Do Not Heckle A Professional Comedian. You Will Not Win.

Last night, Emp. Peng. and I spent a mostly-lovely night out seeing Lewis Black's Let Them Eat Cake tour from the mezzanine of the Palace Theater in Columbus. If you have never heard of Lewis Black, here is a 5-minute sample that, while a few years old, is a fairly decent representation of his work. If you will be offended by f-bombs used as every part of speech except an adverb or use of other words that would be bleeped on basic cable, or are currently located in an environment that would not appreciate such things, please do us all a favor and do NOT start the clip playing.



So, last night, after doing about a half hour of material on how golfers are the second-biggest gamblers on the planet--behind people who lose their virginity on their wedding night--Lewis Black started in on some humorous commentary on current events, such as the headline in yesterday's USA Today, "TSA Considers Airport Gun Ban. He had much the same reaction as I did when I saw that, ("You mean they're not already banned, when I can't bring nail clippers?") only his was much funnier. The guy sitting two seats to my right, who had spent way too much on the $6 mixed drinks at the lobby concession stand, apparently had a different opinion on the overall hilarity. After the first segment, he started getting fidgety and complaining loudly to his date, the lady sitting immediately to my right. Five more minutes of material later, he pulled a cigarette from a pack, threw the rest of the pack at his date, proclaimed he did not need this (excrement), stood up and started storming off. He got almost all the way out before he decided to stop at the edge of the mezzanine railing and yell down to the stage, "I didn't pay to hear the (bleep) news. If I wanted the (bleeping) news, I would have stayed home and watched TV!"

As you can imagine, this brought the performance to a grinding halt, much to the annoyance of those of us who did not pay to hear a drunken heckler. Now, the other thing about Lewis Black is that he has been a touring stand-up comedian for at least 20 years now. In short, this is not his first day here. He calmly strode to the edge of the stage nearest Mr. Drunk Guy and asked if the guy was familiar with his body of work, because this is what he (bleeping) does. There was a too-lengthy back-and-forth between the main attraction, the heckler, and a couple of other people down in the pit who apparently decided that this had turned into Audience Participation Night, but the real show was in the seat next to me. While 99.8% of the audience (me included) was hoping that we could get back to what we paid to come see, I watch the reaction of the guy's date. When the heckler first started shouting, she had that familiar expression of "Why isn't the Earth opening up and swallowing me?" which morphed into "This is going to be a very uncomfortable conversation when we get home." As it became apparent that when you heckle a veteran comedian you will not win, and that the back-heckle was quite funny (though not as hilarious as his usual material), she started laughing right along with the rest of us. She even laughed a little at the bit he used to regain the long-lost audience control, about how one of the bad things about becoming more successful as a comedian is that he used to have an audience who knew what to expect at his performances, and now that audience is bringing their friends.