Some unhinged audience members at a comedy club in New Jersey must have thought they were at a MAGA rally when they started heckling a comedian about who she voted for. One of them ended up throwing a canned drink at her, so she picked it up and chugged it.
Ariel Elias admits the set wasn’t going so great at Uncle Vinnie’s Comedy Club in Point Pleasant Beach, NJ, on Saturday night. There was a group of about 20 celebrating a “Mexico-themed” birthday, with some wearing fake mustaches. They had been told to quiet down before the set started.
A woman in the audience asked, “Did you vote for Donald Trump?”
“I can just tell by your jokes you voted for Biden,” the woman heckler yelled.
“I can tell by the fact that you’re still talking when nobody wants you to that you voted for Trump,” Elias fired back.
Cheers went up from the audience, and after trying to get her act back on track, Elias said a man threw a beer toward her head.
Elias calmly picked up the can, and chugged it.
A clip was shared on social media, and went viral with over 1 million views by Sunday afternoon.
“I knew I had to chug it,” she says. “I was so relieved that there was still some left in there after it exploded against the wall. Also my adrenaline was going crazy, so even though normally I don’t drink before or during sets, I felt like this was a valid exception.”
Elias said the person who threw the drink at her immediately ran out of the club after throwing it.
The club asked Elias if she wanted to press charges, but she declined.
“[The club] apologized, made sure I was OK, and asked if I wanted to press I charges. I don’t, because I’m never going back to that town again without someone paying me,” she says. The club has booked her to return in April.
Uncle Vinnie’s decided to press charges themselves.
“My message to last night’s hecklers is that therapy is great, I highly recommend it. Or just write down your feelings. I promise you’ll feel like throwing things less,” Elias told Rolling Stone.