GREAT ESCAPE: Bill Cosby Comes to Pier Six

Bill Cosby’s 1983 standup show, “Himself,” has memorable vignettes about the birth of his children, potty-training, eating chocolate cake for breakfast, his numbness at the dentist’s office and his wife.

He was family-friendly in the 1980s, funny as always, and riffed on why his own tough mother is now a doting grandmother to his kids.

“I tell my kids, ‘This is not the same person I grew up with. You are looking at an old woman who is trying to get into Heaven,’” he joked in his show.

Fast-forward 21 years. In May 2004, a very different Bill Cosby spoke to the graduates of Howard University as their keynote speaker.

Furious about the disproportionately high crime rates in the African-American community, he turned a verbal mirror on the mothers, wanting the community to look at itself.

"I'm talking about these people who cry when their son is standing there in an orange suit. Where were you when he was 2? Where were you when he was 12? Where were you when he was 18, and how come you don't know he had a pistol? And where is the father?" (Click here if you want to hear his speech.)

On Aug. 20, Cosby is coming to Pier Six Pavilion. A stand-up comedian since the 1960s, Cosby has both the ability to make us laugh and touch a nerve. Which Cosby will be in Baltimore: the loveable Dr. Huxtable who eats Jello pudding, or the irate entertainer demanding class accountability?

Gates open at 6:30 p.m. and the set begins at 8. Tickets range from $20 to $85. Click here for tickets on Pier Six’s website.