Everyone saw the advertisements for Joe Gatto’s arrival to campus on Friday. It was one of the most heavily marketed events in CAP Center history. There were cardboard Joe Gatto heads scattered all over campus, and you would have to be living under a rock to have been unaware of the event.
Although the CAP Center did a phenomenal job of advertising the event, there has been surprisingly little said about the event since Friday. This raises the question: did anyone even go to the Joe Gatto event?
Well, the simple answer to this question is no, and this is all due to the actions of Mikey Milton ’24. To provide some background, Mikey is a senior at Bucknell who has some personal beef with Joe Gatto. Milton was featured in an episode of “Impractical Jokers” during his sophomore year of high school. During the episode, Joe was tasked with bumping into Milton when he was out to dinner with his girlfriend, spilling his bowl of chili and ruining both Milton and his girlfriend’s clothes. She broke up with Milton shortly afterward.
So, Milton decided to pull a prank of his own on Joe. He knew that Joe had traveled across the country to perform his comedy act in front of thousands of Bucknellians. So, Milton rallied all of the students together who had reserved tickets to the performance and paid them each $20 to not show up.
Joe had been practicing for months for this performance. Although he is widely renowned for his hilarity on “Impractical Jokers,” he had never performed stand-up comedy in front of this many people before. He hadn’t slept in days and had made it a priority to memorize the entire script to prevent any slip-ups.
It was finally time for the event to begin. However, 20 minutes went by and not a single student walked through the door. “I knew this wasn’t a good idea,” Joe thought. But he decided to give it a few more minutes to anticipate any late arrivals. He would use this time as an opportunity to recite his script.
Minutes turned into hours and still no students showed up. Joe was getting ready to pack up his things and leave, but suddenly, a shadowy figure came into view and started walking towards Joe. Seconds later, Joe was standing face to face with Mikey Milton. Milton simply said two words.
“Remember me?”