Esparza, the winner of NBC’s Emmy-winning comedy contest “Last Comic Standing,” closed a two-hour, five-man stand-up routine that drew regular laughs with jokes about college drinking and a number of politically incorrect references.
Esparza was preceded by the show’s other finalists: Myq Kaplan, Roy Wood, Jr., Mike DeStefano and Tommy Johnagin.
“I am a not tough guy, but I’m pretty sure I could beat up everyone who shops at Trader Joe’s,” Esparza said, in a line that drew some strong laughs.
The comedians generally stuck to stock material but included a few Princeton-specific references for their audience.
“A school like this, just statues and awards, you can tell smart shit is going on,” Wood said, contrasting the University with his own college experience, which he said did not at all prepare him for his career.
Along with drinking, sex was another topic the comedians brought up frequently during the show.
“You can accidentally create a person, but if you try to build a shed, you’ve really got to want that shed,” Johnagin said in one of his best-received lines.
Audience members, even those who hadn’t seen the show on television, said they enjoyed the performance.
“I liked the guy from the Bronx,” said Josh Sarett, a Princeton Township resident, referring to DeStefano’s “absolute honesty.”
DeStefano, who called bulimia “a disease white girls catch from magazines,” also taunted the audience for not laughing loud enough through his set and made no apologies for his take-no-prisoners style. “I want to be murdered doing comedy,” he said.
“I like it a lot. I’ve never seen the show,” Kasey Morris ’14 said, adding that a friend suggested she go to the show just hours before the curtain opened.
Students comprised more than half the audience, drawn by tickets that were offered for $10 through class governments.
“I watched [Last Comic Standing] a couple times and I’ve loved it so far,” Leland Baldwin ’14 said, noting that the live performance was “definitely better than the show.”
“None of their jokes are edited or anything, so their whole character comes through in their jokes,” Baldwin added.
In a phone interview from the tour bus on Saturday, Wood said he prefers performing live.
“When you’re doing competition on TV — where nightly, we’re only doing two or three minutes — you can’t mess up, you can’t flub a line, you don’t have enough time to recover,” he explained.
Wood said he prefers not to change his routine from city to city, explaining that he draws on what he considers “probably the best but also the most dangerous source of material”: reflections on his own personality and experiences. But, he added, performing at Princeton gave him the opportunity to “play more intelligent material.”
The comedian explained that working in comedy had its ups and downs. “There are some nights where this doesn’t feel like work. It almost literally feels unfair that I get to do this. I feel like I’m robbing somebody. And then there are nights when I feel like I should be paid double,” he said.
But, Wood acknowledged, the chance to share his perspective on the world through comedy made up for the difficulties of the profession.
“Being able to just get people to see the world through your prism ... that’s plenty of motivation for me,” he said.
Read More
Yale University to join Research Collections and Preservation Consortium (ReCAP)
David YunYale University has joined Princeton, Columbia, Harvard, and the New York Public Library in one of the world’s largest library and archives preservation repositories and shared collections, Research Collections and Preservation Consortium, also known as ReCAP.
Yale University has joined Princeton, Columbia, Harvard, and the New York Public Library in one of the world’s largest library and archives preservation repositories and shared collections, Research Collections and Preservation Consortium, also known as ReCAP.
Princeton rising junior passes away in cycling accident
Victoria DaviesKerry Grundlingh ’27 has passed away in a cycling accident near her home in South Africa.
Kerry Grundlingh ’27 has passed away in a cycling accident near her home in South Africa.
15 personas detenidas por ICE en Calle Harrison, explican funcionarios de Princeton
Luke GrippoSegún el alcalde de Princeton, Mark Freda, inicialmente los oficiales de inmigración solamente estaban en busca de una persona. Ana Paola Pazmiño, directora ejecutiva del grupo local de defensa de la inmigración, Resistencia en Acción NJ, reveló que los oficiales detuvieron a estas personas y les pusieron en una camioneta mientras ellos estaban de camino a su trabajo de paisajismo.
Según el alcalde de Princeton, Mark Freda, inicialmente los oficiales de inmigración solamente estaban en busca de una persona. Ana Paola Pazmiño, directora ejecutiva del grupo local de defensa de la inmigración, Resistencia en Acción NJ, reveló que los oficiales detuvieron a estas personas y les pusieron en una camioneta mientras ellos estaban de camino a su trabajo de paisajismo.