WASSUP WITH DAVE CHAPELLE?

I saw this article on a hip hop blog...I was touched. Dave got offered MAD MONEY to make people laugh, but he's got other plans.

Dave Chappelle Comeback Tour

By Michael Miraflor
Two Wednesdays ago, at 930 AM, I got an IM from a co-worker with a Ticketmaster.com hyperlink. I clicked on it and couldn’t believe my eyes. Dave Chappelle. Live Stand up. Tonight, 9PM and 11PM. $35.00. Tickets on sale 10AM.

He had done low key shows the two previous evenings at the same club, Punchline in the San Francisco financial district, to small audiences of about 70. Wednesday was an added bonus, unscheduled with no announcements. You almost had to stumble upon the listing on Ticketmaster to find out about it. At 10AM on the dot I copped 2 tickets to the 11PM show for me and the ladyfriend. I wanted to know how he would handle a live audience at an intimate setting, knowing full well the disappointment and confusion over his Comedy Central disappearing act. I wanted to see if dude was still funny, or if he really fell off.


I was typical of the ordinary Chappelle Show fan in my reaction to his mysterious disappearance. At first it was disbelief. After reading all the crack rumors, I thought it was a clever marketing ploy. When the South African mental institution stuff made the wires, I became concerned. But when the DVD for the second season was released without a date for the start of the 3rd, after being pushed back several times, I got angry. And disappointed that Dave would abandon his fans. I mean, he is getting paid a ridiculous amount of money what the In Living Color cast would kill for.

There were reports that Chappelle had been doing impromptu performances in Los Angeles for the past month and a half, starting the night he got back from Africa. He would show up randomly to clubs late in the evening, so late sometimes that there would be less than 20 people left at a given venue. Dave is obviously trying to connect with his core fans to get some of his confidence and swagger back. So how did he do?

Absolutely killed it. Dude is funny as hell the way he effortlessly connected with the audience. He seemed poised and comfortable, like a guy who just came back from an extended vacation. All of his material was new, a lot of it surprisingly falling into the socially conscious tip. He joked and commented about the missing chick in Aruba, about terrorism, his family, and his time in Africa. Seeing him do standup, especially in this turbulent point in his life, cast a new light on the guy who we regularly associate with his crazy ass TV skits. In between taking on-stage cigarette puffs and randomly screaming “mike jones!,” he would transition from joke to social/political commentary, and would of course allude to his time off and the reasons why he did it.
e didn’t come alone either. Chris Tucker showed up and did his bit, although compared to Chappelle he was long winded and forced more than a few jokes. Paul Mooney (Negrodaumus for the uninformed) did a set and destroyed the place and scared the shit out of the nearly 90% white audience (by white I mean blue-blooded private college types) who literally didn’t know whether to laugh or be offended. A few people who felt the latter and didn’t have the sense of humor and irony-of-being-made-fun-of-by-a-black-man-when-they-felt-entirely-comfortable-hearing-a-black-man-make-fun-of-other-blacks for the sake of comedy actually got up and rudely left in the middle of his set. Maybe it was by design and maybe it was for the best, however, as the true Chappelle fans stuck around to see him close up and sign off after a 4 hour show.

“I’ll see you when I see you, bitches, maybe on PBS or something. I think a few people are a little pissed at me.” And with that, the $50 million man called it a night. So you heard it from me, he hasn’t lost it and he doesn’t seem insane. Let’s just hope he gets back on TV soon for everyone else who wasn’t lucky enough to see him on his west coast comeback tour.

NOTE: Al Gore was in the audience. I’m not kidding. Al frickin’ Gore.

Don’t sleep on TicketMaster. I have a feeling he’s going to do this around the country before (and if) season 3 resumes taping.