Students filed into Fulton 511 on Thursday evening for yet another night of comedy on campus with Asinine Sketch and Improv Comedy’s big show, “Hey Siri, don’t be afraid.”
Asinine, Boston College’s only improv and sketch comedy group, opened the show with a montage of a member leaving the group only to be haunted by his memories with the Asinine mascot. The video followed the Asinine member all around campus with Barbra Streisand’s “Memory” playing in the background until he eventually reunited with the donkey. And with that, the acts began.
The show alternated between sketch and improv acts, an upbeat song playing between each to keep the audience engaged. The first sketch was Stu’s Moment, which follows hipster Stu, who’s just a little too into the bongos and slam poetry. Stu’s absurd dance moves and multiple coffees spilled on other Asinine members started the show off strong.
After, the group performed their first improv game called the Death Game. The audience gave the actors a location and various ways of dying. The improvers then created a scene based on these suggestions. It ended with all four members dying in humorous ways.
The next sketch took a bit to get to the punch, but had the audience rolling in the end. A seemingly unengaged college student gave a passionate and incredibly serious presentation about using CRISPR gene editing to make a burger man who is “equal parts man and meat.”
This was followed by the improv game Good, Bad, Ugly. Audience members proposed questions they needed advice on, and Asinine members offered good, bad, and ugly advice for their problems.
The following was a sketch of a man trying to propose to his girlfriend, but the other restaurant attendees do not make it easy. The pure randomness of this one had audience members in stitches. The addition of the improv game Party Quirks simply added to the hilarity. The host left while audience members decided on the quirks of the three remaining members on stage. The host then guessed each party-goer’s quirk through their act.
Another entertaining, though raunchy, sketch was Mancala. Skilled mancala player Chlamydia Onyourjohnson beat two other humorously named opponents before being bested by Jack Loosefingers. The sketch was peculiar, with random jabs at “anemic PhD students” that got the audience laughing.
Next was the widely performed improv game, Growing Shrinking Machine. Five different scenes from one inspiration—“spy” in this case—took place with Asinine members rotating in and out to grow and then shrink the group.
A sketch called Hell Week came after, which portrayed the initiation for the new Sigma Nu of BC. One of the characters was a little too enthusiastic about rushing, fully embracing any punishments the brother in charge came up with. The sketch ended with a cackling audience, the stage clouded in baby powder after the overly enthusiastic brother was hit with a sock full of it.
Two Asinine members subsequently took the stage to play Lines in a Pocket. The two members improvised a scene of two men in prison, having to incorporate phrases the audience members had written before the show.
The penultimate sketch was short and sweet: Jesus Christ, Rookie Card. Two members with incredibly strong New York accents find a baseball card for Jesus. Unfortunately, the card ends up being destroyed. Thunder sounded—God’s wrath—and the lights went off before the last improv game of the night.
Four Asinine members participated in Irish Drinking Game, where they had to make up a song to a stereotypical Irish tune. They cleverly created a melody about going to the beach, achieving an impressive number of rhymes for a song made on the spot.
The last sketch of the show was Graduation Day in Space. With a galactic BC logo on the screens behind them and an EDM version of classic graduation music, various students received their diplomas via Bluetooth. One character, Roland Plarb, was particularly ambitious. He graduated with a 4.0 and received progressively more controversial degrees, the last of which was Advanced Racism.
With raunchy sketches and impressive improvisation, Asinine let its unique skill set shine with “Hey Siri, don’t be afraid.”
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