Kyle Grooms Brings Comedy to the Johnson Center

By Broadside Staff Writer Dylan Hares

One thing we have come to expect from the Program Board as a student body with nothing better to do is big names when it comes to entertainment. Program Board surely delivered when they had Kyle Grooms take the stage in the Johnson Center Bistro as part of their lineup of Homecoming activities. Grooms is best known for his extensive stage experience with shows like Comedy Central Presents, BET’s Comicview, and the Def Comedy Jam. We have also seen his face a few times on the notorious Chappelle’s Show. After seeing his performance, it is easy to see where his comedic influences lie.

Kyle Grooms’ performance was prefaced by a short act by George Mason University alumn Ryan Carter. Carter, overall, was pretty funny. All of his jokes related to testicles, but he made it funny. He had good comedic timing and told us jokes we want to hear—jokes about testicles.

After Carter left, Grooms was brought on stage and was warmly welcomed by the audience. “Tell us a joke, monkey,” Grooms yelled. About 90 percent of Grooms’ jokes were race-oriented, but he made it funny and used the environment and the atmosphere to his advantage. He talked about his past, about the election, and of course, about Chris Brown. Grooms displayed a seamless impression of Barack Obama which really got the crowd going. Surprisingly enough, Grooms was not reserved like many of the Program Board’s normal acts. Instead of being reeled in, Grooms went all out, using every potty mouth word he had at his disposal—which the audience was all too eager to laugh at. A lot of his jokes came from his Comedy Central specials like the one about bottled water or the African-American family skiing down the mountain, but hearing him say these in person was definitely a lot funnier. Some of his funniest material came from interaction with the crowd. He did a hilarious impression of a girl who sneezed halfway through a joke and made jokes out of everything he heard the crowd say. Some of his punch lines he carried a little too far and some of his more complicated jokes eluded the crowd, but overall he was received extraordinarily well.

The entire show was absolutely hilarious and was definitely time and money well spent, at least for the Program Board. If you missed the performance in the JC, you can catch clips of Kyle Grooms on YouTube or on Comedy Central’s website.