Twitter
Facebook
Reddit
Digg
Tell us what you think!Send a letter to the editor about this or any other article in The Maine Campus.
Every year, University of Maine students can be sure of a few things: a winter that comes sooner than anybody hopes for, students trying to ride longboards, and a visit from Bob Marley, “Maine’s king of comedy.”
Marley makes it a point to perform at the Collins Center for the Arts annually around this time of year. This time around, the house was close to filled with enthusiastic fans of all ages.
Marley typically brings another comedian to open for him, and this year that role was filled by a comic referred to as “Crazy Jake.” Donning boots, cargo shorts and a hoodie under a flannel shirt, Crazy Jake put on his redneck “Mainah” hat and talked about breasts, fireworks and urination in a brief, curse-heavy act. To cap off his performance, he showed off suggestive dance moves to LMFAO’s “Sexy and I Know It.”
After Crazy Jake’s set, Marley quickly took the stage and launched into his act, which consisted primarily of new material.
He first spoke about the changing weather and how “old ladies” describe their first notice of the transition to colder conditions, using their location and what they were wearing at the time.
Marley also talked about his recent travels across the country for performances. While in an airport, he saw a woman in sandals whose pinky toe was one of the longest on her foot, which amazed Marley so much that he couldn’t stop looking at it. When the woman asked if he was checking her out, Marley responded, “I’m not making a move toward you, seahag, I’m looking at your Guinness Book situation over here.”
Marley said that while he was in Georgia, he saw things he had never seen anywhere else, like a “55-year-old man on a Huffy bicycle with a banana seat.”
While in a hotel in Arizona, Marley said he broke his toe in a darkened hotel room. About his iPhone, he said, “It’s a flashlight that illuminates your walking path for three seconds, just enough time to build momentum and smash something.”
He also mentioned how doctors “don’t deal with toes,” citing his view of a proctologist’s mentality, saying, “I don’t want to deal with toes. I’d rather look up some lady’s a–hole.”
Marley said he performed in Hartford, Conn., a dream destination for his mother, who he begrudgingly brought with him. He talked about how his mother confuses some words, like when she said, “My feet are awful now. I got that necrophilia.”
Marley brought his kids, wife and mother to Disneyland and described the experience as unpleasant. His mother admired how the shrubbery was cut to look like Disney characters, so on a crowded monorail, she loudly said, “When I get home, I want to trim my bush like Goofy.”
In a joke that was alluded to for the remainder of his set, Marley said that the oft-used phrase among Mainers, “Well, what are you gonna do?” really means, “Well, I really don’t give a s—, [sticks up middle finger] here you go.”
Marley spoke about the new casino in Oxford, Maine, and how construction workers and other people with blue collar jobs were prominently featured in the advertisements promoting the bill to allow the casino to be built.
In an unexpected but entertaining twist, Marley left the stage and played a video featuring “outtakes” from the ad, featuring himself as a dimwitted construction worker. The video showed various takes that Marley messed up in various ways, like by saying, “These casinos are gonna be wicked f—in’ good, dude.”
After the outtakes, usable bits of them were shown in a crudely edited ad that had Marley saying, “Casinos are good. They will provide jobs for Maine.”
Marley returned to the stage and talked about bringing his SUV to the car dealership for repairs and being told that with proper maintenance, it could run for 300,000 miles, to which he responded, “If I’m driving a minivan with 300,000 miles, I want you to hop behind the wheel and run me over on the I-95 South.”
Marley rejoiced at the fact that school is back in session, saying, “I love my kids, but that school bus could not have come fast enough.”
He added that non-parents would not understand what it is like to have a kid “unless you have somebody standing in a 3-foot proximity saying, ‘Wipe my a–.’”
Marley also discussed how short Maine summers force residents to attempt to cram multiple warm weather activities into a short amount of time, his wife being one of those people. When asked if he wanted to go whale watching, Marley said, “I really do. First, let me go outside and slam my d— in a car door.”
He also talked about how the term “whale watching” is a misnomer, saying, “‘Watch’ would make it sound like your eyes would be overwhelmed by the amount of whales.”
In one of the many examples of local community in his act, Marley talked about being in the deli line at Hannaford. Marley said that he sometimes has difficulty censoring thoughts that should stay in his head and those that should be verbalized. When Marley told the employee, “Give me a pound of slaw,” and he responded, “You want country or garden,” Marley said, “How about cole, s—head?”
Marley talked about how women like to rearrange the furniture in their home and imagined what a guest offended at the configuration would sound like: “Did you offend me? You put a rocking chair next to a loveseat! Nancy, get the kids, we’re out of here.”
To conclude his well-received performance, Marley talked about his relationship with his wife. He recently watched the “The Vow,” a 2012 film starring Channing Tatum, and referring to Tatum’s character’s dedication to his wife with amnesia, Marley said, “I love my wife, I wouldn’t leave her. I would retrain her.”
