Will Ferrell’s Funny or Die Comedy Tour


In honor of Ferrell’s new movie Semi-Pro, Ferrell toured America, from N.Y.C. to seven other colleges and universities with fellow comedians Zach Galifianakis, Demetri Martin and Nick Swardson. The turn out was crazy; I went to the sold-out show in N.Y.C.’s Radio City Music Hall. Although the tickets were expensive, discounted on eBay for the high price of $100, they were well worth what we paid. The fact that my friend Farah and I were the only fifteen year olds in a crowd of 800 drunk college students added to the hilarity of the show.
We came for comedian Demetri Martin; he is our number one comedian and we even created shirts to replicate his: they simply state “COMEDY.” However, when we left, we had a much higher respect for the other comedians than when we entered.
After the introduction, which was the only time I actually laughed at Ferrell, Martin came out first. He recycled a few jokes, and we didn’t care because the jokes were completely different in person. The rest of his new jokes were overwhelmingly hilarious, and we were the first ones to hear them. Following him was Nick Swardson, who we had watched a few times online, and thought he was just another comedian. This show completely changed our view of him; he was hilarious, abnormally short and only talked about his monkey obsession. How could we not laugh? As soon as he finished, Ferrell walked out dressed as Ron Burgundy. Although this is the same not-so-funny man that we saw only a few moments before, it was completely different knowing that the actual character basically every single person knows and loves was standing in front of me. He soon killed this excitement by dragging on a long and boring interview with some old famous man. Then came Galifianakis; he walked out on stage with his beard as large as ever and a green beanie basically falling off his head, opening with, “I got a haircut. It makes me look like a lesbian garden gnome, even though that’s redundant.” Although definitely the most controversial, Galifianakis was histerical. Not only were his jokes what made him stand out, but the way he expressed them as a quiet comedian who would randomly scream non-existent words also added to the humor.
The end was the highest point of the whole show; Galifianakis suddenly rips off his clothes and revealed that he was wearing Orphan Annie’s dress. “Tomorrow” starts blasting, and he skips over to a large pad that he frantically tore each page off of to reveal one hilarious and controversial joke after another. The scene caused everyone to fall over in their seats; it’s a chubby guy with a large beard standing on stage wearing an Annie dress while racist jokes are continuously spewed from his mouth and the music grew louder and louder. Finally, the music peaked, and the last page was quickly torn off, which read “STOP DANE COOK”. And with that, he skipped off the stage. Out came Ferrell wearing Uggs, riding around on a mechanical wheelchair. After ten minutes of that, the other three comedians came out wearing Uggs and began singing “No One” by Alicia Keys.
At 11:00 at night, we were alone in the city, the night before the first day back to school. I decided this was the best ending to break ever.