Hot Cuppa 'Chocolate News' in a 'Clean House'

Today's cuppa: hot chocolate (of course)

I did a syndicated feature story this week on the new Comedy Central show "Chocolate News," starring David Alan Grier ("An American Carol") -- who was hilarious in a 2006 episode of "Clean House," when he nominated his brother's family in Northern California to be on the show.

Here's a link to an edited version of the feature story, courtesy of the Fort Wayne (Ind.) Journal Gazette.

When I spoke to Grier about "Chocolate News," I took the opportunity to get an update on how his brother, sister-in-law and nephew are coping with the clean house that host Niecy Nash (who appeared in an early pilot of "Chocolate News") and her team created for them.

"That was really a family emergency," Grier said. "I've gotten more play on that. Niecy and I have been acquainted and friends for a while, and that's the only way I could get my brother to clean his house."

Asked if his brother has maintained the new lifestyle, Grier said, "My nephew has kept his room in tip-top shape. The parents are trying their best, and it's so much better than it was, let's put it that way. But that's the only way I could effect any change, to bring in a TV camera -- or else nothing would have happened."

After many seasons of watching "Clean House," which has had a diverse bunch of families and/or housemates, I've noticed that the clutter -- or as Nash calls it, "mayhem and foolishness" -- pretty much looks the same from home to home, no matter what sort of folks created it.

Asked about that, Grier said, "Well, yeah, there's not a lot of variety in mess. It's a pile of clothes. Usually, it's clutter. Yeah, my brother's become famous from that show.

"I haven't watched the show lately, but it was very traumatic. I can just describe it, it was like power yoga therapy. It's all slammed into a week. The people involved, they just have to go do it."

And, in case you're interested, here's the full "Chocolate News" story as it was submitted for publication...

With "The Daily Show" and its spin-off, "The Colbert Report," Comedy Central has established a strong presence in the world of funny fake news.

And starting in 2003, it was home to "Chappelle's Show," the critically acclaimed but short-lived sketch comedy series starring comedian/screenwriter/producer/actor Dave Chappelle.

Also, from 1990 to 1994, Fox aired "In Living Color," a sketch-comedy series featuring several members of the show-business Wayans family, along with James (now Jim) Carrey, Jamie Foxx and actor/comedian David Alan Grier.

Blend elements of all of these, and the result is "Chocolate News," a sketch-comedy faux-newsmagazine show from an African-American perspective, premiering Wednesday, Oct. 15, on Comedy Central.

Grier plays the show's host and does multiple characters in its "investigative" pieces. He's also executive producer, with Fax Bahr and Adam Small ("MADtv," "Blue Collar TV"), Robert Morton, Peter Aronson, and Jordan Levin, former programming chief at The WB.

"It was my idea," Grier says, "thinking about a lot of things. I wanted to figure out a different way to do sketch and also looking at the landscape of television after Dave Chappelle's show went off.

"And it seems like there was a void. There's no show from an African-American perspective that did comedy and sketch."

Grier didn't want to emulate Chappelle but to do something different.

"It's like 'In Living Color' with a graduate degree," he says, "being able to delve into more political minutiae and all of this race politics, which is part of it, and black culture, that nobody's doing."

Unlike "The Daily Show" and "Colbert," which both rely on the headlines of the day and guest appearances by newsmakers and others, "Chocolate News" is wholly scripted.

"It's not really a news show," Grier says, "It's more of a magazine format, making up and really writing these pieces. Then we had the freedom to comment on any issue. It required more work on our part, because we have to start from scratch."

Of course, when you talk about news from an African-American perspective, thoughts go immediately to Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, the Democratic candidate for president.

It's been reported, rightly or wrongly, that some late-night comedians have had trouble figuring out exactly how to craft humor around the Obama candidacy. Grier plans to find a way.

"If we're supposed to be from an African-American perspective, which we are," he says, "then we have to be able to address this in one way or another.

"It's like the nation is going through growing pains as we speak, on how to reassess race, how do we redefine it, how do we talk about it, how do we look at it?

"It's amazing for me to witness. I have to tell you, a year ago, I never thought we'd get this far so fast, that Obama would be right where he is now. It's just amazing to watch from a political perspective."

With an African-American man running for president on the Democratic ticket (after fending off a formidable female primary opponent in New York Sen. Hillary Clinton), and with the Republican Party having its first woman on the ticket with vice presidential candidate Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, it's a year that defies expectations on many fronts.

"Yes, yes," Grier says, "just what you're talking about is one aspect of the story we talked about -- is this the end of the world? Is this when pigs fly, when monkeys fly out of your butt, when a black man is elected, when a woman -- what else is next?

"All fields are open, and we're really having fun trying to take a smart but really funny look at stuff."

When comedy gets topical, though, and takes on such hot-button issues as race, politics and gender, it runs the risk of giving offense. Again, Grier has other plans in mind.

"I've been asked by other people," Grier says, "do I want to offend someone? No. That's not my goal. My goal is to make you laugh. I don't want to make you hate, but so often in comedy, someone is offended.

"It also seems like, today, everyone's offended by something. I'm not worried about it, but my goal is not to piss people off and make them offended; I'd rather you talked about it at the water cooler."

And sometimes, while pulling stories out of his imagination, Grier has discovered reality can be stranger than comedy.

"I'll tell you," he says, "we did this (sketch for the pilot about) interracial Siamese twins. Then this black woman who's married to this white guy, they had twins. They weren't Siamese twins, but they were twins; one was black, and one was white.

"We read the story, we're like, 'Oh, my God.' Every time we do a story, as bizarre as you think it is, something close to it is reported. It's not that far off."