This Woman In A Wheelchair Won A Treadmill On National Television

At least now we know that The Price Is Right isn't rigged. That's what the best friend of wheelchair-bound L.A. comic Danielle Perez commented after Perez, who is an amputee, won a treadmill on the game show Tuesday.  The show-pas launched a social media frenzy in which observers either reveled in the hilarity of the moment or blasted the insensitivity behind it.  Perez, for her part, delighted in the nationally televised awkwardness. Her tweet about her useless prize beautifully encapsulated the irony of the situation, not to mention her sense of humor:

"There's humor in every situation," she told us on the phone yesterday — during her brow appointment before appearing on Jimmy Kimmel Live! last night. "Most of my [material as a comedian] is anecdotal… It’s about my life, my experience as a woman of color, a woman in a wheelchair, a Latina [who talks] like a Valley girl... So much of my stand-up is just me and the ridiculous situations I’m in." Perez said she didn't register the absurdity of her prize until after she had won. On stage, "I was just like Oh my god, sure, I’ll take it!" she says. Perez became a bilateral below-the-knee amputee after a vehicular accident in 2004. Now, she mines her experience with disability for bits for her stand-up routines; she offers the example of receiving a Tinder message that read "I bet a lot of girls would give up their feet for a beautiful face like yours." ("I wonder what he had to give up for that sparkling personality," Danielle laughs. "A kidney? What has to happen to him that he’s this Casanova-Romeo?") Perez's comic POV is on the rise: On Tuesday night, she did stand-up at the Whole Foods in Pasadena, California ("I’m just living the very glamorous life of an Internet star!"), and only 24 hours later, she was prepping for a guest spot on a national talk show. On the show, Perez described what she planned to do with the treadmill — "I guess I'll just do what everyone else does [and] just use it as a piece of furniture" — and won a surprise cruise courtesy of Kimmel and co. It may be Perez's guessing skills that got her here, but it's her sense of humor that has us laughing along with her.