Humor U

Saturday night Leann and I went to see Humor U, BYU's stand-up comedian troupe [1], at the Varsity Theater in the Wilkinson Center. We showed up half an hour early, but the line to get in already stretched nearly to the other end of the building and people were still coming. I didn't remember the Varsity Theater being that large, so I started to suspect that they'd overbooked the event. However, my doubts proved to be unfounded since they squeezed us all in with a few seats to spare.

All but one of the performers were male. There could be any number of reasons for this, but I suspect that being funny just doesn't matter as much to a girl. Just like spitting into the Grand Canyon from the top just doesn't matter as much to a girl.[2] More peculiar to me was the fact that all but two of the performers were rather goofy-looking [3]. Perhaps having an appearance that's an outlier on the scatter plot of human beauty means you get teased about your appearance. And that, in turn, drives you make fun of yourself which eventually evolves into making fun of other things. But who can tell these things?

Most of the performers had at least one or two jokes that fell flat. A couple of them only had one or two jokes that didn't fall flat.[4] One of the new performers was a ventriloquist. I thought he was pretty funny and (except a few ls and rs) his ventriloquism was undetectable.

However, the man who stole the night was Steven Jones. He is probably best known as the "New Spice" guy in the BYU Library commercial that went viral on Youtube (see it here). He emceed the event as well as being the final performer. His mom was in the audience which added extra hilarity. The coup de grace came when he told us that he usually listens to the Rocky soundtrack when he runs on the treadmills at Gold's Gym.[5] However, one evening he accidentally put his iPod on shuffle and then he proceeded to dance to a variety of songs, including "U Can't Touch This", "Chariots of Fire", and "You Raise Me Up."

Over all the night was quite enjoyable and I'd recommend Humor U to anyone who likes a good laugh.

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Notes:

[1] You can see their website here.

      They should not be confused with BYU's sketch comedy troupe, Divine Comedy (website here). I like their videos "Lord of the Engagement Ring" (based on Lord of the Rings), "Zoobies" (based on Newsies), and "CTR Wars" (based on Star Wars). I also like their MormonAdz.

[2] Unless, of course, she's being wooed by Jack Dawson.

[3] Unfortunately the girl was not included in the "but two".

[4] Unfortunately the girl was one of them.

[5] By the way, I've heard from a variety of sources that Gold's Gym is the absolute worst gym to have a membership with.