OG’s Fairy Balanced Review of Absolute’s July 2 Pro-Am show

Darryl Pervis – MC

Good stuff, the crowd warmed to his self-deprecating loser shtick pretty quickly, some quick and sharp spritzing got the audience firing on all cylinders; it would take a pretty talentless hack to fail with a room that well prepped.

Oliver Gross

And I was just the talentless hack to do it! They hated me like I was trying to sell them land in Florida, I did manage to dig myself out of one hole only to fall into another. My biggest laugh came from a throwaway bit about the vomit and Canadian flags littering the Market after Canada Day. Easily my worst AC set ever.

Paul Balyot

New guy from Montreal (at least to me) an excellent stage presence and charisma, some chraming stuff about being a Canadian Pilipino with a Jewish boss. My enjoyment of his set collapsed when he started doing jokes I know I’ve heard before. Like “Jew” vs. “Jewish” (Jon Stewart has a few bits that beat that horse dead) and worse, the naked men in the gym bit (Tim Allen’s book “Don’t Stand Too Close to a Naked Man”) complete using the mic as a swinging dick then dragging it on the floor to represent the black guy. The audience ate it right up of course, applause breaks a plenty but still he needs to get some fresh material, he’s got the stage chops, half the war has been won.

Brent Cassidy

While he did better than I did the stool and mic stand could make the same claim, less shocking and more wit is what I think his act need. They were an oooey crowd but it seemed that the majority of big reactions came in the form of “OOooohhhh” rather than laughs.

Two Loons

I’ve managed to miss their sets every time I’ve been on a show with them, I had a sneaking suspicion that I knew what it was anyway; ballad style songs counter-pointing raunchy lyrics and I was right. They were surprisingly unpolished at times is about the worst I can say but the best I can say is that they didn’t suck. It’s just that the “Flight of the Conchords” has pretty much laid waist to the genre, you can’t do anything without being compared to or even accused of being them. They may want to try for something different; Bruce Mccullough’s “Shame Based Man” or “Radio Free Vestibule” are examples of pushing musical comedy into new directions.

Melissa Morse

A fantastic set, applause breaks on pretty much every bit, even the weird crazy shit that flew over the audience’s head like a unicorn shitting rainbow elves got laughs. They may not have known why they were laughing but on some level they knew it was funny. Melissa has always been good but that set was easily the best.

Alex Wood

Just destroyed the place so nothing new, for the last three weeks his sets have been on a steady rising arc. While there wasn’t anything new he’s added new tags and expanded on various established bits. Google v. God most notably where he’s added a colour commentary (don’t worry God fans, he’s catching up!)

Carrie Gaetz

Asked Jeff if she could do a “tight three minutes”. Jeff replied “Oh yeah, you’re well know for going under you time.” Let’s face it, she would have spent three minutes telling the crowd she only had three minutes. The only thing Carrie can do in three minutes is a pitcher.

Jay Malone – Headliner

Because I’m a loser with a day job I couldn’t stick around to watch his set so I will assume he did well, gonna try and catch him on the weekend.