By Benjamin Zander
Correspondent
Despite taking place on the most unlucky day of the year, students who attended the Friday, Nov. 13, CUB Alt event featuring comedian Chris Gethard and The Mixed Signals had a night filled with laughter and high spirits.
The event opened with the College’s improv comedy troupe The Mixed Signals, with members Nolan DeVoe, Alyssa Hess, Emily Mullin and Steve Munoz, playing improvisation games with the audience.
Following the troupe’s performance, Chris Gethard took the stage. Just seconds after he began to speak, Gethard was interrupted by an announcement on the Library Auditorium’s PA System.
“I had no idea I’d be competing with both a ’90s nostalgia icon and a PA that nobody can control,” Gethard said, referring to an event taking place at the College later that evening, featuring Dave Coulier from “Full House.”
Gethard, a native of West Orange, N.J., is a writer, actor and comedian who plays the role of Derek in the Comedy Central series “Broad City,” and had a recurring role on the final season of NBC’s “The Office.” Currently, he is the host of “The Chris Gethard Show,” a New York City public access talk show that began as a live stage piece at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater in Manhattan.
“I was reading a copy of The Signal, and I’m very sorry about the WiFi situation,” Gethard said. “I went to another state school, but I made a mistake. I had never been to the TCNJ campus and it made me retroactively mad, because I went to a school called Rutgers, and it was terrible. They put all the landscaping into this campus, and let us live like human dirt in a shithole called New Brunswick.”
Gethard also spoke of the discrimination New Jersey residents face in New York City. He described the luxurious Grand Central Station, which has trains going to Westchester and Connecticut and contains a tennis court, farmers market and an oyster bar inside. Then, he described Penn Station, which has trains going to New Jersey and Long Island.
“I wouldn’t eat fuckin’ seafood in Penn Station… I wouldn’t eat food that I bought outside and brought with me into Penn Station,” Gethard said.
Gethard made a point to address the females in the audience for this particular point.
“I’m a feminist… I understand there’s a lot of bullshit limitations that you ladies have to fight through, but here’s one thing you’ll never have to deal with, you’ll never have to go inside the men’s (bath)room at Penn Station.”
Gethard, who describes his appearance as, “a grown up version of Calvin from ‘Calvin and Hobbs,’” said that his wife is more attractive than him “to the degree that it looks like I have hired her.”
He spoke about getting married at a Jewish summer camp, and spent three minutes walking through the logistics of the wedding to lead up to the punch line, but as he was about to say it, the PA system went off again.
Through laughter, Gethard said, “It took me over three hours to get here only to be tormented by a bodiless person inside of small gray boxes.”
Gethard also spoke of a place that he and his wife stumbled upon in Orlando, Fla. called Gatorland.
“You go into this backyard, which is just filled with hundreds of alligators, and that’s it!” he said. “At Disney World, I paid $16 just to park (and) another $100 to get inside, and you have to wait hours to get on any of their rides. At Gatorland, I paid $20 total, and within five minutes of entering I was watching a show where they hang chicken carcasses from a string, and gators leap out and get ’em.”
After this, the PA system went off a third time, prompting Gethard to say, “There’s now two very long jokes in a row where that happened right at the punch line!”
Gethard described a night of drinking in college, which led to him waking up fully clothed and running down the street in New Brunswick wearing a Batman mask.
Although seats didn’t fill up, those in attendance lined up to get their picture with Gethard and to have a conversation with him after the show.
“I really wish more people were at this event, because honestly, Chris Gethard was the funniest guy I’ve seen so far while going to school here,” sophomore marketing major EJ Paras said.
