David Letterman introduced the world to Stupid Human Tricks nearly 20 years ago. Mackenzie Warren brought them to Northwestern just in time for this year’s Dillo Day.
Warren, a Medill graduate student, devised a contest to give his 1987 Jeep Cherokee to the student who came up with the most creative one-minute performance conveying a desire to own the Jeep.
Warren said he was giving up his Jeep because he didn’t want to go through the hassle of selling it and he wanted to spark creativity on campus.
“The bottom line,” he said, “is that it’s time to have fun.”
The contest began 11 a.m. Friday at The Rock. With the red Jeep parked in front of Harris Hall, students did their best to impress a group of judges. Twenty acts performed during the two-hour time slot, including a male stripper, Britney Spears imitators and a performance of Queen’s classic song “Crazy Little Thing Called Jeep.”
“We (the judges) were looking for people who were willing to be crazy and who really wanted to win a car for free,” said Sarah Dublin, a Speech senior.
“However,” added Warren, who conferred with the judges after the performances were finished, “we had to pick acts that would go over well on stage in front of a large crowd.”
Because of those constraints, some of the more interesting acts — including a girl who peed her pants and a group called “Jeep Love” that used fireworks, made the judges amaretto sours and gave them massages — were passed over. The judges voted on their individual favorites, and the three acts with the most votes — Dan Hoyle, Jeni Laybourn, and Joe Schenck — competed for the Jeep Saturday on the Dillo Day main stage.
Before the Long Beach Dub Allstars were set to play, the three students were scheduled to perform, and whoever received the largest applause from the audience would win the Jeep.
Hoyle, a Speech sophomore, was the first to step up to the microphone. He attempted to rap his message to the audience, but there was no beat for him to follow and he sounded lost. He made four attempts to get the crowd roaring, but each time he lost his rhythm and apologetically stopped. He left the stage to a mixture of polite applause and drunken booing.
Laybourn, an Education senior, stepped in front of the crowd next. She was carrying a guitar and was accompanied by a group of friends playing backup for her. She played a folksy tune extolling her many shortcomings as a driver, explaining that she needed the Jeep so it would hold up when she crashed it. Try as she might, she couldn’t get the crowd to respond. In the middle of the song she cried out, “Hey, anyone need a date?” in desperation. The answer, apparently, was no as she walked off the stage to another smattering of applause and chorus of boos.
That set the stage for Schenck, a Speech freshman. Without saying a word, he tap danced across the stage. The clicking of his heels slowly integrated itself into the audience’s pulse until the entire crowd was moving to the beat of Joe’s feet. Toward the end of his performance, he threw the crowd into a frenzy. His steps exploded all over the stage as if he had thunderbolts in his shoes, and he finished with a flurry of tapping and a backflip. He bounced off the stage listening to the roar of the audience in approval of his performance.
Afterward, Schenck said that the being up on stage on Dillo Day was the greatest rush he ever felt.
“This really made my first year here complete,” he said.
Warren thought the contest was a success: “We proved that Northwestern’s not as lame as people say it is. When there’s a fun idea on campus, people get motivated and do something about it.”
