“Last Comic Standing” finalist and “Crank Yankers” writer Dan Ahdoot will perform March 5 in Lee Hall Auditorium.The event is sponsored by the Campus Activities Board, which discovered Ahdoot at a National Association of Campus Activities conference in Birmingham, Ala., last semester.
“He was by far the funniest person we saw,” said Bekah Buckley, CAB entertainment division head. “Everyone thought he was so funny. He had everybody in the audience just rolling.”
Ahdoot’s emergence as a stand-up comedian began when he was growing up in New York City.
“My dad is the funniest guy that I know,” he said. “Seeing him work a crowd is really funny. [Also,] Dave Attell was one of my biggest influences growing up. I watched him a lot in high school. He gave me the motivation to get on stage.”
Ahdoot’s own comic experience began while he was in college at Johns Hopkins University preparing for medical school.
“I was doing a lot of improv and sketch comedy in college,” Ahdoot said. “My sketches were always a little too edgy for the group, so I started doing stand-up. I started out my senior year in Baltimore.”
Once Ahdoot became a full-fledged stand-up comic and graduated, he decided to skip medical school for his comedy passion.
“I’m good at it,” he said. “I’m better at stand-up than I am at anything else, and I enjoy it more.”
Leaving Baltimore, Ahdoot, a New York City native, moved in with his family and found a number-crunching job while he acquired gigs at many of New York’s comedy clubs, he said. From Caroline’s to the Comic Strip to Stand Up New York, Ahdoot made his rounds until eventually taking first place in the NYC Triad Comedy Competition in 2002. Ahdoot didn’t stay confined to New York, though.
“I’m always on the road,” he said. “You have to keep at it. [Stand up] isn’t like riding a bicycle. It’s more like going to a gym.”
In 2003, Ahdoot took first place in the Philadelphia Comedy Competition and followed that up in 2004 by becoming a finalist in the reality series “Last Comic Standing.” He was also a guest writer for Comedy Central’s “Crank Yankers.” He displayed his crank-call fluency at the NACA conference, CAB student director Bobbie Lee Daniel said.
“He takes phones from people in the audience and prank calls someone they know,” Daniel said. “[At the conference] he called a girl’s dad and pretended to be her professor for like 15 minutes. He was acting like he was trying to date the girl, and then he said her grades were too low, meaning that if the dad let them date he could help her with her grades. It was pretty funny.”
Students can expect Ahdoot to do similar cranks in Monday’s performance, Daniel said. This will be Ahdoot’s first show in Mississippi.
“I’m excited about that,” he said. “But I’m a little scared, too.”
The show will begin at 7 p.m. For more information about Ahdoot visit his Web site at www.standupdan.com.