Eugene Mirman (left) and H. John Benjamin (right) brought comedy and life advice to the stage for spring fest. | Photo by James McIntosh.
On Sunday, April 14, two “Bob’s Burgers” voice actors, H. John Benjamin and Eugene Mirman gave students and community members an hour full of comedic relief and life advice.
Benjamin voices Bob Belcher, the main character and dad of the main family on the show. Mirman voices Gene, the son in the family. The event was a part of the Student Entertainment Committee’s spring fest. Mirman and Benjamin shared the stage and split the
Mirman’s first words to the audience were, “you seem very nice, I sound like you thought I would. So that’s great, great for all of us.”
Mirman’s first topic was centered around his wife, and explained that he often plays this game where he tries to think of something he can say to her to make her think that she is crazy when they are out in public together. He used an example of one time when they were at the supermarket.
“I was by the shopping cart, and she was maybe 10-15 feet away from me and I yelled to her, ‘You know what, I am gonna get toilet paper, I don’t think it’s a waste,’” Mirman said.
He continued with a short piece about child abuse, joking about how one time he was in a café and saw a six-year-old in a fedora and immediately thought to call the police.
Mirman also related his skit back to his younger childhood years, as a friend recently told him that when they were in elementary school, their teacher told her to not be his friend, because he was a loser.
“To prove to her that I was a loser [my friend] showed her my test scores,” Mirman said. “I get that there’s a test that can show that you’re bad at math, but what’s the test that proves that you’re a loser? It’s not like there was a question like ‘what’s your favorite food and I said sour cream, or what’s your favorite band? My rabbi,’” Mirman said.
Some of the other pieces he did were on having an experience with a dumb lyft driver, interfering with the Russian election, signing up for Christian Mingle even though he is Jewish and married and an album that he created nine years ago that was made up of solely sounds he could make from his mouth including a cat meow and him teaching Russian phrases. However, he received the biggest laugh from the audience when he discussed digital drugs.
“When I first heard about it, I was like this is the dumbest thing in the world, I’m gonna make 10 of these,” Mirman said. “Most of these types of things are often like cocaine or heroin or those types of things, but also of course I have amoxicillin. If you go online to iTunes or whatever there’s tons of companies that make digital drugs, there’s lots of acts, it’s very common, but only one of these companies reached out to me and threatened to sue me because they mistook my joke for their actual project.”
When it came time for Mirman and Benjamin to change places on the stage, Benjamin was nowhere to be found, leading Mirman to stall for a few minutes. He offered the audience a chance to ask him questions, but as soon as they began, Benjamin stepped out onto the stage carrying a snack pack of Oreos, Chips Ahoy and Nutter Butters, as well as an avocado. He claimed that the snack pack was an original gift from New York and invited the audience to come up and help themselves, and the avocado was found in the green room behind the stage.
Benjamin’s first piece was about the size of the state of Rhode Island, and related it to his life in comedy.
“So, Rhode Island, shit,” Benjamin said. “The country’s smallest state, meet the country’s smallest comedian.”
Benjamin continued his part by joking about not bringing any material and instead questioning the audience, and hoping to last longer than “Game of Thrones” so the audience would leave. Throughout his half, he often picked on the younger members of the audiences, although the most notable time when he talked about how great living in New York City is.
“I live in New York and I live in the west village, which is a very upper-middle class area,” Benjamin said. “On my block I’ve got a coffee shop and a pizza parlor on one side, a school and a sex shop on the other. The sex shop is called fantasy world and it’s very large, and that’s the great thing about living in New York. If you need a dildo immediately, like on the fly, that you can run out and get one. Not like here where you probably have to drive to Providence to get a decent dildo, even a used one.”
He continued to do a large skit on sex shops and dildos, picking out the younger members in the audience and teasing them about being in attendance, stating how they were too young to hear.
“I’m not a big sex shop aficionado, I do go in now and again, twice a day, give or take if I’m working or doing something, sometimes at night it is open 24 hours,” Benjamin said. “I’m sorry about this, you’re 13, that’s not college age.”
Benjamin ended his half of the show with a song called “Well I should have learned to play piano.” Three local Jazz musicians played the bass guitar, saxophone and drums, while Benjamin interrupted at various times with random musical notes from the piano that did not fit the rhythm or tone. At one point, everyone stopped except the drummer who kept a steady beat and waited for Benjamin to chime in, but he did so after about 10 seconds of anticipation.
“Most would call this reckless, baby I call it jazz,” Benjamin said. “Jazz is the ocean, I am just one wave, forming one current, crashing onto some remote beach somewhere in time. And that wave makes a small, imperceptible change.”