The Dangers of Comedy

A comedian who used missing girl Cédrika Provencher as the punchline in a joke about ruthless tax collectors says he’s terrified to leave his home after getting death threats over the routine.

Mike Ward, a well-known Quebec stand-up comedian, says he’s getting angry looks and snide comments every time he goes out. “I haven’t been able to leave the house since Friday,” Mr. Ward says in a video message posted on his website.

“Everywhere I go, I get stared at. I get judged. Christ, there are two imbeciles on my street who have been in front of my house since Friday.”

snip

While the subject is extremely touchy, some of Cédrika’s family and other supporters say the gag is no cause for threats.

“I’d say it’s no time to make jokes on the topic of Cédrika, but it wasn’t really cruel and wasn’t aimed at her,” said the girl’s grandfather, Henri Provencher.

“I know it’s the comedian’s role to test the limits of taste, but we’ve still got an open wound, and this certainly picks at it. But it’s also not the time to react by going overboard.”

It always cracks me up when people threaten violence on someone for being insensitive because only the truly empathic want to kick the crap out of someone for things said.

One of my many goals in comedy

is to punch out a drunken Andy Dick.

A great article on Zach Galifianakis

Here.

Zach is currently one of my favorite comedians that only comedians know about, he walks such a fine line between prepared material and off the cuff vicious insanity, he’s the reason why the edge bleeds.

Comedians in the news

A good piece on Nikki Payne’s recent pains in the career.

Don Kelly continues to milk the native thing.

Jason Rouse provides health tips.

No, that last one is not going to lead to a “Rick Astley” video.

Bye George

You were always one of the greats.

A review where the headline says it all

The Love Guru is a comedy like the Leafs are a hockey team

Oh Mike, what happened man?

Woot!

Fans of the Great White North can take heart and take off! Again.

Bob and Doug McKenzie will soon be among us once more. Not in the flesh, but their animated facsimiles, voiced by Canadian comic actors Dave Thomas and Rick Moranis.

They invented the characters for the now legendary satirical SCTV skit “The Great White North” in 1980 and portrayed them in the feature film Strange Brew three years later. And they will be up to their old antics when The Animated Adventures of Bob & Doug McKenzie goes to air in Canada on the Global network in January.

Of course what they’re not telling you is that like all our childhood characters they’re coming back edgier, grittier and more eXtreme then we remember. For instance the fist episode has Bob and Doug going to Kandahar for a beer and bacon run.

Og’s Fair and Balanced Review of Nikki Payne

defibrillating an audience out of a comedy induced coma.

Angelo Tsarouchas (MC / opener / split middle / gravitational well) seems to be out of his “whore” period as he didn’t yell the word once the whole night but he yelled about some other new stuff so that’s okay. Big and loud and funny as always Angelo kicked the night into high gear like the unnatural force of nature he is. While he was the MC and did the MC thing he really did a split middle length and style set. That’s not a complaint, I don’t think there can ever be enough Angelo and I doubt there ever will be. The only problem was that someone had to follow him.

Just deep fry the walk in freezer and soak it in Ouzo, I’ll take it up to my room after my set

Tony Vendetti (split middle) rushing back from the Pad had the unenviable task of cleaning up after Hurricane Ang. He has to spend the first 6 -10 minutes of his set dealing with the aftermath. The audience didn’t let Angelo go until Tony started talking about tripping over his own balls. That seemed to get their attention enough for him to remake the stage his own. Which lead to the next problem, he went long looking to get off stage on a big laugh. He got it but not until the show started to creep into too late for an Ottawa in bed by 11:00 pm crowd.

And then Martha Chaves (opener in the middle) was thrown on to do a five minute spot.

It figures that a Nikki Payne show would upset the system.

Martha did fine as usual, she and Tony are a great mix but the audience was spent. They were tired and had enough. Fortunately for them Nikki hadn’t.

As Angelo was starting to bring her on she was literally jumping up and down like the meth had finally kicked in and she’d need to rob the 7-11 before the high wore off. She exploded onto the stage and told the audience in no uncertain terms that they would wake up or she’d stalk and beat the crap out every last one of them.

