When attending a black comedy show, most fans of black comedians know there are three things they should be aware of:
- If the show is scheduled for 7 o’clock, it will start promptly at 8:12 p.m.
- You will be charged the equivalent of a down payment on a small suburban home for a shot of Hennessy and lukewarm buffalo wings.
- If you can’t take a joke, you shouldn’t sit up front.
Apparently, a fan at a South Carolina comedy club didn’t get the memo and decided to take out his frustration over his bill, his lack of self-esteem or his displeasure with the comedic performance by hopping onstage and starting a donnybrook during comedian Steve Brown’s live show Sunday.
Brown, who has appeared on popular shows like BET’s Comic View, The Bad Boys of Comedy and Michael Harriot’s podcast, was performing at the Comedy House in Columbia, S.C., when a member of the audience decided to jump onstage and re-enact his favorite scenes from WorldStarHipHop (how no one screamed “Woooorld Staaaar” is a testament to the audience’s restraint).
Seemingly nonplussed, Brown took the opportunity to engage in a time-honored ritual described in African folklore as “squaring up.” Displaying an agility obviously gleaned from watching too many kung fu movies, the comedian ducked and evaded roundhouse punches as well as a few attempts from the impromptu gladiator to hit the performer with the microphone stand and the stool (which—at many black comedy shows—is often subjected to sexual misconduct in a hackneyed practice called “fucking the stool”).
The attacker was ushered offstage but returned briefly with his shirt off, because, according to the bylaws of Inebriated Negroes Fighting at the Club Topless (INFACT), drunken bar fights cannot be legally sanctioned unless one person removes the clothing from his upper body and screams, “You don’t know me!”
Brown addressed the issue on his Instagram page Sunday by assuring his fans that he was OK, posting a video and a picture of a scratch, insisting that “mic stands are a bitch.” In the video, Brown stressed that “comedy clubs gotta be held accountable for lack of security.”
“The thing is, the dude wasn’t being heckled, nobody was messing with him,” Brown said. “All of a sudden, the dude just got up and lost his mind. I asked him if he was OK. I had to give him the comedian disclaimer: If you come onstage, your ass is open game. So you saw what happened.”
Many who witnessed Brown’s dodging and ducking ability expect the comedian to be cast in the remake of The Matrix.
When asked by The Root why he had attacked the comic, the offender did not say: “You don’t know me! Where’s my shirt? Also ... can I get a to-go box for my wings?”