Mormon humor

Last weekend I made my way down to Provo, Utah because I’m in a relationship and that means you do things that you don’t actually want to do. Genny’s company, AtTask, had their annual Christmas party, where the promises of a free dinner, raffle prizes, a drink or two and maybe even a NCMO were enough to convince me to attend.

For those of you unfamiliar with Provo, the town is… unique to say the best. Provo is located ~45 minutes south of Salt Lake City in Utah County, home of BYU and some interesting policies. Although Salt Lake City is predominantly seen as Mormon (LDS) from an outside perspective, Salt Lake honestly has nothing on Utah County. Now, don’t get me wrong, The LDS religion is one of my favorite religions that there is. The people are friendly, welcoming, and (usually) fun to be around. A bit more politically correct than I tend to be, but really just always nicer than most. That being said, as a lab mate of mine put it, if you put enough of one group of people together, whether it be exercise physiologists or just a bunch of Mormons, you’re going to get some pretty unique results which aren’t representative of the individuals themselves. The business Christmas party was a tremendous example of this. 

The night started off with a well-timed execution of our arrival, seamlessly transitioning from a glass of wine to putting our raffle tickets in for some prizes to an actually pretty delicious dinner. We sat with Steve, and his son Chase (both LDS, which will come in to play later). The conversation was pretty great for meeting some strangers, whom I normally don’t do well with, but overall fun people and Chase was one of the only other guys in the entire room of 400 around our age. Then, suddenly and without warning, the evening’s “entertainment” began.

Jayson Hewitt was given a tremendous introduction, highly heralded as a great friend of some schmucskie and a guy the company has been trying to book for years. Lucky for us, this year they snagged him, but the only details we were given was that he was “entertainment.” A bit puzzled by what he actually did, the first thing that Mr. Hewitt said in front of the microphone was “I see a lot of people here who are balding, and a lot of people here who are not balding” to which I immediately turned to Genny and said “Well, at least we found out that he’s not a comedian.”

Oh, how wrong I was.

Mr. Hewitt continued his act, which included songs that he put parodies on by switching a word or two, and/or making them slightly clever with his own spin. He actually had a pretty good singing voice, but his songs weren’t funny. A few songs later with really awkward transitions, he began his stand up comedy routine which may have been the worst stand up I’d ever seen in my life. He preached to the crowd about how having 4 kids was hard (no shit?), and about how being a dad was hard and it makes him tired. He really nailed the point home that he was Mormon too, having jokes about prayer and the Heavenly Father. For 45 minutes.

I didn’t laugh a single time. I don’t think Genny did either. I look at Steve and Chase, and those guys are in tears they’re laughing so hard. In fact, the whole room was laughing (the whole room was mostly LDS), and they were laughing nearly the entire time at things that weren’t funny. Now, I know the humor was targeted towards the middle aged LDS families, but the jokes were still awful. There was no edge to them. Everything was set up so that no one could even take the joke the wrong way, and doing impressions of other singers does not translate to humor.

I returned to lab the following week to talk to my lab mate (Jayson Gifford) about what I had witnessed, to which he said “ Oh, Mormon humor is the worst!”

Take it from both of us, it really is. This was the 2^nd to worst piece of live entertainment I’d ever seen in my life

If you don’t believe me, here’s a YouTube of Jayson Hewitt’s performance.  Please try to make it through the whole thing. 

Youtube.