![]() ![]() They liked their slam poets to deliver the goods in tones of the highest seriousness and on subjects of lunar bleakness they favored musicians who could turn out covers with cheerful precision and they wanted comedy that was 100 percent risk-free, comedy that could not trigger or upset or mildly trouble a single student. But the students’ taste in entertainment was uniform. The colleges represented were-to use a word that their emissaries regard as numinous-diverse: huge research universities, tiny liberal-arts colleges, Catholic schools, land-grant institutions. For all these reasons, thousands of comics dream of being invited to the convention. College gigs pay easily a grand a night-often much more-and they can come in a firecracker string, with relatively short drives between schools, each hour-long performance paid for (without a moment’s ugliness or hesitation) by a friendly student-activities kid holding out a check and hoping for a selfie. Representatives of more than 350 colleges had come as well, to book comics, musicians, sword swallowers, unicyclists, magicians, hypnotists, slam poets, and every kind of boat act, inspirational speaker, and one-trick pony you could imagine for the next academic year.įor the comics, the college circuit offers a lucrative alternative to Chuckle Hut gigs out on the pitiless road, spots that pay a couple hundred bucks and a free night in whatever squat the club owner uses to warehouse out-of-town talent. They had come to Minneapolis in the middle of a brutal winter for the annual convention of the National Association for Campus Activities ( NACA), to sell themselves and their comedy on the college circuit. This was not a case of professionals approaching a technical problem as an intellectual exercise. Feraz Ozel mused about the first time he’d ever done stand-up: three minutes on giving his girlfriend herpes and banging his grandma. “Better safe than sorry,” Chinedu Unaka offered. “Don’t do what’s in your gut,” Zoltan Kaszas said. Three comics sat around a café table in the chilly atrium of the Minneapolis Convention Center, talking about how to create the cleanest possible set. ![]()
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