Sean Young's Bloody Yarn

A few years ago I was waiting to go up at the Hollywood Improv when the host came on stage and announced “we have a special treat, Sean Young is in the audience and she’s going to do stand-up for the first time.”

Sean Young is an actress semi-famous for making an ass out of herself. Most recently at the DGA awards for heckling Julian Schnabel, but also for dressing up in a homemade Catwoman suit and storming the Warner Brothers lot in an attempt to win the role in Batman Returns.

Sean took the stage and lit a cigarette “I really just wanted to come up here so that I could smoke,” she said. The audience laughed. With one simple line and a dash of D-list celebrity magic, she had won them over.

Then Sean went on to talk about how when she gave birth to her first child she was really into mother earth, so she kept the placenta and buried it in her back yard. Needless to say, this anecdote did not go over so well. As much as the audience liked her for killing them with second hand smoke, they didn’t want to know the intimate details of her hippie childbirth.

Unfortunately, it only got worse, as Sean described how her dog dug up the placenta and ate it, at which point the audience collectively threw up in its mouth.

At this point one would have hoped that Sean would graciously exit with a “thank you for enduring my bloody yarn, and good night,” but she didn’t. The room was tense in the way that only a celebrity publicly humiliating herself can make it, and the red light in the back of the room that is used to tell comedians that their time is up was flashing like crazy. But Sean is not a comedian, so she didn’t understand the light system and barreled on.

Digging herself deeper into a whole, she recounted the birth of her second child and how once again she kept the placenta and buried it in the back yard, and once again her dog dug it up and ate it.

Then, in a moment of ultimate mercy, the host of the show approached the stage and lured Sean Young off with a glass of wine; at which point I turned to my friend Jason and said “that’s funny, that’s exactly how we get my grandfather to take a shower after he’s pissed himself.”

I can’t say I did any better that night then Sean. She pretty much killed the room. But at least I kept my dignity and left my placenta where it belongs, in the freezer next to the icy pops.