Chris Rock: No apologies tour
On Sunday, August 24, at the Orpheum Theatre

Chris Rock is back - in more ways than one. Four months after his last appearance in the Lower Mainland, Rock brought his No Apologies tour to the Orpheum for three sold-out performances. He also laid to rest any notion he’s past his comedic best-before date. During Sunday’s comically powerful, 90-minute set he was as sharp and relevant as he’s ever been. The 43-year-old Brooklynite is one of the few who can make grand political statements without coming off as too preachy. He’s as apt to take on the Bush administration as Britney Spears, with important points to be made about both. And his delivery, comparatively stilted when he appeared here on his Black Ambition tour in 2004, flowed with the ease of a hilarious conversation.

This is not to say he doesn’t trot out some of the same tired premises that lesser comics do. But his take on subjects such as Spears, race relations, and the differences between men and women are often brilliant, making searing comments on society at large without losing any of the humour.

Spears has been the butt of so many jokes, it’s verging on hack to even bring her up. But Rock uses her to illustrate how hypocritical governments can be when it comes to child abuse and follows it up with a killer punchline-literally. He says he was surprised the authorities took Spears’s kids because they had no knots on their heads or other visible signs of mistreatment. “That’s when I realized they take white kids quick. Even O.J. Simpson kept his kids—and he killed their mother.”

He talked about black men not being picky when it comes to white women, saying there are white women with no scales in their houses. They just know they need to work out when too many black guys start hitting on them. Black women, however, are more discerning: “You see a black woman with a fat white man, that means her credit’s fucked up.”

One theme he hammered home was the way political correctness has made everyone careful what they say these days. His rule of thumb is “the more shit you got, the less you can say.” Fat girls can talk all they want about skinny girls, short guys can rag on tall guys, the poor can slam the rich, but not vice versa. Which provided a great recontextualization for doing fat chick/midget/pauper jokes, letting us laugh at how delightfully wrong they are.

And that was his point. As he said over and over, “It ain’t the word, it’s the context in which the word was said.” He believes that if you’re having an argument, you should be allowed to say whatever you can about the person without having to be PC. If a one-legged guy smashed into his car, he says, you can be sure Rock’s going to mention that one leg.

And while he says his “beloved” N-word is still largely off-limits to white people, he thinks there’s one legitimate application: “Fuck me harder, nigger.”

Nothing, and no one, is off-limits to Rock. Off-stage, he makes no secret of his support for presidential candidate Barack Obama. On-stage, that doesn’t keep him from taking shots. He says Barack Obama is the blackest name one could possible have. “It’s right up there with Dikembe Mutombo.” He says you expect to see him holding a spear standing next to a lion. The only thing holding Obama back, Rock says, is his black wife. “He needs him a white girl. Look what it did to Tiger Woods.”

But the biggest jabs came at Obama’s Republican opponent, John McCain. It’s been two decades since comedians could trot out the old-age jokes they used to target at Ronald Reagan. Rock took them to the next level: “He’s 72. He was too old 10 years ago. He’s so old he used to own Sidney Poitier. Look it up!”

Rock was much more in-the-moment than he was on his Black Ambition tour stop here, when his routine almost seemed rote. This time around, he seemed to enjoy himself more, laughing along with us at times, making the performance that much more enjoyable.