Lambein's Got Talent poster - Courtesy of Caleb Welker
By Isabella Bratton ('26)
Lambein’s Got Talent will take place on Saturday, Feb. 17, from 8-9 p.m. in the CFA Recital Hall.
11 Lambein Hall residents will be showcasing their unique talents with the potential to win up to $100. At the end of the show, the audience will have the opportunity to choose a winner to receive the prize.
Senior Nuri Park (‘24), the Assistant Resident Director, explained that they took the name “Lambein’s Got Talent” from both the famous show “America’s Got Talent” and “Britain’s Got Talent.” The talent show was started last 2022-2023 school year by the male Resident Assistants (RA) of Lambein.
All of Lambein’s RAs have been involved in the preparation process in different ways; advertising, emailing, hosting and judging.
Park said that, although the audience will be choosing the winner, the RAs have a part in making sure it’s a fair competition.
“The RA’s,” Park stated, “mediate the votes to make sure there is no audience bias, but the audience ultimately decides the winner.”
The performers will provide a wide variety of entertainments for the audience, such as singing, poetry recitation, dancing, playing instruments, a weather forecast and more. Park mentioned an exciting act called “Master of balance,” although he wouldn’t divulge the details about it. At last year’s show, Junior Ethan McCarthy (‘25) remarked that groups played kazoos, the piano and danced.
“Guys are excited to show off to the school,” McCarthy, a judge for the event, said, “we have put a lot of work into this, and it will be a fun night.”
It won’t just be one person walking away with $100. There is a second place award of $50 and third place will receive $25.
Students are highly encouraged to attend, and the hosts are sure audience members will walk away entertained.
“I think the campus needs an event where people can just have fun and relax,” Park stated. ★
From 8–9:30 p.m. on Saturday, Feb. 18, Houghton University’s Center for the Arts (CFA) will host the talent show “Lambein’s Got Talent,” in which students from across campus will compete for the grand prize of $100.
“Let’s be honest,” says Junior Joshua Morris, “$100 is one heck of a prize[,] especially for college students.”
As the show’s Master of Ceremonies, Morris is responsible for introducing the upcoming acts, facilitating conversations with the three judges (who will remain anonymous until the opening of the event), and entertaining the crowd during the intermission and between acts.
Morris also added that you “best believe I am going to also be throwing in my own twists and surprises to get some laughs from the crowd too.”
One of the performers is Junior Jonathan Hutmire, who will perform what he describes as “a moving musical number.” In addition to his performance, Hutmire is looking forward to the “giggles” that will come out of the event.
Along with the performances, Morris speaks highly of the ways the show aims to entertain its audience, mentioning that audience members will have the chance to be picked by him to come up on stage and win mini prizes like candy and much more.
Men’s Area Coordinator Shua Wilmot facilitated planning for the event with his assistant, ARD of Lambein Senior Adam McCutcheon.
Speaking on the event’s formation, Wilmot says that the whole purpose of the event is “to get Lambein residents engaging with one another in new ways, for them to see a different side of their peers, and to have a Lambein event that is open to the broader student body.”
Towards the end of the event, he will perform in a short play that he hopes, as he does with the entirety of the play, “will offer students a fun evening that will make them forget about their homework and their worries for a little while.”
“People should come out for [the show] because Josh Morris is going to be a fantastic Master of Ceremonies,” says Wilmot, “and it will be a joy to see if Lambein’s Got Talent.” ★
This year’s spring SPOT was a clear success. Just by luking at the audience one could tell as everyone constantly johned in laughter together. Senior roommates, Luke Ogden and John Carpenter did a superb job #tag teaming back and forth throughout the two hour show with an array of facetious comments and jokes. They kept it short and concise with fewer acts, while regularly engaging with the audience, therefore making this one of the strongest SPOTs in years.
As normal, not all acts were equally amusing, though few disappointed. The show started out a little slow with a typical Christian school jab. The song may have had one or two clever lines, but overall it served as the usual conservative Christian relationship song with overdone points, such as getting “friend-zoned.” Also, the Mariachi band did not garner quite as many laughs as was perhaps hoped, but overall the show was strong and flowed well.
During setup breaks the extremely talented duet of Malcom Bell and Jerbrel Bowens entertained with upbeat piano-percussion pop songs that kept the audience lively. Also during breaks, Luke and John creatively entertained with their various top 10 lists.
The Flight of the Concords song Jenny was brought back again and done quite well. And videos such as the RAs Reading Tweets and Amazing Race were also clever and fun components to the show.
