It was the spring of 1998, I think.  My quirky little undergraduate college was celebrating its “Spring Fling Week,” an event characterized by a lip-synching contest, a mud volley ball tournament and heavy drinking.  I was an RA then, of course, and would often have to respond to calls about people repelling themselves off of the roof of our on-campus apartment buildings. 

In years past, the student activities people would also plan a concert for Spring Fling.  One year Foreigner came.  Foreigner.  To a college campus.  In the lat 90s.  The attendance was underwhelming.  So, in my junior year the school decided to do something different--they hired a comedian.  I forget the guy they were supposed to get--he’d been in movies and was a name I knew.  But that guy couldn’t come.  So they got this other guy, Richard Jeni.

“Who the heck is this Jeni guy?” I asked my friend Lauren.

“Uh.  I think he was in the Mask.  You know, with Jim Carrey?”

“Oh.  Are we going?”

“Adrienne, what else do we have to do?”

“Good point.”

This was in the days before everyone I knew was legally allowed to drink, so they were forced to do even more undignified things like go bowling or hang out at Borders (where my hot boyfriend Peter worked) until the wee hours of morning.  I continued to do this when I could legally drink; it was a sad time for me when my friends sacrificed this weirdness in favor of the more standard coming-of-age rituals.

Anyway, since this was before the “roommates drinking nearly every weekend phase,” it stands out in my mind as a golden period.  We went to the Richard Jeni show in the college chapel with low, low expectations.  We got a seat up front because that’s how we roll. 

The man got up there and a student activities person introduced Jeni, citing his many accolades. 

“Yeah,” Jeni said.  “I’ve done all of this and what am I doing?  I’m talking to a bunch of people in a church on a Friday night in Pennsylvania.”

The man couldn’t have won me over any faster.

I remember laughing to that point where I could no longer make any sound.  At one point my friend Nicole got so excited she shouted out an answer to one of Jeni’s rhetorical questions.  He talked to her and mocked what he thought she said her major was (it was English and History; he thought she said “English History").  He did this bit where he impersonated a lobster.  To this day I try to recreate this when I am bored.

So there it is.  A night nearly a decade ago where I remember only joy.  I recount my above (probably boring) story because I saw on the news that Richard Jeni was found today, dead from an apparent suicide.  I didn’t know the man and I never saw him after that one show, even while I was flipping the channels.  But he made me laugh once.  And for that, I will miss him.

Rest in peace, Richard Jeni.  I hope you find what you couldn’t find here.