By Chelsea Reil
Despite repeated attempts to draw some laughs from the crowd, it seemed Tina Kim couldn’t engage about 40 audience members who came to see her stand-up performance in afterHOURS Friday night.
Kim, who was brought to campus by the Asian Student Union, attributed the crowd members’ lack of enthusiasm to their Asian upbringing. They were not laughing at some of the jokes that poked fun at stereotypical Asian behavior because they hit too close to home, she said.
“You guys are so frickin’ polite, I feel like I’m at church,” she said.
Before she started a Q’A session to try to connect with the audience, Kim spoke about her first time performing at a college, wanting to be black and why they will never have an Asian American on NBC’s stunt show “Fear Factor.”
“I remember the first time I did a college, there were all of these banners saying, ‘Asian Awareness Week,'” she said. “I thought that was funny because what, it’s like, ‘Be aware, there are Asians up in here. Next week they’ll all be back to computer programming, but for now they’re out of the dorms.'”
Kim joked about how when she was little she wanted to be like her white friends because they got to wear their shoes in the house. But now that she’s older, Kim said she knows better.
“Now, I want to be black,” she said. “Because when black women are little, their moms are all like, ‘You go girl!’ But Asian moms are like, ‘Where do you think you’re going?’ And now, all my mom asks me is why I’m not married. What is that? You never let me out of the house and now you want me to be married?”
Kim talked about her parents for much of the show, saying that although her folks are a little wacky, they do provide a lot of material for her shows. She said her dad loves watching “Fear Factor,” despite the fact that there never seem to be any Asians on the show, because of the second round, when the show generally makes its contestants eat unusual food.
“It’s like pig’s blood soup or cow intestines, and the Asian is like, ‘Yeah, I just ate that for breakfast,'” she said. “My dad’s watching TV and is like, ‘Look at that stupid white boy. There’s so much protein in that.'”
Jennifer Schinabeck, a freshman international business major, said she enjoyed the performance but acknowledged the lack of interest from the audience.
“I liked it. I came because it was something to do, to get me out of my room,” Schinabeck said. “But [Tina] was right, the audience was kind of weird.”
Mario Mai, a senior criminal justice major, said he tried to liven up the crowd by asking some questions during the Q’A session, but it didn’t seem to help. He said the vibe was a “little off” for a comedy show.
“I enjoyed it for the most part,” Mai said. “My sense of humor is a little more outrageous than this. I think the audience made her a little more reserved.”
