Saturday Night Live (SNL) comedian Seth Meyers opened his stand-up act on Friday evening by poking fun at the Hewlett lecture hall, joking that the room was poorly suited for comedy because the audience could be tempted to browse the large periodic table of elements posted high up on the wall if they got bored with his act.
Ticket holders and hopefuls on the stand-by list lined up outside Hewlett an hour before the show started, eagerly waiting Meyers’ performance. The comedian and longtime actor’s introduction and subsequent entry drew tremendous applause.
The Stanford Speakers Bureau, which also sponsored other prominent comedians’ visits to campus, including Sarah Silverman, Seth McFarlane and BJ Novak, organized Meyers’ performance. Speakers Bureau is hosting Common at Stanford on Wednesday.
The event was co-sponsored by Stanford’s own Robber Barons comedy troupe, which opened the act with three sketches that drew laughs from the audience.
Speakers Bureau director Peter Tu ’10 said he was very satisfied with the collaboration
“In each of our events, we like to reach out to and involve different parts of the Stanford community,” Tu said. “This time it was the Robber Barons, and we thought their opening act prepped Seth’s stand-up perfectly.”
Meyers, who has performed at other colleges, including Northeastern and his alma matter, Northwestern, adapted his act for a predominantly undergraduate audience.
He started off by consoling the seniors in the room, saying, “Sorry about the world.”
His advice for college students consisted of disparaging the prominent use of the futon due to its discomfort and unromantic nature, as well as advocating against the use of Axe body spray, which he deemed “the futon of scent.”
As the show progressed, Meyers moved to politics, remarking on the sex scandal involving former New York governor Eliot Spitzer. He also discussed his experience at SNL, touching on the infamous Ashlee Simpson episode from 2004, which involved the singer being caught lip-syncing rather than singing.
Meyers also spoke about his experience performing on SNL with Sarah Palin, saying he thought the former Alaskan governor was amazing due to her sense of humor, but wouldn’t want her to be president, vice president or a Department of Motor Vehicles worker.
Bantering with the audience, he asked one audience member who said she had gone abroad to Austria what she studied. In response to her answer–“tourism”–Meyers jokingly asked whether or not she knew the difference between studying abroad and merely traveling.
Sam Clanon ’13, a member of Robber Barons, said the Meyers act worked well.
“He did an excellent job of tailoring his material to and interacting with the audience, and his observational wit was just as sharp as some of the guys who are more associated with that type of comedy,” Clanon said.