I’ve been watching Richard Pryor, and simultaneously getting into signifyin’, an artefact of African-American culture that is awesome semiotically and a big part of hip hop.

In Live on the Sunset Strip Pryor mentions signifyin’ and then launches into a routine which, to me, is nonsense (I guess it’s about his burns) but which brings the house down. It ends with this anecdote…

Let me tell you what really happened… Every night before I go to bed, I have milk and cookies. One night I mixed some low-fat milk and some pasteurized, then I dipped my cookie in and the shit blew up.

… which is actually about a crazy drug incident.

Richard Pryor’s comedy is funny, but bleak. The things he jokes about are terrible — drug problems, being beaten as a child, problems with racism, organized crime, and police. He handles them with skill, but there’s real pain there. His routine about having a heart attack (“you wasn’t sorry when you was eating all that pork”) makes me want to jog.