‘Ooh, this napkin, okay, should I wipe my mouth with it? Or is that what whitey wants me to do?’” My kids know that when they deal with anything white, they gotta think about that shit. “Everything in my house that’s the color white is either hot, heavy, or sharp. “Ever since my kids were born, I’ve been getting them ready for the white man,” he says. Much of this special is about racism, double standards, and the unrealistic expectations of a white-male-dominated society that thinks the playing field is level because they have an unobstructed view of everyone else’s head. Rock never makes the mistake of treating his routine like a dumpster for every bit of social commentary that pops into his head. “He called me a faggot,” Rock reports, then his eyes brighten and he adds, “And he’s a preacher!” Riffing on “guns don’t kill people, people kill people” and the corresponding idea that murderers use knives, too, Rock concludes, “If 100 people ever got stabbed at the same time, in the same place, by the same person, you know what that would mean? Ninety-seven people deserved to die.” Along the way, he slips in an acknowledgement of how guns and the cult of machismo are inextricably tied together by recounting the time his grandfather took him hunting in South Carolina, after he shot a squirrel and cried. He’s in fine form in Tamborine, and you can hear it in his delivery of a punch line in a bit about the inconceivability of real gun control in the United States. Rock is as good a writer as it’s possible for a comedian to be without sounding written. But the greats go the extra kilometer, thinking not just about the content of the jokes but the shape of the language itself: the sound of the words, the rhythm of the sentences. The 9 Best Jokes From Chris Rock’s New Netflix SpecialĪll comedians worth talking about refine their material so that they pause for laughter in the right place and for just the right amount of time.
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