Bill Hicks page at Pax Acidus

Bill Hicks.

Southerner.

A man in black to rival Johnny Cash.

Bill Hicks was a rock and roll star, magic mushroom eater, and a comic genius.

Lenny Bruce said that the job of a comic is not to just entertain, but to tell the truth through comedy. Bruce, Richard Pryor and Bill Hicks are some of the only American comics to ever do that.

You see, Bill Hicks never faked it, which can not be said for 99.9% of anyone else in the entertainment business. He stood his ideas against popular thought and made everyone listen. Bill made comedy out of issues that other stand-ups wouldn’t even attempt. Common topics included Desert Storm and drugs. And he got away with it. Stupid people laughed at their own stupidity. Ha Ha!

If you want to see how fast America can get ugly, just look at the Gulf War. As long as we don't suffer casualties, Americans like a war.

I got beat up for marching in a rally against Desert Storm in Madison, Wisconsin, once a place known for it's Vietnam protests. But you have to remember this wasn't Vietnam. Americans weren’t dying. Only 150,000 Iraqis to save a nickel on a gallon of gas.

America felt great about itself killing defenseless Arabs.

So many American flags were bought and hung that everyday looked like the fourth of July. A president as stupid as Bush had the highest rating of any president ever. Did I say stupid, yeah I did.

A few months later the Storm was calmed and Bush couldn't even win a re-election. The Republicans weren’t laughing for the first time in over a decade. I thought it was hilarious.

Then there was Bill Hicks, the one voice of reason. What did Bill have to say about all this? Just that, "He was for the war but against the troops." Classic.

Not that he even thought of it as a war. ‘A war is two armies fighting’. Get it?

Bill Hicks died tragically of pancreatic cancer. But he kept all his convictions to the end. He lived it like he preached it. Now that is facing your demons.

One demon Hicks faced while still alive was David Letterman, famous Late Night puppet for the network moneybags. Letterman banned the last show Hicks recorded. Bill Hicks, we at Pax Acidus salute you and your beautiful dead ass.

David Letterman, the bus is gonna run you over.

- McCutcheon

Here is a poem sent to Pax Acidus by Peter Styles of Australia:

Bill Hicks Is My Bestest Deadest Friend

Whenever I feel life’s thunderous load
Flattened by a fat bloke in stage diving mode
In times when it seems like we’ve reached our ‘Best Before End’
I think of Bill Hicks; my bestest, deadest friend.

Now Hicks was a rager, a prophet, a major
A Brigadeer General of comedic urges
A lurcher of laughs, a jester of purges
He didn’t take bullshit, he said what he saw
Now gather round children, I’ll tell you some more

He shocked without abandon, to get towards truth
For instance:
That putting the old in homes was dreadfully uncouth
They should do stunts and stuff in snuff films instead; that would be
rather groovy
Don’t let granny die, a little bird in a cage, “Put her in the movies!”

On war and on the army he took the time to say
That anyone dumb enough to want to join should: whether black or woman
or gay
The secret of Gulf Victory Hicks saw lay upon the sheets
Of papers Ronnie sent to Saddam: all those sales receipts

He couldn’t stand Reagan, or Bush, or Dan Quayle
And thought Clinton a puppet, a smokescreen, a veil,
To hide from us things that we weren’t ‘spose to see
Like the time when they sent tanks into Waco: terror in the Land of the
Free.

Not afraid to pass comment of good times on drugs
Of tripping and spliffing; his affinity with drunks
On mushrooms and weed, t’was unnatural and poor
To make plants of nature against common law

Porngraphy, another one of Bill’s most telling mocks
He said that he’d wiped universes off his chest, with old and greying socks
That your children are not special and that trailer parks are packed
With the in-bred spawn of wife-beating Southern trailer trash

His audience got bigger, his reputation grew
Until, alas, the stupid arse got cancer,
at the age of thirty two Conspiracists say:
"He was obviously microwaved by the CIA"
It could, of course, have been the way,
He smoked one hundred cigarettes a day.

Alas poor Bill is dead now, bought the farm in ’94
And if you too have heard his works, it’s shit you can’t ignore
If not, I would implore you, though his funnies seldom rhyme
To check out all his albums, a guilt-edged investment of time

I never even met him, I never saw him play
And all the time he was alive, had I heard him mentioned? Nay.
And now I close this tribute, for me not clapping lend
Applause please for Bill Hicks; my bestest, deadest friend.

- Peter Styles

Bill Hicks Page