I love NYC.
EDIT:
I’ll try to keep the set-up as short as I can (and most likely fail at that).
Basically, my girlfriend and I had made some plans for the day before Thanksgiving and, due to mutual lateness, they got thrown out the window. She had been wanting to go to a comedy club for a while so, after a quick Google search, it was decided that the Comedy Cellar in Greenwich Village would be our destination for the night. It was about 10PM at this point so we quickly scrambled and headed out.
We got there with over half an hour to spare before the 11:30PM show started. I looked at the $18 + 2 drinks cover charge and, because of my unemployment (and this is important later on), I thought it’d be better to either wait until a non-Holiday show or to go to a different, hopefully cheaper comedy club. I quickly browsed on my iPhone (the damn thing is so useful) for comedy clubs around the area and we headed towards one nearby where the show had, unfortunately, just finished. My girlfriend wanted to go back to the Comedy Cellar to check it out and, after a bit of trepidation on my part, we decided to just walk in and enjoy the night.
All the comedians (comics?) were really good, doing about 15-20 minute bits as far as I can tell. It was kind of hard to get a good grasp of time when you’re laughing so hard. I can’t for the life of me remember any of their names unfortunately, but they were all more than worth that initial cover charge.
And then the host threw the bombshell.
“From his hit show in Comedy Central, Chappelle’s Show, here’s Dave Chappelle.”
I thought “what!?” and “really!?”and a bunch of other words followed by question and exclamation marks while I quickly turned around to see if this was some kind of bad joke but lo and behold, it really was Dave Chappelle walking to the stage. I turn to my girlfriend and say: “I have to go to the bathroom but I guess I’m not going now.” I didn’t want to miss a second of this. After a long applause he starts his thing and you eventually realize that he wasn’t as prepared as he would be for, say, one of his HBO stand-up shows. There was a lot of improvisation I thought but I’ll be damned if the guy didn’t deliver. The guy is just funny as hell. He was also on-stage for about 2 hours I’d say, which was probably a lot more than he was supposed to.
It’s around here that we reach the actual exchange that led to the title of this post.
I was sitting rather close to the stage and Dave Chappelle looked at me and asked: “So what’s your story?”
“Me? There’s not much to say,” I replied.
He made some comment that I can’t remember exactly (I can’t remember much of what he said in detail, to be honest). It was something along the lines of people thinking of a million things to say until they get put on the spot to which everybody laughed.
I quickly said: “Well, I’m unemployed if you want to be topical,” and he noted that, in spite of that, I still had money to go to comedy clubs to which people laughed again.
He asked me what I used to do, I told him I was a doorman and he said that some of the smartest people he knew had been doormen. He used one of his writers as an example and then said something along the lines of “well, those are all the examples I got for you, buddy” to which, yes, people laughed once more.
He made a couple more jokes at my expense over the course of the night, much to my delight. The one I most distinctly recall went something like: “I trust this guy here. He opens doors for people, both figuratively and literally.”
My bladder was just about to explode at this point. I was still holding it and I figured I either piss my pants right there and then or I go to the bathroom and miss a minute of his comedy. He had been going on for a while and there was no clear end in sight so I opted for the latter. I start to get up and he says: “Aw, don’t tell you you’re leaving now.”
“No, dude. I’m just going to the bathroom,” I said.
“Well, when you come out, you and your girlfriend are getting a drink on me.”
I kinda froze for a bit and said: “Wow, really!? Thanks, man,” and headed towards the bathroom as a light applause erupted among the crowd. I didn’t know if he was being serious or not but sure enough, soon as I get out of the bathroom a waiter approaches me and asks: “Coors Light and Heineken?” which was what my girlfriend and I had been drinking respectively.
I sat down, thanked Dave again and the show went on. He mentioned me a couple more times after that and I even squeezed in a gay joke in there (my comedic bread and butter) which seemed to put the whole room in a really awkward place. Alas, if I start talking about this night in more detail than I already have I’ll never finish writing this post so let’s wrap this up.
I’m already thinking “I’m definitely writing about this on my site” and, even though I feel as if Dave Chappelle doesn’t really enjoy the picture taking part that Chappelle’s Show brought to his table, I just had to get my picture taken with him so I could add it to that future post I was going to write. So I had my girlfriend take the picture (which lies at the very beginning of this post) and later got to writing that post (which you’re just about done reading).
After we left, my girlfriend asked: “Who was that guy?”
Showing her the way of Chappelle’s Show has become my number one priority right now.
I love New York City.
http://www.sebastianvonbuchwald.com/200 ... e-a-drink/
Good times.
