Month: July 2011

Not this year.  Sure, I went the past two years in a row and wanted to start making it a tradition.   Year one was amazing.  Coldplay and fireworks. Love in the air.  A panic attack in the line back to the subway to get off the island.

Year two, I suffered heart wrenching breakdown (but Arcade Fire and Weezer kicked fucking ass.)

This year, I’m sweating behind two counters and a projector.

Next year, I promise myself I will celebrate summer.  For this year,  I am a cinema-masochist and all that matters is whether or not you want Becel margarine on your popcorn.  Yes, that’s all we have.  Becel.  No, it’s not butter.  It’s Becel.  What do you mean you don’t know what margarine is?  Don’t tell your kid it’s butter.  You’re lying to him.  Kid, it’s margarine.  It’s like butter, only not real.  And we can keep it longer without worrying about it going bad because it’s filled with disgusting chemicals.  Yeah.  You did see the commercial for it by the Heart & Stroke Foundation in which they claim it’s good for your heart.  But you know what’s better for your heart?  Not eating Becel.  I’ll tell you that much.  Now hurry up and take your popcorn so I can run up to the booth and start the damn movie.  Yes.  I do that too.

Clown College posting is officially back on.  We’ve received our Fall schedules!  As I may have mentioned, class sizes in Humber’s comedy program aren’t very big; we started off with about 20 people per section.  I imagine that will have dropped a tad as we enter our second year.

I’ve come to be accustomed to the members of my section so it will be very interesting to see how I fare this term, as they are mixing up everyone into new sections.  For a while I was worried about this.  Given the nature of this program, it’s common for us to divulge somewhat private information during our classes and in our sets.

I speak for myself, but others may sympathize that it takes time to trust people enough to open up like that.  Especially when you face the consequences of seeing them every day for the rest of the semester.

I want to say that people have become used to my interactions with them.  They know me and how I will react to certain circumstances and though initially I was worried about whether or not it would go over well next semester, I’ve decided not to care.  I’m just going to try to make the best of it and stay positive.

Let’s see if I’m kidding myself.

The ride was long, arduous; the traffic, horrendous.  We finally arrived at our destination: the Four Points Sheraton – London, ON.  Stepping out of the car into the sweltering heat, we look around and a group of four people exit the hotel, presumably on their way to a nearby restaurant for dinner.  They are four average, young guys; pale due to too much gaming.  Apart from that, nothing about them stands out from any other human being except as they walk passed us, we notice one slight difference that puts them apart from the rest of us.  These four young men have gigantic plush fuzzy tails.

This past Saturday, LaughDraft‘s improv team performed at a Furries Convention.

I can’t say I possessed any particular kind of knowledge with regards to furry fandom prior to this event, but I’ve since learned that it’s on par with things like Anime fandom.  And instead of explaining the culture of Furrydom in my blog, I’ll suggest you to check out the details on your own.  You can get started at Wikipedia, should you desire. I simply wanted to introduce the somewhat surreal atmosphere of people, dressed in fursuits walking around a hotel, as if it’s completely commonplace.  It was the most weird and wonderful experience of my young career as a comic.

Members of our troupe were assigned a meeting room in which to perform.  No stage.  A conference room in a hotel.  We set up the chairs and the room filled and let out, and filled and let out over the course of our two hour performance.  We played mainly the types of games from in Whose Line is it Anyway?   Though we’re quite new to performing improv, I feel the show went really well!  The audience was very engaged, which was great, considering we had absolutely no idea what to expect from a group of Furry fans watching a comedy show which has absolutely nothing to do with furry fandom!

Everyone, performers and audience seemed to be having such a great time!  I can’t wait to go on the road again for another performance, tails or not.  It’s all purrrrrfect!

 

For the record though, yeah… the whole thing is a little fucked.  But how can I judge?  I’m dressing like Janeway at FanExpo this year.

The Improv portion of LaughDraft is getting ready to put on a show in London, ON this weekend, which is exciting for me for two reasons.  First, because it’s the first time this particular troupe puts on an improv performance, as we seem to be more sketch-based and second because, as a comic, it’s my first out-of-town performance (stand-up excluded because I did that set at Absolute in Ottawa over the Winter break.)

Today, we had an entire evening’s worth of practice to get us warmed up and comfortable playing with each other. It was the first time I did any improv since the end of school, and it’s great to see how well those of us who’ve been working together over the past year, both at Humber and with the LaughDraft can come together in this particular way. Improv has so much to do with trust and knowing that your partners and fellow players have your back.  It’s great because I don’t think all work environments are like that, and in comedy, many people are certainly prone to competitiveness.  Luckily, improv isn’t really the right environment for that form of competition and it almost seems that the more open and vulnerable you are with your fellow performers, the more in-tune they are with you in a scene.  I could be wrong and just interpreting this in a really sappy way, but that’s just how I feel.

One thing I will say is that I’m super-missing my non-TO friends at about this point.  My Ottawa Rideau and school peeps as well as the pals I met during my summers in Arras.  That being said, it always hits me around this time of year that I should be boarding a plane back to France to interpret some amazing World War One stories, but alas, no lavish European trips for me for a while.

I suppose these feelings are expected when you choose to do a complete 180′ in your life.

 

When I was at University, I studied political science.  It goes without saying that people in my field were particularly sensitive about the language they used and were always sure to use the most up-to-date politically correct language so as not to offend anyone and to remain objective.

At Humber, I’ve been instructed not to make comments dismissing racist or non-PC remarks as what I may deem to be inappropriate could, in fact, be stifling someone else’s creativity.

So where should I stand on the issue of political correctness?

I think this video will hold some answers:

 

Driving back from my hometown of Welland, Ontario tonight, I was listening to Alan Cross explain the deal about the “27 Club“. 

Basically, a bunch of awesome musicians, such as Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Kurt Cobain & others died at the age of 27.

It just… got me thinking…

…that I’m fuckin’ glad comedy isn’t rock n’ roll bitches, cuz I’ma just gettin’ started!  WOO!

See ya’ll at Yuk Yuk’s, this Tuesday at 7:30!!!!!!