On Tue, Apr 3, 2018 at 6:50 PM, Steve Timko <[email protected]> wrote:
> Chris Rock’s latest comedy special, “Tamborine,” dropped on Netflix in > February. I’d rate it as his best standup special and one of the best I’ve > seen, up there with Pryor, Chapelle, Bill Hicks and Eddie Murphy. > He starts out dissecting society’s problems and has great insight. They’re > one liners but they’re often deep. Chris Rock offers more insight in 30 > seconds than you get from 20 minutes of talking heads on cable TV news. I > wonder how serious he is about his pro-bullying jokes. Is he just going for > laughs? > He turns inward, talking about his divorce and his philandering. In > reading articles about the special, Rock was quoted as saying he had three > affairs, one with a celebrity, one with someone semi-famous and one with > someone in the retail class. I never heard that joke in the show. Maybe I > missed it or maybe it got edited out. The famous one is supposed to be > Kerry Washington. The retail class might be a joke about banging a > prostitute. I was listening to the Howard Stern Show on Sirius when Howard > pried details out of Rock about an affair he had with a nude model. Rock > said she was white but had a mixed race baby. Rock said he knew it wasn’t > him who was the father. But he said her pimp, who was black, got her > pregnant and they tried to extort money out of him. The nude model claimed > Rock broke their non-disclosure agreement and sued him. She was pretty hot > by the way. > Rock said he is lonely as a single man and is through with cheating. But > this is the same Rock who once observed that man is only as faithful as his > options. He also described himself as addicted to porn and aid it made him > sexual autistic and he started missing sexual cues. > I guess I’m not 100 percent sure his apparent candor was actually honest. > I wonder if he was a skilled comedian looking for a laugh. > > A second Netflix comedy special is Ricky Gervais’ “Humanity.” It’s about > an hour and 20 minutes and I watched it in chunks over a couple of weeks. I > also follow Andy Kindler on Twitter. Kindler is well known as a Gervais > basher. Kindler Tweeted several links of reviews critical of Gervais’ > special. Some were obscure sites and poorly written, but there were some > big names in there, too, including Lindy West in the New York Times. > <https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/28/opinion/ricky-gervais-transgender-netflix.html> > I’m a Gervais fan, although, I stopped following him on Twitter when he > turned into too much of a promotional whore for his last Netflix special. I > think the British “Office” is one of the five best television shows of all > time. Because of all the bad reviews, I expected Gervais’ special to be > horrible. It was nowhere near as good as Rock, but I still enjoyed and it > would recommend it to others. > He does try to push the politically incorrect button and I see how that > would anger some. But it’s clearly a comedy show. Be prepared to laugh. My > primary complaint is that he has a formula, especially early on, where he > talks about something conventional or even sweet and then gives it a > shocking punchline. Sarah Silverman does this, but she doesn’t pound it > into the ground like Gervais. > > I will check out the Rock special. I made the decision a while back to treat Ricky Gervais as though he had passed away shortly after completing "Extras." The thing that now bears his name and uses his social media is not somebody I can stomach, not even in small doses. I have all his podcasts and "guides to" when I feel nostalgic for what was his style of comedy and commentary. -- Kevin M. (RPCV) -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TVorNotTV" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
