Credit: Keat Teoh

“You have your hat backward,” Gallagher sneers at a twentysomething man in the front row. “Are you a homosexual? Because it seems you have a problem figuring out the front from the back.” Big laugh. “I see people every day I can’t figger out what sex they are,” he continues. Even bigger laugh. The old man—1980s fixture, incessant smasher of fruit, and “comedy legend,” according to the marquee outside—is onstage in front of a sold-out Admiral Theatre in Bremerton, Washington. An hour earlier, my friend and I had disembarked the packed rush-hour ferry in downtown Bremerton and wandered uphill through oddly deserted streets (our hundreds of fellow passengers seemed to have vaporized when they reached land) until we found the Admiral. Gallagher stood on the sidewalk. He was small and old—his back bent a bit, his trademark dark curls faded to a dank grayish-­blond. He scuttled around the corner and through a side door.

It’s cocktail seating inside the Admiral—small tables of four—and we are placed at #B32 with a largish lady in pink and her mustachioed gentleman friend. “Oh, you’re sitting with my daughter!” the elderly usher crows. “This is my daughter!” We aren’t sure how to respond, so we say, “Cool!” Things are immediately awkward. They would only get worse.

My memories of watching Gallagher during my 1980s childhood (Comedy Central was my third parent) were pretty much apolitical—silly props, innocuous puns, and, of course, all the smashing, smashing, smashing. Tonight, we’re expecting much of the same, only older, sadder. We are smug and a little bored. “Gallagher’s gotta be, like, 90 now, right?” I joke. “Because he was, you know…” “Bald?” my friend offers. “In the ’70s?” “Right.” The stage is swathed in thousands of yards of black plastic sheeting. Spray-painted on the back wall is a banner (created, if the internet is any indication, by Gallagher himself before each show) that says: “G-[watermelon]-L-L-[space]-[watermelon]-R-R-R.” It is… sad. We were right about that much.

Then Gallagher gets going. And fuck. Bremerton is a military town and a conservative one: It’s more than just a slide into obscurity that delivered Gallagher to the Admiral rather than, say, the Moore in Seattle. You see, Gallagher is—how best to put this?—a paranoid, delusional, right-wing religious maniac. I HAD NO IDEA.

“Hey, President Obama,” he spits out the name like a mouthful of burning hair. “You ain’t black. I don’t care what you say—you’re a latte. You’re half whole-milk. It could be goat milk—you could be a terrorist!” I am too busy losing my mind to catch the next joke, which is about Ted Kennedy’s brain cancer. Aaaaand we’re off.

Gallagher is upset about a lot of things. Young people with their sagging pants (in faintly coded racist terms, he explains that this is why the jails are overcrowded—because “their” baggy pants make it too hard for “them” to run from the cops). Tattoos: “That ink goes through to your soul—if you read your Bible, your body is a sacred temple, YOU DIPSHIT.” People naming their girl-children Sam and Toni instead of acceptable names like Evelyn and Betty: “Just give her some little lesbian tendencies!” Guantánamo Bay: “We weren’t even allowed to torture all the way. We had to half-torture—that’s nothin’ compared to what Saddam and his two sons OOFAY and GOOFAY did.” Lesbians: “There’s two types—the ugly ones and the pretty ones.” (Um, like all people?) Obama again: “If Obama was really black, he’d act like a black guy and get a white wife.” Michael Vick: “Poor Michael Vick.” Women’s lib: “These women told you they wanna be equal—they DON’T.” Trans people: “People like Cher’s daughter—figure that out. She wants a penis, but she has a big belly. If you can’t see your dick, you don’t get one.” The Rice Krispies elves: “All three of those guys are gay. Look at ’em!” The Mexicans: “Look around—see any Mexicans? Nope. They’ll be here later for the cleanup.” The French: “They ruin our language with their faggy words.”

Above all, everything is gay, gay, gay to Gallagher. He leans into it with the borderline-­nonsensical, icked-out, ignorant glee of a boy—or the protest-too-much vigor of a GOP senator. Gallagher delivers your Bible verse for the day: “Without God, we are nothing but dust. What is butt dust? Is that what you get if your homosexual isn’t properly lubricated?” He relates a story about spilling mouthwash onto his crotch during a show: “Lucky for me, there was no homosexuals in the area—’cause my balls was minty fresh.” At other points during the show, Gallagher says, “Men and women can’t live in the same house” and “There’s no way men and women can have a relationship.” He says he can’t remember why he used to feel pleasure in looking at a woman. And, “There’s only one kind of homosexual guy, and that’s the pretty ones—why do homosexual men have to be so good-looking?” Gallagher. Listen. Is there something you want to share with us?

