Raw Feed

Dennis Miller rolls out a highly polished new act in this HBO special, taped before a live Chicago audience on March 1, 2003. While Miller's social commentary remains rigorously middlebrow, it's his typically loquacious, often elegant, occasionally anachronistic (one wonders what the young, Windy City audience makes of Miller's coiffure reference to "the harmonica player from the J. Geils Band") delivery that makes The Raw Feed worth visiting. Surreal esoterica abounds from the moment the comedian takes the stage with references to the "sequin mines of L.A.," the India-Pakistan conflict as understood through the filter of Jonny Quest, the length of purchase receipts from Circuit City, and suck-up Saudi royalty described as "the Eddie Haskells of the Middle East." The occasional killer line emerges, including Miller's prescription for peace in Israel (give Palestinians the casinos) and a hard truth about nature: "It's like Nick Nolte with a clogged Eustachian tube." --Tom Keogh