I am going to take a little detour here and tell you about the Just for Laughs 10th Anniversary Alumni Edition that happened at the McPherson Playhouse on Wednesday. It may not have had any bands, but the show did have its own personal DJ, who warmed up the crowd that tried to track down their seat numbers in the swanky venue. I suppose that's how I'm going to tie this to Bandnight.
The show began with Ben Seidman. It says in my "yearbook" program that Seidman is the only person in history to be named resident magician at Las Vegas' Mandalay Bay. Sounds promising. I've always found Penn and Teller very entertaining. Unfortunately Ben Seidman's main trick was to make the crowd uncomfortable. He's one of those wacky comedians that would be better suited for a set at Chucky Cheese than here at the Playhouse. He told us that it bothered him that most people think he is gay, but that it was ok, because most people don't know he is a woman. Did you hear that? Even the crickets are uncomfortable. Well, it's magic time! He pulls someone out of the audience. I couldn't help but notice the man, whose name was Michelle, mouth the words "Oh fuck". The trick was probably one you've seen a million times. He asks for a twenty dollar bill. Man signs twenty dollar bill. Folds twenty dollar bill. Magician puts a paper clip on the twenty, and the man clips it to his pocket. With a little sleight of hand and distraction, Seidman swoops in. The money is gone! Where could it be? Well, it's paper clipped to the man's upper back, and for some reason he also has the man's credit card. I also have to say with every joke or trick, Seidman would turn black and go "Oh no he didn't!" or "Oh snap!" with various head movements. Again, uncomfortable. It doesn't end there. He tells poor Michelle he won't give back his belongings unless he passes a test. So, Michelle has to sit in a chair. Seidman cues some music to the DJ, who is positioned behind a veiled curtain. Basically it was a montage of guess which hand I'm holding a napkin. We finally reached some funny bits when he started distracting his captive and throwing the napkins away to show his hands were empty. It got a bit more ridiculous each time to the point he was throwing his shoes. He thanked Michelle and his act was over. I sink in my chair hoping this isn't the level of comedy we will be subjected to.
Then a booming voice came on, welcoming us to the show. Some lucky bastards in the nose bleeds get a "free seat upgrade" thanks to Capital One. The Just for Laugh theme song plays in full before our host, Frank Spadone, comes to the stage. I didn't know at the time but Spadone's credits are quite fantastic. I notice he had a role in Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle. I'll have to watch it again to point him out. He did a great job in warming up the crowd after such a frightful display. His shtick is about being a Catholic Italian with a traditional family upbringing in Canada. His job was to fill the holes in between each act, so I will give an overview of his whole act instead of trying to break each part down. A highlight was telling us that in the Italian house, you have the downstairs and then the top floor is basically the showroom, where everything is wrapped in plastic. That his father bought a new couch, and when Spadone tried to sit on it, he was told it wasn't for comfort, it was for decoration. There was a nice rant about how women like to control men because they are so used to playing with dolls in their childhood. So, for two minutes he plays his wife telling him what to wear, what to eat, he's driving too fast, he's driving too slow, don't fart, not to drink too much...with the climax where it resembles the teachers of Charlie Brown. There was also talk of the coming of age for women. How a mother can be proud of their daughter's first period, but you'll never hear a son tell his father about the first time he masturbated in the shower.
Next up was Ryan Hamilton. He was named one of Rolling Stone's top five comics to watch in 2009. He was also part of this years Last Comic Standing. Outside of Jeremy Hotz, who I will get to later, he was the best comedian of the night. His material was clean. He didn't dip into any blue material or resort to toilet humour. The best way I can describe him is you take the set up of Jerry Seinfeld and then the punchline of Will Farell, you'll get Ryan Hamilton. The main part of his set was about how he is from Idaho, and now he resides in New York. A New Yorker says "Oh yeah, Idaho. I know Idaho, that's in the Midwest". No it isn't. Hamilton describes New Yorkers just think of the west coast is LA, the east coast is New York and the rest of America is the Midwest. There was also a funny bit about hot air balloons being the worst form of transportation. Nobody goes to work in a hot air balloon. He described a date where he took a girl up in a hot air balloon, and how you are stuck with that person for, at least, two hours no matter if it's a good date or not. I'd definitely recommend him.
Spadone comes on again. Once Hamilton has raised the bar, you can sense Spadone is struggling a bit. He seems flustered. He tells some more jokes, but the crowd isn't as rewarding as his first set. It's just additional anecdotes about his Italian upbringing. I'm not exactly sure why he just didn't do his set, and then MC'd the rest of the night. Finally he introduces the next comic, Robert Kelly who plays Louis CK's brother on the show Louie and has also toured with Dane Cook.
This guy was the polar opposite of Hamilton's clean quirky delivery. This Boston native was crass and swore like a sailor. He was a heavy set man, and opened his set with his hatred for skinny people. He points to the man in the Capital One seats [who actually got called on by almost every comedian this night, for some reason], and tells him that he is doomed to become fat and ugly. He tells us he just doesn't care anymore. There comes a point in a man's life where he doesn't give a shit. This involves pushing his wife over while she's tying her shoes at the flea market and farting in a baby's face. Yes, farting in a baby's face. He told us he was holding one in for so long and someone rolled a baby carriage up behind him. He couldn't resist, on account of being old, fat and not caring. He went pretty far with it, to describe the baby's reactions. It sounds horrible and we all felt guilty for laughing. He tells the crowd you know you've become too fat when you drop something and then you consider if you really need it. The man was truly in your face and not pulling any punches. Another example of that was describing how he had to pull his fat up to expose his penis that resembled chewed up bubble gum in a bush. He brought the audience to tears telling us a story where his wife waxed his ass. There were other fart jokes involving tight jeans and the sound that followed. You get the point.
