Before any big decision, Joe Rogan wants you to calm down, take a deep breath and masturbate.

Rogan, best known as the host of ‘Fear Factor,’ performed Sunday night with Charlie Murphy, John Heffron and Steve Brewer as part of Bud Light and Maxim’s ‘Real Men of Comedy’ tour at the Landmark Theatre.

Headlining the show and doing over an hour of comedy, Rogan not only amused the crowd with anecdotal stories and situational humor, he also dispensed meaningful advice as well.

‘Jack off first, then think about it,’ Rogan told the crowd as he transitioned from a joke about going through with a suicide bombing to accidentally getting a girl pregnant. ‘Everything will be all right,’ he said.

Rogan’s entire set was this blended form of fun, shocking jokes, teetering on grotesquely obscene, but always managing to fall on good old-fashioned un-PC humor. He laughed about things that were sexist, racist, homophobic, anti-religion, anti-government and anti-college but found a way to make each one seem like laughable opinion instead of something to protest about.

‘Confession has to be someone’s big joke,’ Rogan said when talking about his own Catholic upbringing. ‘You take a guy who is never allowed to masturbate or have sex and put him in a dark room in a costume and he has to listen to whispered f— stories. Come on!’

Rogan has been doing stints on television for the last 10 years. Whether he was acting as electrician Joe Garrelli, the hilarious character on the sitcom ‘News Radio,’ to being the voice of ‘Ultimate Fighting Championship’ or of course, hosting the most vile show on television (a show that even Rogan finds disgusting), Rogan is known for many things. But never once was it being a comedian. This is why so many people in the audience were surprised to see how funny he really was.

‘He wasn’t his typical ‘Fear Factor’ self, which made it quite funny,’ said Eric Kohler, 22, of Syracuse. ‘(He’s usually) very compliant, very safe, very primetime. Here he was very off-the-cuff, very unscripted.’

Some of Rogan’s most amusing and interesting bits were when he discussed both the relationships in his life and women in general. He accomplished an eerily dead-on-impression of a nagging girlfriend that was so good, in fact, that audience members couldn’t believe those words were coming from a guy. Other statements not only made the audience laugh, but also, clichly, made them think. He talked about the inability to ‘make love’ when in a position like doggy style, the work ethic of a blow job (job being the keyword) and the fact no woman in a man’s life will ever be able to match the one relationship that really matters.

‘How can you be my best friend when my dog is still alive?’ Rogan asked after explaining how his girlfriend was trying to be the closest thing to him.

But while Rogan was controversial in making a point, Murphy was on the far opposite span of comedic humor. Best known for his work on ‘Chappelle’s Show’ or just for being Eddie Murphy’s brother, he performed jokes that tried to live up to his controversial image. He failed and was normally flat or stupid.

Strutting around the stage with his trademark wide-eyed bright smile, and referring to himself in only the third person, Murphy told year-old stale jokes about everything from Sept. 11 and airport security to Michael Jackson and Osama bin Laden.

‘Every six months this motherf—er releases another terror tape out of nowhere … like Tupac,’ Murphy said.

However, it might have been this familiarity that appealed to audience members as they laughed at even the mere mention of phrases like ‘O.J. Simpson.’

‘Charlie Murphy was just funny,’ said Brent Woltz, an undecided freshman in The College of Arts and Sciences. ‘He used a lot of topics that were kind of controversial, and that’s what made them funny.’

While laughing, however, it was clear that people in the audience wanted one thing from Murphy: to talk about his stories on ‘Chappelle’s Show.’ And while he ignored the audience’s screams of ‘Darkness’ or ‘F— yo’ couch’ for most of the act, at the end, Murphy did thank his fans for making him a household name. He also told one story about a man who had found him at a hotel and asked how sick he must have been of hearing his own name. To which, Murphy told him to ‘go f— himself.’

‘Let’s not forget that I have been ‘Eddie Murphy’s Brother’ for the last 17 years,’ Murphy said. ‘You think I’m going to be mad that people finally got it right? I slammed the door on that f—er and screamed, ‘Charlie Murphy!”

Also performing Sunday was Heffron, winner of NBC’s ‘Last Comic Standing 2,’ who both mocked the college audience for being in its twenties and commended it for being able to survive in Syracuse winters. Brewer told hilarious stories about raising his three-year-old son.

At the end of the night, if the audience didn’t have a laugh, it sure walked out with a new look on life.

‘I’m not saying I have any answers,’ Rogan said. ‘But smoke a joint and look through a telescope. You tell me what the f— is going on (in the world).’

Published on October 15, 2006 at 12:00 pm