By: Nick Deterding (Whetstone contributor)

Junior Megan Albano wished the comedian who appeared at Wesley’s Comedy Night Sept. 19 had funnier jokes.

“Overall the performance was all right,” she said. “There was a nice turn-out and Lyon interacted well with the audience. I thought his jokes were a little on the boring, not-so-funny side, but the majority of the crowd seemed to really like him.”

Grant Lyon, the comedian, brought out about 40 Wesley students, but by the end of his skit, only 25 remained. The Student Activities Board sponsored the event.

Students who stayed throughout the performance said he said funnier jokes toward the end.

“I liked how he showed a comical movie at the end of his performance,” said sophomore OsShan Chapman. “It was different and funny.”

“I enjoyed the performance,” said sophomore DeLois Howard.  “But I liked it more at the end because he started off kind of scratchy.”

Lyon, a history major from UC Santa Cruz College and a former soccer player, told the audience he decided to pursue a career on stage instead of on the field.

“I’ve always liked entertaining people,” he said. “I was the class clown and I performed in a lot of the high school plays. When I got to college, I had to make a choice between soccer and theater because it was just too much to do both, and I picked soccer.”

He missed performing, though.

“So I started telling jokes to my teammates on road trips,” he said. “I did that for months and all my friends on the team kept encouraging me to go try stand-up for real, and when I finally did, I fell in love.”

Born in Los Angeles, in Chicago for middle school and Sacramento for high school, and then college in Santa Cruz, Lyon said he has been all over the country.

“I moved around a lot when I was younger because of my mom accepting new jobs,” Lyon said. “My mom grew up in L.A. and wanted to try something different, so when I was in seventh grade, we moved to Chicago. But my mom missed California so we moved back after a few years later.”

During his comedy skit, Lyon made jokes about missed an opportunity to be on a network TV show.

“I was going to be on the show ‘Trauma,’” he said. “It was a show about paramedics that only lasted for one season in 2010.”

Lyon said he was arrested for setting off fireworks and his second court0 date was during the recording of the show.

“I missed the first court date because of comedy, and then the show was shooting right when I had my second court date,” he said. “My lawyer told me not to skip the second date because, since I’d already missed one, they would put a warrant out for my arrest. It was the most frustrating experience of my life.”

Lyon said being a comedian is his dream job, especially when he gets to do the opening acts for Robin Williams, Kevin Nealon and Bobby Lee Grant.

“It’s interesting,” he said. “I never had a dream job when I was growing up. I never thought that far ahead. When people would ask me I’d just say ‘I’ll figure it out when I have to.’”

Lyon said his senior year of college forced him to think about life after school.

“I finally decided I wanted to be a comedian,” he said. “But it is a pretty sweet job. I think it is my dream job because I couldn’t imagine myself doing anything else.”