On Thursday night, the Student Association Programming Board (SAPB) brought CollegeHumor Live to the Osterhout Theater. The free show featured three stand-up comics affiliated with CollegeHumor.com
CollegeHumor is a website founded in 1999 that combines funny comics and videos; it’s also the company that brought forth the Webby Award-winning YouTube series, “Jake and Amir.”
The CollegeHumor Live show at BU starred Thomas Dale, who has appeared on popular shows like “Chelsea Lately,” along with Matt Pavich and Brady Matthews. Pavich was the winner of the New York Comedy Festival’s New York’s Funniest competition and Brady Matthews — the show’s opener — has performed in places such as The Comedy Store and has also toured the Western college scene.
Over the course of the evening the three entertainers discussed racism in radio commercials, compared vaginas to Disneyland and said girlfriends were bad to “Netflix and chill” with.
While their purpose was to entertain, it was clear that they were walking a fine line.
“There were definitely a couple controversial jokes,” said Bernadette Machuca, the vice president for programming for SAPB. “You always hear something like that at any comedy event.”
The comedians were not screened beforehand.
“We had no control over the selection of the comedians for this tour, or the material that they were going to cover,” said Machuca, a senior majoring in Biology.
The comedians, on the other hand, were clearly comfortable with their material.
Matt Pavich, a New York City native, thinks that he isn’t stirring the pot, but rather making difficult topics more bearable.
“If you actually listen … I’m not like hating on anyone or saying anything bad,” said Pavich. “I’m trying to diffuse that situation.”
Some students were grateful for the candidness of the show and overall thought it embodied the troupe’s namesake, as the performers joked about stereotypical college obsessions like sex, drugs and technology.
“I think it can be tricky to joke about controversial things and people get offended, but I think it’s good to laugh about it,” said Lauryn Maleski, a freshman majoring in human development.
The final act was headliner Thomas Dale, a Long Island native who now lives in Los Angeles; Dale was met with some mixed feelings from the crowd. His skit centered around his sexual orientation, defining himself as a gay guy who wishes he was straight. Since the topic rarely strayed, some students were disappointed with the ongoing joke.
“I didn’t really like the third one,” said Fiona Tarzy, a senior majoring in philosophy, politics and law. “I thought that it was the same sketch over and over and over again. I think he could’ve moved on to a different bit.”
However, other students felt Dale’s topic added a sense of realism to his bit.
“I enjoyed him a lot,” Maleski said. “It was a heavy laugh I needed. He talked about a lot of serious things that he might be dealing with and going through and that’s a way of coping so I respect that. I think it’s a healthy thing to do.”