CollegeHumor Live, hosted by The HOP, featured several comedic acts involving performers Jake Hurwitz, Amir Blumenfeld, Streeter Seidell and Josh Rabinowitz.
CollegeHumor is a website that features mostly original comedy videos that the staff writes and produces themselves and often act in. CollegeHumor is also known to feature videos that are submitted by comedians. Several of the online series from the show have earned Webby Awards.
“CollegeHumor is great at creating and producing original content,” HOP Executive Board Member Allison Borko wrote in an email to The News-Letter. “I am always amazed at how topical and funny their articles and videos are.”
The hosts of the event included Jake Hurwitz and Amir Blumenfeld, who are the actors, editors and writers of CollegeHumor’s “Jake and Amir.”
“I’m just pretty amped to be here at Johns Hopkins University,” Blumenfeld said.
After a brief rap battle, Jake and Amir introduced the first comedic act named Josh Rabinowitz. Rabinowitz, one of Comedy Central’s 2011 Comics to Watch, brought the laughs with his quips and anecdotes about his awkwardness and his attempts to be cool.
Rabinowitz cracked up the crowd by reminiscing on how, in elementary school, all you needed to be cool was a Lunchable and a Capri Sun.
“Capri Sun was like the vodka of elementary school ... I’d be like, ‘Oh yeah me and Bobby polished off that tropical medley of flavor in under an hour,” Rabinowitz said. “We were so buzzed we played tag all day.”
When Rabinowitz finished up his act, Jake and Amir came back to the stage to play a game that they called “text-message chicken.”
In this game, Jake and Amir read texts off the other’s cell-phone until one of them was too embarrassed and lost the game. After reading texts about Amir’s inability to exercise and sad relationship, Jake was the “chicken” as Amir read “sexts” between Jake and a woman who he named “Rebecca medium tits, small teeth.”
The headlining act was executive editor of CollegeHumor.com Streeter Seidell. Seidell told the crowd about how, in college, one of his greater skills was gaining weight.
“I gained freshmen fifteen every single f**king year… being the fat kid is kind of fun because people want you to come to their parties because they know you’re gonna eat something weird,” Seidell said.
Seidell’s act went on for over a half an hour with anecdotes about his parents’ inability to use the Internet, the second amendment and sex.
When Seidell finished his act, Jake and Amir returned to the stage with a few pop-culture questions for the students. Male students were asked to name Justin Bieber songs and characters from Twilight and female students were asked to name characters from video games. Finally, to end the show, two students got up on stage to sing Katy Perry to the crowd. The two Webby Award winning comedians finished up their act with a huge round of applause.
“I was laughing, along with everyone else around me, for the entire time,” Freshman Emily Schoenfeld said. “I love CollegeHumor and I was so excited to get to see them live.”
With reading period and finals approaching, the comedic event was a great stress-reliever.
“This could not have happened at a more perfect time,” Freshman Rosie Peck said. “With finals and classes wrapping up, it was nice to have the opportunity to take a break from my work and just laugh.”
Borko, who interned with CollegeHumor last summer, helped bring CollegeHumor Live to campus.
“The HOP decided to bring CollegeHumor to campus because in the past comedy events have always been successful and well attended… Especially with the stress of finals, it is great that the HOP is able to provide an entertaining distraction,” Borko wrote.
After the event Borko was pleased with CollegeHumor’s success.
“I think the event went great!! I had an awesome time. I thought all the comedians were hilarious and hopefully the audience did too! We had a really great turnout,” Borko wrote.
During the week leading up to the event, The HOP distributed tickets for the highly-publicized show throughout campus.
“We decided to distribute tickets beforehand because we figured it would be cold and we wanted to avoid making a ton of people stand outside in the cold and then possibly get turned away,” HOP Co-Chair Emily Rosenberg said.
