THE UNIVERSITY DARRY KANSAN
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 30, 2009
NEWS
3A
CAMPUS
Comedy group brings East Asian perspective to KU
BY RAY SEGEBRECHT rsegebrechtkansan.com
rsegebrecht@kansan.com
Asif Ali, Prashanth Venkat and Hasan Minhaj share the same city, East Asian ethnicity and knack for comedy. But before September 2008, they performed all their part-time stand-up shows in Chicago alone. Since they combined their acts into one entity - the Brown Man Group - and began touring campuses nationwide, however, both their success and fun at work, Ali said, has skyrocketed.
"It's easier to come up with material, to bounce ideas off each other," Ali said. "When you all look up from each other and learn from each other, it's a great sense of accomplishment."
The three have performed past shows with NBC, Comedy
Central and HBO, but they will come to Lawrence together for the first time this Saturday at 6 p.m. for a Halloween performance in Woodruff auditorium. The South Asian Student Association, which teamed up with the Asian American Student Union and the Pakistani Student Association to host the event, paid $6,000 to make it free and open to all students, Shivani Karia, SASA president said.
"We thought this would be a great way to begin Halloween weekend," Karia said.
Ali said the college crowd is the trio's favorite to entertain because they like to perform for their peers. Mohammed Ali, the group's manager, said the students who attend the show this Saturday will be first live audience to see it. He said the different approaches of the comedians should give their content a broad appeal. Ali has more intellectual, smart humor, he said, and Venkat takes a more brash, in-yourface approach. He said Minhaj was unique from both of his partners because of his enthusiasm and energy on the stage.
"Each comedian has a very different type of routine," Mohammed Ali said.
Asif Ali said that after each member of the group takes the stage, the three will then come back out together for a final, more improvisational stretch of the show. He said this part was usually the most popular of each performance.
"it's like a band," Asif Ali said. "We all work better together. The energy will be a lot better, and the audience will be able to feel it."
Asif Ali said involving the
audience has been something he has incorporated more and more into his material since he started sharing the microphone with Venkat and Minhaj two years ago.
He said the relationships he has built with both of his two group members has improved his job the way a more healthy environment would help in any line of work.
Asif Ali said the great senses of humor they all share is what keeps their bond particularly close.
"I think we've gotten a lot closer over these shows," Asif Ali said. "We stay in touch pretty often and we hang out a lot when we can."
"We're all really good friends," Asif Ali said. "I think we all will be friends until we make a lot of money and kill each other," he added with a laugh.
Asif Ali said he couldn't wait to
TIME: 6:30 to 8:30 p.m.
Doors open at 6 p.m.
COST: Free
LOCATION: Woodruff Auditorium, Kansas Union
Source: Shivani Karia, Overland Park senior and president of the South Asian Student Association
take the stage with his two best friends in Woodruff Auditorium to try their new act together this Saturday night.
"We're looking forward to destroying Kansas with hilarity," he said.
Edited by Abby Olcese
CONTRIBUTED PHOTO
Hasan Minhajj, Prashant Venkat and Asif Ali make up the stand-up comedy troupe Brown Man Group. Minhajj, Venkat and Ali will perform a free show on Saturday.
HALLOWEEN (CONTINUED FROM 1A)
"It began as a holiday for young children," Bedora said. "I'm always surprised to see some of the costumes; they have definitely changed."
This year, Bedora said the First Christian Church is hosting an event they call Trunk of Treats. On Halloween night, members of the church decorate the trunks of their cars and hand out candy to the children who come to trick-or-treat at their trunks.
Julie Boyle, Communications Director of USD 497, said some of the 15 elementary schools in the district do have Halloween celebrations, but others choose to have more of an autumn harvest celebrations instead.
"There are no district rules on how to celebrate Halloween," she said. "It's very much a school-by-school decision."
She said sometimes on Friday afternoon some of the schools allow students to wear costumes to class and the PTO might host an evening activity for students.
"Usually the parents will meet
and decide what to do," Boyle said.
"When my son was in elementary school, I remember they made apple cider and did other autumn activities."
Kelli Huslig, Administrator of Veritas Christian School, 256
N Michigan St. said they leave the celebration of Halloween to individual families.
"We have children here from various religious beliefs." Huslig
become a huge adult holiday with elaborate parties, expensive costumes, and formerly makeshift parades becoming highly organized civic events."
"The holiday has lost its innocence."
She said she would describe this change as a "theft from children."
said. "The school doesn't involve it in our curriculum and we have no opinion about it one way or the other."
ELLEN FELDMAN
Writer
Ellen Feldman, novelist and social history writer, researched and wrote a history of the ghoulish holiday for American Heritage in 2001.
"The holiday has lost its innocence," said Feldman, noting the transformation it has gone through even since the beginning of the new millennium. "Halloween has
According to the NRF, Halloween is also the largest overall consumer holiday. People are expected to spend almost $4.75 billion on this single holiday this year.
