Comedy Central
John Mulaney visited the university on Wednesday as a stop on his “Kid Gorgeous” tour.
BY
SENIOR REPORTER
Opening the night with several university-centered jokes, former Saturday Night Live writer, Broadway actor and token “Big Mouth” star John Mulaney made a memorably hilarious impression at the Bob Carpenter Center Wednesday night.
“Home of the Fightin’ Blue Hens,” Mulaney says, pausing for a moment, “which absolutely, absolutely, absolutely, absolutely is a team name that needed the name ‘fightin’ in the beginning.”
The university was just one stop on Mulaney’s nine-month comedy tour. With almost every show sold out, the comedian’s self-deprecating humor has proven to resonate well with audiences, especially after considering the addition of a sixth show at New York’s Radio City Music Hall after the first five sold out.
Mulaney’s routine featured stories of embarrassing email blunders, tales of going to church with his family and instances of ghost sightings in his childhood home. He spoke about the absurd nature of the “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” movie, and spent a sufficient amount of time speaking about the university itself.
“I liked the part when he harassed Delaware and the Fightin’ Blue Hens,” freshman Olivia Romano says, “I mean, why Delaware? He was talking about getting off the train in the middle of Wilmington and I was like, yeah that’s funny, we’re in the middle of nowhere.”
Mulaney also commented on his own experience as a student at Georgetown University, and joked about his alma mater contacting him for donations.
“I gave them $120,000 and now they have the audacity to ask me for more money? What kind of a coke-head relative is my college?” Mulaney says, “College was like a four-year game show called ‘Do My Friends Hate Me or Do I Just Need to Go to Sleep,’ except instead of winning money, you lose $120,000.”
After picking up a copy of The Review, Mulaney began reading some of the articles aloud, including a story on crime rates during the week of Halloween and an article about food establishments pushing retailers out of Main Street. He followed up by interacting with the audience in an attempt to understand what syllabus week was, and why students partied as a reaction to receiving their schedules for the semester.
Toward the end of his set, Melaney began to reference the U.S. political climate, comparing Donald Trump’s presidency to a horse being loose in a hospital.
“I think eventually everything is going to be okay, but I have no idea what is going to happen next, and neither do any of you,” Mulaney says. “No one knows what the horse is going to do next, least of all the horse, he’s never been in a hospital before, he’s as confused as we are.”
The content of Mulaney’s set further proved to be tailored to the university audience when he mentioned notable university alumni, like former Vice President Joe Biden, Baltimore Ravens quarterback Joe Flacco and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. And if that wasn’t enough, he also invited a freshman nursing student, who had tweeted him earlier in the day, on stage to take his blood pressure for an assignment.
“I think that says a lot about his character,” sophomore Abigail Hunter says. “It says that he cares about his audiences regardless of if they can afford to pay $90 for a ticket at a big theater, or can pay $25 and see him on a college campus.”
