Last Saturday, comedian Greg Giraldo overdosed on prescription medication leaving him in critical condition in a hospital in New Brunswick, New Jersey. On Wednesday the 29th, he died after five days in a coma. He was 44. Again, we've had to endure the loss of a brilliant comic, especially in a world where many mediocre comics run amok. Greg Giraldo was probably best known for his razor-sharp barbs he used in many Comedy Central Roasts, and every single one of them he gave a killer performance, telling oft-offensive jokes about the person being roasted and fellow dais members, but he did it in a way that sounded good-natured. In many Comedy Central Roasts, he usually was the first guy up to lash into Bob Saget or Larry the Cable Guy, but a couple of months ago, they had a roast of David Hasselhoff, which was brilliant (considering the roast for Joan Rivers was a dud), Giraldo was the last person to perform on the show, which now seems eerily prophetic. And I think that performance was the best one out of all the roasts he had done previously, although it would be very hard to choose just one.
I never know why whenever a comedian dies, it's always a good one. I don't wish death on Dane Cook, or Larry the Cable Guy, or Gabriel "Fluffy" Iglesias, or Carlos Mencia, but I find it unjust that we've lost Bill Hicks, George Carlin, Richard Jeni, and now Greg Giraldo. Giraldo never achieved the level of popularity he deserved, which is unfortunate because even his regular stand-up bits were very acute and observational, but I'll always remember him fondly. And he seemed like a cool guy too.
True to roasting fashion, Gilbert Gottfried, another fairly frequent presence on the Comedy Central Roasts tweeted, "If Greg Giraldo is cremated, will that be the 'Greg Giraldo Roast'?" which had a lot of people crying "too soon!" However, I think that he would have gotten a hoot out of that joke, since he always took whatever insults were hurled at him at roasts in life, so why not in death?
Roast In Peace.
