Don Rickles Ruled
Today's post is from our friend HIM.
This post is a spiritual counterpart to one I penned in 2015. In May of that year, I mourned the retirement of David Letterman. Today’s post is in response to sadness of a more profound sort: Don Rickles, the equal opportunity offender who often graced Letterman’s guest chair, died on April 6 at the age of 90.
‘Mr. Warmth,’ as he was ironically known, was an acquired taste. His style was a throwback to a different era. It was, by turns, well-rehearsed and seemingly spontaneous. But it was also a style of comedy that saw the act of loving offense as one of the higher callings in entertainment. If not for Rickles, comedians like Chris Rock, Amy Schumer, and Daniel Tosh would only exist in truncated states, with access to a certain type of breezy belligerence denied to them.
Don Rickles, like Lenny Bruce before him, mined the worst of our thoughts and transformed them into laughs. A racial slur or gendered slam were, in his hands, a way to lighten our collective load. You showed up to one of his shows wanting to be the subject of one of his tirades, waiting for one his mic drops, waiting for some snippet of remembrance related to his days with Sinatra, some genuine mention of the love of his life, his wife Barbara.
This was comedy best suited to nightclubs filled with smoke, to a low-lying Vegas Strip that no longer exists. Yet his humor remains as relevant as ever in an era where people constantly seek out silos of non-offense. Rickles was having none of it. Like the comedians who came before and after him, Rickles understood something important: laughing at others is a dopamine rush; laughing at yourself is cathartic. He was the master of ceremonies, timing his zingers and lobbing his one-liners with the ease of an expert.
As Rock said on Twitter when his death was announced: Don Rickles is funnier right now in death than most comics are in life.
That about sums it up. With Donald Jay Rickles gone, the world is just a bit less fun. You will be missed.
Don Rickles, legendary insult comic, died this morning at the age of 90. https://t.co/6Vhb1ues3d pic.twitter.com/IdLMAPqaiy
— Variety (@Variety) April 7, 2017