Hecklings

There is a strange and unique relationship between a comic and his audience. There is no more prominent example of this than with unhappy (often drunk) audience members. In dealing with hecklers, comics that don't have an understanding for human foilbles come off looking like they should pick another profession, while those that do impress me even more. Carlos Mencia, despite having his record tarnished since I saw him a few years ago, was a master at audience interaction.

Unfortunately a lot of the time, hecklers represent something painful and sad about how vile people sometimes are -- are very obviously in the wrong. George Carlin -- a notoriously nice guy -- had nothing but contempt for them. A lack of any patience for the subject might have some merit as sometimes heckling doesn't go well AT ALL (Peter Anthony).

Still, hecklers can improve the show as with Joe Rogan (probably the funniest), Kevin Smith, and Richard Herring. Similarly, some of the best work I've seen by Zach Galifianakis came from hecklers, although his distaste and frustration is obvious.

Finally, although some commedians really hate to be heckled, sometimes not liking what you see and writing an online review isn't a crime.