“The Eric Andre Show” is one of the most direct satires of talk shows and late night comedy vanity there has ever been.
It should come as no big surprise, then, that namesake star Eric Andre handles his birthday parties in the same vein.
This past Saturday, April 13th, Andre celebrated his big three-six (a noted age landmark) with a Block Party at the storied Regent Theater in Downtown LA.
Andre’s onscreen right hand man, Hannibal Buress, was there, as well as some other offbeat comedy stars like Weird Al Yankovic, Reggie Watts, Tim Heidecker, and the more mainstream Tiffany Haddish.
“I’m friends with everyone,” Andre said sarcastically to open the event, though at this point the statement is not so far from the truth (he even apparently spends time with Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez).
Every year Andre finds a new way to mock the pomp-and-circumstance of high-publicity celebrity birthdays. His own has been running for three years now. In 2017, he marketed it as his Bar Mitzvah (featuring a “Short Jewish DJ”) and last year it was his Quinceañera (where he actually dressed the part).
This time around, Andre could not resist going after the disastrous and now officially criminal Fyre Festival, releasing his own promo video that starts out glamorous and ends exposing Andre in front of a green screen standing in a kiddie pool. Notice the tags in the post below, too: Bella Hadid, Gigi Hadid, Kendall Jenner, and Hailey Bieber — the celebrity influencers and models who were famously paid to promote the festival beforehand.
Andre upped the ante by inviting meme celebrity Andy King to attend, an event producer for Fyre whose appearance in the Netflix documentary about it skyrocketed him to internet infamy for his recount of being instructed by indicted organizer Billy McFarland to perform oral sex on customs officers to get more water to the island.
“As Netflix says, right now I have more power than the Kardashians on social media,” King said at the event, “and so I’m really going to drive positive change with that.”
The party kicked off outside the theater in an intentionally dingy parking lot. Andre arranged a petting zoo complete with a camel, sheep, and other farm animals. He also had a mechanical shark for people to ride in lieu of the better-known bull version, which was one of many odes to the setting of Fyre Festival. Others were pitched tents and people handing out sad cheese sandwiches in styrofoam containers.
“I just walked in here. Is this the party or are we in the parking lot?” one confused attendee asked (yes, for real). If Andre had heard that comment it would probably have been one of his best gifts.
There were better ones, though. Skateboarding legend Tony Hawk collaborated with Birdhouse Skateboards to create a special edition deck for the comedian called “Bird Up,” a reference to one of his most popular remote sketches on the show.
Andre’s Block Party wasn’t just about laughs. Musician Moby and rappers Playboi Carti, OG Swaggerdick, and Cousin Stizz were there, some of whom also performed.
Public tickets sold out quickly, but Andre continued his antics by publicly posting his cell phone number on Twitter so that people who didn’t get tickets could call so he could sneak them in.
While Andre may have wished his Block Party to be a Fyre-esque disaster, it wasn’t, proving rather to have just the right touch of Andre-brand mockery that has brightened his stardom in recent years.
Andre has otherwise been quite busy. “The Eric Andre Show” is officially debuting in Canada, he aired a spin-off special of his show on Adult Swim, and voices a character in the upcoming live action “The Lion King” from Disney.
For those who missed out, stay-tuned for next year’s edition of what has to be the weirdest, albeit endearing, series of celebrity birthday parties in America.
