Greg Stone
New York City is a fantastic place to be if you’re a fan of stand-up comedy, and during my time in the city, I’ve been to a number of shows that went absolutely off the rails for a variety of reasons.
However, I don’t know if anything tops the time that a guy who came in last place in my fantasy football league was forced to do a five-minute set at an open mic for the first time in his life and made the sage decision to get absolutely hammered before his name was pulled.
I still can’t tell you exactly how it happened, but by the time everything was said and done, he’d made out with a dude who had previously copped to taking a bunch of mushrooms before he got on stage (an encounter he had to be reminded of the morning after).
However, I can confidently say that incident has nothing on what transpired during stand-up comedian Greg Stone’s set at the Comedy Cellar a couple of weeks ago.
Every comic knows they’re taking a bit of a leap of faith when they decide to interact with the crowd, which is what Stone did when he opened the floor to the audience to see if there was anyone in attendance who was willing to share a story about their screwed up family.
One woman decided to speak up, and while she was initially hesitant to say exactly why she thought her family was fucked up, she eventually dropped an absolute bomb when she revealed her father had murdered her mother a couple of years ago before imploring Stone to “make it funny.”
Over the next few minutes, the comic did what he could to grant her request and it’s safe to say he handled things pretty well.
I guess you could say he did a...stand-up job considering the circumstances.
I’m so sorry.