Matt Love has the crowd in the palm of his hand while he sits on a small stage at Murphy’s Irish Pub. He’s slowly strumming on his acoustic guitar—he’s at the peak of his performance.

His timing is perfect. And his jokes, witty.

“If E.T. were an alcoholic,” Love says, taking a long pause, continuing to play a pleasant, steady tune on his guitar, “would he drunk dial home?”

Love, a senior in the College of Engineering, is one of Milwaukee’s youngest stand-up comedians. He has spent the past year tweaking his material and fine-tuning the delivery of his one-liners.

“It’s kind of rare to see a Marquette guy in the comedy scene around Milwaukee,” Love says.

Love will tell a story about a “cake-tease” one moment, and then muse his hatred for the 2040’s apartment building the next.

Love is also big on self-deprecating humor. Some of his primary material? His voice. It’s extremely high, something he likes to address early in his set.

“You want to make fun of yourself before the audience has the chance to be like ‘wait a minute, this guy talks like a fifteen-year-old girl, why should I listen to him?’” Love says.

The Journal sat down for an interview with Love, who enlightened us on what it’s like being in a business like show business.

Matt Love

Age: 21

Hometown: Littleton, Colorado

Major: Civil Engineering

Marquette Journal: How did you get into comedy?

Love: I had this summer job and I was living by myself and I had no friends. I would come home every day (from work) and have nothing to do. One day I started researching stand-up comedy because I was wondering to myself,”How do people even get into this?”

I did some sleuthing, if you will, and I found this stand-up comedy class. It seemed kind of weird, you know? Like you shouldn’t have to take a class. But (I thought) this could help me get into it. That was once a week all summer.

MJ: What are your boundaries when it comes to making jokes?

Love: I can get into some kind of weird stuff sometimes—but I would never touch a Catholic joke, mostly because it would make my mom furious.

MJ: How would you describe your comedic style and who are your influences?

Love: There is definitely some Steven Wright. It blows my mind that he does an hour of material, and it’s all one liners.

MJ: For the college students who want to get involved in comedy, what would you recommend they do?

The scene is huge right now in Milwaukee, the ‘underground-hipster’ comedic scene, and there are websites galore out there. All it takes is a Google search to find out what open mic nights are out there.