Detroit Is Mad At Dave Chappelle

Dave Chappelle had a bad night, which happens to all of us; it just doesn't normally happen to us on a stage while being filmed. TMZ reported on Monday that one of Chappelle's sets at a Detroit comedy club did not exactly go over well with the audience. The outlet reports: "According to multiple people in the crowd during Thursday night's 9:30 show at the Fillmore ... a seemingly wasted Chappelle took the stage an hour late (mostly due to the crowd still being seated), and told very few jokes. Instead, he sat quietly smoking, rambling, and slurring his speech."

There's a video of the set and it doesn't look good... but it doesn't look terrible, honestly. I will forever maintain that nothing happens in a vacuum, and since we don't have the full story, it's hard to know what was really going on during Chappelle's display of crankiness.

Could Detroit be the next Hartford? If you're not in the know about Chappelle's rocky recent history on the stand-up stage, in 2013 he went to Hartford, Connecticut for a show which started out as planned but quickly derailed when he started getting heckled. He stopped performing his routine and as Gawker reported, instead...

He used his remaining contractually obligated 15 minutes of performance time to sit on a stool, chain smoke cigarettes, and read passages from an audience member's book out loud. As the crowd booed him, Chappelle retorted with "You're booing yourself. I want you to go home and look in the mirror and say 'boo.' Remember, that's how I feel about you."

He's always been one for figuratively holding a mirror up to people, and objects in mirror are uglier than they appear. To their credit, Chappelle's rep did not deny to TMZ that the Detroit set was less than satisfactory for the audience members, but regardless, they would not issue refunds to the crowd. "Out of the 50 shows on the tour, Thursday was definitely not his best set. On the flip side, the incident inspired some additional sharp-witted material and (Friday) he came back with a vengeance," his rep said.

Chappelle's fans expressed their dismay about the alleged bad set on twitter. While these tweeters may not have been there to witness his set in person, the word of his allegedly awful performance was enough to have them boo-ing in 140 characters. Take a look.

Images: Getty Images (2)