Intentions and Actions Survey,
conducted by BIGresearch, expects
18-24 year-olds to spend an average
of $68.56 for costumes and decorations.
The NRF's 2009 Halloween Consumer
"Halloween seems to me a reflection of our current culture," Feldman said. "It is thoroughly consumerist, no longer fit for children, and infantilizing of adults."
Margaret Walck, St. Louis junior, has celebrated Halloween with her family since she was a child. She
said she and her mom used to decorate the outside of their house for Halloween every year, and views Halloween as a consumerist holiday as opposed to associating it with pagan practices.
Walck said her family has a favorite Halloween decoration, a "little ghost man" named Joey.
"He even talks;" she said.
She said her family has been celebrating Halloween for nearly her entire life, and she'd never thought about it any other way.
"Why let it ruin something fun?" she asked of the stigmas generally associated with religious beliefs.
Karleskint, however, said the main reason she didn't like Halloween was for its pagan background. She said the candy and costume aspects of Halloween were fine, but objected to other means of celebration.
"Halloween gives people the license to use ouija boards and tarot cards," she said.
A HISTORY OF HALLOWEEN,
ABRIDGED
Edited by Megan Morriss
Halloween began more than 2,000 years ago in Ireland, Northern France and the United Kingdom as a Celtic celebration of the end of harvest and the beginning of winter.
Their new year was Nov. 1, the first day of winter. The night before, which they called "Samhain" and is currently our Hallowen night, the Celts believed the boundaries between the worlds of the living and the dead were opened. To celebrate, they performed different types of rituals, such as crop burning.
These traditions went on, untouched, for many years before the influence of organized religion had any effect on their practices.
After the Romans took control of Celtic lands, the
traditions of both cultures meshed together. Christianity began to spread throughout Europe in the 800s A.D., combining Christian traditions with the ancient holiday. After this, it became known as All Hallows Eve and even later on, Halloween.
Pope Boniface IV was extremely influential in the Christianization of the night of the dead. He took a role in directing the focus of Halloween from a celebration of the dead, to a more acceptable, church-friendly holiday.
The evolution of these traditions continued and later took many forms, including the commercialized Halloween practiced in the U.S. today and also the popular Mexican tradition, Day of the Dead.
Sources: History.com (The History Channel)
AmericanHeritage.com
PSYCHOLOGY (CONTINUED FROM 1A)
Wade said the two most immediate steps to creating positive psychology were through the emotions of
Wade also answered the basic questions of why positive thoughts were healthy for individuals. According to the research Broaden and Build Theory, by Barbara Fredrickson, professor of psychology in North Carolina, people with positive emotions are likely to learn more, be more creative, demonstrate more initiative and be more productive.
gratitude and hope, the two emotions that are most important in experiencing full happiness. He said one of the misconceptions about positive psychology was the idea of trivializing negative events.
"When events happen, were going to have those feelings." he said. "But what research in positive psychology indicates are the things which help us to cope well with negative events as we struggle through them."
Sheryl Lang, another participant
of the workshop found positive psychology to be very reassuring.
"It makes people become better," she said. "It's enlightening."
Wade said the important aspect of positive psychology to take to heart was that happiness was a possibility.
"If we're looking to change, the starting point of any change is awareness," he said.
Edited by Jonathan Hermes
ROCKY
(CONTINUED FROM 1A)
it's wonderful," she said. "And it's about sex. Just sex for an hour and a half, which is great at any age."
The film was based off of a stage musical from England called "The Rocky Horror Show," said Matt Jacobson, associate professor of film and video studies. The stage show premiered in America in 1974, and was made into a movie in 1975, but because the movie was so off-beat, it was a box office failure.
Mechele Leon, associate professor and artistic director of the University Theatre, first experienced the film at the Greenwich Theater when she lived in New York in 1981. She said the chaotic experience gave people a feeling of release, particularly around Halloween.
Every student who attended was given a bag of props associated with major plot points on-screen. Viewers throw rice, for example, during Brad and Janet's wedding at the beginning of the film.
"Rocky Horror is about subversive identities, you know, the monster and the transvestite," she said. "Just face it, it's a great way for people who have never appeared on stage to get up and perform."
SUA provided each audience member with a bag containing various props, including squirt guns, gloves and toast. SUA also ran a trivia contest, a dance-off and a costume contest.
— Edited by Lauren Cunningam
Mike Gunnoe/KANSAN
Evan Stoskopf,
Leawood senior, and
Laurie Winkel, Topeka
freshman, participate
in the costume contest at
the Rocky Horror Picture
Show Thursday. Stoskopf was the winner of the contest. He said that he was glad to show his parents that their money was going to hard work in college.
Are you considering a pre-professional health program or a career in chiropractic?
Come and visit us at our new campus in Overland Park
- Three entry dates per year
- Accelerated undergraduate courses
1
- A rich history and exciting future
- Scholarship opportunities available
CLEVELAND CHIROPRACTIC COLLEGE
Kansas City | Los Angeles
www.cleveland.edu
1-800-467-CCKC