space to imajin

To my chagrin when I first listened to Bernie Mac on the Original Kings of Comedy tour, he cursed like crazy (I never knew him from Def Comedy Jam). He let it flow like water from from a faucet man! It rubbed me the wrong way. BUT, his routine was drop dead funny. Then came the Bernie Mac show and I saw a different side to him. To me he did not lose his edge, it just cut a different way. He was probably the first black entertainer who started a serious “conversation” with white America. I think that more than anything else made his show incredibly special. It brought uncomfortable elements of black culture to the forefront and Bernie Mac let it rip. It felt so real. Iike i heard him say in an interview with Terry Gross, the idea was not to have “punch-line comedy”.

My heart goes out to his family and his closest friends as they mourn his loss. But as I said to someone yesterday, he got to do in his lifetime something that most of this earth’s inhabitants can only dream of doing…. to do what one loves and make a great living from it.

Bernie Mac, I will miss you – RIP –