Dave Chappelle & The Fountainhead

I went to see Dave Chappelle’s stand-up show twice recently at the Punchline Comedy Club (in the span of one week). The man’s a genius, to say the least — the past two years since his show went off the air has definitely helped him perfect his timing and delivery. His on-stage presence and stamina is also extremely admirable — the second show lasted five hours, and he was on top form over eighty percent of the time (”You know what a 7 hour Dane Cook set’s called? Unfunny“)

Chappelle’s Show, besides being ground-breaking and overall excellent, wasn’t really intellectual entertainment of the highest order (though it was quite smart most of the time). So it was quite surprising to me when Dave Chappelle talked a bit about Ayn Rand’s Fountainhead (”I hate Ayn Rand. You’re never gonna hear s— like this at a Carlos Mencia show“). I never made the connection, but once Chappelle started comparing himself to Howard Roark (the protagonist) on-stage, the similarities were quite striking. Both were men of a singular vision, who destroyed their very creations instead of compromising their art.

I have never seen Chappelle’s standup show before, but I have to admit that I found his calmness and style quite disarming and comforting. He genuinely enjoys doing what he does, and the level of clarity and cleverness he employs during his shows definitely made an impact on me. There were many, many memorable moments, one I remember vividly was him saying “..what I try to do at every show is to strip away that veneer of celebrity, so that you people start seeing me for what I am“. One of the other illuminating moments came when he mentioned, cigarette in hand, that all he did nowadays “was read one good book after another“.

I track ‘dave chappelle’ on Twitter, and I’m convinced that Chappelle’s popularity’s growing exponentially the longer he stays off the air. The outcome of the elections have people clamoring for his return, hopefully we’ll see more of him on the air.

Oh, apparently he’s “David Chappelle” on Facebook. I’ll let you find that one out for yourselves