One of the funniest comedians of the night was Lavell Crawford. Crawford took the stage with his overly large shape and quick wit from the very start. His fast delivery of humor drew the audience into his hilarious stories

The five finalists from last season’s “Last Comic Standing” took the stage this past Thursday night at the Pabst Theatre. “Last Comic Standing” is a reality show on NBC that follows the same format as “American Idol.” Except this time, America is trying to find the nation’s funniest comedian.

Ralph Harris played MC for the event and entertained the nearly sold-out crowd throughout the show. Harris loved to poke fun at the audience, continually teasing two girls who showed up late to the performance. You could say they were asking for it though because their seats were front and center.

One of the funniest comedians of the night was Lavell Crawford. Crawford took the stage with his overly large shape and quick wit from the very start. His fast delivery of humor drew the audience into his hilarious stories.

He would build one fact of the story into the next and his jokes flowed together nicely. Crawford relied on his weight as the punch line to his jokes, “I hate flying. Most of the airlines we’ve been flying on have been asking me to buy two seats so I can fit on the plane!” His tight, annoying voice was funny when accompanied to his stressful tales.

Though some of his topics seemed like nonsense, his detailed stories kept the crowd roaring. His most hilarious tale was about how his mother made him dress up as an unknown cartoon character for Halloween.

He said, “Every house we went the person giving candy kept asking me, and who are you supposed to be? And I’d be like I don’t know either, just give me the damn candy!”

Another great comedian of the night was Canadian-born Gerry Dee. He spent the first nine years out of college as a schoolteacher before deciding to start a stand-up comedy career. “I lied on my first job application. I wanted to teach gym, but they made me teach twelve-grade history. I didn’t even pass twelve grade history.”

His laid-back approach to his storytelling and the sarcastic inflection in his voice was a treat to listen to.

He continued talking about how one boy, Bobby, in the class asked him where the Mayans came from. He said he had no idea who the Mayans were, so to look educated and to ridicule the kid in front of the class; he assigned all the students to go home and look up where the Mayans came from.

That way he said, “I had a night to go home and find out myself!”. He quickly quipped, “And I’m sure Bobby got beat up after school. Mission accomplished!”

After finding two University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee students in the audience Dee poked fun of them by saying, “Never go to class stoned because I could always tell when one of my fifth graders was.”

He had the audience rolling on the floor when he said that the only grade you could get away with smoking marijuana was kindergarten. He joked that this was because it already took a half an hour for the rest of the kids to get off their jackets and snow pants.

He followed with a dead-on impression of a stoned kid trying to take off his one-zipper snow pants. The crowd found it very amusing.

Another funny part of Dee’s act was when he told the crowd about Roy from New York. Roy had emailed Dee after a show saying that he was upset with the fact that he had used similar jokes from the NBC show during the comedy tour. Dee continually said after many jokes, “Roy, that one was new!” The repetitious joke worked well with the crowd.

A shocking turn of events took place when Amy Schumer was brought out to perform. Schumer’s comedy reminded me a lot of Sarah Silverman’s in that it was shocking and only gained small laughs from the audience because it was so vulgar. It was like the audience was afraid to laugh, even though her material was very funny.

Schumer talked a lot about her first roommate in college named Denise, who was a big slut. She said she knew this from the first day they moved in together because Denise showed her how she could stuff her full fist up her vagina.

Schumer was also great at adding humorous build to her jokes, like Crawford had done in his act. Schumer added, “And when all my friends went over to Europe, guess who came home with chlamydia? That’s right, Denise did!”

Later, Schumer told the audience about how on the NBC show the execs told her that if she wanted to continue to talk about Denise that she would need Denise to sign a consent form. Schumer said, “And when I called her up and was like, Denise, I need you to sign this consent form so I can talk about how big of a slut you are on the show. She agreed and signed the form.”

Schumer finished with, “And if that isn’t being a true friend, I don’t know what is”. The audience loved it.

Later into the performance, Harris came out again and did an unimpressive impression of his grandfather. The crowd loved it, but I was not impressed. It reminded me too much of Eddie Murphy’s performance of all the different family characters he played in the “Nutty Professor” movies.

With that the season champion, Jon Reep took the stage. To my surprise, Reep was not as funny as the other finalists. Reep is from Hickory, NC and joked mostly about his small town during his act.

He played off the lesser-educated people in the crowd because he said “that is the type of people I’m used to performing for.” Unfortunately, he used the words “retarded” and “hick” in his act, which was less than pleasing to my stomach.

Later he rose up the crowd’s spirits by talking about Pabst Beer and the Green Bay Packers. His joke about how cheap Milwaukee’s Best Beer was pretty funny. But besides talking about beer and sports with the crowd, Reep had a hard time finishing up his act. At the end of the night, all five finalists came out and grooved to dance party music as the curtain came to a close.

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