WEST HAVEN–Welcome Week 2008 has come and gone. While the week was filled with a variety of great activities, the week’s performers were major highlights.
Hypnotist Jim Spinnato helped students prepare for their first day of classes by putting on a hilarious show. Pulling about 15 student volunteers on stage, Spinnato proceeded to hypnotize them and a member of the audience! The volunteers’ hypnotized stunts ranged from getting pinched on the butt when the word “chargers” was spoken to reenacting the dance to the song “You’re the One That I Want” from Grease. Spinnato ended with his musical acts, which were by far the biggest crowd pleasers. Students jumped out of their seats to see the volunteers dance to “The Booty Song,” compete in a muscle competition, and dance like Chippendale’s dancers to “You Spin Me Right Round.” The whole show sent the audience into consistent laughter and surely caused the freshmen volunteers to leave quite a lasting first impression for their new friends.
On Wednesday, Aug. 27, students let loose at the luau in the Quad. Paired with Hawaiian-themed dinner, a trio of beautiful hula dancers wowed the crowd with skillfully choreographed dances. After demonstrating a couple of dances themselves, they proceeded to teach a group of students how to hula dance. The amateur dancers were taught basic hula moves and then a more complicated dance, which told the story of a Hawaiian fishing town. The performance was a very entertaining glimpse into an amazing tradition.
Bringing students back to laughter were the comedians Alex House and Craig Carmean. House opened up with a very conversational show, which mostly revolved around college, motherhood, and being politically correct. She won over the crowd by picking on audience members and not being afraid to say what was on her mind. She used her surroundings as fuel for a lot of her material, including the “circus tent” the show was under and the people walking by the tent.
Carmean followed, starting off with some musical numbers on his guitar, specifically an ode to Ramen Noodles and a tour through unintelligible bands of the nineties, which was surprisingly accurate. He also performed an original song, the hilariously revolting “Dirty Sanchez.” Like House, Carmean couldn’t help but discuss the scantily-clad club-bound female students as they walking by in a never-ending parade of sequins. Pushing every joke to the edge, Carmean made the audience boom in laughter every time.
As Welcome Week came to a close with a couple of parties, off-campus trips, and the drive-in movie, first-year students and upperclassmen alike got the chance to get back into the grind of the school year. The week’s performers stood out as the most impressive events while they entertained audiences with humor or a relaxing hula dance. Hopefully, performers of such caliber will continue to visit campus throughout the rest of the year.
