Back to the Expo Main Page

Dean Haglund's stand up routine was wonderful (I had tears in my eyes from laughing so hard -- both days!). Dean basically does an interactive X-Files episode with the help of the audience. First, he makes sure the audience will participate (by picking on the people who don't participate), then he gets people to shout out animals. Friday's animal was a mutation that made a kangaroo-bear-dog. (Sunday's was a chicken-armadillo-wombat). His routine was broken down into 4 sections.

The first section was the teaser (that 3-5 minute piece before the credits that sets up the episode). For this section, he selected a member of the audience to come up and do sound-effects for him. Saturday's guy (John the Kiss fan) was excellent, Sunday's guy was pretty bad. Even with the guy on Sunday, Dean make sure the bit was hysterical. Probably the best sound effect from Saturday was when Dean said something like "I've got to get in the car, let me get my keys". The audience member attempted to make a key sound, which Dean made fun of (of course). In retaliation, the audience member pulled his own keys from his pocket and jangled them for the microphone, causing Dean to laugh. It was great. In other particularly funny moment, the audience member was supposed to make a sound like a mad animal. Saturday's guy made a noise that sounded a lot like Scooby-Doo. Dean made note of it, joking about killing Scooby-Doo. The sound guy then made a point to make Scooby-sounds for the animal for the duration of the skit. It was very funny.

The second section involved Dean playing the part of a doctor who attempts to explain the death of the character from the teaser. To help him, he calls a member of the audience to be his "arms". He wears a long white scientist's coat and has the audience member stand behind him and put their arms through the sleeves. Both of the audience members (both women this time) were excellent in their roles. Dean tried to modify his dialogue to match the hand motions of his helper, who was desperately attempting to match his dialogue. It was great. A high point of the Saturday run involved Dean making fun of the woman's hand-motion for working. When he made fun of the motion, she switched to a rather X-Rated hand motion for him. Another cute scene was when Dean was describing an emergency, and he said that he did the first thing he learned in medical school. After a pause (in which the poor girl was attempting to figure out what to do) she made the motions for a phone and dialing 911. It was funny (it doesn't sound that funny now that I'm writing it, but take my word for it, it was great). Dean accepted questions from the audience after he finished his scientist's explanation, and one question/statement from Saturday was "Your fly is unzipped", prompting screams from the audience and a great look from Dean. Sunday's hand-helper was doing such a great job with her hand motions, Dean made it a bit harder on her by moving his head around after stating that he needed to put on his glasses. Sometimes she would attempt to peek over his shoulder to see what she was doing, and he would yell "Pay no attention to that head!".

For the third act Dean "got into character" by putting on Langly's glasses. Usually he would pull a member of the audience to play with, but this weekend he called on producer Paul Rabwin to help him with the third act. In this instance, Saturday's and Sunday's games were completely different. On Saturday they did a bit where they had to speak to each other starting with consecutive letters of the alphabet (Dean started with "A", then Paul had to start his response with "B", etc). If anyone messed up, the audience was supposed to let them know. Dean played Langly, while Paul played Mulder. It was really great (and hard to describe). Mulder got turned into Scully about 1/2 way through the act, and Langly messed up once (skipping Q to go straight to P) but the audience caught it and let him know! At one point, Langly threatens to kill Mulder/Scully, to which Paul replied "I don't want to die, I've got two more seasons to go!"

The third act on Sunday was completely different. Dean did call on Paul Rabwin again, but this time Paul accused Dean of embarrassing him yesterday, and threatened that if he did it again, Langly would be a skinhead next season (cute!). This time instead of the alphabet game, Dean pulled out a pile of papers that was composed of pages from different scripts (X-Files scripts, unrelated movie and tv scripts, etc). As "Langly" and "Mulder" went through the act, they were to stop every so often and flip through the script pile. When the audience yelled "STOP", they had to stop flipping and read whatever line they ended up upon. It was surprising how sometimes the line from the script matched perfectly with what the players were already saying (which was pretty darn funny in its own right), but other times the lines from the script were somewhere off in left field! Once again, it was hysterically funny!

For the fourth & final act, Langly had to confront the monster in a location of the audience's choosing and with a weapon of the audience's choosing. Saturday's location was a library bathroom (of course it is in a bathroom!) and the weapon was red meat. Sunday's location was the YMCA and the weapon was haggis! Dean then chose a member of the audience to move his body for him. The helpers on both days were great, and I am even more impressed with Dean. That man really can contort his body! The positions the helpers moved him into were great, and I'm impressed that Dean could hold his body in some of them. The finale was that he had to defeat the monster with his "special" move. Saturday's helper positioned Dean into the finale move from "The Karate Kid". Sunday's helper had Dean head-butt the creature. Both were very funny.

I'm afraid my brief discription does not do the routine justice at all. You really must see Dean perform live if you ever get the chance!

Back to the Expo Main Page