Comedy Show like a roller coaster: full of ups and downs

When I bought my ticket five minutes after the show was supposed to start, then walked in and realized my seat was in the fifth row, I knew something was amiss. When I sat down and waited for fifteen minutes chatting with friends, the suspicion grew. Finally, when the lights dimmed, and Cohen was maybe half full, that nagging in the back of my mind coalesced into a theory. It's quite simple, really: Sunday afternoon is the worst time possible to have a comedy show.

Even the headlining act Jeff Ross noticed it. "Sunday afternoon, huh? I hope you all got stoned before coming here," he casually observed. Judging by the general mood of the crowd, the answer was most likely "No." But why is Sunday so bad? Because at four o'clock, you're not thinking about laughter. You're thinking about how you have a test on War and Peace the next day, and you're on page five. And already you can't keep the characters straight.

But even for all that, both comedians made an excellent effort to get the crowd going. The show started off with Jimmy Dunn, a local stand-up and host of Fan Attic on the sports channel NESN. Whoever scheduled this show did their homework, because this guy was funny. Maybe a little too funny, because several people (yours truly included) thought he did a better job than Jeff Ross.

His humor was varied and fairly insightful, covering such topics as the parking situation at Tufts, romance, and of course, Vegas. "I was playing this game they had there. It's called 'Lap Dances'," he quipped. "I don't know how you win, but they've got real friendly dealers."

Most of all, he focused on relationships. He managed to keep it light, even though he briefly touched upon what sounded like a recent breakup in his past. Most people at college have not yet lived with a member of the opposite sex, but Dunn still managed to make such experiences as discerning the reason for a rock in the bathroom (his girlfriend's pumice stone for keeping her feet smooth) amusing and personal.

Jeff Ross's routine was an experiment in the other direction: utter randomness. There was no unifying theme, simply a string of one-liners and short anecdotes strung together. Unlike Dunn's ability to springboard off a dead joke into a new direction, whenever Ross's antics failed him, he immediately focused in upon it. "I love these in-between times," he said during one burgeoning silence.

But, as sophomore Kirit Radia said: "It felt like he lost all his material halfway through."

Ross's routine began after he entered and asked, "How do you like my new shirt? Winona Ryder gave it to me." He proceeded to remove a coat hanger from the back. He included a few other topical jokes, but his humor revolved more around the outlandish fictional exploits of his family. Instead of creating semi-believable, humorous folks, he relied on one-liners to describe them. There should have been a drum set in the back to emphasize it.

In general, Ross received three responses: dead silence ("that joke sucked"), genuine laughter ("okay, not bad"), and really nervous laughter ("is it legal to say that?"). It felt like he enjoyed pushing the limits, seeing how far he could take a joke, but unlike some comics, he couldn't quite figure out when to stop. He always went a couple jokes too far into the realm of uncomfortable before withdrawing into safe material. For example: I now know way, WAY too much about his genitalia.

A little more than halfway through the show, Ross did something genuinely unusual and, dare I say, innovative: he invited a member of the audience, who could play the piano quite well, up onto the stage, and had him play romantic music while Ross read some "poems". What kind of poems, you ask? An example: "Roses are red / my balls are blue / I'll get down on one knee / when you get down on two."

Was the show worth seeing? "It was a great way to spend a rainy Sunday afternoon," noted sophomore Jason Steinman. You can't really beat a three dollar ticket price for stand-up, so I have no complaints. Thank goodness Jimmy Dunn is local, because he is well worth more than that. As for Jeff Ross, you can catch him on Comedy Central.