Due to some steph that happened following the fall SPOT, Nathan Hatch could not afFord to be quite as scandalous in his musical performance, although his Party Rock duet with Nathaniel Efthimiou still trumped some other acts included in the show.
The news update could not phelp making some jabs at Russia’s unprepared setup for the Olympics, and, though touching on serious issues, the two were only joshin’. This second performance of Hatch’s cracked people up with some eggcellent yokes from both him and co-anchor Josh Phelps.
And I must profess-or should I say concur with many peers that Ben Murphy’s clever punny story elicited an aBendant amount of laughs. Returning later with his Jimmy Fallon inspired thank you notes, more laughs were released as he thanked Luke Crawford for “reminding us what Jesus would look like if he was a 6’4” Canadian white ginger from Thailand with a giant smile.” And also he was sure to thank Sodexo as well “for a bar-like atmosphere in a dry town”- though as Luke and John remind us we should all be getting drunk… on Jesus.
Another fun wordplay skit included a quintet of sophomores who produced a clever script consisting of an impressive amount of Lord of the Rings quotes and references. And though funny, I urge you to also take warning from the skit: If you are in the music building and need a drink, resist-“do not disturb the waters.”
Overall, briefly mullen over the night’s events from the clutch president appearance to Sodexo jokes (napkins are a staple food) the show was strong and entertaining. Good work hosts, people shall be tweeting about this for days to come-well, as long as the Internet is working.
As first years, Luke Ogden and John Carpenter dreamed of one day hosting SPOT together. As seniors, the pair will live out that dream this Saturday. Sitting together on a townhouse couch, Ogden and Carpenter discussed the upcoming show, their role as hosts, and inevitably reminisced about their past as students, friends, and roommates.
With a half-empty gallon of green tea in his lap and his co-host’s inspiring presence nearby,
Ogden explained some anticipated differences in the upcoming SPOT, in contrast to previous shows. “There’s going to be a lot more laughing, ‘cause John and I are awesome,” he said. “There’s going to be even more jokes, more fun-ness, more ooo’s, more ahh’s, more music.”
Ogden also said that he and Carpenter eagerly await aspects of the show that he describes as “elements of surprise and fun.” They look to CAB for one such element, a series of Vines, to go with this SPOT’s theme of social networking, dubbed #hastagspot by the hosts.
Along with the promised humor, Ogden and Carpenter vowed to stay true to SPOT’s function as a variety show. They assure the appearance of some singing acts, group dancing, and plenty of videos. In addition, Carpenter anticipates “some stuff we’ve never really seen before; people are getting pretty creative with their ideas.”
Ogden himself, a music enthusiast, said, “I will probably make a singing appearance… definitely can’t keep my vocal chords from moving.”
Courtesy of Facebook.com
Aside from Ogden’s own voice, both he and Carpenter expressed specific excitement regarding their choice of musical interludes between acts. Performing live, pianist Malcolm Bell and drummer Jerbrel Bowens will assume the stage frequently during the night, working together to both entertain and enthrall the audience during set changes and act transitions.
As Carpenter said of the two musicians’ talents, “They’re both good enough that we can tell them what to play an hour before the show and they’ll be able to do it.” Ogden added to his co-host’s statement, describing the pair’s awaited musical appearances as “beautiful.”
Aside from the various acts and the musical performances of Bell and Bowens, yet another aspect of SPOT lies in Ogden and Carpenter’s own performance as hosts. As friends since freshman year, the hosts claim four years worth of ideas related to the enactment of this spring’s SPOT.
As roommates, Ogden and Carpenter indulge in planning the event while the majority of Houghton indulges in sleep. “We do a lot of brainstorming in bed at night,” said Carpenter. “Once we’re talking it doesn’t really stop.”
Ogden said, in explaining his relationship with Carpenter, “We feed one another – literally and figuratively. There’ll be times I’ll be like, ‘John, you want some eggs?’ He’ll be like, ‘Yea’… But we feed off of each other as well – not so much literally in that way – more figuratively.” Such “feeding” often results in a cascade of witty comments, the essence of their pending SPOT appearance.
The hosts display chemistry off the stage that can only be anticipated to make an appearance in the spotlight as well. They profess a successful friendship due in part to making up for each other’s faults. For Carpenter, Ogden is better with words; for Ogden, if a joke goes too far, “John always knows when to stop.” Due to such chemistry, or possibly just the fact that they both have blond hair, they once were even mistaken as brothers.
Overall, Ogden and Carpenter anticipate a satisfying SPOT for this spring. They possess confidence in the acts and in themselves as hosts. As opposed to the lengthy, mediocre SPOT of the fall, Ogden plans for a SPOT filled with entertaining acts. He said, “We would rather have an hour-long SPOT of awesomeness and good acts than a two-hour-long with good acts and bad acts.”
