Reluctantly yours

By Joe Brown (contact)

Wednesday, Nov. 19, 2008 | 2 a.m.

Chris Morris

After 11 years in Aspen, Colo., the Comedy Festival packed up and moved to Las Vegas in 2005. The festival gathers so many comedians in one place at one time — including Ellen DeGeneres, Jerry Seinfeld and Dane Cook — that for these three days each year, Caesars Palace becomes the comedy Woodstock.

Make that Laughingstock.

Most comedians were thrilled when the laff-fest relocated to this everything-all-the-time city.

Not David Alan Grier.

“I loved the Comedy Festival when it was in Aspen,” says Grier, 51, on the phone from his office in Los Angeles. “It was awesome. No one went there to ski or snowboard, the slopes were empty, everybody was inside listening to (genital) jokes. It was a week of bliss, because I love to ski, and the empty slopes was my idea of heaven. So I’m starting a petition to get the Comedy Festival moved back to Aspen. I can dream.”

Starting Thursday, the festival conquers Caesars Palace, with more than 60 performers slotted into the Colosseum, ballrooms and clubs. Grier is appearing solo at 10:30 p.m. Friday in the Palace Ballroom at Caesars.

What is it like to be surrounded by so many comic peers and rivals at once?

“It’s my idea of hell,” Grier jokes. (I think he’s joking.) “It’s like being backstage at some sleazy club, and we all have to go onstage, and everyone’s like (sighs) ‘Jerry Seinfeld just did all my black material.’ ”

Out of this whole anthill of comedians, Grier has perhaps the freshest material to deliver. In October, just before the presidential election, he launched a weekly “fake news” program on Comedy Central called “Chocolate News,” a parody of magazine-style news shows from a black perspective.

A thoughtful, culturally engaged guy who started out as a serious actor before comedic success claimed the bulk of his career, Grier seized his new platform as an opportunity to offer a preelection editorial rant to his base.

“To the white folks who still can’t bring themselves to pull that lever, just vote for (Obama’s) white half!” he shouted. And: “Black people, until Nov. 4, I am begging you, stop doing stupid —!”

And so on, on an edgy show with skits about a “De-Negrofication Institute” for suburban white boys and a warning about “Fat Black Mama Syndrome,” about the explosion of black-man-in-drag comedies.

“We talked about what would be better for the show, if (Obama) won or lost,” says Grier, who was one of the original cast members of the long-running “In Living Color” sketch show. “If Barack would have lost, we could have been on the air for 500 years, just with one conspiracy theory after another. But I’m sure we will criticize and make fun of Barack, like any president, and I think we are in a unique position to do that.”

Since Obama’s victory, Grier says, the P.C. atmosphere has thinned out a bit, and comedians have become more relaxed about poking fun at the president-elect.

“(Obama) was so deified. Jon Stewart tried to do the mildest of jokes, and people booed, and hopefully we’re past that. Poor Bernie Mac did two or three “My wife is so ...” jokes at one of his benefits, and the crowd was like (whiny voice) ‘That’s sexist, that’s racist, that’s hate-ist ...’ And Barack had to come out and apologize for anything and everything.”

The president-elect seems to have a sense of humor himself, but he’s not a comic lightning rod. Yet.

Grier says he and his “Chocolate” colleagues will find the funny in the presidency itself. “(Obama) is so levelheaded and even-tempered — he’s not a knee-slapper himself. It’s mostly the things around him that are funny and we’ll continue to respond to.”

Grier watched the historic election results at the Democratic Party’s California state celebration at the Hyatt Regency in Century City, and it almost turned into a comedian’s worst nightmare.

“I was supposed to host this event,” Grier says, “and by the time I get there, the fire marshal had closed it down. Every hungry-dog politician was grabbing the mike; they were introducing all these high school kids who had made thousands of phone calls. And I was like, ‘What do you want me to do?’

“So they tell me, ‘We have good news — you’re going on after Barack.’

“And I was like, ‘Are you (kidding) me?’

“When Barack Obama was announced president, everyone was cheering and crying. This white woman I was standing next to offstage fell out — I’m talkin’ fell to her knees weeping. I was crying. And then they were like, will you go on after that? It was horrifying.”

Not every comedian would have the smarts — or the humility to know what to do next.

“Here’s exactly what I did,” he says, laughing. “I got up there and said, ‘I have to scream!’ So everybody screamed. Then I said, ‘Not four years of Barack Obama, but eight years,’ and they screamed again. I did every political cliche, then introduced a gospel group, got in a car, and went home.”