Entertainment

Louis C.K. reigns as comedy’s king

Louis C.K. is sitting on top of the world. His FX series and recent stand-up special won him a couple of Emmys, and he’s popular enough to play 14 solo shows at City Center. All that success seems to have made him happier.

Lucky for us, “happier” doesn’t mean less funny.

He still traffics in the self-deprecation that fueled much of his earlier material, making endless fun of his pudgy, 45-year-old body and describing part of his nethermost region as “a bag of leaves that nobody tied up.”

But he has a new, positive attitude, one that makes a convincing case that regret and self-loathing are healthy signs of maturity. Don’t diet and work out, he advises: Eat whatever you want until you hit your natural “target weight” and can “marvel at the glory of the increasing you.”

And he tells hopelessly unattractive men that when it comes to snaring the women they covet, they simply need to be patient: “Wait for her circumstances to match your looks.”

Featuring all new material, the 70-minute set is a marvel of pitch-perfect delivery and hilariously politically incorrect observations. He turns an anecdote about helping an elderly foreign woman who’s fallen in an airport into a complicated portrayal of benevolence tinged with resentment — calling the momentary hesitation of onlookers to come to her aid “a game of decency chicken.”

He rejoices in his divorced status, pointing out that “marriage is the larvae stage of true happiness — divorce.” And although he clearly loves his kids, he says that some of the happiest moments of his life are when he says goodbye to them.

While some of his musings sound generic — are sharks embarrassed by their fins? — they’re still plenty funny. But he’s best when getting into more dangerous territory, such as our barely repressed homicidal impulses.

“I really believe that the law against murder is the No. 1 thing preventing murder,” he says.

His closing routine, which he dubs “Of course . . . but maybe,” is an instant classic. It begins with an innocuous statement, such as the Make a Wish Foundation for terminally ill children being a wonderful thing.

Then, after a perfectly timed pause, he adds, “But maybe, maybe, giving a beautiful memory to a kid who’s gonna be dead in a week is a waste of time.” He makes us utterly complicit in his wickedness even as we can’t stop laughing.