German dirty talk, threesomes and expletives aplenty were some dominant themes at last Friday's show in Shriver, when Hopkins alumnus Dan Ahdoot returned to perform on campus.
But backstage, the outgoing and foul-mouthed comedian adopts a more subdued disposition. That's not to say he's cold or stoic by any means: He can't help but pop out a joke every few minutes.
"This is like a very ghetto version of Frost/Nixon right now," he cracked as we sat with the voice recorder between us.
But to expect Ahdoot to be as bawdy as his on-stage persona would prove false, as he in fact is a reserved, thoughtful individual. Not too surprising, since the Hopkins grad was granted a degree with honors in Romance Languages and Literature in 2000.
As he often references in his act, Ahdoot was also on the pre-med track as an undergrad and even waded through the mire of the application process to get accepted to med school before ultimately deciding against going into medicine.
"I got in, and when I got my acceptance letter, I had a nervous breakdown," he recalled.
He continued, "I realized, 'Something is not right here.' My friends got their acceptance letters, and they were, like, jumping for joy, and I just collapsed. So I realized I needed to take some time off."
So Ahdoot headed home to New York City to do just that, taking a day job doing data entry at the offices of Comedy Central.
It was, ironically, this dull 9-to-5 that led to his first shot at professional writing.
Already a veteran prank-caller by this time, Ahdoot approached the folks at Crank Yankers and asked for a shot at writing for their show.
"They were like, 'Yeah, give us eight concepts tomorrow,' and I gave them 30 the next day," he said.
But nights and weekends were spent working the open-mic circuit in Manhattan, and it was there that Ahdoot exercised and strengthened his comedy muscle.
The diversity of the audiences in New York, he explained, helped him to hone his ability to interact with the crowd, a unique skill not mastered by all stand-up acts.
"[The audience] would be rich, they'd be poor, they'd be heroin addicts," he said, and in the days following 9/11, "there'd be firefighters, pissed off firefighters, so I got really good at reading a crowd quickly and being able to navigate through that."
It's a skill he continues to use and build in his act today, as anyone who has seen him perform knows quite well.
On Friday night in Shriver, Ahdoot began by picking on a student with leopard print-covered crutches and continued to have spontaneous chats with audience members throughout the show, which, as usual, culminated with prank phone calls to the parents of students in the audience.
("Hi, this is John Ackerman, an RA at Hopkins. We had a group of students streak through the campus tonight, and your son was one of them.")
His frequent and well-received stand-up gigs landed Ahdoot a spot as a contestant on the second season of NBC's Last Comic Standing and a slew of bookings on college campuses. In 2005 he visited 122 colleges, making him the most booked of any college act that year. (He's currently got a one-man show in the works about that tour.)
Of course, making it as a comedian wasn't as easy as it sounds in a neat little newspaper article. Ahdoot estimates that it was four or five years before comedy actually became profitable for him, and until then, his family and friends remained skeptical.
"I come from a family of immigrants, and success is very important," Ahdoot, who is an Iranian Jew, said.
"So [at first] they weren't very happy, but then once I started making money, they were like, 'I always said you should become a comedian!'"
Success and, oddly, his education from Hopkins were strong motivators for Ahdoot.
"The good thing that Hopkins did for my career is it really raised the stakes. It was like, 'Dude you're giving up a lot to pursue this, so pursue it well,'" he explained.
Now that he has that success, Ahdoot is working hard to maintain it and go further. For the foreseeable future, Ahdoot is more than happy to stick primarily to his stand-up gigs.
"It's like my baby, and you can't say no to it. And it keeps me grounded," he said.
The comedian plans to head to Los Angeles for a pilot season and recently pitched a show to the Food Network. But Ahdoot admits that there is something special about stand-up that will keep him coming back for more.
"There's nothing like being on a stage alone with a microphone and a light on you," he said.
If the past few years are any indication, that spotlight won't be dimming anytime soon.
