Aziz Ansari sings ‘Kiss from a Rose,’ talks annoying videos of babies

Comedian Aziz Ansari performs his show Buried Alive at the MAC Center on April 12. Photo by Brian Smith.

Kelsey Misbrener

Aziz Ansari, small in stature but large in fashion sense, began his Thursday evening by thanking the KSU College Democrats at the Student Center for their work on the campaign trail.

In his tweed pea coat, Adidas kicks and scruffy beard, he said he’s a big Obama supporter — he has even met the guy.

He did an event last March with Obama in New York City, and after the show, he got a behind the scenes hangout with the president.

“It was so strange, cause I expected it to be like, very formal just like, ‘thank you for your time,’” Ansari said. “But he was like, ‘What’s goin’ on, Aziz? What you been up to?’” Obama then proceeded to tell the comedian his daughter loves “Parks and Recreation,” the show in which Ansari plays Tom Haverford.

After the College Democrat appearance, Ansari hustled out of the Student Center to prepare for his stand-up show at the M.A.C. Center.

He said he wouldn’t tailor his jokes to the college crowd, and he would use the jokes that come up in his life as a 29-year-old comedian. He thought those jokes would still be relevant to the early-20s crowd.

As promised, he started off the show with some jokes about his friends getting older and sending him constant pictures of their babies. He gets multitudes of videos of toddlers taking their first steps.

Instead of thinking it’s cute, he is annoyed — especially if they’re white babies, which unlike brown or black babies, “aren’t ripe yet.”

When he gets these videos, he said he sends back ones of himself walking.

He has more swagger than those babies, so he feels they should be more impressed with his.

He also told some more questionable, stomach-churning jokes at the beginning of his set. He talked about how he was the cutest child of all time, and he was shocked no pedophiles tried to molest him in his youth.

“I definitely thought the child molester one was funny, but I didn’t really know how I felt about it,” said Jennifer Delozier, a freshman communications major.

The offensive jokes and those aimed at an older crowd threw the audience off-balance for a bit. Not as many laughs resounded in the crowd, but then Ansari latched on to Kent State’s funny vein.

“He was telling a whole bunch of different jokes. He was really diverse, and I thought it was great,” said Janna Hehn, freshman exploratory major.

He told the story of when he went to New Orleans to introduce the singer Seal at an event.

Before Seal got there, he decided to do his own rendition of “Kiss From a Rose.” His was a bit more tone-deaf than the smooth-as-silk Heidi Klum ex.

To the audience’s delight, Ansari launched into an all-out a cappella performance of the hit song.

The climax, if you will, of the show was his skit on men in this day and age sending dick pictures to girls.

He started asking the audience who had ever received a dick picture, and screamed “WHAT!” when many hands around the room clapped yes.

He targeted one poor girl in the front row who said she’d gotten one such picture message. She admitted a guy had sent her a picture of his junk sitting in a hot dog bun, and didn’t even need to tell a joke to supplement that story.

The audience interaction had people on the edgeof their seats, eager to hear his next kind-spirited attack.

Contact Kelsey Misbrener at [email protected].