Earlier this week, CAB decided to cancel its Houghton’s Got Talent (HGT) event due to lack of student participation (for further elaboration, see “Houghton’s Got Talent Cancelled” on the front page of this issue.) A student life representative came to the Star office that evening to discuss the issues surrounding the cancellation. He posed a question: “Are Houghton students looking to be entertained more than they are looking to be involved?” I think that this is a worthy question to explore and my response would be a resounding “yes.”
Now, given this specific example, we could talk about the problems of the HGT event itself and why students may not have been very excited to participate in it. For one, the conceptualization of HGT appeared to be much too like SPOT, especially last fall’s SPOT, but with significantly less hype attached to it. For another, it wasn’t very well advertised – consisting of an email announcing auditions over Christmas break, with a few mentions on social media. (And, if you’re like me, you’re much less likely to keep up to date with emails over break, much less think about school.) Finally, though the event was apparently a hit several years ago, there hasn’t been a standing tradition of holding it every year, making students much less likely to participate since they don’t know what to expect.
These are all important considerations before we could make the catch-all conclusion that students are less inclined to participate campus events and organizations anymore. In fact, as a singular event, we could dismiss the cancellation of HGT as a defining example, given all the problems outlined above. Yet, when we think about it, I think we can see it as part of a larger trend indicating a deadening of student life and participation.
Let’s consider a few more examples. A good example may be the decreasing involvement in student government organizations on campus. This can be seen most notably in the desperate emails pleading students to run for the empty class cabinet positions. It also evident in the SGA elections where there is only one name running on the ballot. Student government organizations appear to be running increasingly on a small group of people, with less input coming from the wider student community. (Be honest, have you ever attended an SGA meeting during your entire college career?)
Even here at the Star, we’ve noticed a drop in participation. Finding writers to take on stories is getting a lot harder than it used to be. This could be due to the drop in enrollment (for example, when I first began working on the paper in my freshman year, enrollment was hovering a little above 1,100, perhaps more; now it is about 900) but I don’t think this explains all of it. Many students that we have emailed seem to be less willing to tackle on important college issues and a little more hesitant at seeing their name in print.
There also seems to be less activism, less response to the changes or events that take place on campus. Always excepting the comment board in the cafeteria, students have been taking weaker stances on college issues and, if they haven’t, they’ve been keeping their opinions to themselves. Here at the Star for example, there have been significantly less letters to the editor and less opinions pieces taking on strong stances about college issues and events. Houghton is in the midst of a great period of change, we have a lot to react to, either in protest or support. For instance, there is the always-problem of low enrollment prompting financial problems, program cancellations, rising tuition, a new athletic complex that is taking on more and more debt – among others. I have yet to see a strong, public student opinion on any of these issues.
Where is the spark? Where are the young upstarts looking to change the world (or, at the very least, their campus)? Again, I think we have become too complacent, looking too much to being entertained. Or maybe it’s not looking to be entertained that’s the problem, but our own apathy.
Let’s fix this. We can revitalize our campus by getting involved – whether it be something like writing a letter to the editor, attending an SGA meeting, drawing up a petition, or even something weird like putting together a juggling act for the school talent show. We can do it.
SPOT hosts Hannah Lily and Will Strowe made their way on stage in sweatshirts and sweatbands, in a tribute to Sylvester Stallone’s “Rocky”, to kick start the 2013 Homecoming SPOT this past Saturday. A new spin on the structure of SPOT featured student acts of talent along with the usual videos, skits, dances, and songs that elicited laughter – for the most part. This year’s addition of crowd questionnaires filled in the awkward gaps between acts and kept the crowd engaged, while the surprise stage visits of Houghton graduate celebrities “Beardo” and “Dreads” kept the audience on their toes. From ‘What Does the Fox Say?” to raps to German accents, SPOT displayed a broad array of talents and wit from faculty and students alike.
CAB was two for two in their video contributions; their “Valentine’s Day” movie trailer depicted the almost inexhaustible joke of awkward Houghton couples and revealed the identity of stars within our midst. Their “Valentine’s Day” video was followed up by a rendition of “The Hunger Games” in which Sodexo kept a careful eye on the fruit to student ratio. First year students were comforted in their fight against the freshmen 15 by Hanz and Franz’s “Buddy Workout” video. The final contender in the video section, a remake of the recently viral YouTube music video “What Does the Fox Say?,” did not disappoint in its ridiculous hilarity and continuously perplexing question: what does the fox say?
