Revenge of the Nerds: Chris Rock and Howard Stern



(image via phillyburbs)

How�s this for inspiration: at school, Chris Rock and Howard Stern were often violently �liberated� from their lunch monies. (The Corsair serenely pours himself a 1978 Domaine de la Roman�e-Conti Montrachet) Could this, we wonder, have inspired Howard�s unnatural fixation with roasted deli meats? Stern, as listeners know, was one of the few white pioneers that attended Roosevelt Junior-Senior High School in Long Island. �These guys would choke me and say, �You�ll never live to see your fifteenth birthday,�� Howard wrote, perhaps a little breathlessly, in his bestseller Private Parts.

�On the first day of Junior High School, some kids got robbed,� notes Chris Rock in his own bestseller, Rock This! He continues, acidly, �But I got special treatment. A guy turned me upside down and shook the money out of my pockets.� Though those neighborhood punks have faded into a well-deserved obscurity (The Corsair averts his gaze), Stern and Rock remain hungry, in remembrance of lunches past. Over the intervening years, those unanswered teenage pleas for administrative aid have metamorphosed, pellucidly, into some of the finest crafted American comedy of our age. (The Corsair sparks up a Fuente Fuente Opus X cigar) Sometimes, it seems, an ass whipping can be an existentially clarifying process. I am wedgied, so to speak, therefore I am.

Chris Rock, not unlike Stern, took his licks after being bused from Bedford-Stuyvesant to a predominantly white school in a low-income area. �It was also hard being the only black kid in a white school,� wrote Rock, ruefully, �whenever they would do that lesson on slavery, everyone would turn around and look at me.� (Exaggerated cough suggesting feigned detachment)

Both turned out well, all told. Rock�s new sitcom �Everybody Hates Chris� comedically revisits those uneven smackdowns from his Brooklyn childhood. Fox Broadcasting actually passed on the original script of this no brainer. �Someone,� Chris told MTV.com, �actually picked (Fox TV�s �Method and Red�) over us.� Perhaps the nervous executives feared that Chris Rock might suffer a well-publicized panic attack and subsequently retreat to summer quarters in South Africa? (The Corsair averts his gaze) No one, of course, actually mentions the most bizarre walkout in the history of television; Chris Rock felt the need, nevertheless, to clarify his professionalism at the Television Critics Association press tour, saying, �My name�s Rock, not Chappelle. Are you confusing me with another skinny black man?"

�The King of All Media,� an equally unforgettable American comic, has been busy mining the depths of his dark (The Corsair shudders), fetid unconscious. The result will be �Howard Stern: The High School Years,� which is Stern�s unique, animated take on that awkward age; the show is currently in production for Spike TV. Those epic beatings, evidently, can only be properly rendered via computer generated animation. And after 11 years and over 2,000 episodes of inspired adult hijinx, with props that have included everything from tickle chairs to the aforementioned gelatinous slabs of luncheon meat hurled � wobbly -- at strippers� akimbo asses, the Stern Show is moving from E! Entertainment Television, which decided not to renew his contract, to �In Demand� pay-per-view. So much the better for us fans.

That�s not all. By the time you read this column, Howard Stern should either be finished -- or in the process of finishing up -- his long run on terrestrial radio. Listeners will have to pay to hear the slow motion car crash that is the life and times of the merry Z-lister, �Beetlejuice� and the rest of the wack pack. (Averted Gaze) After paying millions in government fines, Stern has decided to move his flagship from Infinity Radio to the uncensored, subscriber-based free speech zone known as Sirius� Howard Stern Channels (slots 100 and 102, respectively) � well out of grasping distance of the FCC�s briny tentacles.

Chris Rock, likewise, escaped from the clutches of an unchecked monster. Rock has been, at various times, a comedian, an actor, and � briefly -- a manufacturer of crack cocaine. You read that last sentence correctly, true believer. Although he never actually sucked �the glass dick,�as it is called, he revealed to Rolling Stone that he mixed up the ingredients for sale. On �Everybody Hates Chris,� the young Chris character expertly deals with bullies by making clever cracks; in the turbulent 80s, before his comedy career took off, Chris Rock dealt with Bed-Stuy poverty by cooking up crack! Say it ain�t so. To paraphrase the pharmaceutically-wise celebreality star Whitney Houston (sotto voce), �Crack is wack.�

But that was then and this is now. Which leads us to the following question: What is Chris Rock doing on the small screen, and � no less -- on the UPN? Wasn�t Chris Rock at one time an A-Lister? Why isn�t Chris Rock commanding the requisite $20 million a picture and some back-end points?

Two words: �Pootie Tang�; three more, we cannot fail to note: �Head of State.� You get the idea. Chris Rock, to be sure, hasn�t been the pickiest actor with regards to his choices of film projects. Somewhere between his critically acclaimed performance as Morgan Freeman�s son Wesley in �Nurse Betty,� and �Yuck Mouth� in �Panther (Averted Gaze),� things went � sideways. Howard is also going through some hard times. Although Stern technically begins his transmissions on Sirius Satellite Radio on January 1, 2006, he may have some unasked for �vacation time� in the near future. According to FMQB: �FCC's Enforcement Bureau is indeed investigating an early February broadcast in which allegedly indecent material was aired � on the February 4, 2005 � in the midst of the �Stupid Bowl,� a contest that featured women golfing with strap-on dildos on their foreheads, followed by the contestants attempting to sing �Amazing Grace� with a four-inch sausage down their throats.�

Charmed, I�m sure. So, Sirius� Howard Stern Channels has something to prove, for free speech, and, ancillary to that, in defense of the commercial viability of uncensored adult comedy. And �Everybody Hates Chris� is, in its own way, is small-screen redemption for the affable comedian who has participated in some ill-conceived film projects of late. As we know, there�s nothing �not including The Howard Stern radio show � that the High Hollywood crowd loves more than a comeback. Both Chris Rock and Howard Stern are somewhat expert at coming back from a beating if we are to judge from history. And the geek, my friends, shall inherit the earth; it�s revenge of the nerds. And revenge never tasted so sweet.

Everybody Hates Chris premieres on UPN on September 22, 2005.

The Howard Stern Channel is listed in slot 100 Sirius Satellite Radio with �Howard Stern II� taking slot 102, starting Sept. 29. Stern himself begins broadcasting on January 1st.