So his sophomore year, B.J. tried out again and made both groups. He performed for OTI and the Pudding for three years, and acted in nine shows total while at Harvard.

And during his sophomore year, B.J. teamed up with B.J. Novak ’01 to produce a variety show that was more Vegas than Harvard—a singing-dancing vaudeville affair hosted by the two B.J.’s and showcasing various acts, including a reverse stripper, final club gladiators and a cat-fighting female a cappella group.

The show was a giant success, outdone only by the following year’s “B.J. Show” in Sanders Theatre which featured Bob Saget of “Full House” fame reprising his television roles in a few skits and ending the show with his own standup routine.

B.J. says the show—like his other activities—was something he couldn’t have done anywhere else.

Always Improvising

All of B.J.’s various extracurricular commitments have at times meant a bumpy academic experience. His junior year was especially challenging—during that year, he juggled the B.J. Show, a part in the Children’s Theater show, a popular comic strip for The Crimson and an elaborate campaign for council president, as well as his committments to OTI and the Pudding.

It was late that year, right before being forced to take a year off for academic reasons, when he had the sobering realization that classes and books should come before plays and former sitcom stars.

“That’s why you’re here,” he says. “You learn from your friends, you learn from extracurriculars, but the thing that counts the most are academics.”

But B.J. hardly seems regretful about his college career. His attitude is always optimistic, and his method is improvisational.

“Everything with B.J. is spontaneous,” says Thomas O’Dell ’04-’05, who acted in this year’s Pudding show with B.J. “He’ll try anything, and he’s always coming up with new ideas. He loves to improvise.”

Beyond the stage, his antics have ranged from walking out of exams screaming to making loud pronouncements in the strictly-silent Lamont Reading Room. When the time came to take his final for Social Analysis 36, “Religion and Modernization: Cultural Revolutions and Secularism,” he donned a red robe and sandals, glided into the exam room, and proclaimed to the assembled test takers the end of secularization in grand style.

And while the Pudding’s productions are scripted, occasionally B.J.’s penchant for over-the-top improv has led him to introduce new props, alter lyrics mid-song, or step outside the box—literally. In his junior year, he danced off the edge of the stage and into the orchestra pit.

“I landed on the pianist’s head and a trumpeter’s music stand, but I crawled right back up and went on,” he says.

Behind the Laughter

B.J.’s positive attitude imbues much of his comedic sensibility—a shtick that’s a mix of Andy Kauffman’s inscrutability, Tom Green’s prankishness and a heaping of Bob Hope’s charm.