Pete Lee, a nationally renowned stand-up comedian and comedy writer performed Saturday, Jan. 27. Campus Programming and Relations hosted a fantastic night of culturally inspired laughs and snarky comments about the inconveniences of bagged milk in the Markee Pioneer Student Center. Lee, a Janesville, Wisconsin native, stopped in Platteville on his Tall, Dark, and Pleasant tour of various midwest universities following a terrific performance on the Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon.   

“I liked how he didn’t shy away from politically sensitive topics, it really added a lot to the show,”  freshman engineering major Dutton Brown said.

The audience reacted really well to Lee, especially when he discussed political topics.

“It seemed like he had as much fun as we did, which, to me, makes the show that much better,” freshman engineering major Cole Biehn said.

Lee started off as a journalism major at the University of Minnesota. His roommate convinced him to try his luck at the Acme Comedy Co. stand-up night.

When asked about this, Pete Lee said, “My roommate in college, Tim, said, ‘you’re really funny and you have to do stand-up,’ but I was too terrified to do it. So, at the end of the year, he handed me a little notebook and said, ‘here, I wrote down all the funny stuff you said.’  I was going through it and thought, ‘wow this is pretty funny,’ and seeing the effort he put into that for me, I thought I should honor him and try it.”   

Getting up there for the first time, Lee realized that comedy was his passion.   

“Getting that first laugh, it was like a drug, I just thought, ‘Oh no I’m hooked,’” Lee said.

Now, a decade later, Lee still does it for the laughs, but even more than that, he enjoys making people laugh.   

Lee addressed how he handles nerves, “Yeah, there are always nerves, but everyone has bad days, and those nerves never stop me because I just love improving someone’s mood and just changing their energy from negative to positive.”

“It’s okay to fail. If you make ten paintings, two of them might be good. Don’t be afraid to succeed through failure. There were a couple of stinkers peppered through the act, but you shouldn’t get upset, you just go, ‘what the heck,’ and move on to your next bit,” Lee said.