Rising comic to tell jokes, promote new album

By CHHUN SUN

For a man who makes a living telling jokes, Dan Ahdoot exudes a relaxed and humble demeanor.

He recently auditioned for an MTV show, and he’s currently taking an acting class.

That’s the life of an up-and-coming comedian — always moving forward. As part of this movement, he is making stops at college campuses across the country to perform, including a stop at Fresno State on Thursday in the Satellite Student Union at 8 p.m. The free event for Fresno State students is put on by USU Productions.

Ahdoot, billed as the only Iranian-Jewish comedian, is a man on the move. Besides having more than 100 college performances under his belt, the mid-20s comedian has written for Comedy Central’s “Crank Yankers” and has opened for Jay Mohr and Dave Chappelle. He was also a finalist on NBC’s “The Last Comic Standing 2,” a popular reality television show competition.

But all of his accomplishments so far would not be real today if he hadn’t made a crucial decision after graduating from prestigious Johns Hopkins University in Maryland. He was ready to fill out the application for medical school. Then he had an emotional breakdown.

“I liked medicine,” Ahdoot said, “but I don’t like it as much as I like being a comedian.”

Being a comedian seems like it was his calling all along.

When he went to grade school, his bigger schoolmates bullied him for being small. So he found his way out of those situations by cracking jokes on the bullies.

“I was pretty funny when I was a kid,” Ahdoot said. “I was always known as the class clown and people would come to me for comic relief.”

Now people can hear his jokes in more ways than one.

This week, he released “Hate Me, or Hate Me,” an album that deals with sensitive subjects such as growing up in an Iranian home to advertisements being influenced by hip hop music.