Comedian Black is back and golfing may just be on the agenda

It’s the little things that make Lewis Black happy. A good book, dinner with friends and a round of golf go a long way in brightening up the 64-year old comedian’s cynical outlook.

The comic may be known for his loud, vitriolic rants against society, but he isn’t always so cranky.

 “My stand up character is based on me,” he says from his tour bus office. “I didn’t come up with some mask, but it’s me blown up. It’s me taken to my psychotic conclusion.

Lewis will bring his “The Rant is Due” tour to the Pikes Peak Center on Saturday. His last album, “In God We Rust,” just earned a Grammy nomination for Best Comedy Album. He already won two Grammys for “Stark Raving Black” in 2011, and “Lewis Black: The Carnegie Hall Performance” in 2007. This is his fifth nomination in that category.

The Gazette: Are you relieved the election is over?
Lewis Black: I was tired of people flipping out, both sides, that somehow their lives were going to be terrifying if the other guy won.
We spent a year doing nothing. This arguing back and forth doesn’t serve any purpose. We should only do it for six months. We’ve got to grow up. We constantly find ways to entertain ourselves and this takes the cake. The conventions - we have to stop, don’t do it.

Gazette: Do you think everything’s resolved now, post-fiscal cliff?
Black: I felt like terrorists couldn’t have done a better job with damaging our economy. (The Congress was) sent back for a reason. They were rebooted. Now we’re going to have the debt ceiling argument.

Gazette: Have you ever thought about running for public office?
Black: God, no. I just try to think about this stuff and make it funnier.

Gazette: You have some clear issues with technology. Is there anything you find useful?
Black: I like bits and pieces of it. I like the fact I can, if I’m writing a book, type it onto a screen and edit it. That’s phenomenal. When I started writing, you still had to type it on paper, and you had to use some Wite-Out (expletive).
I like email, some of it. I like the three or seven pieces I get from friends each day, as opposed to the 193 that have nothing to do with anything, unless I want to buy a camel in Kuwait. I like occasionally being able to text if I’m running late. I have an iPad. It’s easier to carry on a plane, nice to have for a movie.

Gazette: What do you think about Colorado’s marijuana legalization?
Black: It’s a step in the right direction. It shows a certain amount of intelligence. I believe if we don’t want to raise money the old-fashioned way through taxes, we need to find new sources of income. Pot is a motherload. We also need to deal with it medically and grow up about it.  This is growing at the side of the road, and they won’t work with it. It’s absurd.

Gazette: You don’t have many flattering things to say about your generation: Baby Boomers. Why?
Black: We did a (expletive) job. What we did do well is we hung out better than anybody else.  ... The proof is in the pudding with the Baby Boomers in Congress, that group of appalling (expletive). We have a government of compromise, so live with it. As a kid, I used to think, looking at the adults around me, I’d think they were nuts. Now that I’m a grown-up, I think they’re even crazier now than when I was a kid.

Gazette: People might not know your first love was playwriting. Your full-length play, “One Slight Hitch,” finally made it to the stage in L.A. in 2005, and has been produced a handful of times around the country since then. What’s it feel like to sit in the audience and watch it be performed?
Black: It feels like a thousand paper cuts. There’s a certain amount of agony and there’s a certain amount of joy.

Gazette: You take issue with Valentine’s Day.
Black: You don’t have a holiday of love during the height of flu and cold season, you move it to June or the spring, not in the dead of winter. It’s six weeks after Christmas, and it’s like, we didn’t get enough crap at Christmas? Then it’s six weeks later and you say I got you everything you could possibly want, and now you want more, are you kidding me?

Gazette: So, golf, huh?
Black: (Golf is) meditative if you do it right. I don’t do it right, but if you can clear your mind and hit the ball around like an idiot, that’s great.