‘Step Brothers’ comedian performs at USC Monday
The Russell House Ballroom nearly reached capacity Monday night as actor and comedian Rob Riggle entertained a diverse crowd with hilarious stories taken from his own experiences, peppered with curse words and outrageous sound effects.
Students lined up as early as an hour before the performance, which was sponsored by Carolina Productions.
Fourth-year media arts student and USC’s spring comedy competition winner Matt LaBorde opened up for Riggle with a 15-minute set. LaBorde’s jokes covered a wide variety of subjects, ranging from his family and friends to more serious topics including date rape and testicular cancer.
In one of LaBorde’s opening jokes, he told the crowd that he would like to go abroad so he can say that all the American films he’s seen are now posh foreign films.
In response to his friend Jean-Claude describing a French film, LaBorde would say, “I did see, though, an indie film [that] killed at Sundance. It chronicles the struggles of an African-American family in the heartland of the Southeast, called ‘Madea Goes to Jail 2.’ Now that’s art.”
In another joke, LaBorde imagined a world in which parents retaliated against “your mom” jokes by making fun of their kids, exchanging “your son” jokes with each other: “Your son is so poor and it is all your fault.”
LaBorde also shared kooky witticisms from his grandfather including, “I think we should stop printing money and start selling our bodies.”
Immediately after LaBorde finished his set, Riggle took the stage to an enormous round of applause.
“You guys are looking good for real,” Riggle said before visually surveying the crowd, rating audience members’ physical appearances by nodding, pointing and giving “yes” and “no” responses to various students.
Riggle told the audience he had spent some time on campus Monday and thinks USC’s mascot is awesome.
“The Gamecocks. Deal with it!” Riggle said.
It wasn’t long before the Gamecock conversation got sexual, as Riggle said, “I’m sure the ladies are getting tired of it,” in reference to being bombarded with innuendos and pick-up lines like, “Hey, my c--k’s game if you are.”
Riggle has spent a lot of time in the South, but still finds Southerners entertaining. He shared a story about encountering a few snow flurries during a recent Nashville tour stop and the ridiculous reactions of the locals, comparing snow in the South to “a nuclear war.”
“To the storm shelter! We’re all gonna die!” Riggle said.
The majority of Riggle’s act was comprised of elaborately shared true stories from the actor’s life, including a tale about his freshman roommate who owned a boa constrictor and another about being a hippie “for a day” to pursue a girl named Astrid.
Other jokes included comparing the Kardashians to the cast of “Swamp People,” a disgusting description of men’s bathrooms at football stadiums (which Riggle compared to “the gates of hell”) and 45-minute phone conversations with his best friend during which the pair describe “in vivid detail how we would defile each other’s mothers.”
At the end of the show, Riggle opened the floor for a five-minute Q&A with the audience. Most of the audiences’ questions involved asking the actor to spout out lines from “Step Brothers” and “The Other Guys” or reenact the police scene from “The Hangover,” much of which he did with a smile. The audience also learned that many of Riggle’s memorable lines and scenes were improvised by the actor (including “in the face”).
But some questions provided insight into the actor’s life outside of show business.
One student asked Riggle why he left “The Daily Show” to which he jokingly said, “I just got tired of Stewart’s bullsh-t,” before honestly stating that he left because his commute from California to New York kept him away from his family too much.
Another student asked Riggle if he was still enlisted in the Marine Corps,which prompted the actor to reveal that he will be retiring this summer after 22 years of military involvement.