Head on over to The Daily Beast to read a piece by Toure about one of Dave Chappelle’s recent “secret shows”. The thing that caught my eye about this show is that it was at The Comedy Cellar. The Comedy Cellar is essentially the holy grail of comedy rooms. It’s a small basement with low ceilings in the Village in NYC. The stage has a classic brick wall backdrop that elite comedians stand in front of every night of the week. When I was in New York at the end of April I made the pilgrimage to the Cellar and got to witness Anthony Jeselnik, Bill Burr, Tom Papa, Colin Quinn, and my comedic soulmate Aziz Ansari. It was the highlight of a great week-long trip, but I would trade every single moment of my trip for the chance to be at The Comedy Cellar for the hour that Dave Chappelle was there.

Dave Chappelle is the reason I love stand-up comedy. That is the thing that I love the most in the world, and it’s because of him. My first exposure to Dave was in the movie Blue Streak. It’s not a great movie, but when I was 11 I really liked it. He was quite funny in the movie, so when I saw the name Dave Chappelle in an ad on The Comedy Network I was intrigued. I took note and a few days later I watched the single greatest hour of stand-up comedy that I have ever seen, and maybe ever will see.

Dave Chappelle: Killin’ Them Softly is absolutely perfect. From his opening musings on the sudden influx of white people into Washington DC, to ranting about Sesame Street, to a chilling tale about a baby selling weed on the corner, everything in that special works. I am captivated every single time I see it. I used to read through TV Guide just to find out when the next time the special would air. There were times where I didn’t go hang out with my friends because I knew that Killin’ Them Softly was going to be re-aired. It just didn’t make sense to go hang out with a bunch of 13 year old kids when I could listen to Dave Chappelle tell jokes. Who in the hell would ever make that decision.

One day, while on a vacation with my family, I found a DVD of Killin’ Them Softly. That $15 was the best $15 that I ever convinced my mom to spend on me. Gone were the days of annotating a copy of TV Guide. Instead I could watch it anytime I wanted. At this point I have probably seen that special about 60 times. I can lip-sync the damn thing, and I still laugh every single time. I’m chuckling right now just thinking about it.

Dave also gave me my first shot to sound like a pretentious comedy nerd. When Chappelle’s Show debuted, I was anxiously awaiting the first episode. I watched every single episode of that show in it’s original time slot. As soon as everyone was running around yelling “I’m Rick James, bitch!”, I got my first chance to be the guy that says “You know, Dave has this great stand-up special.” Being a guy that knows a lot about comedy has become a big part of who I am. “Hey Colin, I want to know what you think about this” is a sentence I hear all the time, and Dave Chappelle is the reason for that.

Now, most of this has just been an extended love letter to Dave instead of talking about the article that started this, but it all figures in to it somehow.

The title of the article is a little misleading. It’s probably search bait to talk about if there will or won’t be a comeback. In the past few months the Chappelle rumour mill has picked up quite a bit, so there have been a number of articles similar to this one. The thing that stands out here is when Toure talks about Dave’s style and on-stage persona. Everyone else has been trying to recap jokes (which Toure does very well here, just read the bit about Chappelle’s encounter with a gay gentleman), but the last few paragraphs of this piece address how Chappelle simply has to address himself in his act now. He got too big, and there’s too much of a mythology around him, for that to not take over his perception of the world. In the past that joke about the gay guy approaching him would simply work like that: a gay guy approaches him. Now, in Dave’s post-Africa world, the gay guy recognizes him as being Dave Chappelle and Chappelle talks about how he used to be a famous guy.

It’s that mindset that worries me. With these unannounced shows and a desire to stay out of the spotlight, it make me wonder if I’ll ever get to enjoy Chappelle again in the way that I once did. The fact that he is so funny helped make him exceptionally popular and his popularity has now limited how often he wants to be funny. In the last five years I’ve seen about 16 minutes total of new material from a handful of YouTube videos. I can lip sync most of that stuff too, but it’s not the same. I just want him to be able to stand-up again like a regular comic. I feel bad for the guy for the shit he has had to put up with, but god dammit I miss him.

Dave Chappelle is the greatest.