Emma Alcock
Every once in a while, you meet someone whose every statement offends you… yet, you aren’t able to just walk away. For me, that person was comedian Matthew Broussard, the most recent in a line of impressive performers.
His introduction was nothing special. He just asked who was what major and why we were at his show instead of going out. I started thinking that it would be a long show to sit through. Soon enough, though, Broussard showed his true colors.
One of his most outstanding traits was his blunt honesty. His warm-up anecdote was his experience selling Adderall, aka the drug used to treat ADHD and narcolepsy. He said that after his prescription ran out, he became known as the only dealer on campus. He then turned this reputation into what sounded like a very healthy relationship with an “attention whore.”
“So that’s how it’s going to be?” I asked myself. I could see that Broussard had an offensive lineup of jokes, but I wasn’t put off enough to leave. I decided to sit and wait.
As it turned out, he was just warming up. For no good reason, the female body has become a point of origin for many of today’s songs and jokes. Broussard continued this trend by providing a raunchy history of the terms “g-spot,” “fallopian tubes” and “Kegel exercises.” These terms, all named after male scientists, were an example of what Broussard called “vaginal imperialism.” Yikes.
Thankfully, the sex jokes ran out after discussing the difference between the vulva and the vagina. This is when the show became bearable, even enjoyable.
For his next bit, he talked about the “bad guys” in movies that were childhood favorites for this generation, such as The Lion King. He argued that the only reason “bad guys” were bad is because of their name. I had to laugh when he said that “Anyone would be a dick if their older brother had a nice name like Mufasa while they got Scar.”
He then asked the crowd if there were attractive “bad guys” out there, and, Thor’s brother, Loki, was the first one named. “Loki?” Broussard said with a surprised laugh. “Next to Chris Hemsworth, the sculpted, perfected Nordic god? You know, he looked like a god, so they cast him as one. Loki, huh?”
My favorite bits of his came towards the end of his roughly 45-minute performance. He asked the crowd if there were any “grammar snobs” in the audience, which quickly generated some excitement. Broussard began this segment by saying that knowing grammar rules didn’t make him smarter, but it made him want to stab his friends. I laughed, thinking of a few of my grammar-conscious friends.
“Even though I’m Jewish,” he said, “I enjoy being called a Grammar Nazi. Is that bad? Oh well, get on the train…” This suckered an audible gasp from the crowd, until he finished his sentence, “to conjunction junction.”
The strongest part of his show was also the last. He opened up the website he runs, Mondaypunday.com, which has nearly 200 visual puns to solve. He called up audience members to solve, and those who solved first got a free t-shirt. I thought the puns were extremely creative, and while I won’t spoil it, my favorite one had the six characters from Friends.
Was Matthew Broussard the most offensive comedian I’ve ever heard? No, not by a long shot. But his brightest moments came when he shared his intellect instead of being offensive for the sake of being offensive.