CollegeHumor Live had Northwestern students laughing about porn, the recent sex toy controversy and Justin Bieber while benefiting Dance Marathon Thursday night.
A&O Productions brought comedians Jake Hurwitz, Streeter Seidell, Dan Gurewitch and headliner Anthony Jeselnik to a nearly full house in Cahn Auditorium at 7:30 p.m. as the second part of A&O’s Winter Speaker Series. Though A&O said it couldn’t release ticket numbers, about 900 tickets were available for the event, and the capacity of Cahn is around 1,000. One dollar of every ticket sold benefited Dance Marathon.
The show opened with Hurwitz and Seidell hosting a contest for the worst tattoo among the audience, with a prize of $50. After five minutes of searching, only two students reluctantly went on stage.
“This is the first college we’ve ever gone to where not one person has a (bad) tattoo,” Seidell said.
A girl with a dreamcatcher tattoo in honor of her Native American tribal chief ancestor walked off with the prize.
Later in the show, Seidell expressed his views about the motorized sex toy demonstration in Prof. John Michael Bailey’s Human Sexuality class .
“When you see this professor, do everyone a favor and let him know about the Internet,” he said. “You don’t need to hire a prostitute and bring them to a college to teach that information.”
Gurewitch spoke next on topics ranging from bathroom habits in India to surgery to online dating websites. His discussion of finding random porn sites late in the night evoked the most laughter from audience members.
“It’s the Internet equivalent of blacking out at a frat party: I don’t know how I got there, I feel bad about myself and somehow my pants are off,” he said, laughing.
Jeselnik headlined the show with a deadpan comedic style. For many of his jokes, he led audiences to conclusions and then turned the joke in a different direction.
“Anthony had his own distinct style, which was funny but kind of weird at times,” Weinberg freshman Phil Trachtenberg said.
Jeselnik made jokes about his girlfriend and family, often in unexpected ways.
“When I was 12 years old, I found my dad’s porn in back of attic. That was a game changer,” he said. “The worst day was when I found my mom’s porn – in the back of that video store.”
The show concluded with Seidell and Hurwitz holding a “shameful trivia” session in which they asked audience members questions, ranging from titles of Justin Bieber songs to lines from “The Lord of the Rings.”
A&O brought CollegeHumor Live to NU after a poll to students in early January proved it was a group NU students wished to see, said Communications senior Stefanie Goliszewski, A&O’s co-director of promotions and public relations.
“Bringing them represented our overall purpose: catering to the student body and bringing acts they want to see,” she said.
CollegeHumor is a comedy website that launched in 1999, according to the site. The site was nominated for the Webby Awards, which honors Internet sites, in 2007 and led to the creation of The CollegeHumor Show, which premiered on MTV in early 2009, according to A&O’s website.
A&O decided to donate some proceeds to DM because the group felt it would be a “great way to benefit DM” and would make students feel they were helping out, Goliszewski said.
Weinberg freshman Michael Muzyka said he enjoyed the show, but the humor from the show was different than what he has seen on CollegeHumor’s website.
“I was expecting a different comedic style,” he said. “It doesn’t fit with what I’ve seen.”
Medill freshman Emily Ferber said the show did not live up to her expectations after seeing A&O’s Aziz Ansari show earlier this winter.
“I wasn’t wowed,” she said. “I liked seeing comedians I’ve never heard of before, but they lacked a certain quality that makes me laugh really hard.”
