Rock In A Hard Place

The guy onstage was struggling. A group of Canadian teenagers had just bounced and the crowd had thinned out except for me, a few couples and a gang of Brits in the front row.

I grabbed my bag and jacket to make a fast getaway, just as the host's teenage son came to the stage and stuttered an introduction for the next comedian, a surprise guest, we were told. "P-p-please help me w-welcome? C-CHRIS R-ROCK!" I sat back down and started to clap as a slouched-over guy in baggy clothes and sneakers approached the stage, his eyes barely visible beneath his Yankees cap.

As everyone knows by now, Chris Rock is hosting the Academy Awards. Apparently, he was here to try out material. Scribbled on the cardboard back of a notebook was a laundry list of one-liners, many of them movie-related humor. Much of the routine was good but safe, rarely straying from familiar terrain. There were bits about black marginalization in films, the remarkable movies of Pixar and the unremarkable (but prolific) movies of Jude Law. "I was sitting through a Jude Law movie the other night when another Jude Law movie came out in the middleof it!"

I howled my signature hyena-pitched laughter. But the reception among the Brits in front of me was lukewarm. They even mildly heckled Rock.

"Do you guys even know who I am?" Rock asked, after making a few royal-family jokes. They shook their heads. "I'm kinda famous here in the States." Blank stares. "No really. I am."

Despite a lackluster movie career, Rock definitely has enough cross-appeal status to carry the Academy Awards on his twerp shoulders. And though rumor has it that Jerry Seinfeld and Jay Leno helped him shore up his Oscar routine, I'd like to take credit. That night, I was Rock's main coach, a barometer for how much he needs to ratchet up his humor.

Rock, of course, rarely censors himself, usually letting fly every imaginable four-letter word. But tonight, he was tame for 40 minutes. "I'm a fastball pitcher," he recently told Entertainment Weekly, "so I'm gonna be throwing fastballs."

Not from what I saw. Sure, his pre-Oscar comments may have pissed off the gay community, and he has the FCC on edge, but Rock, like the countless schlemiels who've preceded him, will keep it G-rated and dull. He'll bring no pain. Otherwise the tuxedoed stiffs in the audience might flash back the same dumb stares as the Brits in front of me did.