Perhaps you saw the notice that the Chris Rock show tonight is rated PG-13.

Perhaps you were shocked.

Don't worry. So was Rock.

"I know nothing of that," the 43-year-old comedian said on the phone from his home in New Jersey. "I don't know why the [heck] somebody would advertise a PG-13 show. That's borderline retarded."

So don't worry, Rock is going to be Rock: profane, blunt and controversial.

"Bush has [bleeped] it up so bad, he's made it hard for a white man to run for president," he says in his current show. "Wasn't McCain too old 10 years ago?" And because he doesn't think Barack Obama can win, Rock recommends that he marry a white woman.

Even so, Rock bristles when his politics are referred to as radical.

"I think I'm a pretty mainstream comedian. When they have a comedian function, it's me and Jerry [Seinfeld] and Ray Romano. How radical can I be?"

Rock's trip to Richmond comes in the middle of a yearlong tour, from September to September. It's much longer than his usual tours, which last three to four months, and which he embarks on every three or four years. This time, the tour is longer for two reasons: daughters Lola, 6, and Zahra, 4.

"It's weird," he said. "When you've got kids, you think you don't have money,'cause you don't."

When he is touring, he is on the road for three or four days a week and then home for four or three days. His daughters sometimes travel with him, especially now that they have summer vacation (the older will be entering first grade, and the younger is heading into her last year in preschool).

"They save you from your miserable self. It's true. It's the best way to sum it up. You've got to analyze every move you make. There's nothing like kids to get you out of you."

Rock said he never particularly sought fame or success but just fell into it when he was discovered in comedy clubs and brought on to join the cast of "Saturday Night Live" in 1990. If he had never been offered the "SNL" gig, he wouldn't have been upset.

"I'd work at UPS or FedEx or whatever," he said. "I'd be one of the funnier guys at FedEx.

"Hey, if you'd have offered me a job paying $8 an hour in 1985, I would have never told jokes."

1985 is when he first became a comedian. A high school dropout, he had been working as a busboy and dishwasher at a Red Lobster.

"I was making $3.35 an hour then, so my idea of a good job was $10 an hour."

And does he ever go back to that Red Lobster?

"It's weird. I'm allergic to shrimp now."

Earlier in his career, Rock compared his comedy to that of George Carlin, who died last month. While looking back on Carlin this week, it wasn't the comedy that stood out in Rock's mind, but the man himself.

"He was a great guy. I used to love him . . . I just loved him because he always talked to you as an equal. He was 70 years old, and he would talk to you like you actually did the same thing for a living, and everyone doesn't do that. A lot of guys talk down to you. George was always right there with you and was interested in what was going on in your life and what you thought was funny.

"The average guys -- I'm not going to say any names -- they just tell you stories all day about things that happened four years ago. George was really about now."