Richard Pryor (12 01, 1940 – 12 10, 2005); Happy Birthday Daddy Rich!

...today's the birthday of "Daddy Rich", that's right, Richard Pryor (no relation) who remains, to me, the unequivocal king of comedy...that's saying something coming from a dyed-in-the-wool George carlin fan...To be certain, Lenny Bruce started making provocative waves in the comedy world with a couple of revealing bits but Pryor dropped into that tube and rode the peak straight on up to the comedic shoreline...and broke through it...the recent spate in the media vis-a-vis the whole "N-word" thing holds on extra dab of bitter-sweetness because it seems, looking back, Pryor took the usage of that word to extremes at times (during the 70's) and then turned around and used it in a bit (on his Live on the Sunset Strip set) to explain how it helped him heal during a trip to Nairobi-- "I looked outside the plane and thought 'wow! they fuck over your luggage in Kenya, just like they do in LA!' "...

...a few years ago I worked on a project and had to do some research on Rich's life story and learned he made some serious lemonade out of the lemons handed to him in life-- growing up while his family ran a brothel, getting molested by a neighborhood tough, later dealing with addictions brought on by the lifestyle of living out of a suitcase, on and on-- when his backstory really began to flesh itself out I was amazed he'd even survived for as long as he did Read the rest here