Spadone is here on stage trying to play off the toilet humour of Kelly. More fart jokes. Announces British comedian Gina Yashere.
She asks "How we doing, Victoria!?" in a harsh accent. I'm one of three that actually understood what she just said. Yikes. The crowd stares in a confused clutter of flesh. It took some time to adjust to her accent, but she did a decent job in making the crowd laugh. She talks about her mother immigrating to London from Nigeria, and why in the world out of every place on the map would she pick somewhere that rains so much. Plus a location with so much subtle racism. Then she asks where the black people are at. "Is there any black people in Victoria?". Someone in the back claps. It's funny when you think about it, and she picked up on it. Not sure if anyone registered it, or perhaps thought of it politically incorrect to laugh about a black person sitting way in the back of the theatre. She tells us about the time she wanted to get in touch with her Nigerian roots, so she went to her homeland. "Nigerians are fucking crazy! I stayed in my hotel the whole time with all the other white people". Then she also went below the taste level talking about how good she was in her 20's squatting over the toilet, but now she's pissing all down her thighs, her shoes and sometimes the woman in the next stall. She says she thinks her flaps are a bit off. There was commentary that she loves kids, but she's not into the whole childbirth part. Gina tells us she has a hard enough time with a big poo and it's not like you can break a baby into pieces. Again, guilty for laughing. Another highlight was how her mother keeps asking when Yashere is getting married and having children so she's been borrowing random kids. The problem is she can't get the same kid each time so there's an age gap. The kid was nine months last week and now he is three. Black one week, Chinese the next. She tells her mother he is just sleepy. There was a classic routine about modern rap, where she rapped the words "bitch ho ho bitch ho bitch n**ga bitch ho ho.....diamonds.....bitch ho ho bitch".
In comes Spadone to proclaim he was the one Gina peed on in the next stall, and that he should stop using women's bathrooms. Ok, that was a bit funny, but it was time for our main comic, the miserable Jeremy Hotz!
First thing you will notice if you've only seen Hotz on TV is that he likes to swear as much as the next guy. Instead of saying "_____, what a miserable _____ that is", miserable is replaced by the word "shit". A lot of the best laughs seemed to just come off the top of his head. First he dug into our recent weather the day before the show. How he was struggling through the wind, yet all the locals were acting like it was perfectly normal weather. He tells us a story about flying on Air Canada. What a shit airline that is, he says [though, he realizes that they are one of the sponsors, so he retracts. Tells us it's that shit airline with the leaf on it]. How he was looking at the map that showed all the places Air Canada flew and Victoria was just a red dot in the ocean. That Victoria must have been so small, it doesn't even show up on a map. Then when they were about to land, the plane began to sway back and forth erratically. "Fuck, the pilot can't find it either!". He scanned the audience, picking out a few choice faces to talk to. The best moments was when he would ask where in Victoria everyone was from. One person tells him they are from North Saanich. "North sandwich?", Hotz asks with a disgusted demeanour. He asks an old man if he knew where North Sandwich was. The old man informs him that's where all the rich snobs live. Hotz points to the VIP booths and gives the finger to the North Sandwich people. He chastises them a bit, before he realizes there are booths on the other side of the stage as well. There's North Sandwich people everywhere! He asks the same old man where he is from, he is from plain ol'saanich. Hotz makes an observation that the more north you are in the sandwich, the better. Another audience member lives in Gordon Head, which suddenly becomes Gordon's Head. "So, you aren't really here right now, are you? You live in Gordon's Head!". He asks the crowd if anyone just lives in simple Victoria. One man, the popular one with the Capital One seats, answers he is. He lives just down the street. Hotz asks him if he walked to the show. No, the man took a cab. Hotz buries his face in his hands, something he would do again and again. "You took a cab down the street? You lazy bastard". The great irony of it was that it was established the same man owned several shoe stores and that you'd think someone that sells shoes would have no problem walking down the street. At one point of the show, he catches someone leaning over in there seat. "What are you, fucking puking over there!?". The way he just read the audience was priceless. He would ask questions to relate to his giant Rolodex of comedy. There were also digs against Americans, how they start wars and then call Canada in to clean it up. He tells us about this one time, in LA if I remember correctly, where he was walking his dog and his dog went number two. A man rolled down his window and yells "You better get all of that!", so he picks up the feces and places it in the back of the man's truck so he can see he got all of it himself. Another funny bit was talking about playing on Prince Edward Island, and that anyone that lives on an island has to be a "stand-offish" person. He tells us PEI is even more stand-offish than Vancouver Island, but he saw something he couldn't believe. Right off the ocean, on their very own island sat a single house. "Who the fuck is that guy?", he pondered. He muses that the guy must be thinking if PEI gets any closer, he's getting the fuck out of there. Hotz amusingly says that Prince Edward Island should be renamed Quebec, since they want to separate anyway. It seems he just thought that one up, and caught himself chuckling. "I'll have to use that one again, but obviously not in Montreal". There was another bit about people who have crazy eyes, and how you aren't sure if they are looking at you. He also attacked nose hair trimmers. "What a shit product that is! They don't trim your nose hair, they sharpen them!". He was on for about forty minutes, but it felt like ten. He wishes us all a good night. Do comedians do encores?
It seemed over so quickly [the whole show was about an hour and a half]. All the comics made their ways out to say goodbye as the Just for Laughs theme song played. It was announced they would be available to sign our "yearbooks" after the show. Overall, it was a great show. I could have done without Seidman's wacky magicianship and Spadone should have just did one set instead of trying to segue with more of his own material between the others. I was very surprised at all the fart jokes. I guess I'm just too used to the Just for Laughs I see on television. You know, the ones from the early 90's they show repeatedly on the Comedy Network.
No comments:
Post a Comment