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http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0 ... 15,00.html

   
PETER VAN AGTMAEL / POLARIS FOR TIME

Web Exclusive | Arts - TV
On the Beach With Dave Chappelle
In South Africa, TIME's Simon Robinson talks with the comic about his sudden disappearance from Chappelle's Show

Posted Sunday, May. 15, 2005

In this week's TIME, Christopher John Farley reveals why Dave Chappelle decided to leave his hit show and what he's been up to since he disappeared to South Africa two weeks ago. Last Friday night, TIME Johannesburg bureau chief Simon Robinson met with the comic at uShaka Marine World on the beach in the South African port of Durban. In a ninety minute conversation, Chappelle was eager to set the record straight on why he suddenly left the U.S. and what he's doing in South Africa. Here's Robinson's account:



Dave Chappelle shows up to our interview in a red t-shirt, blue jeans and shiny white sneakers. He lopes around in his usual style, pacing a lot, but does not seem like a man struggling to speak or to order his thoughts at all. He's lucid and thoughtful and a couple of times asks me to give him some time to think about answers. He concedes that he is dealing with a lot of issues and mentions that he had consulted a psychiatrist about a week ago for a forty minute session. He is also quite fastidious about keeping his new sneakers clean and stops at least twice to wipe smudges off their toes.

The first thing Chappelle wants is to dispel rumors?that he's got a drug problem, that he's checked into a mental institution in Durban?that have been flying around the U.S. for the past week. He says he is staying with a friend, Salim Domar, and not in a mental institution, as has been widely reported in America. Chappelle says he is in South Africa to find "a quiet place" for a while. "Let me tell you the things I can do here which I can't at home: think, eat, sleep, laugh. I'm an introspective dude. I enjoy my own thoughts sometimes. And I've been doing a lot of thinking here."

The picture he paints?and it seems a fairly honest and frank assessment? is of someone struggling to come to terms with a new position and power who's still figuring out how to come to grips with how people around him are reacting to the $50 million deal he signed last year with Comedy Central. Without naming specific characters, he seems to blame both some of his inner circle (not his family) and himself for the stresses created by last year's deal.

"There were things that overwhelmed me," he says. "But not in the way that people are saying. I haven't spent any of the money. All that stuff about partying and taking crack is not true. Why do I live on a farm in Ohio? To support my partying lifestyle?"

The problems, he says, started with his inner circle."If you don't have the right people around you and you're moving at a million miles an hour you can lose yourself," he says. "Everyone around me says, 'You're a genius!'; 'You're great!'; 'That's your voice!' But I'm not sure that they're right." And he stresses that Comedy Central was not part of the problem and put no more than normal television restrictions on what he could do.

"You got to be careful of the company you keep," Chappelle says. "It's hard to know how much to say. One of the things that happens when people make the leap from a certain amount of money to tens of millions of dollars is that the people around you dramatically change.

"During my ascent, I've seen other people go through that wall to become really big. They always said that fame didn't change them but that it changes the people around them. You always hear that but you never really understand it. But now that I'm there that makes a lot of sense and I'm learning what that means. You have to have people around you that you can trust and aren't just out for a meal ticket."

The breakdown in trust within his inner circle seems to have led him to question the material they were producing. He seems obsessed with making sure the material is good and honest and something that he will be proud. "I want to make sure I'm dancing and not shuffling," he says. "What ever decisions I make right now I'm going to have live with. Your soul is priceless." The first two seasons of his show "had a real spirit to them," he says. "I want to make sure whatever I do has spirit."

But Chappelle also says that he must share the blame for the stalled third season. "I'm admittedly a human being," he says. "I'm a difficult kind of dude." His earlier walkout during shooting "had a little psychological element to it. I have trust issues, things like that. I saw some stuff in myself that I just didn't dig. It's like when I brought a girl home to my mom and it looked as if my mom really didn't like this girl. And she told me, 'I like her just fine. I just don't like you around her.' That's how I feel in this situation. There were some things about myself that I didn't like. People got to take inventory from time to time. That's what this [coming to South Africa] is for."

This is Chappelle's second trip to South Africa. He first came to Durban, and visited Salim, in 2000. Chappelle won't tell me exactly how he met Salim but describes him as a family friend. A soft-spoken Muslim, Salim seems also to be something of a sounding board to Chappelle, who converted to Islam several years ago. While Chappelle is not doing a formal religious course in Durban, says Salim, who wore a simple cotton robe and hung back through the interview and photo shoot and only spoke when I asked him a question, "if he wants to talk religion then I'm there as someone to talk to." Says Chappelle: "This is kind of my spot where I can come to fill my spirit back up. Sometimes you neglect these things if you are running on a corporate schedule." The crux of his crisis seems to boil down to his almost obsessive need to "check my intentions." He uses the phrase a few times during the interview and explains that it means really making sure that he's doing what he's doing for the right reasons.

His family, he says, has been a huge support over the past eight months. "They've been phenomenal really, just incredible. What beautiful people. Everyone loves their family but it's good if you can like them too."

His religion is also crucial. "I don't normally talk about my religion publicly because I don't want people to associate me and my flaws with this beautiful thing. And I believe it is a beautiful religion if you learn it the right way. It's a lifelong effort. Your religion is your standard. Coming here I don't have the distractions of fame. It quiets the ego down. I'm interested in the kind of person I've got to become. I want to be well rounded and the industry is a place of extremes. I want to be well balanced. I've got to check my intentions, man."

That includes planning for the future. When I ask him if he would ever buy a place of his own in South Africa, Chappelle replies, "First of all I've got to make sure I've got a job."

