Not for the squeamish

Much of the crowd that turned out for comedian Dave Chappelle's performance Thursday at the IU Auditorium wanted to hear jokes about one thing -- pot.\nWhen the star of the pothead film "Half-Baked" asked the audience what people did for fun in Bloomington, he was answered by a resounding chorus of "weed!"\nBut in the end, Chappelle's funny but somewhat over-the-top performance largely steered away from marijuana humor.\n"Weed, weed, weed," he said. "That's all I hear. I can't escape it. It's everywhere."\nHe even acknowledged that he doesn't get high anymore.\n"I'm suffering long-term effects," he said. "That shit will catch up with you after a while."\nBy eschewing pot, Chappelle's performance wisely centered on other subjects, proving that he's not just a one-gag guy. Early in the show, he launched into a lengthy and frequently hilarious treatise on another of his addictions -- masturbation. Chappelle struck up a conversation with an audience member, who revealed that he did more studying than dating.\n"See, this guy gets good grades," Chappelle said. "Masturbation is good for your mind."\nHe said masturbation is a routine part of his life -- "I'm a married man. I have to masturbate once in a while to survive" -- and he asserted that "every guy in history jerked off." \nUnfortunately, much of Chappelle's performance relied almost too heavily on sexual and scatological humor, including his reluctance to perform oral sex on a woman and his assertion that America would never elect an attractive woman president because foreign leaders would always be hitting on her.\nSome of the routine, like his commentary on human-animal sexual relations, made you laugh -- and made you feel guilty for laughing.\n"Bad shit happens when you have sex with animals," he said.\nWhen he started discussing how sex with monkeys reportedly started the AIDS epidemic, Chappelle was treading the line between pushing the limits and going too far.\nThe latter half of his show was dominated by a bit in which he meets the devil in a strip club in St. Louis. The entire piece was abstract and obscure, and it often slowed to a crawl, killing any momentum Chappelle had going.\nOverall, Chappelle's performance was often funny, sometimes dull and once in a while revolting. In general, his warped humor clicked with the audience, but it also wasn't for the squeamish. His performance made you wonder where he comes up with this stuff -- and whether he can be a little more creative than just sex and drugs.