It manages to be hilarious, moving to the point of tears, a glorious celebration of life, and a lesson. In, like, what -- five minutes, really? I mean, the video runs longer than that but the story isn't much longer than that. It's really kind of incredible how perfect it is.
You come to watch something funny, all hyped up and your face muscles are ready to stretch in laughter and when you are done with watching it, you realise that this was a very sad story, but you are still satisfied. That's how good Louis is.
@@TheRepublicOfJohn well, I was born in a Soviet country, but I only remember our early independence days. As a 5 year old, I used to stand in line for bread. It wasn't a straight line as many might imagine. It was a chaotic crowd, in a 30 sqm room, with a proper jail cell bars separating customers with the seller. I used to climb on those bars, because otherwise I'd stay unnoticed and my 4-5 hours of waiting would be wasted. With all that struggle, I still remember those days with a smile on my face.
“The misery of this place was so calculable that a man with a broken shoe sees a child and says to himself, ‘oh, he’s sure to have some glue in his hand.’” Brilliant.
I truly believe this is some of his best material. It is somewhat of a stand up act, but the weight of the story transcends it to another level. It becomes a deep dive into the human experience and how our emotions, grief/sadness/happiness are not just separate feelings, but are intertwined - they have always been.
Dale Cooper hey bro what's up, I'm sorry for being mean. Thought you wouldn't ever reply. Now that you're here, don't you think it's too long that we should forgive Louis
Yeah I think Louis and Norm are the best alive but I have to give credit to Bert Kreischer's the machine story. He is not even close to the level of an old chunk of coal like Norm but man that story is great. Russian stories are just on another level.
@@Darkstar001 Just listened to the machine story. Pretty good, made me smile and quietly laugh a bit. Not like the Louis story. - Oh, I just realized you said it's not on the same level. In that case, thanks for the enlightenment! A great story. Russia, wow.
@@Darkstar001 I cannot believe someone would have such an idiotic opinion. Bert Kreischer is one of the hackiest most overrated comedians, how dare you compare him to Louis
every time I look up and see this clip of Russia, Louis Ck, I am so touched...I don't nessecarely laugh...but am just so touched...By the story...and how it is told. Thank you mr Louis CK, for you are one of the people I aprreciate so much this time and age. Not only for the fun, but more so, because it comes from touch....joy. Thank you mister. Sincerely, Ernst Klijzing, Amsterdam
@@jasminkettana2169 You are wrong. They were comedians, theres no such thing as a boss comedian and an employee comedian. We are not talking about people in an office space here, completely different circumstances. By your logic no one in the entertainment industry can ever fuck with each other because they are “”””colleagues””””. Thats bullshit.
Would have liked this comment except for the last part. Which wasn't so bad. But he's been redeemed by now, I think. He didn't go around attacking or raping people. He paid the price..
@@SylarTheBest On his website. Apparently the broadcasting majors are not yet willing to produce and distribute his work for now ... Let's cross fingers and hope for the future
I was at elementary school in St Petersburg at that time and I remember for $5 you could purchase breakfasts for a hole month in school cafeteria. It costed about 20¢ a day. So I can totally understand why the guy left his workplace after selling Cola.
I'm American and 24 years old. As a young man in the modern world who's trying to understand life and trying to understand myself, I find comfort in stories like this that are pure sadness or stories that are pure funny because part of life is sadness and humor. It's an odd concept to grasp about humanity, that we can be sad or depressed to the point that we are suicidal. Not really a point to what I'm saying but I realize that in life, everything you say doesn't necessarily have to have a point, it can just be said. Louis CK is a man that I look up to, simply because he talks about life at the very core of existance. Idc if he talks about how much of a low life masturbating ice-cream eating piece of shit that he thinks he is, i still look up to him for what he says about life.
DRUnK CHaRDOM I just find it funny that Louis was talking about huffing glue and your profile picture is of a character that huffs glue. It made me laugh. And I agree with everything else that you said.
Yup. Truth is that life is mostly made of smears of sad, hard, and/or boring minutes strung into days and weeks, and by default we feel confused, lonely, disconnected, weak, and lost. But for some reason, these moments of joy and beauty and humor and bewilderment - and the relationships we create with other lost and lonely and broken beings are so deeply worthwhile that the otherwise-rational urge to give up and die is unthinkable for most people. Finding the funny is how we make it through the gray scrubland to the next little town.
Omg. Thank you, Louis C.K. Now I'm crying too! With laughter, agony; literally bent over to the floor. Helluva story. VERY FUNNY: yet Painful. But you made me laugh. Bc it hurts so much, I guess. Jaw-dropping, crazy story. PS Some people have been alone for a lot longer than two weeks..
I love this story so much. I don’t have one that’s anywhere near as good as this one, but it does remind me of this moment I had: I was outside of the building I work in, in the middle of the CBD, smoking a cigarette. It’s a large city so homeless people and people with mental issues are quite common, they’re nearly always fine but sometimes they can make a ruckus or they’re yelling or whatever. You learn to block them out usually or just make small talk. But anyway I’m having this cigarette of mine, and it’s early for me, it’s like 9:30 in the morning usually I try to hold out a little longer before going for my morning cigarette but anyway it’s like 9:30 and there’s this homeless guy walking past (I mean I don’t know for sure if he was homeless, usually I try to at least learn the names of the people that are sleeping around my building, but I digress). He’d obviously been drinking though, he was stumbling a bit (a lot, kind of, definitely more than someone should be stumbling at 9:30am) and he’d just finished drinking a can of beer, and he threw it in the bin. But then, he let out the longest, loudest burp that I had ever heard. It went forever I’m not kidding it went for so long. And I’m standing there, a little ways away from him, I’m in my button down and slacks, got my work shoes on etc, and I just hear this burp and it doesn’t fuckin end. And after he ends this worlds loudest burp, he says, loudly, but to no one in particular: “I should have gotten a fucking award for that one”. And I looked up, and he looked up, and I laughed, and he laughed. And he never even slowed, he just kept walking, and a few seconds later he was gone. It was such a small stupid moment but it’s kept with me. I think about that guy sometimes. I hope he’s doing ok. Anyway that’s my stupid story, thank you for reading this far, if you did.
I remember when a friend of mine first immigrated from the former Soviet Union in the 90s- his name if was Aleksandr, of course. Nice kid, ridiculously smart, but incredibly hardened. He didn’t even mean to be confrontational but he would just stare down teachers with such authority it was otherworldly. He was also very undersized- < 5 feet in high school- and he had stories just this. Complete despair and he would just laugh it off.
Americans have no idea how awful the 90s were for Russians. We did the opposite of a Marshall Plan. We unleashed the worst intentional plague of financial/economic predation the world had ever seen. Just astounding abuse by the West. The world would be so different if we had treated Russia even half as well as we treated Germany after we defeated them.
the only part that always irks me about this story is that USSR collapsed in 1991, three years earlier than his visit, I don't know why he keeps saying that it was in 1994 that it did. It's no big deal and doesn't affect the story, but somehow bothers me a bit 😂
The only thing was left to say is "Shame that Putin came to power and spoil all this". This was a national tragedy and laughing with this is just... wrong.
Why would you not find this funny? Louis himself said that's the point. No matter how bad life get, it's still funny. It's just seeing the silver lining in any tragedy.