He says that he's only been recognized five or six times in the two weeks he's been here. "It happens so sporadically that when it does it freaks me out because I have to remember, 'Oh, yeah, I'm famous.'" At the end of our interview/photo shoot an American woman does recognize him. "Number seven," he cries. "Wow, I'm not that big in Africa. I've got to do an action film here."

During most of the hour and a half that we talk, Chappelle is serious and introspective. But he still has his sense of humor, which comes out as we near the end of our conversation: "Is that enough to prove I'm not smoking crack or hanging out in a mental institution?"

Question 1: True or False. It is more common for a man's left testicle to hang lower than his right.


Question 2: When a man ejaculates, the amount of sperm he releases on average is:
a) 1 teaspoon
b) 4 tablespoons
c) 1/2 cup
d) 1/4 cup.


Question 3: True or False. Early vibrators were used by doctors to bring women to orgasm as a part of medical treatment.


Question 4: A 2004 Cosmopolitan poll revealed what as a man's favorite sexual fantasy:
a) Doing it in public
b) Filming it
c) Tying someone up
d) Having a threesome.



Question 5: True of False. The "Kama Sutra" instructs men to make the sounds of the animals who lend their name to different positions like the dog, tiger or elephant.


Question 6: The G-spot can be found:
a) On the clitoris
b) Inside the vagina
c) On the cervix
d) Nowhere, it's a myth.


Question 7: True or False. Half of all American women say they have orgasms during sex.


Question 9: Which of the following primates has the largest erection:
a) A chimp
b) A gorilla
c) A human
d) A baboon.

Question 10: How many Americans in their 80s participate in sexual activities at least once a month:
a) 3 percent
b) 13 percent
c) 23 percent or
d) 33 percent

Go to the article for the answers:

http://www.asuwebdevil.com/issues/2005/ ... rts/692659

I know nothing about this EFT treatment protocol. I just read it in the San Diego Union-Tribune this morning.

Has anyone tried this?

---

Unorthodox therapy gains local following

By Rick Rogers
STAFF WRITER

March 31, 2005


LAURA EMBRY / Union-Tribune

Susan Hannibal, a self-described intuitive healer
from Vista, demonstrated the Emotional Freedom
Technique used to treat stress.

VISTA ? A once-dismissed therapy for mental
disorders is gaining a following among San Diego
medical experts who treat combat veterans.

Social workers, chaplains and psychiatrists from
Naval Medical Center San Diego and Camp Pendleton
are learning the Emotional Freedom Technique, an
unorthodox method that even its creator can't
explain precisely.

It and a treatment that uses virtual reality are
two of the enterprising approaches being tried at
the medical center to alleviate combat-induced
psychological wounds.

The Emotional Freedom Technique was developed by
Stanford engineer Gary Craig in the 1990s. It was
largely ignored by the mental health
establishment because no one had conducted a
study on its effectiveness.

But Jeannie Ertl, a senior clinical social worker
at the medical center, gave the technique a
chance in November.

She and many of her patients are happy that she
did.

"EFT is tremendous for treating anxiety
associated with post traumatic stress disorder,"
Ertl said.


CRISSY PASCUAL / Union-Tribune
Seaman Wilbur Hurley, a 20-year-old corpsman,
returned from Camp Pendleton from Iraq in October
plagued with horrible visions. He has since been
treated for post-traumatic stress disorder using
the Emotional Freedom Technique, which is based
on the same theory as acupuncture.
She has tried the method on 15 patients, 12 of
whom found it helpful at relieving or eliminating
symptoms such as anxiety and stress. Ertl uses
the technique, which hasn't been approved by the
Defense Department, in conjunction with more
traditional therapies.

"It seems to work for a lot of people," she said.

Seaman Wilbur Hurley is one of them.

Hurley, a 20-year-old corpsman, returned to Camp
Pendleton in October plagued with horrible
visions. In mid-September, he had witnessed a
young Marine kill himself while serving in Iraq.
It was just weeks before Hurley returned to his
base at Camp Pendleton.

"I don't care what happened in Iraq," Hurley
promised himself. "What happened there would stay
there."

But back home in Calvert County, Md., Hurley
couldn't erase the image of the dead Marine.

"I felt like a black cloud was over my head every
day," Hurley said. "I had vivid dreams of walking
through fields of gore. I isolated myself from
friends and family."

By early December, anxiety attacks sometimes made
Hurley pull to the side of the road until his
tremors passed.

Willing to try something new, Hurley followed a
friend's advice and went to Susan Hannibal, a
self-described intuitive healer from Vista who
uses the Emotional Freedom Technique to treat
stress, anxiety and post traumatic stress
disorder. It was Hannibal who taught the
technique to Ertl and several military chaplains.

Hannibal explained to Hurley how the method is
based on the same theory as acupuncture ? that
the body is an energy field with points that can
be manipulated to restore health.

Patients focus on a traumatizing event while
repeating a self-affirming chant and tapping
parts of their body, such as their hands, lips
and sides. A typical session is about 90 minutes,
and some results can be seen after a single
session.

"Once I started doing the tapping, an
overwhelming calm came over me," Hurley said. "I
had no cares or worries in the world. In fact I
left Sue's (office) singing. It was pretty much
the greatest day of my life."

Hurley spent that weekend trying to summon bad
feelings just to prove that he could stay calm.
He concentrated on the worst cases he'd seen
while patching up Marines for seven months in
Ramadi. He also thought about the suicidal
Marine.

"But I felt nothing. It wasn't there anymore,"
Hurley said.

More then a month later, Hurley said he believes
that what happened in Iraq is finally staying
there.

"Nothing that happened over there ruins my day
now," he said.

For more information about the Emotional Freedom
Technique, visit http://www.emofree.com or
http://www.guidedhealing.com.

Rick Rogers: (760) 476-8212;
[email protected]