Comedy show raises eyebrows, elicits laughs

By Kathleen Grohman

The university tries to keep things politically correct, but the Welcome Weekend Monday night entertainers, Jamie Kennedy and his friend Bill Dawes, had a completely opposite agenda.

The stage at Leavey Center was still set for convocation, but the atmosphere in the arena was completely different as opener Bill Dawes began his stand-up routine. Dawes, who has made guest appearances on hit shows like "Sex and the City," opened the show by grabbing the microphone and yelling "Hi, white people! Hi, black people in the back. Is that the basketball team?" He wore a grey T-shirt with "NERD" plastered across it in big bold letters and army cargo pants as he launched into the story of a girl dumping him through a text message.

Dawes did a good job of aiming his jokes to a college audience, playing off the students as he poked fun at a girl's long distance relationship and offered the guys his favorite pickup line: "What are all these people doing here? I thought it was just going to be the two of us." He gave a heartfelt series of jokes urging women not to get too much plastic surgery.

Though Dawes was the opening act, many students seemed to think he was funnier overall. "I think he got the crowd going and was more interactive," senior Jesus Yanez said. Freshman Ashley Arnold agreed. "Dawes was better because he told his jokes faster and Jamie Kennedy didn't get good until the end," she said.

Jamie Kennedy started his career as an extra and followed a long road to success paved by a persona he created named Marty Power, which allowed him to act as his own agent. Later he won the Blockbuster Entertainment Award for Favorite Supporting Actor for his role in the "Scream" trilogy. He is well known for his role in "Malibu's Most Wanted" and his successful hidden camera show, "The Jamie Kennedy Experiment."

Kennedy walked onstage clad in a striped polo with a popped collar and first commented on the ferns still on stage as decorations from convocation. He shooed the security man offstage, took the microphone out of the stand and allowed the spotlight to follow him as he paced across the stage. "Did you watch the news last night?" he asked. The crowd murmured, "No."

"How many of you saw Britney Spears at the VMA's?" The crowd applauded to show that they had and laughed.

Many of Kennedy's jokes centered around airline travel. "There is nothing scarier than turbulence in another language," he said to begin the segment that included impressions of a Japanese and later a Mexican airline.

Eventually, he ended up telling graphic stories about his first time having sex, a great crowd-pleaser.

He poked fun at Santa Clara by reading the tidbit about the university off a Santa Clara water bottle in a cheesy voice and then brought up the infamous "south of the border" party. He praised Santa Clara for the party earning a spot on CNN, and the "top five Facebook faux pas."

Still, Kennedy's jokes were not as vulgar as those of Dawes.

Dawes told his fair share of racist jokes, gay jokes and every other type of crude joke imaginable, but in the end, he gave a poignant reminder that they are just jokes and not meant to offend anyone. Although there were a few sullen faces amidst the laughing crowd, many students expected political incorrectness.

"Everyone knows a stereotype is a stereotype and not true for everyone," freshman Eric Johnson said.

Contact Kathleen Grohman at (408) 551-1918 or kgrohman@scu.edu.