Vandal Entertainment held its second “Ha Ha Palooza” on Thursday, March 27 and Friday, March 28. Comedians Tyler Korso, Ben Palmer and Leonard Ouzts performed on Thursday, while comedian Cody Woods and hypnotist Sailesh performed on Friday.
The event had an unfortunately low turnout, which performers used to develop a greater rapport with the audience. Woods’ jokes, for instance, centered not only on his life, politics and the greater Moscow-Pullman area, but also included extensive crowd work and interactions with every member of the audience.
“[This event] was a 16-year process,” Woods explained. In 2009, Woods would open for Sailesh at Stanford University; they would reconnect in 2024, when Woods participated in and won the 2024 World Series of Comedy contest. “It turns out he books colleges, like, he’s an agent as well. I was like, ‘man, I opened for you in 2009,’ and then now I’m working with him.”
“These [college shows] are the most rewarding,” Woods said of the crowd itself. “These people are still forming, they’re still becoming a person. There’s, like, an innocence about it … When I do shows for, like, a bunch of 40-year-olds in the middle of nowhere, a club, they’re not as … innocent … They’re biased in some ways, they’ve developed their own outlook on life and their hypocrisies … Whereas these kids, you guys are just right at this really amazing point.”
Sailesh, who has been to the University of Idaho campus multiple times, said, “The people that came to it, I know they enjoyed themselves, and that’s the purpose of my job. To make sure that the people that do show up and the people that do get hypnotized … they [get] their money’s worth, and that the people on stage [feel] like the stars of the show.”
Sailesh, who got into hypnotism after experiencing it for himself in college, began his performance with a short speech on hypnosis and laid down some ground rules to ensure the safety of students. While seven students volunteered to be hypnotized, four dropped out of the hypnosis; to the tune of 2000s pop music, Sailesh led the remaining three through interacting with aliens on Mars, performing in a band and a “dating show” for the volunteers in which they were the opposite gender, amongst other scenarios. Students also were led to dance when prompted.
“[The hypnosis event] was weird. It was kind of spooky … I was kind of nervous, so it was cool watching from the sidelines, seeing everyone,” said Tiegan Freeze, a junior majoring in film and television who went to both nights of the event. Freeze enjoyed it and said she would volunteer for hypnosis if given the chance in the future and would go to Ha Ha Palooza again.
This year, the event was coordinated by Mairen Chard, advisor to Vandal Entertainment. “A two-day event is always hard … but all good stuff, great people that we were working with, so it ended up being pretty easy.”
“I hope [students got] a little lightness in the world right now, a little bit more joy and fun and being able to make fun of yourself and … laugh with others,” said Chard. “For college kids, it’s really good for you to take advantage of all those opportunities, because adult life gets going and it gets going fast.”
Cal Torres can be reached at arg-life@uidaho.edu