Comedy showcase cracks up the LaB

The JHU Stand-Up Comedy Club held their first show of the semester Feb. 3 at the LaB. 

Performing to a crowd of students sitting in any open area they could find, several members of the club joked about everything from chain emails to dating over the course of the evening. And yes, in case you were wondering, there were even a couple of jokes about eating Tide Pods.

Sophomore Nick Scandura — who also MC’d the event — started off the evening by comparing relationships to roller coasters. As he put it, there are ups, there are downs and sometimes your ex-roller-coaster calls you at 2 a.m. to tell you about how much happier it is now that you aren’t together anymore.

Scandura was followed by fellow sophomore Natalie Wu, who talked about her ongoing search for a sugar daddy, preferably one who’s in the, “heart-attack-age-range.” 

She also told the story of her friend who thought that Mulan was an accurate representation of modern-day China and referred to the fog covering Beijing as the “fog of war.”

Freshman Alex Gomes told the story of a KFC that started dealing substances a little more addictive than fried chicken. His advice: Always order from the drive through. 

He also joked about how weird it is that his friends keep trying to hit on his twin sister, especially since he absorbed her in the womb. He ended his set with a story about the first time a girl said that she liked him, to which he could only respond, “I like Goldfish.” 

Freshman Harry Kuperstein — who also performed in the Intersession Stand-Up Show — told jokes about his time at summer camp and the fact that one of his fellow campers is now performing as an “adult entertainer.” 

Later he talked about his attempts to smuggle ever-increasing amounts of food out of CharMar, culminating in him squeezing an entire display into his bag. 

Finally, sophomore Laura Oing ended the show by talking about her failed attempt to join the Chinese Student Association. As she put it, the group requires more qualifications than just ‘being Chinese,’ and it’s somehow even more difficult to get into than Hopkins itself.

Personally I really enjoyed the show. Admittedly I’m a really big fan of stand-up comedy, but all of the performances were pretty solid. Most of the jokes were funny — which is really all you can ask from a comedy show — and all of the comedians seemed comfortable in front of the crowd. It’s a pretty basic combination, but it really helped keep the atmosphere light and the jokes moving.

Tonally, the show was pretty similar to the Intersession Stand-Up show, with a healthy balance of humor, profanity and the occasional gross-out joke. 

However, each of the comedians had a unique voice and sense of humor, and none of them blended together or faded into the background.

My favorite joke of the evening probably came from Oing, who had a pretty funny segment about chain emails and how they seem to cover every genre imaginable.

As she points out, they run the gamut from “Send this to 10 people or your mom dies” to “Send this to 10 people to spread the word of Christ” to “Happy Slut-o-ween” or “Merry Dickmas.”

And the event seems to have been a success for the club as well. When asked how he felt about the show, Scandura expressed his happiness with the turnout — about 75 people, according to Wu. 

Scandura also hoped that the show brought some publicity to the club.

“We hopefully spread the word about our relatively new club,” he said. “An important thing for us right now is making sure that people interested in stand-up know about us, so [the show] definitely helped.”

The Stand-Up Club also has shows planned for March 3 and 31, as well as April 20. During the final show, they are hosting an open-mic night where anybody will be able to try telling a few jokes of their own. 

Anyone interested in learning more about the club should reach out through Hopkins Groups for more information.

Correction:

The original article misattributed a joke to Wu when it actually was from Oing.

The News-Letter regrets this error.