Amir Blumenfeld, Jake Hurwitz and Streeter Seidell, three self-proclaimed “immature” Internet stars from CollegeHumor, have mastered the art of annoyance. On the phone with A&E, they took turns saying insulting things while impersonating one another.
Their approach to interviews is a fairly accurate representation of their brand of humor — “Jake and Amir” centers around Blumenfeld finding new ways to annoy Hurwitz, and Blumenfeld and Seidell’s MTV show “Pranked” is a more extreme version of the same.
Though they claim to know nothing of what college kids find humorous and are nowhere near college age, “Jake and Amir” still maintains a solid fan base with an average of about 500,000 views per weekly video.
This week, Blumenfeld, Hurwitz and Seidell are bringing their antics to the Varsity Theater in Minneapolis. Blumenfeld said they’re not just interested in pocketing your cash — they want to be your friends. Stick around after the show, and you might meet some Internet stars in the flesh. Oh golly!
So when we’re doing this, if you guys could call out your name if you’re going to say something super profound so I can remember …
Jake: Don’t tell me what the [expletive] to do.
Streeter: That was Jake.
Amir: Amir!
Oh no.
Amir: I’m a loser. I’m a weakling.
Alright, so … Happy Veterans Day.
Streeter: I don’t give a shit about the veterans.
Amir: No, no, I do!
Is this basically what we can expect at a College Humor Live performance?
Jake: Us being immature? Yes. That’s exactly what you can expect.
OK. Tell me more.
Amir: Hopefully you laugh as much as you’re laughing now.
Streeter: Yeah, if everyone could be as, uh, “laughy” — I don’t know what the word would be — yeah, as laughy as you, then this show should be fantastic.
So are you going to be doing skits or just like talking to each other spontaneously?
Jake: It’s gonna be more scripted. So, Amir and I are the hosts, Streeter’s gonna do stand-up and we’re gonna play some games with the audience, too. It’s a variety show, really.
Is it just the three of you, or do you have other people?
Jake: It’s just the three of us. Is that not good enough?
No, that’s pretty awesome.
Streeter: But you know what? The audience is the fourth performer. They have to watch quietly and respectfully and laugh at the punch lines, and that’s it.
OK, OK. But they’re not going to blend into one person to create your fourth character?
Jake: If they can do that, that would be really impressive and definitely better than our show.
Streeter: Yeah, I suppose if anyone in the audience is a really solid performer, they’re more than welcome to come up and perform on our stage.
Jake: Especially if their performance is morphing. They don’t get a cut of the money. We still get the door.
Have you guys done this in Minneapolis before?
Jake: We performed once at the University of Minnesota, but we’ve never been to — what’s the theater that we’re going to?
Amir: The Varsity.
Jake: Yeah, the Varsity. We’ve never been there.
We just got called one of the ugliest campuses in the country. Did you think it was one of the ugliest?
Jake: You know, we were staying in downtown Minneapolis, and we were just brought in in a van and parked at the auditorium and then left immediately after, but I will say it was the ugliest campus I’ve ever seen.
Streeter: He’s talking about the female student body population, not the architecture.
Oh, I see. There’s a lot of leggings and brown boots here.
Jake: See-through leggings?
What? No, not see-through. So when did you guys go to college? You guys are older now, right?
Amir: Yeah, we’re old. We’re dinosaurs. We went to college back in the 2000-ups.
Streeter: Amir and I went to college. We graduated in 2005.
Jake: I went to college in like 2005. I was supposed to graduate in 2008, but, um, I never finished college. So technically I’m still a college student — second-semester sophomore.
Streeter: Yeah, Jake graduated college in 2000-never.
What were you guys going to school for?
Amir: Jake was going to school for literally no reason, it seems, and, uh, I went with my dad’s money. Take that, Dad! I hate my dad! Will you put that in your paper?
Jake: Title this article “[Expletive] you, Mr. Hurwitz.”
Sure, sounds great. Does working at CollegeHumor make you feel like you’re eternally stuck in a college kid’s mind frame?
Jake: I do feel stuck here, for sure. (Laughs)
Streeter: I don’t even know what college kids think anymore.
Amir: We just have to do what makes us laugh and hope to God 18-year-olds still find it funny.
Jake: Right, I guess we are — we’re very immature, but I don’t know if that’s because we work at CollegeHumor or if we work at CollegeHumor because we’re immature.
What’s your writing process like for your skits and your books?
Streeter: I’ll tell you, when you’re writing a book, imagine writing a college essay, like a five-paragraph essay, and then imagine doing that 300 times, and that’s what writing a book is like.
Jake: Sounds fun. Me and Amir’s writing process is kind of like improvised jokes, and then we try to remember what we improvised and write that down.
Streeter: That’s one of the worst answers I’ve ever heard.
OK, if you guys could trade places with someone for a month, who would you trade places with?
Amir: Streeter. Jake talking.
Jake: That’s not true.
Streeter: I guess I’d probably… yeah, probably Jake.
Jake: Really? I would trade places with Drake.
Amir: I would trade places with Mark Madsen. He’s an assistant coach on the Lakers. That way I could go to practices and have like frontcourt seats to all the Lakers games.
Jake: So you could trade places with anybody, and you didn’t want to be Kobe Bryant?
Amir: No, because his Achilles is torn!
Streeter: I would trade places with Tom Hanks so I could see what it’s like to have everyone in the world like me.
Amir: By the way, the Lakers are the team that left your town and went to Los Angeles. Have you thought about doing the same?
Well, this isn’t my town, so I definitely think about leaving. Where are you now?
Jake: Well, right now we’re in Chelsea, Manhattan, New York.
Amir: The greatest city in the world.
Jake: Thursday morning we drive to Arlington, Va. — the greatest city in the world.
Are you just getting around in one of your vehicles? Not like a bus?
Jake: We’re renting a vehicle from National, actually.
Amir: The greatest city in the world.
Jake: Probably a mid-size SUV. Should be nice.
So you don’t have chauffeur?
Jake: Yeah, we’re sort of low-maintenance in that regard.
Streeter: Also, we’re not successful enough to have someone drive us.
Jake: We’re low-maintenance and low-priority.
Amir: We’re ugly. We really are ugly. I hate myself. Yeah, that was a joke, but I really do.
Streeter: Jake’s doing a beatbox now.
[Jake beatboxes]
Amir: I guess you can just write “Jake shreds” or whatever.
Streeter: You can write, “Jake wastes everyone’s time.”
Jake: Sorry.
OK, tell me something you want to tell me. Tell me anything.
Amir: I wish people would go to the show so I can make money.
Streeter: That’s from all three of us.
Amir: All my life, I want money and power.
Jake: Or, uh, die by lead shower. No, actually, you should not write any of that in the paper.
Streeter: I mean, we’re not going to be millionaires at the end of the tour either way. And Amir’s pledged to give each audience member $250 cash.
Amir: And I guess if I have one more thing to say, it would be “OPPA GANGNAM STYLE.” Remember that?
I sure do remember that.
Amir: Alright, there’s a carbon monoxide leak in this room.
That sounds rather urgent.
Amir: It’s not.
What: CollegeHumor Live featuring Jake and Amir with Streeter Seidell
When: 8 p.m., Friday
Where: Varsity Theater, 1308 Fourth St. SE, Minneapolis
Cost: $15-18
Age: 18+
