One of the greatest skits in the history of Dave Chappelle's show is harder to watch today. Not just because Prince is dead, tragically and suddenly, at 57. Not just because the bit lampoons a man who deserves to be immortalized as one of the 20th century's greatest artistic minds.
And not just because, in 2016, the underbelly of homophobic jokes feel as off-color as the video quality.
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No, Charlie Murphy's True Hollywood Stories — featuring Prince in all of his beautiful and purple and perfectly flamboyant basketball prowess — is harder to watch today because it makes you laugh in a moment when you feel like crying. Public grief is complicated. It is simultaneously insensitive and enriching to present the myth made of a man we just lost. But you can love Prince and love this skit.
Because, by god, we were all rooting for Dave Chappelle's Prince to kick ass in perhaps the greatest pickup game ever televised.
The skit was ridiculous. Wrong, probably, for its digs at Prince's androgyny and quirkiness, for mocking a man who dared to be different and was damn good at it. Distilling The Revolution to perpetrators of "fruity picks" feels ... problematic in today's age. But the lines live forever, part of the Prince legacy whether he liked it or not. Many a pickup (basketball) artist has pulled a quote from the skit.
"Game: blouses."
"Why don't you purify yourself in the waters of Lake Minnetonka?"
Lines delivered in a beautiful, befitting stoicism. And hilarious. And, yes, a lampoon.
But Prince would later say in a 2004 interview about the skit, "I loved it. That's a true story, by the way."
According to Prince, there were definitely pancakes. He just didn't make them.
On a day when Prince nostalgia will rain down, yes, in purple streaks, this too belongs to the canon. And yes, admittedly, it's a way for those of us in sports media to balance the gravedance that is content surrounding a death; we want a piece, transparently, because it helps us cope and helps our bottom line and helps us explain how a transcendent artist touched every facet of this world.
Even sports. Even when he wasn't actually present.
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But don't get it twisted. The real Prince could play basketball. The real Prince liked basketball.
The Star Tribune's @StribJany dug up some newspaper clips of Prince's high school basketball days last year. https://t.co/qPiEuKx8BR
— Josh Moore (@HLpreps) April 21, 2016
From the Strib archives: Chappelle was right. pic.twitter.com/icXBFGWkij
— Libor Jany (@StribJany) March 3, 2015
Beyond being a bona fide high school basketball player, Prince was a Timberwolves (and Kevin Garnett) fan. And when he was asked in that 2004 interview whether he had game:
"Oh definitely," he said. "And (Charlie) don't. And to be honest, it ain't that I'm that great. It's just that he's so bad."
Which is hilarious, and in part, hard to believe. For Prince, it seemed, was great at whatever he touched.