The latest Chris Rock HBO special, Never Scared, is now available on DVD. For a while I was thinking that Chris Rock is the funniest dude around, but after watching the special, I reconsidered that stance. Not that he's unfunny, it's just that other people are funnier. Chris Rock is just the most on-point dude, especially vis a vis the whole men and women/whites and blacks tip. Other people try to be on-point on more political matters, like the overrated David Cross (did you know that Phil Ek and Chris Walla were somehow involved with the audio engineering of his tour? There is no reason for that to be the case) but Rock's great for the kind-of-oversimplifying for the sake of a joke. This is good because it allows for his bits to have payoffs, as opposed to just being riffing for the sake of riffing. The fact that the person I would now name as being funnier is mining a completely different terrain of comedy (Mitch Hedberg) should really speak that I'm not downplaying the awesomeness of Chris Rock at all. Chris Rock's... to say he's more perceptive than funny just seems fucking insane, really. But I always quote his bits, and think of them, and keep them in the back of my mind, whereas I don't laugh out loud when they're said.

Anyway, when I got online, I was thinking I was going to talk about comedians in vehicle movies (long story short: BAD IDEA) and talk about how great Pootie Tang is, and the key to enjoying it. (essentially irony, but more irony of the fact that you are watching a movie called Pootie Tang, about a rap star crimefighter who is too cool for the English language, and the movie's really poorly made but it's not a BAD movie, and many of the jokes just fucking work and are funny.) The irony thing would spin into talking about John Darnielle talking about "ironic music appreciation" in an interview with The Believer, and how it's basically just listening to things that you don't quite "get," but enjoy regardless. This was then going to lead to me talking about the complete fucking insanity of Ol' Dirty Bastard's album, Nigga Please. (It's insane... I've heard he doesn't remember making it, but more apparent when you listen to it is the complete lack of rhymes... I think most people think it's crap, but there's a charisma to it, even when talking shit on whitey and talking about girls on his dick.) Apparently Chris Rock does the intro to that album, but I haven't listened to it, just heard some bits while in my brother's room, looking at a clock. It would've wrapped up with me talking about someone's offhanded comment in Vice (I hate this magazine a lot in theory, but find it compellng and enjoyable as opposed to repellent in practice) that they think that "heavy metal is the new rap" which they probably meant in terms of hipster irony whiteboy appreciation, not in terms of defining youth culture of America... Which seems true and prescient, and I should mention that in that Believer interview, John Darnielle (he's the guy in The Mountain Goats with the zine/website Last Plane To Jakarta) was talking about metal. His fondness for/fascination with the band Deicide came up.

So, I've tackled all those topics, but in abridged form. It's like the cliff notes to my thought process. I am sleepy and have to go to work tomorrow, I should also meet up with both of my parents once or twice before I go back to Olympia, which is starting to seem crazy fucking soon.

There was a family function at my mom's house that my mom might be pissed at me for missing. There's cake in the fridge which might rightfully be mine. There's clothes on the floor of the living room which definitely are rightfully mine, but I gave them to my mom to get rid of because they suck ass. Lots of shirts she gave me for Christmas, I said I'd never wear, and she insisted that I would. Looking back at it now, I should've used the comeback that I'd been dressing myself at least since I was five and that wasn't going to change, but more important in retrospect is that I was completely right and she was full of shit. But to bring it back to a Chris Rock I didn't laugh at, but will be stuck in my memory for all eternity, a man can't win an argument with a woman because a man is concerned with having his argument making sense, which is an obstacle women aren't concerned with. Maybe there are some women reading this thinking Chris Rock and I are misogynists, but in your heart you know that is not the case, even if you are unwilling to concede that Chris Rock is, as ever, fucking on-point.