Dave Chappelle lights up Radio City with return to irreverent, raunchy stand
Dave Chappelle came out smoking at Radio City Wednesday night.
The comedian who seemed to have gone into witness protection for much of the past decade returned with his irreverent and often raunchy sense of humor fully intact.
His nicotine habit was also intact, as he smoked three of his own during the show plus a Newport he bummed from a patron.
The no-smoking rule still applied to the audience.
Chappelle wove together his familiar canvas of jokes, from topical commentary on Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling ('He sure f----- up') to more timeless ruminations on families and parenthood.
In fact, large chunks of his riffs on raising kids and navigating marriage ended up at the same place as a lot of Bill Cosby routines - if Cosby had suddenly developed Tourette's and begun chain-cursing.
After 10 years of marriage, Chappelle mused, 'You don't talk. You have nothing left to say.'
Later in the show, which ran about two hours, Chappelle addressed his whereabouts over the years since he abruptly quit his hit TV show on Comedy Central.
Looking at someone seated in the front, he said, 'You waited 10 years to see me?
'I'm just here to make enlightened money so I can disappear again.'
On a perhaps slightly more revealing note, he addressed a 15-year-old in the audience.
'I wanted to do standup since I was a teenager,' he said. 'My whole life is based on a decision a kid your age made.'
A good part of Chappelle's show, in keeping with his style, was for grown-ups. He spared the genitalia of neither gender, nor his own - all of which helped him transition seamlessly from Tony Woods, a Chappelle favorite who opened the show to a warm reception.
Chappelle has often gotten the most attention for his ethnic, racial and social humor, however, and he isn't cutting back on his return.
In a routine on presidential assassination, he envisioned Chicagoan Barack Obama pulling out his own piece when confronted with armed enemies 'and shooting four people who weren't even involved.'
He pulled some neat misdirection on a gay joke by noting the case of a transgendered man who had gotten hate messages on his answering machine.
'What's sad,' said Chappelle, 'is that he had an answering machine. How could his body be so far in the future and his phone so far in the past?'
He didn't give the LGBT community a full pass, congratulating Chaz Bono for successfully making the transition 'from a woman to a fat dude.'
He worked over Paula Deen with a riff in which he imagined hiring her as his personal chef and dressing her as Aunt Jemima.
And he gave the obligatory shoutout to the city he was visiting.
'I went to Brooklyn,' he said. 'The city sure has changed. I wasn't even scared.'
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