Brandishing both the pitchfork hand gesture and a Sparky the Sun Devil T-shirt, comedian Daniel Tosh was greeted by a raucous student audience Thursday night at ASU Gammage.
Tosh was filming an episode of his Comedy Central show “Tosh.0” after selecting ASU as the winner of his College Campus Invasion contest. ASU will be featured on an episode of the show’s third season next Tuesday.
The comedian opened with a stand-up segment to rile up the crowd and joked that ASU officials said they “really didn’t want to win” the Campus Invasion contest.
“Your school has been wonderful to us, despite the fact that they didn’t really want us to come,” Tosh said.
The College Campus Invasion contest required universities to submit short videos during the summer designed to draw Tosh to their schools.
ASU didn’t submit any videos for the contest, yet Tosh picked the university over several others who entered creative videos. On his show’s blog, Tosh compared ASU’s apparent apathy to “a girl in Starbucks who won’t make eye-contact.”
Tosh spent the last few days on campus and at popular spots around campus, recording comedy sketches featuring students, professors and even Sparky himself.
His repertoire Thursday included videos of him making attractive girls on campus eat spicy foods, a “tweet-and-greet” with his Twitter followers where each one got 10 seconds to say whatever they’d like to his face, and his first-ever live “web redemption,” where he gives an Internet sensation the opportunity to redeem themselves in real life.
Tosh referenced the omnipresent Arizona heat a few times during the event and joked he was required to enjoy his time in Tempe.
“Despite my true feelings, I’m obligated to say I enjoyed my time here at ASU,” Tosh said. “The memories I’ve made in the last 42 hours will stay with me for at least a week.”
Elementary education sophomore Alix Turner said she enjoyed seeing one of her favorite shows live, and that she found Tosh to be hilarious.
“My family watches it at the dinner table,” Turner said. “I go home once a week and we watch Tosh.0 on TiVo for family dinners.”
Accounting junior Kyle Lapointe said he hasn’t missed an episode of Tosh.0, and that he attended the tweet-and-greet to meet Tosh.
“I’ve watched every episode. I live alone so I find myself just kind of cracking up by myself in my house,” Lapointe said. “It’s kind of weird, but it’s hilarious.”
Tosh’s trademark humor kept the crowd laughing all night, but the biggest one came with a joke that seemed to be aimed at the university.
“(You) go to a state school in the desert with a mediocre football program and root for a .500 season,” Tosh said to a chorus of boos.
However, a surprise punch line gave the Sun Devils in attendance the last laugh.
“You didn’t let me finish. I was talking about the Wildcats.”
Reach the reporter at brennan.j.smith@asu.edu
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