It seems that Thursday nights do not offer much to do in Grand Forks. Most businesses close early, and if you are under 21 that leaves very little to offer to occupy your time since the remaining businesses are usually bars. Most weekday nights I spend at home watching TV or playing games with some friends on my computer, but occasionally a break from the usual is a welcome change, and that change is exactly what I needed last week. The real problem is finding something to do that I did not need a whole lot of planning beforehand to take part in. So, I do what any college student would do, scour the internet. 

There are a lot of websites on the internet that compile a list of events going on around the community, but the trick is finding the events that you can make it to. Luckily, I was able to find one right on campus that fit perfectly into my schedule. Once a month Archives is the place to be for an open-mic, 18+ comedy show hosted by Matthew Ternus. The show is made up of amateur comedians from the audience who sign up before it starts, so there is no telling who will get up on stage to try their hand at making you laugh. The list made its way around a couple of tables to try to get more names down and eventually gathered three names on the list. I figured this would not be anywhere near enough for the show to last if it was supposed to. I had figured that most of the people signing up would be as awkward as I would be standing in front of a room of people trying to tell jokes. 

After half an hour of the list being laid out for names to be added, the show started up. The first person up on stage was Matthew himself to introduce us to the show and ease both the audience and the participants into it. The night started off with a good number of laughs, and as each comedian got up onto the stage, they proved that you do not need to be a famous comedian to get a crowd going. Between each name on the list our host joined the show to go through some of his own material before introducing the next person. None of the people on the stage were slouches when it came to getting the crowd going. Jokes ranged from an assortment of current events all the way to some of the better toilet humor that I have heard as of late.  

In the end, I left the show having had a good number of laughs and none the poorer because the event is free for anyone over the age of 18. If you are looking for something to do on a Thursday and it happens to be the night of the month that open-mic comedy is happening, I strongly recommend heading over to Archives because you cannot really beat a free night of jokes from people in your own community. I know that I will be adding it to my list of events to head to every month. 

Dylan Enerson is a Dakota Student General Reporter. He can be reached at [email protected].