Last night I had the pleasure of hosting the DC Improv's funniest college competition at Johns Hopkins University. Judging the competition were comedians Frank Hong and Ryan Conner as well as Event Organizer Allyson Jaffe from the DC Improv. Let's go right to the action:
Allyson introduced me and I took the stage filled with hope and good intentions. Jokes number one through three were immediately met with lackluster response from the crowd of pre-med students. Realizing the futility of the situation I decided to try some brand new jokes which actually went over pretty well. Then I went back to the bread and butter and slowly began feeding myself the stink burger that apparently I had ordered unknowingly. Looking into the blank faces of these kids made me feel awkward and annoyed. For the first time in my comedy career, I decided to get even. "If you guys want to make this thing awkward, then let's go all the way," I thought to myself. I stopped talking, chose a student from the audience and stared at her for about 45 seconds. No words were spoken....nothing. The only thing I heard was Ryan Conner's cackle from the back of the room. I've never been more satisfied in my entire life. I sensed the students were uncomfortable. This wasn't comedy...this was payback. I demanded complete silence; I got it, and I loved it. I probably should have felt like a douche, but I didn't. What I felt was complete peace...it was beautiful.
Finally, I broke the stare and started the competition. The most amazing thing about the performers were that half of them were pre-med and they kept defaulting to racial stereotypes. At one point, I believe three performers referenced "black people eating fried chicken and watermelon" consecutively...and one of them was actually black. Other popular topics included; Asian men being short and having small penises, calling white people "crackers," and pandas are hard to understand because they speak korean.. In a way I suppose it was sort of refreshing to see a diverse student body unafraid to talk about such things...either that or they just watch entirely too much Carlos Mencia. In any case, the kids were fun and some a few of them actually had good material. The winner was Ashwin Bhandiwad. He was clever and had a well crafted five minutes.
To finish the show, the students were treated to the comedic stylings of Ryan Conner and Frank Hong. They were both funny and did well although the students were a bit tired at the point. This was pretty much my fault because I insisted on blabbing and being obnoxious between every performers set and this caused the show to run a tad long. Anywho, looking back I think it's kind of odd that Johns Hopkins was allowed to participate in the "District's Funniest College Competition," seeing as how Johns Hopkins is in Baltimore. If I were a student at Baltimore's School of Massage, I'd feel slighted.
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