The Time Comedian Gallagher Smashed SpaghettiOs

Some comedians are known to smash the reputations of people, brands, and celebs, among other entities, but the late comedian Gallagher, who died at the age of 76 on Friday, November 11, 2022, left behind a 40-year legacy of smashing food, per CNN. What set him further aside from his counterparts was that he did it in the literal sense.

Gallagher's average act was dirty — no, we mean literally. It would entail morsels of food becoming airborne to the point that people started donning ponchos if they knew they would be sitting close to the stage or in "Death Row, " per Anchorage Daily News. Admittedly, there were times that his actions crossed the humor boundary, like when he was sued for batting a candy bar into the audience and allegedly causing an injury, per AV Club.

Despite all of this, it is his interactions with watermelons that we know him for, and it is well-noted that Gallagher's public relationship with them was void of PDA. If these large ovoid fruits were sentient, Gallagher would have been their bogeyman. Watermelons, pound cake, mayonnaise, chocolate syrup, grapes, and at one point, SpaghettiOs went to Gallagher's acts to be smashed, per Anchorage Daily News.

A video of Gallagher in one of his frenetic acts found its way onto YouTube. In the said video, Gallagher is armed with his trusty sledgehammer and has a table in front of him loaded with food, the most visible being his favorite watermelon. The angle and the time the video starts recording give little context, but what is clear is that the comic is smashing food with no regard for the mess he is creating.

Said mess, the morsels, and juices of the food that come into contact with his giant wooden "Sledge-o-Matic" mallet (per CNN) explode upwards, downwards, around the stage, and onto the audience. Judging by the squeals of delight, they are thrilled. Somewhere near the start of the video, Gallagher announced, "SpaghettiOs,” and up-ends a can onto what looks like a sturdy bar stool. He then addresses it with his mallet, adding red to his ever-changing pastel of food-based colors – on the audience, the walls, the stage, and himself.

The performance is evidently from a different era. But going on a comment on the YouTube video, even then not everybody appreciated it, and today, with intensified sustainability awareness programs (per the United Nations Program), perhaps such an act would be even less appreciated.