Modified On December 12, 2006
TMZ.com is reporting that the Odessa cops say that the whole thing’s a hoax. Of course, the press release from the Odessa cops could be a hoax, too. But then we’re really into weird territory.
The objections raised earlier are still valid. The hostile environment just as real. The negative fallout for comedians is still negative, hoax or not.
What could Pauly Shore have been thinking?
Here it is, 4 PM EST, and the MSM hasn’t run a word about it. Only three or four websites have covered it so far. That makes no sense. Pauly Shore might not be a comedy star on a par with Carlin or Steven Wright, but he’s been in several films, he had a television show (if only briefly) last year, and he was a fixture on cable for a good chunk of the nineties.
The club where it’s alleged to have happened hasn’t posted anything about it– last time we checked, they had taken Shore down and had put up this week’s headliner, Michael Winslow.
A hoax? It would appear that way. A good, old-fashioned hoax. For publicity purposes, we suppose. That a comedy club would go along with a gag like this is inconceivable, seeing as how poorly the club appears with regard to their security and the inhospitability of their patrons. But we suppose it’s all good as long as they spell the name right.
In our initial post, we almost likened the whole affair to an Andy Kaufman-esque stunt– part performance art, part publicity stunt. It appears our initial instincts might have been correct.
The fallout for the rest of us, however, might be bad. How long before yet another patron mounts the stage and socks a comic?