D.J. Demers shares jokes with Lopers during night of laughter
By BRETT WESTFALL
LPAC brought in the 2015 Canadian Comedy Award winner for best breakout artist, D.J. Demers, to perform stand-up on Feb. 7. Demers has appeared on Conan twice as well as season 11 of America’s Got Talent, in which he was successful in making all audiences laugh.
Originally from the Ontario area, Demers was diagnosed with hearing loss around four years old and has always had hearing aids in both ears. Much of his comedy focuses on his experiences with hearing loss but is not exclusively surrounded by the topic.
“It gets pretty boring rehearsing the same joke, especially listening to yourself over and over, so it can be hard to just focus on one thing,” said Demers. “What I like to do is record my new jokes for an hour to get everything right, film it for something like choreography, then move onto another one, because I start to get bored of my jokes and especially if it was just about one topic, so I always am writing new ones in a little notebook and play off the audiences’ reaction to see if the joke was a hit or miss. You always want the best stuff when it comes to a large performance that might get more recognition.”
This will be Demers’ tenth year doing stand-up comedy, but he never gets tired of new experiences when it comes to traveling and performing.
“I love being able to do a job that I love and making people laugh everywhere,” said Demers. “It has always been a dream of mine ever since I began writing or thinking of jokes all the way back in elementary school to make teachers and my classmates laugh just because I know kids looked at me differently with my hearing aids, but I don’t want any pity. I thought by making everyone laugh, it was a good sign.”
Demers is grateful for hitting the ten-year mark as a stand-up comedian because of what many inspirational comedians claim when hitting that mark.
I love being able to do a job that I love and making people laugh everywhere.
“Hitting the ten-year mark this September and legends like Jay Leno and a couple others that I look up to, such as Norm Macdonald, Conan, and a long list of others say, in some way, that ‘you aren’t a real comedian until you hit ten years,’” said Demers.
Demers recently moved to Los Angeles to continue doing stand-up and said that after the show in Kearney he would be heading back to continue working out new jokes and performing.
Many new jokes were tried out during the Kearney performance.
“His jokes were pretty good, when he hit the punchline on his best stuff
that he was allowed to do, it was funny,” said Ashley Laurie, a transfer Junior studying visual communications in graphic design and an LPAC member. “I know he was instructed to keep it PG so some of his best jokes you could hear online weren’t performed. Some of his newer stuff was pretty good.”
Laurie says LPAC tries to get a comedian to preform every year.
“We came up with the idea of bringing him in last Spring, but then we took a vote,” said Laurie. “We heard of him because some members of LPAC went to a conference sometime last year and saw him perform and we also watched clips from other comedians. We decided on D.J.”
“Depending on price and if he starts doing bigger shows, we could bring him back, but it’s all about how well the seats filled up that night, which there was a good crowd,” Laurie said. “But otherwise, we will try and bring another comedian to perform next year because I think it’s a good event.”
