"Hi," the man said.
Kelley, describing the experience as "very unnerving," froze long enough for the man to ask, "What are you doing?"
The eeriness of this man's presence switched Kelley's "fight or flight" instinct into overdrive and he swung around, ready to knock the man out.
Kelley halted his punch when, face-to-face with the stranger, he realized the man had not been speaking to Kelley, but into a cell phone.
Kelley, a humorist and political cartoonist for the Times-Picayune, is one of this term's Montgomery Fellows. His presentation Tuesday night more closely resembled a stand-up comedy routine than a lecture, as Kelley focused on the irony he finds in everyday life.
"Comedy is all about recognizing these little moments of irony and hypocrisy," Kelley said, after finishing his story. "I've trained myself to find them in everyday life."
Kelley poked fun at odd consumer products like quacking duck phones and an ambiguously-named car paint titled "antelope fire mist."
He mused about what would happen if the American Gladiators went on Jeopardy, and wondered aloud why a Burger King would need to have a sign saying, "Keep doors open during business hours."
Kelley imagined that the Burger King owners, faced with months of no business, decided it might be a good idea to unlock the doors. A sign would remind them to do so.
Kelly went on to ponder the "elitism" of Haagen-Dazs, an ice cream brand that lists "yolk-of-egg" on its packaging.
"I'd like to meet the hole-of-ass that came up with that one," Kelley quipped.
Kelley also showed a series of his political cartoons to the audience. While the main focus of his work was politics, the theme of poking fun at everyday life became apparent with cartoons about steroids, Viagra and fat pets.
"Comedy is about forcing the square peg of the world into the round hole of logic, and everything that gets scraped off is humor," he said.
The biggest laugh of the night came from Kelley's final cartoon. Before presenting it, he warned the audience that the cartoon was "very offensive," and that he would refuse to show it without a "plebiscite" to determine if anyone would be too offended. The voice vote yielded no "nays."
The cartoon showed former President Bill Clinton sitting at his desk with an aide standing nearby. The aide says, "Ken Starr sucks."
Clinton, with a boyish smile on his face, responds, "Send him in."
Kelley said he had always wanted to be a comedian and theorized that many cartoonists want to do live performances, but fear rejection by their audience.
When asked if he strived to keep his criticism politically balanced, he described his political views as "anti-stupid," lamenting that he had "no representative in Washington."