Just inside the doors of the Tivoli Turnhalle, Senaye Grebe-Michael appears ready to host a paper-shredder’s Thanksgiving. Grebe-Michael, a Metro State Student Activities event programmer, has prepared, on long conference tables, a feast of folded flyers and a cornucopia of pamphlets promoting the Spring 2010 schedule of events and lectures.

Comedian Nick Griffin brings laughter to the Turnhalle stage in the Tivoli Jan. 28. Photo by Floyd Brandt • agreiger@mscd.edu

It’s only too fitting the day’s event, a stand-up performance by comedian Nick Griffin, was scheduled to kick off at 1 p.m. Grebe-Micheal said that lunch time is the best time to host events.

Judging by the constant squeak of sneakers punctuating the curious murmurs of students, as well as the booking of a performer of Griffin’s pedigree, Student Activities has got it right.

Nick Griffin has performed for well over two decades. He has recently appeared on Comedy Central, Letterman and Leno and has also written for another late night show.

He started doing stand-up during his college days. To escape the intellectual claustrophobia and mundanity of his “tiny, midwestern liberal arts college,”

Griffin and his buddies would drive to Kansas City open mic nights. They’d listen to older performers who seemed unafraid to discuss taboos, an observation Griffin called liberating.

“We’d listen, and we’d talk, and eventually my buddies got me drunk and pushed me in front of the mic,” he humbly recalls.

If Griffin’s first performances weren’t polished, his career now certainly is. Along with his pit-stop at Auraria, his time in Denver consisted of a four-night stint at Denver’s Comedy Works South.

Griffin’s stage persona and point of view remind one of a parallel version of Lester Burnham, the embattled father in the film “American Beauty.” Except this Lester hasn’t been killed.

Instead his wife has divorced him and moved in with Buddy Kane. His daughter, Janie, has run off to New York, and he’s taken to patronizing Colonel Fitts’ barber. Swinging from neurotic frustration to resigned shrug, he attempts “to draw on what’s true” about himself and his life. But like a Britney Spears photograph prior to rigorous airbrushing, what’s true isn’t necessarily pretty.

Sitting on a couch backstage after his Turnhalle gig, Griffin leans forward, hoodie pulled over his head, and concedes, “Comics are generally down [and] are outsiders. We just point out things that we think are wrong.”

In a shtick that riffs on topics as diverse as divorce, masturbation, aging and Brad Pitt, what’s wrong to Griffin are life’s tiny ironies and nagging unfairnesses.

Griffin’s Tivoli appearance was one of many events Metro’s Student Activities department, in conjunction with UCD and CCD, has planned for the Spring 2010 semester.

“We looked for something light to start off,” said Justin Merow, a Metro SA event planner.

One goal of SA is to foster a sense of community at a commuter-oriented campus.

Assistant Director of Events, Mark Schwartz, reveals that professors often suggest and sponsor lectures relevant to numerous courses of study.

“Our mission is to offer co-curricular events,” Schwartz said. “I’d say about 95 percent of them are just that.”

“The thing to remember is that [students] do have a voice in what goes on here,” Merow added.