Human Giant tells jokes, launches T-shirts

There was a buzz in the air on Friday night as students waited in the long lines around the Midway tent. The reason was AB Comedy’s Carnival act, Human Giant. AB Comedy’s biggest event this year, Human Giant consists of three men, Aziz Ansari, Rob Huebel, and Paul Scheer, along with their fellow writer and director Jason Woliner. Their self-titled show, Human Giant, is a half-hour sketch comedy program on MTV that recently finished up its second season.

Opening the night were the No Parking Players, an on-campus improv comedy group made up of Carnegie Mellon students. The players took the stage as students began to sit down in the tent, warming up the crowd with improvisational games that any watcher of Whose Line is it Anyway? would be familiar. Finishing with a hoedown about beer, the No Parking Players, while not a professional comedy troupe, entertained the crowd well.

Sadly, only two thirds of Human Giant could make it to Carnival on Friday, as Paul Scheer was stuck at Dulles International Airport. The two remaining members, Ansari and Huebel, apologized for his absence and blamed it on outrageous stories, such as an encounter with Fred Savage. Ansari and Huebel began their show with a sketch where they were the “T-Shirt Squad,” running around with gigantic metal T-shirt launchers, shooting shirts into the audience. The two began threatening students with their T-shirt launchers, making them take off their shirts and throw them on stage. Other topics in the act were Coldstone, “Osama Vin Diesel,” airports, viral YouTube videos, and MTV’s Next. In between the live skits were clips of sketches that were filmed for their television show, including a “Shutterbug” skit, in which they acted as agents for child actors, and a commercial with a shooting monkey. Their style of comedy played on stupid things happening in weird situations, which went over well with the students of Carnegie Mellon.

“I loved them — it was great having them here. A dream come true,” said junior civil and environmental engineering major Danny Schoenfelder, head of AB Comedy.

Human Giant seemed to like Carnegie Mellon too, commenting on the amount of Carnival attractions. “You guys were a really fun crowd. For real. It’s hard to compete with Carnival attractions,” Huebel said. “Most people would probably rather funnel six beers and ride the tilt-a-whirl than sit down and listen to comedians. But I think once the word spread about the man getting his penis lopped off on the ‘scrambler’ ride... people decided we might be a safer form of entertainment,” he continued, joking.

“The crowd was so fired up and not racist at all. I know this because we made our usual pre-show announcement asking anyone that’s racist to leave the audience immediately and no one left,” added Ansari.

As a comedy act, Human Giant is a collaboration of many comedians. “We write a lot of the pieces for the show together as a group,” Huebel said. “We sit in a room and we basically pitch out ideas to each other and see what makes everybody laugh.”