What is sweeter than a bunch of pranksters singing "Happy Birthday" to an answering machine on a cell phone with the audience helping? Nothing! Well, unless you were at False Advertising's "Third Annual Last Show Ever," then you got to see a whole show of entertaining antics including an appearance by Elephant Larry, the hilarious sketch comedy group comprised of Cornell graduates.
After singing Happy Birthday to Paul Adler's '04 answering machine, the show got underway. The first game, "Pillars," featured two inanimate objects portrayed by people and two mobile people. Whenever the people touched the "objects," they would speak for the people. The setting was a flower shop with a young pubescent boy, the shopkeeper, a corsage and a bouquet of flowers.
Next came the game of "Master and Servant," in which Alex Goldstein's '06 mother was included, since the plot involved the private (Michael Popper '05) in the army using the general's (Goldstein) mother's makeup. Several references to the presence of "mom" directly in the building sent laughter out of the audience's mouths, especially since Popper had no idea at first what was happening.
"Shit baggers" was next, hosted by a French-sounding Jake Kamins '04, who introduced himself and then introduced the "performers" of the night. The word of the game suggested by the audience was 'scatterbrained.' There were three different characters that all portrayed their own projections on the word of choice. Jake made sure everyone snapped their fingers, because as he explained, "the clapping hurts my ears."
Then came "Acronyms." Using the words as a kick off, the two players, Popper and Caitlin Steitzer '05, started a scene selected from ideas the audience suggested. During the scene, Kamins would shout out an acronym. The next line they said had to be words that started with the letters of the acronym. Acronyms used included LASER, ZEBRAS, NASA and DARE. The scene: a babysitter and her charge talking about why she was a bad babysitter. The best line of the night came from NASA, "Narcotics Anonymous Sounds Alright!" Said by Popper to Steitzerm regarding her inability to be a good babysitter.
"186, "a favorite game of False Ad came next. The premise of this game is to say "186 (fill in word) walk into a bar. The bartender says 'I'm sorry but we don't serve (fill in same word). The (fill in word again) say..." Words picked from audience shout outs were blanks, units of money and union organizers.
A thrilling interpretation of "Mork and Mindy" came next with Goldstein and Tamara Fleischer '06. According to Kamins, Robin Williams never knew his lines and improvised just about everything he did and said on the show while Pam Dawber was a stickler for lines and always knew each one. The game consisted of Fleischer reading direct lines from a David Mamet play while Goldstein improvised responses. As a result, Goldstein talked about his Boston accent and Salisbury steak while Fleischer rambled on about how "it just has to rain tonight."
Next, they played a game consisting of three characters for four people. The idea was that it started off with three people on stage. When one of them left, the one who was already off stage came on as the same character that left the stage. The scene and skit was a family consisting of a mother, father and child on a hike in the Grand Canyon.
Finally, False Ad did their own rendition of "The Real World." The characters the audience picked for this skit were Abby Orenstein '06 as "the girl next door," Weldon Kennedy '06 as "the homosexual," and Eric Sirota '04 as "the minority" - based on the fact that he was the only really tall person. Fleischer took on the "right-wing religious fanatic," and Kamins was the necessary "troublemaker."
On next was False Ad's special guests Elephant Larry. A sketch comedy group, the five graduates of Cornell started their set with a skit about never remembering the great philosophers and what each of them did. In the skit, one of the friends and a mad scientist went back in time and made a super philosopher man mixed of Aristotle, Socrates and Plato. Unfortunately, all he wanted to do was eat people and not talk about philosophy.
Another skit featured the characters of four guys and Alice. The boys, all dressed as preps, spoke in unison as Alice told them she had to break up with them because she met seven other guys. The boys never missed a beat and stayed together through the whole scene. Their performance sounded like it took a long time to get it right and they did it flawlessly. Hearty applause, which had been present all night, shook the auditorium once again.
One of the best moments came next when all five members, acting as employees of General Motors, had to create a car alarm sound. If you have ever heard an alarm that went off and a series of different sounds emerged, that is what they produced. Each made a different sound and eventually decided they couldn't choose and used all of them.
Three of the actors came out after another brief sketch and went through a mind-boggling round robin style skit where each one was a father, a son, and a grandfather to another person. It circled around the three of them and soon it was impossible to keep all of the relationships straight.
The two "commercials" of the night included 18 billion staples (literal staples, not the office supply store) and different energy drinks that went from Mountain Dew down to an imaginary drinks called Shnookiecocoapants (sic), Puffy Cloud and Happy Bunny.
In between the commercials was a lovely song written by one of the guys to his girlfriend. He sang the song while another member played the guitar. Alas, the love song was changed into a raving rock ballad about the girl's breasts from the guitar player. He was almost kept under control by the other boy until the end when he sang out, "Boobie juggie titty knockers!"
Finally, a brilliant end to the show came with telling of a story about a trip to France. A lot was spoken in stilted French so not a lot of people knew what the performers were saying, but they were able to get the gist of it. The outrageous accents and bad acting had the audience roaring with laughter. It appears that going to a café, a supermarket, a library and a house were all one needs to have a great time in France because hey, "there isn't anything else to do!"
It was a great show once again by False Ad and their guests Elephant Larry. As the last show of the semester, False Ad gave a commendable finale to a great run of comedy, both improv and sketch.
