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Chris Rock

Another dark and dreary Monday. Let’s remember some important contrarian advice from Chris Rock:

(1) Fuck and go places. Mr. Rock rejects the cliche that “relationships are hard.” They are not hard, he says. You need only: fuck and go places. That is all you should be doing, per Chris Rock. He also suggests that you try not to feel competitive with your partner; “her victories are yours.” And he dismisses the idea of waiting till you’re "in the mood." “You can eat pussy while suicidally depressed.” He mimes this behavior. It’s clear he is deadly serious.

(2) Pressure makes diamonds. Bullying is a gift. He suggests that Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg would not have gone anywhere if they had not been relentlessly bullied in school. (He even imagines some of this bullying, which, in his mind, takes the form of : “Fucker! Hey, Fuckerberg!”) Mr. Rock believes that the reason we have Trump right now is that we have become powerless in the face of bullying. He suggests that, for many years, the main (maybe the only) value of schooling was “learning how to deal with assholes.” (I agree with him here.) If we hadn’t stripped schools of bullying, then perhaps we would have been prepared for Trump. We would have known how to deal with him. (Rock also suggests that Trump may be a gift. “Look what Dubyah paved the way for. Obama! Who can imagine what we’ll get after Trump?”)

(3) Have some skepticism toward the police. “You’d think,” says Rock, “they would shoot a *white* kid, now and then, for the appearance of fairness.” Rock goes on to say that the “few bad apples” analogy just doesn’t work. “There are certain jobs where you can’t have ANY bad apples. Zero. Imagine if United Airlines regularly crashed planes, and they were just, like, sorry, it’s a few bad apples. A bad apple pointed that plane right at the Rocky Mountains. It happens!”

(4) Avoid porn. Rock attributes the downfall of his marriage to his porn addiction--among other things. (Rock admits that he cheated three times--and it’s this kind of honesty that launches him toward greatness. You won’t find this in a Bo Burnham special. Rock is Louis CK-esque in his fearlessness. And can we forgive Louis CK? I miss his writing.) Rock says that he became so inured to porn, he would need a very special and exact cocktail to get himself off. Start with a certain ethnic background--move toward siblings--move toward a poolside scenario...Mr. Rock also wishes that--throughout his ten-plus years of marriage--he hadn’t arrived to each and every event fifteen minutes late.

(5) You actually don’t get to be anything you believe you want to be. You get to do the thing you’re good at, if you’re lucky. This one is fairly self-explanatory. Rock gathers his daughters at the door each morning and wags a finger at them: “Remember,” he says. “No one out there gives a fuck about you! Not a single soul. And your status in here, in this house, is questionable, as well.” (This calls to mind Rock’s sitcom, which I never watched. I did enjoy its title: “Everybody Hates Chris.”)

(6) Be realistic. Rock grows tired of ailing couples. “I really loved her at the beginning, she was great, but then her flaws started to come out.” Rock rejects this suggestion. “Her flaws were always there,” he says. “You just chose to overlook them, because you were having sex.” Which brings him back to a favorite refrain: “Eat the pussy!” Followed by further miming. You have to admit: He has a point. As a contrarian, Rock reminds me of some old-school essayists: Joseph Epstein, Phillip Lopate. “Against Joie de Vivre.” “Against Everything.” “Against Love.” “Against Nature.”

Rock’s recent special, “Tamborine,” had me recalling favorite moments from the Louie oeuvre: Louie spanking a sad Class Parent, who wants to interrupt the sex and sit at the kitchen table, slowly eating blueberries. Louie at Ikea, shrugging at a rug. “It is FINE. It does not make me want to cum. It is FINE.” Louie furiously masturbating, while imagining a woman on the elevator with a “bag of dicks.” These bits of writing were all great gifts. Of course, Chris Rock appeared on that sitcom, and his off-stage wife would bellow her displeasure: “Louie is here AGAIN? It is too LATE! Send him HOME!” This was after Louie had been propositioned--a threeway with a cheerful young lady and F. Murray Abraham. Thus ends today’s visit to my sick mind. I’m happy to have watched “Tamborine."

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