By Scott Calzolaio
In his comparison of pregnancy and obesity at this year’s Battle of the Comedians, winner MT Nicolas explained that man-boobs have “no function in society.”
He then set up what seemed like a casual part of his overweight days: “I’m just walking down the street one day, and I see a crying baby.” Nicolas then reaches down, picking up the imaginary baby, lifting it to his chest, and says, “All right – just suck on the titty of love. I’m right here, baby.”
This year’s Battle of the Comedians, sponsored by The Hilltop Players and SUAB, took place in the McCarthy Forum on Tuesday night. The competition was hosted by SUAB Ram Pride Chair Sarah Cowdell and Hilltop President Geoffrey Ducharme, and judged by Hilltop Improv Chair Tyler Demoura and SUAB Publicity Coordinator Christopher Hajeck.
There were five contestants this year. The Rrst to perform was James Kuhtreiber, who spent his 10 minutes talking about the temporary Internet porn block on campus, accidentally joining a mariachi band and quoting from his roommate’s sleep talk.
“Colin has a tendency to talk in his sleep. I’ve been writing these down since September 15,” Kuhtreiber said. “December 3, 2013 – this is our RA Roman,” he said, gesturing toward the crowd, as Roman took a bow. “‘James, I pooped in Roman’s freezer. Don’t tell him,’” said Kuhtreiber, quoting his sleeping roommate.
The next comedian to take the stage was RA and Hilltop Improv member Cameron Zamagni. Zamagni vividly acted out his outrageous fall down Larned Hill earlier that day.
“The moment occurs, leg gives out,” said Zamagni, “and I think, ‘If I’m going down, I’m yelling timber.’” He then made a high pitched squeal as he fell dramatically onto the stage floor.
Other topics Zamagni touched on included multiple awkward encounters with strangers, and his sister’s recent lactose intolerance.
The third performer and last year’s Mr. FSU, James Lindsay, took the stage and admitted that his entire set was going to be completely improvised. Lindsay jumped from random story to random story, without taking so much as a breath in between. The variety of topics he covered had no particular order, and his overall demeanor had the audience in stitches.
“My reason for coming to FSU was originally because they had a smoothie stand,” Lindsay said as he talked about his struggle choosing the right college. “I was like, ‘OK, so Fitchburg has this really cool chocolate milk machine, but FSU has a smoothie stand. I don’t really see anything that UMass-Amherst or Westfield has to compare.”
The next performer, senior Erin McConville, joked about graduation, breaking her ankle getting onto a bed in North Hall “completely sober,” having “verbal diarrhea,” high school superlatives and terrible pick-up lines.
“Let’s talk about terrible pick-up lines,” she said. “I actually had somebody recently come up to me and say ‘Hey, I think you should know I have a Vitamin-C deficiency. Vitamin C as in Cuddles.’”
Nicolas started by pumping up the crowd. Then, he gave a brief disclaimer and age restriction for his set.
“If there are any toddlers out there in the audience, I’m going to ask you to leave,” said Nicolas. “This is not necessarily going to be PG.”
This was Nicolas’ first time doing stand-up comedy, and he won over the judges with his commentary on the struggles of obesity, as well as his high energy and absurd mannerisms throughout his set.
“Fun fact: I lost 150 pounds. I used to weigh 350 pounds,” said Nicolas. “If you think about it, the average newborn baby is seven pounds, so I was walking around with 50 newborn babies.”
Nicolas came prepared with an artillery of fat jokes that kept the audience constantly laughing.
“Being fat is hard – why you laughing?” said Nicolas. “People always assume, ‘Oh, being fat is easy. All they do is sit down all day, watch cartoons and lounge around on their lazy ass, dipping their Oreos into Nutella.’”
After a short intermission, the two top contenders were chosen for a one-minute comedy stand-off for the win. Nicolas’ opponent was Kuhtreiber. Nicolas came out on top with his Rnal commentary on the FSU porn block.
“I thought all the performers were absolutely hilarious,” said junior Nicole Burdick. “They all had different styles of performing, which made it interesting and funny to watch. My favorite would have to be MT because he’s just a hilarious person in general.”
Sophomore Michelle Perrault said, “I thought they were really funny. It was good to go have a laugh in the middle of midterms and everything. My favorite was James Lindsay because he always cracks me up and he never has to take a breath.”
Sophomore Ted Dobbert said, “I had a great time. MT was my favorite because his humor was real and uncensored – the kind of crude humor a lot of people enjoy, but only few can perform successfully. He did great.”