News-Record.com

So, apparently Eddie Griffin's set at a Black Enterprise event was ended when he used profanity and (gasp!) "The N Word."

Hey -- it's their event and they can do what they like. But you might want to fire your entertainment director if he hired Eddie Griffin and thought he wasn't going to say nig...um.."the N-Word."

Had none of these folks ever seen Eddie Griffin's standup? Or any of his movies? He's sort of a third-rate Chris Rock (another comic who would, in all likelihood, have used the N-word without apology to anyone) and his comedy is usually racy and racial.
(Clip from Griffin's stand up below, strong language)

I don't like the N Word. I don't use it. But in comedy and satire -- particularly comedy and satire with a racial component, which is often Griffin's thing -- you have to make some allowance for its use.

Lenny Bruce famously (and brilliantly) advocated the use of the word (and other racial slurs) as a means of taking power from the word. If the president went on TV and used the word a hundred times, he said, it would lose its power completely. Consequently, no redneck could ever make a little black girl in Alabama cry by using the word.

Chris Rock famously (and controversially) tackled the N-word in his bit, "N---ers vs. Black People" (Clip below from "Roll With the New" -- some strong language).

Richard Pryor, after a trip to Africa, famously swore off use of the N-Word.
(Clip below from "Live on the Sunset Strip" -- includes strong language)

One of Pryor's most famous disciples, Dave Chapelle, uses the word almost plenty -- often with a biting satirical edge.
(Clip below from The Dave Chapelle show, includes strong language)

It is, of course, all a matter of context.

But the ridiculousness of pretending censoring the words does away with the racism aside -- there are any number of "safe" comics you can hire for this type of event. Why go with Eddie Griffin and then embarrass and persecute him for doing the kind of comedy on which he's made his reputation? Why not just go with Wayne Brady?

All right...maybe that's a bad example...
(Clip below from The Dave Chapelle Show, contains...oh, you know...)

In this week's posts you can:

* Read my musings on Britney Spears looking like a drag queen (and the possibility that she'll spend the rest of her life performing for them).

* Find out whether Disney Channel's High School Musical star Vanessa Hudgens (and new star of inadvertent teen amateur Internet pornography) is into the Brazilian wax!

* Check out pictures of Maggie Gyllenhaal in the new Agent Provocateur lingerie ad campaign!

* Consider "The N Word" with comedians Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor, Chris Rock and Dave Chapelle -- all of whom used it to greater effect than Eddie Griffin, who was bounced from a Black Enterprise event for dropping it this weekend.

* Tell me whether you got screwed when Apple dropped the price of the iPhone just two months after its release (and whether the $100 store credit they're giving customers makes up for it).

* Check out clips from shows coming out on DVD -- including 30 Rock, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia and, of course, Flight of the Conchords.

If you missed any of it, it's all archived. Enjoy.

Also -- talk back, you lurking bastards!

I've been meaning to get hold of Steve Martin's memoir Born Standing Up for a few weeks now.

A recent excerpt in Smithsonian magazine has made me resolve to go get it this weekend. From the excerpt, in which Martin begins to craft his own style of comedy by abandoning convention:

"What if there were no punch lines? What if there were no indicators? What if I created tension and never released it? What if I headed for a climax, but all I delivered was an anticlimax? What would the audience do with all that tension? Theoretically, it would have to come out sometime. But if I kept denying them the formality of a punch line, the audience would eventually pick their own place to laugh, essentially out of desperation. This type of laugh seemed stronger to me, as they would be laughing at something they chose, rather than being told exactly when to laugh.

Now that I had assigned myself to an act without jokes, I gave myself a rule. Never let them know I was bombing: this is funny, you just haven't gotten it yet. If I wasn't offering punch lines, I'd never be standing there with egg on my face. It was essential that I never show doubt about what I was doing. I would move through my act without pausing for the laugh, as though everything were an aside. Eventually, I thought, the laughs would be playing catch-up to what I was doing. Everything would be either delivered in passing, or the opposite, an elaborate presentation that climaxed in pointlessness. Another rule was to make the audience believe that I thought I was fantastic, that my confidence could not be shattered. They had to believe that I didn't care if they laughed at all and that this act was going on with or without them."

Holy Chocolate Salty Balls!

South Park Studios is now live -- a South Park internet hub from which you can legally stream every episode from all 12 seasons of the show, right up to last Sunday's installment, all for free.

The site also has clips, games, news, an episode guide (when DID Kenny come back, and when DID we find out who Cartman's father was?) -- as well as this really weird avatar maker.

The Kids in the Hall are doing a 30-city, two-month tour (don't call it a comeback - they've been here for years, rockin their peers and puttin' suckas in fear).

The Onion's A.V. Club has an interview with them.

They're apparently looking to do a new show and movie. To which I will immediately become addicted.

Hear it here.

I'm going to miss that guy.