Comedian Myq Kaplan performs in UC
Myq Kaplan didn’t begin his set the way most comedians would.
He teased the Program Board member who introduced him, saying he could barely be heard and asked the audience if his microphone volume needed to be adjusted.
Then he said, “Here are some jokes.”
Kaplan performed an hour-long comedy show in the Bovee University Center Rotunda on Tuesday. More than 40 students attended.
“This man, who had just yelled ‘roll tide’ shortly ago, looked me in the eyes and said ‘l’chaim,’” Kaplan said about an Alabama performance. “For those of you who don’t know, that’s Jewish talk. It means ‘to life.’ It’s a toast to life, and I was surprised that this man had that in his holster. I’d assumed he had a holster, but I didn’t know he’d have life in it.”
Kaplan has been featured on “The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien,” “The Late Show with David Letterman” and “Comedy Central Presents.”
He also has a Netflix special titled “Small, Dork, and Handsome” and hosts the podcast “Hang Out With Me.”
“I got a one-star review (on the Netflix special) that I liked,” Kaplan said. “It was something like ‘I don’t know about these jokes. They might be good. He talked too fast. I’m dumb.’ What I like about it is that it’s more of a review of himself than me.”
A majority of the set was Kaplan beginning a joke and then finding other jokes within that joke.
It took until the last five minutes of the show to finish a joke he had started in the beginning of the performance. It was about a show he performed several years ago and a woman who yelled the punchline to his joke before he could.
“People still laughed because it was the punchline. Normally I say it, but I get paid the same either way, so I didn’t mind,” Kaplan said. “And then she said something that haunts me to this day: ‘I don’t even know what that would mean.’ And then I reevaluated my entire life.”
Kaplan had many running jokes throughout his set, such as making fun of Ohio and the hatred that people have towards Nickelback.
“Besides him calling me out for saying that Joseph Gordon-Levitt is hot, I liked when he ragged on Ohio (the most). I was born and raised there, so that was funny,” said Sarah Gomez-Parez, a Rochester Hills junior.
