BY SARA BRICAULT

In print | April 3, 2008

“See my breasts, they’re the best, in a low-cut tie and dress” sang Ambar La Forgia ‘11, opening up Spike’s standup comedy night last Friday with a hilarious version of Beauty and Beast’s classic song “Be Our Guest” as crowds filtered into SCI 101 and filled the room with reverberating laughter.

For an hour and a half, a line up of ten student comedians filled the room with unrehearsed jokes about everything from politics and hernias to rape and sucking one’s own penis. It was this unfettered diversity that made Spike’s show so unique. “Instead of auditioning and rehearsing … we basically asked anyone interested to show up and be funny,” said Spike member Peter Liebenson ‘11. "That’s why our show is a bit more raw and welcoming of individual comedic voices."

On a campus where many events aim for political correctness, Spike’s show very consciously did not and perpetually tested the line between the offensive and the hilarious. “I railed against … the general PC nature of the school with the most offensive material I could come up with,” Liebenson said, a sentiment seemingly shared by several of the performers.

The show itself went off without a hitch: La Forgia’s rendition of the Disney song began the evening, drawing laughter from its audience after every witty line. “everything anyone has said to me in a vulgar manner and turn[ed] it into something that was hopefully cute and funny,” La Forgia said. After La Forgia’s act, Jon Peters ’09 shared with the audience his new philosophy of setting reasonable goals for himself, like resolving to forget to floss.

Liebenson followed Peters, spitting out jokes that were not even remotely political correct as he made fun of everyone from his roommate to foreign students and even deaf actresses and laughed at how sexual harassment by old men is more cute than creepy: “Man, I can’t wait!” joked Liebenson.

“At first, I was afraid I was only going to be telling jokes about sex and poop, and then I realized I was from Montana,” Brendan Work ‘10 said, after Liebenson’s act. His hilarious performance began with his declaration that “boobs are a social construct” and often poked fun at his hometown. He insisted that, contrary to common belief, “have skyscrapers,” but then immediately acknowledged that they “also have a very low sky.”

Contrasting with Work’s small town, mid-west humor was the comedy routine of native New Yorker Nicole Singer ‘10. Describing Swarthmore from the perspective of a short New Yorker, Singer called the campus a “tree zoo” and went on to lament about the lack of anything resembling vegetation in the city. "We do have Central Park, but it’s manmade," Singer said, insisting that Swarthmore’s plant life is a foreign world for students from the city and grumbling that “every spring morning is a Monday in disguise.”

Nicco Moretti ‘10 took the spotlight after Singer, making some of the best received jokes of the night as he mocked the inadequacies of the lives of those arrested for conspiracy to commit mail fraud: "They didn’t even get away with it!" Moretti exclaimed to a booming audience. Stephen Graf ‘09, the next comedian, took a unique approach by assuming the persona of Leonard Bright, a 34 year-old man who was speaking about his life to the audience at the recommendation of a psychiatrist. Graf’s performance, perhaps because it was so different from the comedy of the other students, was greeted with appreciative laughter and supportive cheers from a crowd who hardly found it difficult to laugh at the pathetic personality that Graf put forth.

After Graf, Alex Ginsberg ‘08 shared with the audience his mother’s advice about penis enlargement (the key, apparently, is to eat lots of mushrooms: “Mario eats mushrooms to get bigger, so it makes sense!” Ginsberg said), and Behram Kahn ’11 discussed the ethics of jaywalking, ending the show with a hearty round of applause from a very entertained, very satisfied crowd.

“I am very PC, so I struggled with the rape jokes and Jew jokes, [but the show was] otherwise funny,” Jane Abell ‘11 said. Still, the stand-up comedy had a great range of humor, from the cute and funny to the borderline offensive or hilarious. "We had a great line-up of comics with really diverse performance styles and points of view. The show was a lot of fun and I’m excited to organize more stand-up shows in the future," Liebenson said.

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