Gallagher commands the stage with the weary, sure hand of a touring comic closing out his third decade on the road. He knows what he’s doing, and even I’m not a big enough dick to dispute the “comedy legend” designation on the sign outside. The people of Bremerton eat it up, and despite the discomfort of sitting in a room full of rabid, frothing conservative dickwads (especially when the “comedy” veers creepily close to white-power rhetoric: “We’re descended from an Anglo-Saxon Viking tradition!”), it’s a relief to have them there. Gallagher needs them, and I need to not witness the complete mental breakdown of Gallagher.

“This is why I’m not on TV,” he keeps repeating. “I am powerful. They can tell. I’m an American and I’m gonna speak my mind.” He tells the truth, the truth, the truth, the truth, and everyone else is afraid. The TV talk-show hosts are afraid, the network executives are afraid, the American people are afraid. It’s our fault that he’s not a superstar—not his—and he needs us to know it. We owe him. “Dave Letterman ain’t comin’ here. Robin Williams ain’t comin’ out here. You gotta say, you know, Gallagher came here, and he did two hours.”

In a section entitled “Additional Facts,” the program describes, with heartbreaking false bravado, a 2008 interview that Gallagher seems to regard as his big comeback: “The Howard Stern Show. The interview lasted at least 1 hour and the callbacks were amazing. It was a chance for everyone to see and hear Gallagher in a new light.” I couldn’t track down an audio file of the Stern interview, but the show’s website maintains detailed recaps of each episode:

Howard welcomed watermelon smashing comedian Gallagher to the studio and was surprised that he was wearing a suit… Gallagher then railed against the late night hosts; Jay Leno is impersonal, Conan isn’t funny, and Letterman used his watermelon-­dropping bit. Gallagher said, “I’m an authority on comedy. I was a comedian in another life,” and listed some of his lesser-known credits, like random parody songs… Gallagher then continued to list his crazy ideas; fart ring tones, a face-paint-focused environmental presentation for Al Gore, and something about photons and electrons.

Ugh. Devastating. It sounds just like the Gallagher show I watched—less a triumphant comeback and more the perversely fascinating but ultimately insignificant ramblings of a desperate has-been.

At last, after two hours of his tedious, hacky, right-wing manifesto, Gallagher gets to the part his (willing) hostages have been waiting for. It’s time to smash some shit. There are the watermelons, there is some cottage cheese (“It’s got the curds that blow up, just like on the news!”), there is sauerkraut and syrup and honey. Then Gallagher gets a tin pie plate. He opens a giant can of fruit cocktail and pours it in. He opens a can of some Asian vegetable—water chestnuts, maybe—and pours that in, too. “This is the China people and queers!!!” he screams and takes his sledgehammer to the thing with a fury that is no fun at all. Wet chunks of China people and queers fly everywhere. The hateful, bitter old man laughs. I cannot believe Bill Hicks is dead and this motherfucker is still touring.

On our way out the door, my friend says to me, “Hey—do you want to go beat up some queers? I heard they’re really faggy.” We laugh. But it isn’t really funny. recommended

Lindy West was born an unremarkable female baby in Seattle, Washington. The former Stranger writer covered movies, movie stars, exclamation points, lady stuff, large frightening fish, and much, much more....

176 replies on “Gallagher Is a Paranoid, Right-Wing, Watermelon-Smashing Maniac”

  1. the comedy shows were always on HBO, I think. we rented them alot when I was a kid and never in a million years would I imagine this is the road he’d take. maybe he had a stroke or something.

  2. I just listened to the interview he did with Marc Maron on his WTF Podcast, famous underground podcast where Marc talks with comedians and actors about things. (http://wtfpod.libsyn.com/ , Episode 145 if you want to hear it.) I think his take on everything is that if Lisa Lampanelli and a bunch of shock-comics can have a career by ranting and raving about whatever they wanna say, then Gallagher’s new career must be somewhere out there for him, too. He talks about the protons and electrons thing, too, on the interview; there’s his claims that he’s a physicist and really worried about the people of modern society. That part reminds me of who I watched in HBO Specials a long time ago, the side of him that says how hard it is to appeal with general comedy…but this new direction is just wrong.

  3. This was a really great article. Gallagher really has always been this way (the gay jokes, differences between men and women, race jokes), but in the late 70 and 80s everybody was doing those kinds of jokes. He just never changed. On the aforementioned WTF Podcast, he says he doesn’t believe in God and says he’s just doing jokes, which I believe. He is crazy, clearly, but he knows his audience. He also thinks every comedian that goes on stage and talks about their own life (Marc Maron, Louis C.K. and the like) are hacks. Obviously, Gallagher is a hack. He is famous for smashing watermelons. You can’t get hackier than that.

    “I cannot believe Bill Hicks is dead and this motherfucker is still touring.” is the best line.

