Off Center gave their first performance of the semester with “Pancakes Without the President”. The sketch show consisted of several skits written by Off Center members and took place on October 3 and 4 in Babbio 112. The lecture room was filled with audience members past the amount of available seating in the room. Between both nights, Off Center had a record audience of 256 people.
One skit performed gave a typical example of what a floor meeting would be like with your RAs. It made fun of outrageous examples of problems students would find in their dorm room as well as questions that were not fully answered or made clear. This included a visit from Steven Couras, Area Coordinator of Lower Campus for Residence life, who lit up a cigarette as he told students, “Just don’t light things on fire.” This presentation was followed by a rousing speech by Ethan Crump playing Captain Maggi who tells the students the dangers of drug and alcohol abuse.
Another skit demonstrated how far Off Center will go with their comedy, staring three cows in Germany as Hitler is coming to office. Two of the cows are stuck in a political debate about the success of Germany while the other only speaks in “moo”. The farmer then comes to milk the cows as you see the cows experiencing pleasure from the experience. However, the final cow does not produce milk and gets killed and dragged off as the other two continue their political discussion.
The highlight of the show was the first ever Off Center digital pants. Off Center offers the explanation that they are called digital pants because they are longer than digital shorts. Off Center has worked since the spring to come up with a series of videos to show at one of their performances. After months of collaborating and filming, they released three of their videos at this event. The first of these videos was focused on the set of Chopped New York hosted by Colin Gliech. In this episode, one contestant was overly excited and cheesy (Karolina Furdyna) while the other was obnoxious and could care less about the competition and more about sleeping with the other competitor (Zach Kastner).
The second video was like most of the awful infomercials you see on late night television. It featured Sean Kelty as Corpral Gerald Finnegan the third who was an elderly man making his own ad for preventing computer viruses. He marketed his special cleaning solution called “Let Saigons Be Bigons”, and demonstrated viruses attacking a computer by having his daughter (Kelly Vertetis) dress as a Vietnam soldier and attack a hard drive. His wife, played by Liz Lamb, also tried to sell the product while pitching her own acting ability to “Hollywood Directors”. The hilarity and ridiculousness of the video was only amplified by poorly placed sound effects and American themed cut scenes.
The third video featured Sean Kelty and Kellie Vertetis as detectives at the scene of a murder. The video titled “Gloves” showed the examination of the crime scene as one of the examiners repeatedly took off gloves as if there were a never ending amount constantly on her hands. As the scene continued, the gloves popped up everywhere including on pockets and on heads of the actors. Finally it ended with two piles of gloves containing the belongings of each of the two detectives as if they had exploded into a pile of gloves. Then, there was a final cut to “executive producer Dick Wolf” on a black screen with the Law and Order music.
Other skits that made up the show included a maintenance man who wants the life of the military, a couple driving in a car to the GPS voices of Obama, Jesus, and an Asian TA, a super hero who calls himself “Rainman” looking for his hero license, a visit from the bread kind and a fight to the death with a baguette, and much more. Overall, this was a great way to start off Off Center performances for the semester. Fans should look forward to seeing more digital pants in the future and should attend the upcoming improv show!
