Georgette Delos Santos
October 13, 2014
Blog 2
Professor Rosner

On October 10th, the Stockton Entertainment Team (SET) held One Night Stand Up event in the Sports Center for Homecoming Weekend. The event included a comedy show featuring Nicole Byer, a star on MTV’s Girl Code and Kevin Barnett, a series regular on MTV2’s Guy Code. That night, my friend and I decided to go because we have watched these two comedians on television and they were one of our favorites from their respected shows. When I saw Nicole arrive on stage, I was shocked by what came out of her mouth. Needless to say, her jokes were wild from start to finish. There appeared to be no topic of conversation she was willing to censor out of her jokes. There were times when she tried to make people laugh with the racism and self-hatred she had for herself that made everyone in audience uncomfortable, especially when she jokes about suicide when, ironically, the college was having a suicide prevention week.
When Kevin Barnett came up, he lightened the tense mood Nicole Byer had left behind. Instead of touching on topics that would make people feel extremely uncomfortable laughing at, he made jokes that were somehow able to embrace people of different sexualities. Instead of making fun of men who were gay, he managed to create a message saying that gays can be powerful, etc. He was a bit inspiring, and he was able to joke about his life in way that felt relatable. As I watched him and listened to his stories, he made me feel as though I was actually there; it felt almost as if I was part of his life. I have not laughed so hard in such a long time, and his humor made me miss home a little. As strange as this may sound, I miss being a school of predominantly African Americans, Hispanics, etc. Sometimes, I can feel a strong racial barrier at Stockton; it feels as though you cannot simply be friends with everyone because of race, and that is never a problem where I am from. Kevin reminded me of the guys back home, and he joked about how he noticed there was some sort of divide amongst races in the South, and even though this is only South Jersey, I can feel it too.