Buzz Sutherland: Your Tuition at Work

Friday, January 23, 2004

College-sponsored "alternative social options," devised to discourage participation in the Greek system, are notoriously awful. They're generally awkward, uptight, and all-around stultifying, and they tend to attract Dartmouth's resident jugdishes and lunchmeat. Perhaps one of the more egregious of these "options" was staged this past week, as "comedian" Buzz Sutherland trundled up to the Hanover plain.

Mr. Sutherland is trumpeted by the National Association for Campus Activities as the Comedian of the Year, and he has earned the distinction for five years running. I was intrigued, because his promotional posters made him out to be a big. fat idiot. He's hamming it up: sticking straws up his nose, making "outrageous" faces, that sort of thing. According to his website, www.buzzsutherland.com, he's "100% clean and 100% funny" and his performances leave audiences "with sore ribs from laughing so hard and so hysterically." Well, he is comedian of the year. But Mr. Sutherland was not my cup of tea. In fact, he made me hate tea.

"Make us laugh," we screamed, as Mr. Sutherland sashayed onto the stage. He was crammed into ill-fitting tapered jeans and, for some reason, a referee jersey with orange armbands. This guy is out of control, I thought. He's wearing a referee jersey now, but who knows what he'll do next? (I suspect he wanted his whimsical attire to reflect his zaniness and love of fun. Instead, it was just peculiar and desperate, really.)

Mr. Sutherland kicked things off with some stale jabs at Hanover parking and campus police; this segued into a riff about cops on bikes and then some social commentary on the foibles of drunkenness, in order to form a rapport with the college crowd. He didn't get to be comedian of the year by accident.

Actually, maybe he did. I don't know who's making decisions about this whole comedian of the year thing, but they're doing a terrible job. It was difficult to ascertain how Mr. Sutherland makes his living as a comedian, even as a comedian of the year. He is not witty, funny, or intentionally comical. He was, however, a laughingstock.

Mr. Sutherland's act is painful and excruciating. His material is thread-bare. Mostly, its just dull observations of the Seinfeld school—what is the deal with rental cars and movie concessions? (I'd really like to know.) While I believe that Mr. Sutherland is the first person in history to humorously comment on women and relationships, most of his other stuff is pretty out-of-date. He made cracks about the television programs King of the Hill (1997) and Beavis and Butthead (1993), as well as the film Forrest Gump (1994).

All three bits were thinly-veiled excuses for silly voices. Mr. Sutherland loves silly voices. His entire act revolves around them. He has a drunk voice and a nagging female voice, as well as crazy British voice and an Australian voice and a flamboyant effeminate voice...he has a lot of voices in his repertoire. He liberally interlards them into every riff. He called The Crocodile Hunter "the greatest show on television" simply so he could trot out the Australian accent. That kind of synergy was usually lacking. Most of his voices were applicable to any material. It got real old, real fast.

He does not just do voices. He has a remarkable interpretation of duct-tape ("You can never roll it back up once you've pulled it out"); I particularly loved what he did with the sound of the vacuum cleaner.

Mr. Sutherland bills himself as a physical comedian, so I suppose it would be appropriate to comment on his physical appearance. He has an unwieldy carriage and expansive proportions, with a loutish demeanor and a voluminous swagbelly. The only time I laughed during his act was when I imagined him unhinging his jaw and eating his weight in pie.

As Mr. Sutherland's promotional material attests, his appeal evidently lies in his "outrageous facial expressions," which is another way of saying that he's dough-faced, and proud of it. His head and neck are shaped like a gumdrop, and he tends to push his chin into the flesh of his neck, which makes him appear rolly and screwball. He likes to shriek loudly and then breathe heavily during his delivery, and often his labored puffing and blowing into the microphone obscured the down-home twang of his own voice. It was difficult to tell if the gasping was part of his act or came from the tremendous exertion of standing upright for more than forty-five minutes.

Mr. Sutherland is perhaps most well-known, if known at all, for a number about a duck receiving fellatio. It's heady stuff, and involves, of course, silly voices. He began it at the end, but my companions and I could take no more. We walked out. The last thing I wrote in my notes was, "This guy sucks."

Many members of the audience did not agree with my assessment. Mr. Sutherland's act was punctuated by hoots and guffaws and seemed to be enjoyed by many, particularly one girl in the front row who cackled hysterically at the most mouldering of the material. Her ribs might have been sore, but I was extremely irritated.

So maybe there is a reason that Buzz Sutherland is comedian of the year—idiots like him. To call this guy fourth-rate would be charitable. He's at the bottom of the heap, and his act, really, is a celebration of human debasement. Mr. Sutherland is a grown man, and he makes his living by wacky antics, madcap high jinks, and sticking straws up his nose?

More exasperating was that this buffoon has been continually lauded as a comedian of the year. He's 100% funny only if you're in the market for the most predictable and mediocre "alternative social activity." And Dartmouth, evidently, is buying.

Buzz Sutherland: Your Tuition at Work

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