Penguins Without Pants and Zamboni Revolution provided a tag team of laughs in their double feature performance Friday night.

Sketch comedy group Penguins Without Pants took the stage for the first hour of the event. In a mad flurry of skits, Penguins sang a song about butterscotch pudding, hosted an episode of ‘Man vs. Wild’ in a Wegmans, hilariously re-scripted an iPhone commercial and parodied Oscar contender Slumdog Millionaire.

The group’s varied and sometimes off-color humor struck a chord with the crowd, even in the most bizarre of scenes. In one particularly strange sketch, a band interview opens with a heart attack, a heart transplant and a triple homicide. Nonetheless, the host nonchalantly decides to continue the interview, with hysterical results.

Halfway through the show, as Penguins concluded its set and Zamboni prepared to take the stage, a sudden rush of students forced the show into a 30-minute intermission as organizers moved it from the Jabberwocky Café to The Underground.

‘We usually have comedy events upstairs in the Panasci Lounge, but in order to have more shows this semester it was decided to have this one in the Jabberwocky,’ said Jenn Vasquez, who organized the event for Orange Night Live. ‘In (the Jabberwocky) the maximum capacity is only 60, so for safety reasons the show is moving to The Underground.’

The estimated audience number swelled to about 160 students.

The audience’s sudden growth was partly due to Greek life.

‘(Zamboni Revolution member) Jessie Jolles is a sister in our sorority, so our whole pledge class came out to see her,’ said Alpha Zeta Omega pledge Erica Schmitt.

The big crowd brought even bigger enthusiasm, and Zamboni Revolution was ready for it. Running out to the front to open their set, the improvisational comedy group blitzed the stage, cheering and throwing candy to the audience.

As an improvisational group, Zamboni only needed a word or phrase from the audience to get started. After receiving the word – ‘coconuts,’ in this case – the group rapidly went through a series of completely made-up, on-the-spot scenes inspired by coconuts. The results were hysterically funny and included – somehow – a bit about a struggling white rapper from Westchester trying to make it in the Canadian hip-hop scene, ‘because the exchange rate makes it cheaper.’

For the second and equally funny half of the show, Zamboni interviewed an audience member and then launched into a series of scenes inspired by her answer.

For many audience members, this was the first time they had ever seen either Penguins or Zamboni, although Zamboni clearly had a larger following.

‘My friend brought me along, he told me it was going to be fun,’ said Brad Montgomery, a freshman computer science major. ‘I had no idea there were groups like this on campus. Both groups were really good, I’m definitely coming again.’

jmrive02@syr.edu

Published on February 15, 2009 at 12:00 pm