While the SPOT videos were largely accepted as solid contributions to the expected humor of the night, the skits faired a harsher fate. Alumni Derrick Tennant, ‘93, received a mixed reaction to his lengthy stand-up comedy act; half the time the audience was unsure whether to laugh or “aww” at the jokes that more often than not poked fun at his own partial paralysis. Other skits, while possibly written with good intentions of entertainment, made light of serious issues and events that crossed the line into rudeness and insensitivity.
The new inclusion of purely talent acts was most evidently displayed in the dance performances. The audience was impressed by the skills stepped, jigged, lept, and tapped across the stage, such as when a student trio performed a tap from the Broadway musical “Newsies.” And while there was no stepping, jigging, leaping, or tapping done by the goat brought in for Taylor Swift’s song “Trouble”, he was an automatic crowd pleaser.
An historical crowd favorite, Danny Kim came back to his former glory as a “big deal” with a rap performance that, despite slip-ups, was carried off with style by him and Cory Martin. “Matilda Jane” however displayed less style and more confusion – who is Matilda Jane again? And no doubt was left in anyone’s mind what dessert the Hardy twins ask for their birthday. Modified songs from Hercules, Veggie Tales, Pitch Perfect, and Late Night with Jimmy Fallon vocalized the musical talents and creativity of various students; and Dean Jordan apparently originated from Mt. Olympus not Philadelphia, as previously understood.
While some acts fell flat of their intended comedic effect, resulting in boredom or downright offense, homecoming spirits created an atmosphere of camaraderie and geniality that encompassed both the audience and performers.
Thank you (pause, followed by mood-setting piano music) Colin Lauer and Graeme Little (pause) for being one of the very few original and genuinely funny SPOT acts of the night.
My own opinion aside, from what I’ve heard, the general consensus among upperclassmen who have witnessed some very popular previous SPOTs is that the annual Purple and Gold variety show fell flat this year. The jokes were repetitive, the show was too long, and some humor was in bad taste.
“I think this year’s show had some issues,” said senior SPOT performer Sarah Jacoby. “It did not seem as well organized as past years. I know there was some trouble getting auditions, which I think was a factor.”
If the unsuccessfulness of the night can be partially attributed to disorganization, another key influence was duration. “It definitely went too long,” said Jacoby. “I know there have been SPOTS that have gone longer, but by the end people were ready to go. I think the length contributed to how people felt about the night.”
In response to how the show could have been better executed Jacoby said, “More cowbell. But seriously, I liked the SNL theme and thought that if the hosts stuck to that it would have given the night more structure.”
Despite difficulties, according to Jacoby there were some featured strengths of the night. “Mike Amico did a great job. Also, I really enjoyed the stepping act and the pitch perfect medley, because it’s nice to have things that are actually more talent than comedy,” she said.
“The community sweater was unique and funny, but overall the community jokes have been beaten to death. Colin’s last thank you was very appropriate.”
Senior class president Sydnie Cunningham shared similar sentiments to Jacoby’s.
“I did not enjoy SPOT as much as previous years,” said Cunningham. “I felt that most of the acts weren’t funny and some were border-line offensive, especially regarding Sodexo.”
Cunningham enjoyed having a DJ in place of a stage band, but thought that the organizers should have been more selective concerning the acts. One aspect of last semester’s SPOT which Cunningham found to be effective was its cohesiveness and she wished that tactic could have been employed this semester.
“In the fall Anthony and Scott went above and beyond to plan out a theme and create good transitions,” said Cunningham.
Cunningham also commented that SPOT may have been stronger if it were less Houghton-conscious. “It was a good idea to have Shirley Mullen in the weekend report, especially since that is a consistent act, and it was nice of her to participate, but people need to realize that you don’t have to make fun of Houghton to be funny,” said Cunningham.
Senior Liz Chevalier agreed with Jacoby and Cunningham’s overall assessments.
“It was longer than it needed to be and there were some acts we could have done without,” said Chevalier.
Chevalier acknowledged that she wishes the hosts would have done more skits themselves. She also echoed the praise for Amico’s remixes and the thanks to Lauer for “putting the community joke to rest,” and commented that the offenses committed during this SPOT were more implicit than explicit.
Like Cunningham, Chevalier speculated that future SPOT skits may be fresher, more creative, and better received if they do not exclusively revolve around Houghtonisms. “We should think about what’s funny to people outside of Houghton, things that you don’t have to go to Houghton to understand,” said Chevalier. “Most of the Houghton jokes are way overused, so for the sake of originality we should step outside of what is normally joked around about.”
