff he talked about is still 100% relevant today. You think the same can be said of Mr Cook and his ilk?

Bill Hicks was a visionary, and a poet, and purveyor of hard truths. And I think about the fact that we don't have him anymore, now when we so desperately need him, and it makes me want to cry. So I leave you with his closing words from the Revelations tour, in case you were ever wondering: What is the point to life?