  4. This was a really great article. Gallagher really has always been this way (the gay jokes, differences between men and women, race jokes), but in the late 70 and 80s everybody was doing those kinds of jokes. He just never changed. On the aforementioned WTF Podcast, he says he doesn’t believe in God and says he’s just doing jokes, which I believe. He is crazy, clearly, but he knows his audience. He also thinks every comedian that goes on stage and talks about their own life (Marc Maron, Louis C.K. and the like) are hacks. Obviously, Gallagher is a hack. He is famous for smashing watermelons. You can’t get hackier than that.

    “I cannot believe Bill Hicks is dead and this motherfucker is still touring.” is the best line.

  5. If he hates it so bad why not use his own head as a melon and get out of here already? The world has left the unimaginative bigots behind.

  6. I think everyone should check themselves because I remember hearing the man use chinks, fags, and probably a few other choice derogatory names in the 80’s. Chances are most of you are now listening and not waiting for the Smash-O-Matic.

  7. Gallagher never made me even crack a smile when I used to see him on HBO as a child in the 80s. I always thought he was a boring hack, only back then I didn’t know what a hack was. He always tried so hard to connect with the counterculture asses of the 70s & is proof that if you give people enough alcohol & drugs anything is funny.

  8. The SOBs brother (Ron) performed here in charlotte last night (3/7/2011). What a joke. The true shit of Charlotte showed up. The racist jokes were not funny at all. There were many quiet moments even though these pricks saved up for 2 weeks to go to see this crap. The only reason I showed up was because my buddy begged me after another guy faked on him. It’s kinda like watching 2 girls one cup.. You won’t forget such a shitty performance even though you hated it (no pun intended). Long story short my buddy got sold 2 wolf tickets and they worked like a charm. Him and his brother suck!!!

  11. Saw Gallager years ago at a county fair in Bakersfield where he was doing a “bilingual” show even though he clearly didn’t speak Spanish. Odd, really odd. Maybe they’re right about the brain damage.

    I think he used to be funny, one-liner funny but he once had it…

  14. You can only see things from your own perspective. The world is your mirror. If you see Gallagher as a bitter old has been, thats what you are, not what he is. Gallagher is a good hearted man with a great sense of humor and he is hysterical. I was at his show last night and had the time of my life. The world needs to laugh and thats what Gallagher delivers. The world doesnt need sniveling and bitching. When is the last time any of you put a smile on anyones face, let alone hundreds of people ?

  15. There is a Gallager brother too, who, from what I’ve heard has even less talent than the “famous” Gallager. They even have had a falling out and court actions. He did (or does) much of the same schtick. I wonder which you got?

  16. You can only see things from your own perspective. The world is your mirror. If you see Gallagher as a bitter old has been, thats what you are, not what he is. Gallagher is a good hearted man with a great sense of humor and he is hysterical. I was at his show last night and had the time of my life. The world needs to laugh and thats what Gallagher delivers. The world doesnt need sniveling and bitching. When is the last time any of you put a smile on anyones face, let alone hundreds of people ?

  17. Too bad you guys just don’t get it. Gallagher is nuts I’ll agree ,but his show is all for fun and sarcasm. He takes no prisoners , he is never politically correct he says what others would never dream of saying in public and he doesn’t give a shit. It’s all in fun and comedy. If you don’t like what he says don’t see him. I saw him in New York City this month and had a ball. He was funny.The same day my son saw Charlie Sheen and learned what a real asshole is all about.
    So my point is ,lighten up enjoy the show for what it is and don’t try to make sense of it or pass judgment on him.

  18. Scope 1, there is a world of difference between someone doing intelligent satirical political/societal comedy and a creepy nutty old man feeling disenfranchised and left behind “TRYING” (though this is doubtful) to pull off satire, when he is not intelligent enough to pull it off, and is left sounding(and again HE IS MOST PROBOBALY, !!NOT!! being ironic!!) like the leftover remnants of a retarded disguisting mutant of right-wing cliche’s……HE REALLY JUST NEEDS TO GO AWAY……or rather “scuttle” …..away!!!!!!

  20. You and your friend HAD disembarked or you disembarked? Where did you get your journalism degree?? The land of past tense times two??

  21. Ever notice how when right-wing butt-corns try to defend their own, they talk about “the truth,” as in, “he speaks the truth and y’all (because it’s always “y’all,” not “you all”) just call it hate.”

    Further, the man smashed things with a sledgehammer (once he could lift it) and told the audience to imagine it was queers and Chinese. Sounds like fear to me. Maybe he doesn’t like the political power the former has gained (tough shit) and the economic power the latter has gained (God-fearin’ white Americans are just as guilty as anyone, as they keep buying and importing cheap shit made in China, so maybe he should be hitting himself with that hammer. From the sounds of it, he couldn’t do much more damage).

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