Local and visiting comedy troupes entertain audiences

Between improv, sketch and stand-up, the IU College Comedy Festival treated audiences to a variety of comedic styles Friday and Saturday.\nFriday night began with host Brian Frange, also an IDS columnist, wondering, “To Amish people, is the antique mall just, like, the mall?”\n The first act, IU’s only right-wing improv group, Trickle Down Effect, started the night with lines such as “I’ll be giving you bad advice, but you should take it,” and “That yo-yo is of the devil!”\nHoosOnFirst was up next, debating Pepsi and Coke – “Don’t drink Coke; yeah, they’re cheaper, yeah they taste better, but come on – we’re Pepsi!” \nAfter the “HoosOn Journey” game, Brett Goldman came onstage for a round of stand-up, commenting that if a million monkeys were on a million typewriters, one would eventually write the complete works of Shakespeare – while the other 999,999 drafted the Patriot Act. \nIU undergrads Dave Klein and Jamel Dotson each did their own short sets before sketch group All Sorts of Trouble for the Boy in the Bubble performed.\nAmong the group’s scenes was “The Banana Dictatorship,” where guerrillas from The Gap invade Banana Republic after forming an axis of evil with Target and Starbucks. They are defeated by warriors from American Eagle, Old Navy and Hot Topic. \nBoy in the Bubble ended in song with “Laugh or Die” and Purdue’s The Crazy Monkeys stepped up. \nThe Monkeys kept the laughter going with lines such as, “Why didn’t you tell me we were going to Alaska? I would have brought pants!”\nDuring a game called “Sex is like ... ” \nthe comedians compared it to: “A chinchilla, ‘cause I have no idea what that is,” and “Ballroom dancing, because there doesn’t seem to be any of it at Purdue.” \nAfter that, the show took a break before returning to Frange and Comedy Caravan stand-up performer Ward Anderson. \nAnderson said for fun, he likes to pretend to be a gladiator: “You call this Starbucks; I say it’s Sparta!”\nHe then moved on to medical testing.\n“Let me tell you the story of my syphilis test, or, as I like to call it, the day I stopped believing in God.”\nGoldman hosted Saturday night, first introducing Fishing with Dynamite, a sketch-comedy group from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. \nThe U of I imports presented Tiger Woods impressions – “For years, I’ve been invading your television with my awesomeness” – talking about great dead golfers, who all apparently hate him.\nAfter a short interlude by Goldman that included lines such as, “I actually went fishing with dynamite once with Dick Cheney. And that’s why I can never go back to Sea World,” IU improv group Full Frontal Comedy took the stage.\nFull Frontal kept the crowd laughing, saying, “If those weren’t Peter’s s’mores, what were they?” and “For I am the Chess Club Toast Master!” \nIU’s Awkward Silence Comedy followed Full Frontal. An audience prompt of “Boobie Lamb” led to phrases like “Pimp my Nerd,” “Before I was Bubba Sparkxxx, I was Big Papa” and “Can you tell the sixth-graders to suck it?” \nAwkward Silence turned the stage over to the Beatbox Hip-Hop Comedy Touring Company.\nBeatbox is part of the Dirty South Improv Theater out of North Carolina and describes its troupe as “hip-hop and improv hanging out and having a baby, and that baby is us!”\nIts combination of on-the-spot raps – “Here I come to save the day,” “It’s time for college coed sports” (“The only college coed sport I know is flippy cup”) and Aquaman, among others – and improv scenes pleased the crowd.\nWith lines such as “(Elmo,) I think you’re buying crack from Oscar the Grouch,” the professional troupe earned a standing ovation.\nFor the grand finale, P. Alex Dodge of Full Frontal led a jam for anyone who wanted to participate – performers and audience members alike. \nAbout 25 people, from the pros of Beatbox to people who’d only watched, played three games – 185, Freeze and World’s Worst.\nFor IU senior Dani Trynoski, the Jam was the best part, though she didn’t participate.\n“I like seeing everybody work together,” she said.