If you don’t know why the title of this post is funny, you missed out on some seriously funny improv. After catching the first two periods of tonight’s glorious victory, I went with some friends to see the final rounds of the McGill University Improv Summit, where seven teams from Quebec and Ontario competed to see who was the funniest on their feet.

This post’s title comes from a particularly funny scene by the team from UQAM, who brought in an audience member, took off their shirts and sang this line over and over again as they set out to perform heroic acts.

Shortly afterward, the moderator asked for another audience volunteer:

Him: “We need a volunteer from the audience. Don’t worry, it’s not hard. All you have to do is sit here.”

Me: “I can do that!”

Him: “Come on up. We’re going to sing a song about you.”

Me: Ah nuts.

The song, by the UQAM U of T (stupid memory mixups) and University of Ottawa groups, gave me props for my shirt matching my eyes (green and brown, respectively), but made some crack about a receding hairline that I assure you does not exist. Stupid.

But the most memorable moment of the evening certainly came as UQAM and the University of Toronto competed together-but-separately in a sketch about a planet of basketball players being invaded by aliens. Or something like that.

The UQAM team’s English was awful (they get extra points for overcoming their language deficiencies in an English competition, and in some cases, even using it to their advantage). As UQAM (the aliens) scanned the planet with Toronto (the basketball players), they used the term “niggerman”, entirely by accident, to refer to a stereotypical tall black basketball player. The audience’s jaws collectively hit the floor.

Amazingly, it got worse.

The UQAM aliens “morphed” Power-Rangers style into one large basketball-playing machine, and threw out the only name they could think of right off the bat: Magic Johnson.

Toronto scanned the invading force, identifying it as “a large black man with AIDS”. Again, the audience is floored. We start laughing uncontrollably with a mix of horror and amazement. This sketch is going out of control.

As the two groups battle to the death, we hear Toronto utter the line that shocked me into missing the rest of the sketch:

“Quick, his vulnerability is his immune system!”

Both teams were penalized heavily after the sketch was over.

The final results: Ottawa 1st, UQAM 2nd, U of T 3rd, leaving McGill, Carleton, Sherbrooke and U de M going home crying.

Strange coincidence of the night: UQAM, in a sketch about ghosts, name-drops Dan Akroyd, one of the Ghostbusters. Just now, I see Akroyd in an SNL cameo. Creepy.