How Eric Andre Reacted To Seeing Me Back Stage After 10 Years

You won't believe this...

Last weekend, I had the lucky treat of being added to the guest list for Eric’s Friday night show at Terminal 5 by a mutual friend in comedy, one of the show’s producers. I first met Eric years ago, when I regularly saw him performing his stand up at the Bowery Poetry Club and around town at open mics and booked shows we were both performing on. We weren’t exactly bffs, but we saw each other perform often enough that we knew each knew who the other was.

An interesting thing about comedy is that I saw many of the same faces nightly, because we were all hitting the same stages, and over time, I just became acquainted with other comedians through a kind of inertia of seeing them over and over again. There are comedians who I never hung out with outside of performing at comedy events ever, for a decade or more, but I’d consider them to be my friends. It becomes a sort of co-worker environment, as in, co-workers aren’t always friends, per se, but if you ran into them at the store, you might say hi and chat for a minute.

Anyway—Eric’s show was fantastic. There were many highlights, but my favorite part was when Eric invited a random audience member up and asked him about his ex-girlfriend. He then coerced this 20-something into letting him text his ex on Friday night around 9 p.m. (from the guy’s phone) in front of a packed drunken audience of hundreds at Eric’s live show taping in midtown Manhattan. The texts were projected on a big screen behind the stage so the audience could see the conversation unfold. It started out easy with some sentiments along the lines of, “You were the best thing that ever happened to me,” “The government is trying to keep us apart” and “My dad is in the hospital” — I’m paraphrasing, here.

During the texts, Eric implored the guy to go bobbing for chocolate pudding, so he did. While his face was getting annihilated with what I’d essentially describe as a pudding black face, she texted back, “Are you OK?”

At this point, the audience began chanting, “FaceTime her!” So of course, Eric complied.