Walking into The Quicken Loans Arena (The Q)  Oct. 6 I was prepared for quite the show from America’s comedy “Sweetheart” Amy Schumer. Known not only for her stand up but for her movie, “Trainwreck” (which takes place in Cleveland), she has quickly become one of the biggest names in comedy.

Amy Schumer’s show opened up to a full audience. Every seat was full from balcony to floor —where I sat—which is impressive for a comedian. The audience was an unexpected mix of young and old, male and female, but the overwhelming demographic was tipsy middle-aged women, ready for a night of crude fun. I sat on the floor in one of the folding seats and was fortunately surrounded by a group of hilarious —to me—women who maintained a running narrative throughout the show.

Opening with the jazz band Locksmith Isidore, which is led by Schumer’s half-brother, the first 30 minutes of the show were a jumble of solid smooth jazz and people moving in and out of their rows to grab drinks and food before the show really began. Once everyone had settled down a bit the opening comedian, Mark Normand, strode on stage. Cheery and clever, his jokes on how men and women are different was a huge success with the audience, especially the bit on menopause. “Women should celebrate [menopause],” he quipped to the audience, getting quite the response from the women in the room. As his set came to a close the announcer’s voice started booming to announce the main event as Schumer awkwardly teetered on stage. Wearing a simple plaid skirt, black top, and heels with a bottle of white wine in hand, she looked strikingly normal and treated herself as such.

From the start of her set, Schumer kept the mood crude and self-deprecating yet light and, of course, extremely funny. Maturing from her previous stand-up tour, she departed —a bit— from jokes exclusively on sex to jokes on sex plus quips covering the enigma behind celebrities, the Kardashians and her observations on relationships. Combining this clearly adult subject matter with immature voices and physical comedy, she lessened the brashness of her humor while keeping the audience thoroughly entertained. Although I had seen her show on Comedy Central and reveled in the masterpiece that was “Trainwreck”, Schumer still shocked me with her command of the audience. There were no lapses in laughter from the audience—although that might have been the audience’s alcohol consumption talking—and I was basically in tears for a solid hour. Broaching on some more serious subjects toward the latter half of her show, Schumer showed us her stomach—skin and all— to exemplify the body of a “real woman,” and burped into her mic as she broke down the constructs behind female body image. “Men don’t care about cellulite and that’s why I love ‘em,” she bellowed. She had me willingly under her spell of comedy and I began to hang on every word.

Right when she had the audience hooked and too exerted to laugh anymore, Schumer began to tackle gun control. Close to her heart because of last summer’s shooting at a movie theater screening of “Trainwreck” in Louisiana, she dealt with the subject humorously but with an evident amount of frustration and passion. Most notably, a man walked out of the audience as she reiterated her view that guns shouldn’t be sold to people with mental illnesses and she brought out the mockery in full force calling out his “camo hat,” much to the delight of the audience.  Soon after this submersion into politics, Schumer was back to her normal jokes, adding to her reputation for being “one of us.” Recounting her supposedly deep rooted love for Bradley Cooper—one that I share—she compared herself to his actual girlfriend  Irina Shayk, the striking Russian model, and challenged audiences to tell them apart in a bikini.

Exceeding even my high expectations, Schumer delivered in spades with a disarmingly funny set that left me feeling tired and teary-eyed from laughingand enamored with her awesomeness. She took full advantage of her sold out show and played to the tenacious spirit of Cleveland like no other could, all while in heels.