Comedy open mic cancelled during comedy open mic

The weekly stand-up comedy mic at Gushbucket’s, a popular Tampa bar was canceled approximately halfway through last night’s event.

“ALL COMEDY SHOWS CANCELLED AT THIS LOCATION”

– Gushbucket’s Management, via a post on their Facebook page

“I guess that’s that,” said local open mic comedian and show promoter Mike Hurrl. “It was a good run of eight… well, seven and a half weeks.”

The cancellation came suddenly and with no advance notice.

“We started like we always do; list was scheduled to drop at 7 for sign-up so I got there around 7:30 to set that up. Nobody wanted to go first, which is also pretty standard, so we had to argue about how to settle that and started just a few minutes after 8,” said Hurrl. “And then… something happened and then we had to quit and leave.”

“I’ll tell you exactly what happened; Mike’s a dipshit,” said Tyler Tylerson, another local open mic participant.

“Mike was doing material between everybody’s sets, which is obnoxious but he seems to feel is necessary to keep the energy up.”

“You have to reset the room! Everybody knows that,” said Hurrl in his own defense.

“After every comic, Mike?? Anyway, he started going in on this one table near the back that wasn’t paying attention because they came in not knowing there was an open mic that night. A lady told him to leave them alone and they went back and forth a bit before Mike told her to shut the fuck up and called her a fat, ugly c-word. She got mad and yelled, ‘that’s it, you’re done!’ She took out her phone and called someone,” Tylerson explained. “Turns out her father-in-law owns the place and that’s who she called.”

Hurrl immediately received a call on his cell phone from the bar’s owner who told him that the show was canceled immediately.

“I thought he meant after we finished for the night, which was certainly disappointing but I understood, kind of,” said Hurrl. “Then he said he meant right then and there, that he was coming down and if I was still there, he’d break my knees, which was certainly terrifying because he’s a big guy and I’m sure he could do it.”

Hurrl abruptly ended a set being performed by Fooly Joe, yet another local open mic comedian, by unplugging the microphone and began packing up and removing his sound equipment.

“No way that was five minutes, man,” bemoaned Fooly Joe. “He didn’t even give me a light.”