Last Tuesday night I got a little surprise on my phone in the form of a Facebook message notification. It was about 11pm and I popped it open and, much to my delight, found a notice from the organizer of the Lehigh University Sundaze. It said that Louis C.K., a very popular comedian across the nation, was coming to Lehigh the next night for a free show. Naturally I was a bit skeptical about it so I googled the show. No dice…nothing online. So I checked out Louis’ website and sure enough, there was a show for Lehigh posted for the next day. Louis C.K. replaced Aziz Ansari, a comedian and actor who plays on Parks and Recreation, who apparently bailed at the last minute.
I got to Lehigh extremely early. Too early. Doors weren’t supposed to open until 8 and I got there at 6:30, just to ensure that I’d get in. Turns out I was the first one there. I navigated my way to the basement of Packard Lab to the General Motors Auditorium and used one of their computer terminals to tweet and read news. Around 7:30 the masses started showing up and promptly at 8pm the doors flung open.
For not being advertised at all other than Facebook the show drew a pretty good crowd. The auditorium was tiny…holding a few hundred at best with many left to stand along the sides and in the back. Since this was a short notice show, I was curious as to who the opener would be. Out walks Todd Barry, famed comedian from Flight of the Conchords. And man, did he kill it. A poor student in the front row opened his trap and announced that he was an accounting major when Barry asked the crowd how many were engineering students. He was subject to a few minutes of ridicule, especially after he mentioned that after becoming an accountant he had aspirations to become a lawyer. “Man, NO ONE must talk to this guy. He’s going to rip me apart on his blog… accountantlawyer.blogspot.com. He practices law in all the ways that aren’t interesting.” He even jabbed at the Lehigh Valley’s Transbridge bus company, which he had used to travel from NYC.
Louis C.K. came out and got right into things. For those of you who aren’t familiar with his comedy, it’s exceedingly vulgar and completely true. His first pieces were brand new material, so new that many places probably haven’t seen it and there’s no videos of it on YouTube yet. He talked in depth about the Catholic church and how the Pope has sex with kids. Considering all of the news coming out lately, it was very timely and extremely hilarious. He also ripped on terrorists, jews, etc. but the Pope bit I think really took the cake for the whole night. Afterwards he went into some of the stuff from his last tour which stopped at the State Theatre in Easton. Despite this, it was all pretty fresh and very funny. All in all a fantastic event, especially because it was free and open to anyone. Props to Lehigh University Productions and everything that went into pulling this off on a short notice.
