Tracy Morgan gets guilty laughs

Two Campus Times reporters went to see Tracy Morgan in his Jan. 30 show at the Rochester Institute of Technology. Here are their thoughts.Greg Dubinsky – When Brian and I showed up to the snow-packed, hellishly cold RIT campus, we were ready for anything. Brandishing our special pink show passes and the fried chicken we mugged a group of RIT students for, we were escorted past the crowd of plebians and managed to even find seats in the third row. Things were looking great. Sitting next to a random elderly couple in a completely different college campus, trying to eat fried chicken while setting up our expensive digital cameras, we felt right in place. Brian Goldner – I’ve seen Morgan before on SNL, but never doing stand up. He was part of a three-man act and the first two comedians were decent. The highlight of the evening was definitely Morgan’s performance. I feel that growing up with two older brothers prepared me pretty well for some of the things he had to say.GD – Being an only child, and a child of divorce, I did not have this preparation. Nonetheless, I felt that I could relate to Morgan’s routine, especially when he talked about being black. I thought the second comedian, actually, was pretty funny. BG – Yeah, he was good. When the chair collapsed under the weight of some guy in the first row he incorporated it into his act. Also his advice on how to steal textbooks from the campus bookstore was quite insightful. I shouldn’t tell you the details, but let’s just say, “You bring new textbooks to the cashier and pretend you’re returning them without a receipt, and they tell you to keep them until you get your receipt.” He made a good point when he mentioned how people from New York City are the only people who have to simultaneously represent themselves and vandalize. I stopped carving my name in a bench for a moment to throw a chair across the room and yell “Brooklyn!”GD – Right. Morgan had some moments, none of which were for the light-hearted. Or, really, anyone offended by jokes about crippled women with caesarian section scars. A lot of his routine was in his shock value, also known as “I can curse and make vulgar comments about sex acts” value. He also made fun of the National Technical Institute for the Deaf interpreter…BG – Morgan loved that guy. For those of you who don’t know, the NTID interpreter is someone who signs out whatever the speaker is saying, even if that means having to make sexual signs. To make it even worse, the NTID guy was a fat old white guy who looked like Santa Claus. Morgan started on the guy as soon as he came out, and he didn’t give up on him until the show was over.GD – Yeah, it was kind of like looking for a virgin at a Dungeons and Dragons convention – just too damn easy. He forced the interpreter to make certain vulgar signs, over, and over, and over…BG – Also too damn easy are the jokes about porn stars. Haven’t they been picked on enough?GD – I like porn stars. Morgan, on the other hand, did not seem to show the greatest sensitivity to any group, particularly white women. Overall, though, taken lightly, I thought it was pretty funny, and definitely appropriate for an audience of college students. What do you think, Brian?BG -At one point Morgan pointed at me and told me that I was going to hell. I was next to the stage taking pictures of him and I laughed at a joke he made about being “the Beast Master” because his girlfriend was an ugly cripple with C-section scars. I feel that this adequately sums up his act – hilarious, but it made you feel a little guilty at times for laughing. What really got me was the voices, his impersonation of an adult film star begging to perform fellatio was quite humorous the several times that he did it. If I see him a second time, I hope that he has got some new material, because he really beat on the proverbial dead horse, or in this case, a crippled tramp. GD – Some sorority snaps to Morgan for doing Brian Fellows, though. Also, my biggest disappointment of the night was going backstage, meeting Morgan, posing for a picture “Can I get a picture with you, Tracy?” “Sure, random white fellow!” and after no flash, reading three deadly words after Morgan left “Memory card full.” A paradigm for the evening, I think. Enjoyable while it lasted. Dubinsky can be reached at gdubinsky@campustimes.org.Goldner can be reached at bgoldner@campustimes.org.