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Chris Rock's campaign

He had plenty to say about the candidates - and the incumbent - in town Tuesday. But though his comedy was kinder, it was no less blue.

There was no question that this is an election season as Chris Rock hit Philadelphia on Tuesday night for the first of three performances at the Academy of Music.

He opened the show with his own comedy caucus, detailing the abundant lies that are part and parcel of the process. Then he tore into each of the candidates in turn.

McCain: "How you gonna make decisions about the future if you ain't gonna be here?"

Clinton: "I think America is ready for a woman president, but does it have to be that woman?"

Obama: "He doesn't let his blackness sneak up on you. You hear 'Barack Obama' you expect one of the Commodores to come through."

And lest you were worrying, Rock had plenty of ammunition left over for our sitting president. But unlike other comedians, there was no bile to Rock's political humor. He didn't seem angry at these public figures. It was more like he was gleefully pointing out how little clothing the emperors were draped in.

Even when he was deliberately trying to shock ("Obama needs him a white girl. Yeah, I said it!"), he never seemed mean-spirited.

In many ways, the show revealed a new performance style for Rock. He no longer prowled the stage restlessly like a zoo cat, exhorting and challenging the crowd in a street preacher's cadence.

Instead he seemed lighter, less intense, with a more traditional stand-up approach. He even used a wired microphone, dragging tangled spools across the stage in his wake. Though he paced less, he nonetheless employed a more physical brand of comedy, bolstering his punch lines with gestures and movements.

There was a thematic sequence to his act, moving from politics to race to money to marriage. But he took plenty of detours. Talking about Hillary Clinton led to a tangent about the rules of infidelity. Discussing interracial dating lead him to sing a hilarious funeral dirge for Anna Nicole Smith. He jumped right from Iraq to the steroid scandals.

His riffs on politics ended with him musing on the incredible arrogance it takes to even contemplate a run for the highest office in the land. "Do you know how much Puff Daddy juice you have to drink to say you want to be president? How many Kanye injections you have to have to say you want to be president?"

Rock still curses more than anyone but Al Swearengen, the foul-mouthed saloonkeeper on HBO's Deadwood. That makes it almost impossible to recount much of his act in these pages. We can't, for instance, begin to tell you what he said about Babe Ruth. Or Regis Philbin. And the references grew increasingly blue and anatomically graphic as the night progressed.

But Rock has a dazzling command of all his material, whether it's Isaiah Washington's career prospects after getting booted off Grey's Anatomy or our curious obsession with bottled water. ("We have brainwashed ourselves to believe that if you use water from a faucet, a piece of pork will fall in your glass.")

One of the highlights of the performance was Rock's explanation of the very specific, almost convoluted circumstances in which it is permissible for a white person to use the N-word. Believe me, there is an extraordinary amount of provocation involved.

It's hard to say how scripted Rock's soliloquy was, but he certainly seemed more extemporaneous Tuesday night than he has in the past. There were several points during the show when he paused as if inwardly debating which humor trail to pursue next. Unerringly, he chose the right ones.