Auditorium filled Friday with ‘Tater Salad’ laughs

As comedian Ron White entered the IU Auditorium stage in a puff of smoke from his own cigar, thousands of his fans cheered in anticipation of his performance Friday night.

Longtime friend of White and fellow comedian Alex Reymundo warmed up the crowd with his tales of life as a Mexican raised in Texas and living in Kentucky.

“Her family’s hillbilly, my family’s Mexican,” he said of his wife. “They spend all day debating who married up.”

Other topics he focused on included his children (“They’re my little Hick-spanics.”); texting (“If I can’t do it drunk and in the dark, it’s not an advance in technology.”); and oxygen bars (“They’re selling oxygen. Why not? We bought water.”)

White kicked off with jokes about his recent Florida arrest for possession of seven-eighths of a gram of “medicinal” marijuana.

“I get bummed when I run out of weed; marijuana cures that. ... When I have seven-eighths of a gram of pot, I consider myself to be out of weed,” White told the audience. “I’m in jail for an hour and a half. I came out and there’s a bus of kids holding signs that said ‘Free Tater!’”

White also pointed out the irony of Scotchguard, at least in his case.

“I’m looking for a product that’ll protect my sofa if I spill my scotch on it, what do you got? ‘We got Scotchguard,’” he said. “Let’s go with that. You got any vodka-guard?”

From freshmen students to senior citizens, White’s fans couldn’t get enough of the Texan.

“It’s our anniversary, so it seemed like the perfect event,” said Johannah Rask, who came down from Indianapolis with her boyfriend.

Freshman Kory Faus said anyone can relate to White.

“It’s a great way to start the weekend,” Faus said.

The laughter didn’t stop through his first scotch and cigar, or his second or third rounds either.

“Toward the end, he got more vulgar. I think he was getting drunk,” said freshman Jordan Lew, who mentioned White’s few verbal slip-ups. “It was awesome because he just played it off and made another joke about it.”

One of those was when White told the audience about a USO tour he went on; he misspoke and said “UFO.”

“I went on a UFO tour,” he repeated, rolling with it as the audience laughed with him, “which not a lot of comedians are asked to do, because the jokes translate so poorly from planet to planet. These are legal aliens, but oddly enough, they still speak Spanish.”

White assured the crowd his scotch whisky was real, not a nonalcoholic substitute, as some skeptics have suggested.

“I never pretend to drink, you all know that,” he said. “I only drink when I work – that makes me a workaholic.”

And at the end of the night, his success was evident in the smiles, laughter and chatter from the audience.

“My cheeks hurt,” said freshman Tori Barber, from laughing so hard.