Eric Andre Tour Is Like ‘If Carrot Top Went Into Violent, Violent Rage’
If you’re the kind of comedy nerd who enjoys “Comic in front of a brick wall joking into a microphone,” the Eric Andre Explosion Tour probably isn’t for you. The best way to describe his current round of shows, Andre told Jimmy Kimmel last night, is as “if Carrot Top went into a violent, violent rage and tried to attack everybody in the audience, destroy all the furniture on the stage, sprayed so much ranch and other salad dressings into the audience.” Which, frankly, we’d pay good money to see.
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Andre claims the new show is “very interactive.” How interactive? “I'll bring a middle-aged man out of the audience and tie him up to this Janet Jackson sex swing and I'll motorboat his pickle tits and his jelly belly,” brags the comic. “It’s not just joke telling.”
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It’s also like a talk show, says Andre, but instead of expensive celebs like Olivia Rodrigo, he interviews “randos from each city that I’m in.” When Kimmel pushes Andre on his definition of “rando,” he admits they try to keep it interesting. In Kansas City, for example, Andre interviewed a woman who held a Guinness Book record for owning the most marbles. “But then we'll set off explosives under her chair,” he says, “with like rats and snakes coming out.” Kimmel is dubious — rats and pickle tits get a positive reaction from the randos? “Sometimes,” Andre admits, adding that “there's a lot of nudity as well,” as if to convince any potential audience members anxious that the show might include cringe elements.
It’s all funny when Andre is poking audience members, but how does he feel when the tables are turned? Kimmel asked the comedian about the time Andre quit his new prank show with Johnny Knoxville. (For those not in the know, The Prank Panel is a show that Andre describes as Shark Tank for pranks, with contestants trying to convince the prank experts to try their gags.)
“Knoxville's a crazy person so he wants to prank you as he's pranking the other people,” explained Andre. “A prank for Knoxville is just assault with a deadly weapon. He would hit me with a taser and a stun gun every day at work and I quit.”
Andre reconsidered and talked to Knoxville’s old Jackass producer about how to handle the situation. “He goes, ‘(Knoxville) is never going to stop attacking you. He's going to put rat traps in your mailbox and break your fingers when you go to grab your mail. So you have to get him back.’”
Andre’s solution? He kept a police-grade taser by his bed and brought it to work. “I hid it in my clothes and while he was talking to one of the contestants, I pulled it out and I hit him right in the center of his heart,” he says — which sounds like a murder confession. But Knoxville, who has something of a history with pain, barely flinched. While he vibrated from the shock, Knoxville “grabbed the stun gun out of my hand and pulled another stun gun out of his pocket,” Andre said. “He just started nailing me with both weapons until I ran.”
Suddenly, the Explosion Tour sounds pretty tame after all.
