Lewis Black, comedian, performs on Broadway (drinking water)

Lewis Black, comedian, talks about drinking water

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Contains strong language.

[Laughter; laughter intersperses the whole show]

We care so much about health, that during the last 25 years, we destroyed water.

'Cause when I was a child, this was the simplest thing of all.

This was the essence of life, and when you were thirsty-

that's the operative word, ladies and gentlemen:

the word is, and has, and will always be "thirsty", " not hydrate- they made that fucking word up.

I could go anywhere in my house when I was a child.

You know, there was three or four different rooms.

I could go into my basement, and I could get clean water, and drink it [pleased noise]

And then go back out and play, and those were great times.

But then, then we decided every town and every village

which had all the water coming to it,

and all they had to do was clean it, said: "We'll save money.

We won't clean the water so much, and with the money we can save,

we can then buy the water at the supermarket."

Try to go through this logic with me.

Our country had water coming to our homes, and even if we were locked out,

we could still get it.

Clean water, and we said, "No! Fuck you!

I don't want it to be that goddamned convenient.

I wanna drive, and drive, and drive, and look for water, like my ancestors did. "

So we now buy water from Coke and Pepsi, 'cause when I think clean water,

Oh yeah, I fucking think Coke and Pepsi.

The water that they sell is actually so shitty

they won't put it in Coke and Pepsi, and that's not funny

because it's fucking probably true.

Aquafina ? I think it means the end of water as we know it.

Then there's spring water. All sorts of spring waters.

Deer Park, which I don't touch, 'cause there's a picture of a deer,

and you don't need a deer pissing and shitting in your water.

There's all sorts of spring waters. It's bullshit.

Because nobody's ever seen a spring.

Nobody's ever fucking seen a spring.

Uh-uh, there's no such thing.

Fuck! When was the last time you said: "Boy, I can't wait to go to a bottling plant"?

You know where spring water comes from ?

There's a couple in Pittsburgh that sits in a bathtub, and fills these fuckers up.

'Cause that's how stupid they think we are.

They think we're so stupid that on many bottles of spring water, they print the nutritional facts.

The nutritional facts of water!

How dumb do they think we are ?

It's as if they believed that we fell asleep on a nuclear reactor, and our brains had melted,

and we are now nothing more than meat with eyes.

I wonder how many calories are inn water! Let me look! Arrrrhhhh!

"Total fat" Total fuck fat in water.

What that implies is that there's water with chunks of fat in it.

And I gotta find that water, 'cause that's the tasty goddamned water.

And if that weren't enough, they print next to the calories and the total fat,

all of the zeroes that are there, they print the percent of our daily requirement.

If they think we're that stupid, the labels on spring water

should just be written in crayon with the "r" reversed, and a finger like this.

When I was a kid, and water was free, nobody ever told you how much water to drink, ever.

Four glasses of milk, nothing about water.

But then, they started bottling water, and as soon as they started bottling it,

they said eight bottles a day.

Eight!

Eight, you fuckers!

That's like a goddamned homework assignment.

I can't remember what day it is, now I gotta remember how many bottles of water I drank? Fuck you!

That's 56 bottles of water a week.

You need a burro to carry that much shit around.

And if you don't drink 56 bottles of water a week, many doctors say,

at the end of the week, you should take a garden hose, and shove it up your ass.

Here's the kicker-- you're gonna love this.

Scientists have begun to experiment to find out the effects of water on our system.

And guess what?

We're probably drinking too much water.

And by the sound of your reaction, I realize that some of you are fucked.

You've been scarfing this shit down.

You've been yelling: "Look at me, look at me! My pee has no color."

That's because you've pissed all the nutrients in your brain away,

and you're lucky that your head hasn't caved in.

There are people who walk out of their apartments in New York City

every morning of every work week, carrying a liter bottle of water in a sling,

as if it was a little baby.

They're carrying a liter bottle of water with them

as if they were crossing the goddamned Mojave!

"What if I never see water again?"

The bottom line is, is that nobody knows.

Nobody knows shit about health.

I know this because there was an article written a few years ago

about a gentleman living in the Bronx.

The oldest man living in New York.

115 years old.

Living by himself, having no health problems.

Getting around without any trouble whatsoever, mentally clear,

and they asked him what his diet was.

And he said that between the ages of 90 to 115, he'd narrowed his diet down,

and it now consisted of bread fried in fatback and three gallons of Thunderbird wine a week.

When they asked him why he didn't fry his bread in bacon, he said:

"Because bacon's too lean!"

Imagine if he went to a doctor.

The guy had been doing tremendously, and if he sat there and described his diet,

the doctor would go: "What the fuck is the matter with you?

You can't eat that anymore. You have to start on a diet of fruits and vegetables."

And he would have, and he'd have been dead in a week!

'Cause they don't know.

They try to come up with these general rules of health, and they can't do it.

It's impossible to do, because everybody's health is different.

What's good for one of you will kill the person sitting next to you.

Every one of you has a health that is unique and totally different from everybody else.

Completely, because we are all like snowflakes.

I've thought of two general rules of health, and I think these actually work.

The first is: The good die young, but pricks live forever.

(These subtitles are based on the transcript in http://www.livedash.com/transcript/yourmoney/4998/CNN/MondayOctober252010/323699/ , but with censoring "bleeps" replaced by what Lewis Black actually said)