“Then I told Charlie, that’s not how you spell “helter-skelter”, give me the knife you idiot.” Nikki recalls some of her old days adventures in California.

Advancements in GPS technology and the insanity defense makes that sort of thing possible in our modern world so they did wake up and for the next 40 minutes or so Nicky devastated the room and pretty much all the other acts on the stage that night were relegated to warm-up status. This was definitely what the crowd came to see. She was rambunctiously foul, a demented pixie from the wrong side of the Enchanted Forest’s tracks. Not just jokes about her being a stripper:

Note to Nikki other people have to use that mic stand

Or the snacking preferences of her vagina (crackers, who knew?) but there’s actually a startling post-feminism bend to her material that may very well be unique in comedy. A woman getting ahead in business with a blow-job isn’t a bad thing to Nikki; in fact it strikes her as an efficient time saver and a quick observation of the irony of free choice to modern women laid bare a fundamental truth. She spritzed ferociously, veering in and out of her material effortlessly, picking up the established audience quirks (and damn was it a target rich front row, the planets were aligned) and throwing them way over the line. You know she did it right as the victims gave up a standing ovation in payment for their public humiliation.

At the end of her set, an audience that was ready to pack it up and go home were left wanting more, is there any higher praise for any performer in any art?

A Bruce the Australlians didn’t like

I did not know this:

Wind back to September 1962, when the American comedian Lenny Bruce caused near hysteria with his first performance in Sydney. Bruce’s routine was littered with four-letter words and obscenities - including “the Lady Chatterley word”, as The Sun so delicately put it - and sent Sydney’s media into apoplexy.

Under the headline “Disgusted by ’sick’ jokes”, the paper reported that outraged audience members walked out of Bruce’s performance at Aaron’s Hotel and others heckled the comedian during an hour-long routine that included a blasphemous account of the crucifixion, racial references and a detailed story about how Bruce had used a prostitute to frame a judge.

The Sun’s theatre critic, Norman Kessell, wrote “it is reasonably certain that Sydney has never seen a public performance of such blasphemy and obscenity”, and mused that “it will be astonishing if the Chief Secretary’s Department allows it to continue”.

The department was not needed - the hotel’s manager, Nicholas Devery, cancelled Bruce’s contract after only one performance. Hastily arranged shows at Sydney University and the University of NSW were stopped by authorities, and ABC television dropped a planned interview. Newspapers bristled with indignation at the “sick” comedian.

Now a days you’d have to dress up like a dingo and eat babies to get called sick.

Boris out Dore in at Yuk’s

A great last minute replacement has made Yuk’s Ottawa the show to go for this weekend. If you haven’t gotten a chance to see  Jon Dore recently or ever I can’t encourage you enough to do so now.

Well I could kidnap a beloved family pet and start sending you body parts in the mail but that might be a bit much if not messy.

Dore is the best I’ve seen of  “alternative” comedy in awhile if not ever, that is his stuff isn’t a bunch of wanking . He’s smart, weird and clever but above all original and funny with the bone-dry understated delivery required to make such tricky material work.

Words I don’t think I ever used to describe Jon’s act when he was here on Wednesday nights. Of all the guys to leave Ottawa he may have benefited the most creatively from the trip outta this jerkberg.

While his show is hit and miss I blame the misses on the Comedy Network, after all this is the same putrid hole that’s vomited out “Comedy, Inc” and continue to reanimate the long dead corpse of “The Air Farce” so its small wonder that even the most solid of talents gets tainted in the process. I thank the gods that “Kids in the Hall” was on before that abomination of a network, could you imagine what they would have done to them if they had gotten their lame hooks into it?

<in eddie murphy white guy voice>”The Chicken Lady, can we have her go out on a date with Saddam Hussein? And this ‘Head Crusher’ sketch, Bill over in accounting doesn’t get it, could we give him giant foam hands? The wife saw that at the ball game and thought they were a hoot!”< / in eddie murphy white guy voice>

The horror would be too much to imagine, I should stop now.

So go and see the one of the bleeding edges of modern Canadian stand-up  because one day the Comedy Network’s suits might notice he’s doing good stuff and strap him down to go all “Clockwork Orange” and program out the original comedy out leaving an empty husk that recycles gags from “You Can’t Do That On Television”