Her Campus: So Kevin, where did your love for comedy begin?
Kevin Tosi: My love for comedy began mostly with my family — a lot of holiday parties. We are a really big Italian group and everyone is really funny. Some of my greatest memories are sitting around tables and laughing harder than I have ever laughed before.
HC: Is there anyone in particular in your family that inspired you into this field?
KT: A bunch of the guys in my family have always been funny. My cousins, my dad, my uncle — my grandma’s really funny, too. She doesn’t speak English too well, but the jokes are still great.
HC: What would you say it’s like doing standup comedy on a college campus?
KT: Standup comedy is pretty fun on a college campus mostly because you can get away with a lot of stuff. You can say really whatever you want, especially in a bar you can really let things go. And usually people don’t care too much, which is great. No boundaries.
HC: What are your favorite characteristic to pull off of from college people?
KT: I like when people complain about a lot of things that don’t really need complaining, so by making them laugh and realize what they are complaining about isn’t really that important. It really kind of makes them see things differently. It makes them take a load off everyone once in a while because people are too serious most of the time.
HC: If you could only tell one more joke for the rest of your life, what would it be and why?
KT: My favorite joke ever I think is: Have you every made homemade bread before? Well, when you throw dill in it — the herb — do you know what kind of dough you need to make dill bread? Dildo. Am I allowed to say that joke? Okay, good.
HC: Telling from the nature of your joke, who are your comedic icons?
KT: I grew up watching a lot of standup comedians, a lot of old guys. My dad was a huge fan of Richard Pryer. He was the best really, right from the start. I remember hearing some of his jokes in seventh grade and some of the stuff was so vulgar but so funny, it almost kind of made it okay. Now I love Louis CK. I love dry comedians, they’re my favorite.
HC: And I have also heard that you do advertising on campus because that’s your major. Tell us a little bit about Moon Man.
KT: Moon Man is a pretty fun little project that a couple friends of mine in SAE (Sigma Alpha Epsilon) started last year. We were looking to create our portfolios, and we realized we didn’t have that much stuff in there, so he [one of my friends] figured we would start up this group called Moon Man Advertising. It’s free and we would do little ads for companies and then we would get to throw them into our portfolio, so it really gave us a lot of experience with actually working with clients. We got to make T-shirts, which was pretty cool.
HC: So, what are your plans after graduation? Do you plan to continue that [MoonMan] or do something new?
KT: Moon Man will probable be done when I leave unless someone else wants to take it over. Other than that, I am going to try and go into any ad agency and try to be a copywriter and make ads.
HC: Lastly, what is the joke that you would say has gotten the most reception via social media? Facebook, Twitter — what have you posted that all of your friends have commented on it ‘you’re crazy?’
KT: He actually was a Campus Celebrity once before, Tim John. He is my muse. I like to Photoshop pictures of him in weird situations. Every time I put a picture up [on social media], it gets a pretty good following. Either that or pictures of people that make the same exact face in their profile pictures — I like to cut all of those up and put them together and show them that they have the same face in all of their profile pictures.
HC: Well, thank you for joining us! It was so nice to meet you, Kevin. It was great talking with you.
KT: Thank you very much.