The Chappelle Show Comes To Portland

My wife and I went to see Dave Chappelle this week. I was excited because we hadn’t left the house, together, on a date, in nearly ten years. Chipotle wasn’t around the last time we went on a date. At least it seemed like ten years. Maybe it was only two years ago but after you turn 50, every year somehow feels like a decade.

The whole thing was fucked up from the start. First, we had to buy the tickets online. Buying on TicketMaster is so annoying. They always say stuff like, “DON’T GET UP AND GO TO THE BATHROOM! THESE SEATS ARE GOING FAST AND MIGHT NOT BE THERE WHEN YOU’RE DONE.”  Really? I can’t go to the bathroom mid Chappelle ticket search?

What is the proper amount to spend on Chappelle tickets? My wife likes good seats up front. Seats on the floor were going for $750 or $800. So for my wife and I to go see Dave Chappelle at the Rose Garden (now the Moda Center but I refuse to call it that) in sets my wife would appreciate, it would put us back $1600. That’s ridiculous. I decided to go the cheap route and look for tickets at the 200 level. Even those were going for $150 and, here’s the best part, I couldn’t find two together.

To review:  My wife and I are going out of the house, together, for the first time in a decade. We’re going to see Dave Chappelle. But we can’t find seats together so she’s sitting in Sec 205 Row N Seat 7 and I’m sitting in Sec 205 Row O seat 8. Perfect!

After sitting in a line of traffic for 30 minutes because no one in Portland understands how cars and traffic work or that you need a short, round, scary looking human in a yellow traffic vest with a whistle and a whole lotta attitude to get things moving properly, we finally decided to park like two miles away and just walk it. Gina (my wife) has a torn rotator cuff and I am still recovering from back surgery. We don’t walk anywhere fast together and the clock was ticking. So we walked. And walked. And walked.

When we finally made it close to the Rose Garden, I desperately had to pee. But the line to get in was ridiculously long. (more about this later) At dinner, I had an apple martini and those make me have to pee like a 6 year-old boy with a bladder infection. Here’s where the white privilege shit gets real. If a homeless person pees in public, I’m absolutely disgusted. Outraged. Up in arms. When I have to do it, it’s just because “I really had to go.” I thought about that as I snuck into an alley and went behind a bush where no one could see me. I’m not proud if it.

But when the line to get into the Rose Garden is thousands deep, what choice do you have? Ya see, Dave Chappelle has a rule at his show: NO CELL PHONES. Upon entering the arena, you had to lock your cell phone in a pouch that would not open until the end of the show.

If more Republicans were at the show, they would’ve said:

“He’s taking away my personal freedoms.”

“First he locks up your cell phone. Then he tells everyone America was built on racism.”

“We pay taxes. You can’t make me lock up my phone.”

But he can. And he did.

Gina and I went up to Section 205 to find our separate seats. If you know my dad, you know I was raised never to sit in my assigned seat. This night would certainly be no different. Gina and I sat in the first two empty seats we could find. We sat there for most of Jeff Ross’ opening act before the real owners of the seats showed up. I’ve never been more annoyed to have to move out of seats that really weren’t mine in the first place. Part of me wanted to contest the move and make these so called seat owners prove these were their seats, which they couldn’t because no one had real tickets on account of the fact that the tickets were all on phones locked up in Russian security pouches.

So we moved. And then we moved again. And then it got annoying so we finally went to find our real seats.

All this time, Jeff Ross is telling jokes about the two German Shepard dogs he adopted during the pandemic, Aush and Witz and how Prince Phillip, who was 100 when he died, had recently given the queen a puppy on her 96th birthday.

“A puppy? For your 96th birthday? A little optimistic, don’t ya think?”

By the time we finally sat down, separately, I reached into my coat and realized my phone pouch had fallen out. Perfect! Now I have to go back and try to remember all the seats that weren’t really our seats to see where I dropped my locked phone pouch. Now Ross has volunteers from the crowd on stage and he’s riffing on their appearance.

“Those are some incredible man boobs. Do they ever explode unexpectedly, like Mt. St. Helens?”

‘So nice to meet you. I didn’t know the Unabomber still had living relatives.”

It takes awhile but I finally find what I think is my phone.

“I think that’s your pouch,” a guy in row C says. “I’m not sure cuz I put mine on the floor under my seat too. I guess we’ll find out later.”

We did. It was. Thank God.

My real seat is exactly in the middle row O, so on the way back up to not sitting next to my wife, I spot another open seat on an aisle and I take it. See, I care about people. Why make an entire row of people get up if you don’t have to?

Finally, after 2 hours of pre-show show, Dave Chapelle is about to come onstage. The floor crew unveils that colorful “C” — comedy’s Nike swoosh —  and off we go.

Unfortunately, the guy behind me has a cold. A bad one. Every time he laughs, the snot in his nose sounds like an engine revving before the start of the Daytona 500. Every time Chappelle does that thing, in-between chain smoking four packs of cigs, where he cracks himself up a little bit and hits the microphone on his jeans to let you know how easy it is to crack himself up, the guy behind me snorts like the dragon from GiggleSnort Hotel. On two occasions, he laughs so hard that I feel little pieces of spittle raining down on my bald head. Ewww! I spend the next 45 minutes living in total fear that Mt. Snottius will fully erupt and give me a strain of COVID no one has even heard of that this guy contracted from whatever Dollar Store he works at.

Chappelle comes on and gives us 45 minutes, if that, of not-much-to-see-here-but-I-am-Dave-Chappelle material. There’s a recurring theme about being in someone’s dream — sometimes you’re in someone’s dream, sometimes they’re in your dream — that kinda, sorta attempts to tie the show together. There’s a bit about an old Russian mob boss that ruined one of his first performances, a bit about taking out a restraining order and then providing secret financial support to the deranged racist that tries to break into his driveway, a few reflections on Will slapping the shit out of Chris (“I’m friends with both of em but I do wonder how Will was able to hide that real evil side so well all this time) and a few lingering Trump thoughts.

As I looked around the sold out arena, I had two thoughts. 1) Comedy is not meant to be experienced in large venues. The key to comedy is feeling a connection to the comedian and his/her stories. That’s incredibly hard to do when 18,000 other people are drinking, talking and wondering how the hell they’re gonna get their cell phones out of a locked pouch. 2) I wonder how much Chappelle made for showing up for those 45 minutes. $250,000? $500,000? $1,000,000.  Of course he deserves every penny. Not because he was working out new material or really working out any material. He deserves it because he’s Dave Chappelle and he can sell out an entire stadium with not much to say other than “I’m Rich Biatch!”

“He just kinda mailed it in,” my wife said as we trekked the two miles back to our car.

Yes he did.