Dying is easy, and comedy is hard. By that calculus, telling jokes for six-plus hours would appear downright impossible—unless you're Dave Chappelle.
The 34-year-old funnyman returned to his old stomping grounds at Hollywood's Laugh Factory Sunday and accomplished the feat for second time. Chappelle performed a 6-hour, 12-minute stand-up routine, breaking the record he set last April by five minutes.
"Dave was determined to keep his record because he recently heard that Dane Cook was planning on trying to break [his] record," club owner Jamie Masada told the Associated Press.
Chappelle and Cook, 35, have something of a rivalry going when it comes to marathon sets.
The latter was the first to shatter the longstanding record of 2 hours, 41 minutes set by Richard Pryor in 1980, clocking in at 3 hours and 50 minutes in early April.
But he was one-upped by Chappelle Apr. 15. The outspoken comic cracked wise for nearly double Cook's mark, starting at 10:30 p.m. and finishing up six hours and seven minutes later—and with nary a bathroom break.
Masada says that the Block Party emcee had plenty of new material for his latest endeavor, after extensive traveling of late, including a recent trip to Ecuador.
There was no immediate commment from Chappelle, who in 2005 bailed on a $50 million deal with Comedy Central for two more seasons of Chappelle's Show and hightailed it to Africa.
Chappelle shot down reports that he suffered a breakdown, telling Esquire in 2006 that he turned his back on Chappelle's Show for professional and personal reasons.
Aside from hosting Block Party, the 2005 Michel Gondry-helmed documentary about Chappelle's all-star Brooklyn street bash and occasional stand-up sets in clubs across the country, the comic has been mostly lying low since his great escape.