“…is something wrong? Are you not enjoying the program? What’s wrong with you all? Why aren’t you showing up on time? Why are you skipping class? How come you aren’t handing in your homework on time? You only have __ many of these classes left this semester, so at least try to show some enthusiasm.”
Some of us ARE doing it all, by the way… Have you noticed?
It’s really discouraging to be grouped up with a bunch of people who aren’t holding their own when I’m up every freakin’ day, early as shit, to get either to school or to my part-time job on campus — on time! I put in my hours, do my homework (of which the workload is significantly heavier than last year,) while simultaneously volunteering for comedy events around Toronto and being a very invested member of LaughDraft, time-wise, with its organization, its promotion and its creative content. And I’m fine, thank you very much.
To be associated in the same light as someone who doesn’t show up on time ever, but who passes anyway because teachers feel bad giving them a failing grade, it’s insulting. Why should I bother handing my stuff on time now, if I know I can get away with slacking hard?
You know why the second years are behaving like that? Because you are LETTING THEM!
Great news! I get to do more than perform for the Toronto Sketch Comedy Fest, I’m also now officially one of their 3 Humber student-interns. I’ll be working on some social media updates, some organizing, some helping out here and there, and other exciting interny things!
Like the Comedy Awards, I’m glad Humber sets us up with these neat ways to meet & work with the big shots and little shots in the community! 😀
Check back often to see how this new adventure turns out!
Yay!
"Don't point that gun at him. He's an unpaid intern."
It’s the first time Humber contributes to our troupe (Free Food, anybody?);
We’re performing ALL NEW sketches;
It’s Halloween!
One of my sketches got in;
We might make some money if enough people come, which will help us with future projects, etc.
We were also selected as the one troupe from Humber to be submitted into the Toronto Sketch Comedy Festival (which my class friends and colleagues are quick to point out is only due to the fact that we are currently the only performing-sketch troupe in the program so far this year. To which I say: Default performance in SketchFest is better than no performance at all.)
Why this is exiting:
Two of the Kids in the Hall are performing in this festival. OMG!;
Other AMAZING sketch troupes are performing in this festival;
Our program coordinator at Humber, Andrew Clark, likes us enough to recommend us to the organizers;
We get to showcase 15 minutes of our best material to date (none of which was written by me… sigh.);
We get unlimited access to see all the shows in the festival;
Vest of Friends got to do it last year, and this year they might make it to Just For Laughs… just saying…;
Etc.
For everything there is to be excited about, it’s difficult because there are always some people ready to downplay the achievement, however meager it may be in our just-beginning careers and for what purpose? I simply do not understand. Are they still in that “it’s cool to be apathetic” stage? Do they simply not want to be a part of this but feel obligated to stay on? But again, for what reason? I just don’t get it.
I wonder if it’s to do with the fact that I’m older. Or that apathy has naver been in my nature. I crave DOING. I crave things to give a shit about! Maybe it’s relative to what you put in. I put a lot into LaughDraft, creatively and professionally. I do a lot of the organizational aspects of it, I try to keep our meetings on track. I often meet with Andrew to discuss Humber’s involvement and have done since the very beginning. Because of that, I expect the same enthusiasm from all the others. Here’s the problem. It’s not them. It’s me. Maybe I just have unrealistically high expectations. When something excites me, I expect it to excite the others in the group. And it does some. And others not.
And who cares, at the end of the day? It’s no big deal. But I do. That’s the problem.
Here’s an insight into one of my most terrible jokes:
“The worst thing about attending a cancer party, is that you can’t complain about the food. Sure you’re chicken may be rubbery, but that guy’s dying of fucking cancer!”
I don’t mean to mock anyone’s struggle with cancer. It’s just that sometimes, it’s so hard to not to be able to do or say anything helpful or comforting, that just saying anything, even if it’s the opposite of comforting, helps me deal with such a heavy reality.
Last night’s Yuk’s was a ball! Sadly, I’m stuck at home this evening memorizing a monologue & writing topical jokes, or I’d be out telling more jokes tonight. This semester’s been busy. I can tell this not only because of the amount of work I have due, but more visually, because my apartment is in an almost constant state of disorder. In university, I used to clean my room as a means of procrastinating. Maybe I should get back into that habit, (instead of blogging to procrastinate.)
Yuk Yuk’s Humber Night – October 19 2011
This is how I get called up:
“Your next comedian is, um… Brie Watson.”
Technically, she got it right. Yes I was next, and that is in fact my name. But how about a little oomph please? I walk up on stage to that and the crowd already thinks I’m going to bore them to death.
But I get up on stage and couldn’t be happier about the fact that the three people in the front row, off to the side, look like celebrities. More specifically, they look like a blonde Justin Bieber, the bearded-guy from Modern Family (but not a red-head) and a less-coked-out Courtney Love. Bringing this information to the audience was one of those moments I’ve heard Larry refer to as: “A gift from the comedy gods.” Just a moment when something comes up and you just KNOW it’s going to be good and it’s going to resonate well with the crowd. And it DID. Which is GREAT! Because I was going up with all new material and I was worried the set would be garbage!
But this guy was blonde.
God! I just re-listened to it. I HATE re-listening to my sets. The second half of it WAS garbage, I stumbled so many times. Gotta tighten it up, that’s all. Tighten it up. I wonder what Larry thought of it. I LONG FOR HIS APPROVAL.
AND for Andrew Clark’s. That’s why I talk so freakin’ much in his class. LOVE ME, ANDREW! Get me a gig with Breslin when I graduate this place!! Don’t send me back to Ottawa, I don’t want to go back there! I can’t do it! I just can’t!! (Unless it’s to do gigs at Yuk Yuk’s! In which case, SEND ME BACK TO OTTAWA!! PLEASE!)
The gay dude from Modern Family!!
I think I’m starting to crack under all this pressure.
Some things just can’t be the same the second time around, but, you make of them what you can. This was my second year volunteering at the Canadian Comedy Awards. This was its 12th year and was originally supposed to be held in Ottawa. I have no idea why they decided to bring it back to Toronto, but hey, who’s complaining?
I volunteered by checking in award nominees when they arrived to the Delta Chelsea hotel in Toronto. I got to meet a lot of fun performers just sitting at a table, handing out sweet swag bags.
By chance, a man I had met last year, who organizes the Stand-Up gala portion of the Awards weekend recognized me and asked me to help out at the gala. I turned him down, obviously. What? No. Of course not, I went and met Shaun Majumder, who was hosting (and was a super nice guy!) and some of the other featured performers for the evening.
By virtue of my selfless acts of volunteering, I was allowed to attend two nights of after-parties, which were both very fun.
Was it because the Kids in the Hall were there last year? Some of my heroes? That I actually got to see the Awards show? That it was my first time surrounded by such talent because I hadn’t been up that often performing yet? Was it the booze? I don’t know, last year’s party just seemed a bit crazier, a bit more exciting.
But it was still a great time and I’m excited to even have been allowed into an “industry-only” event. I’d encourage any of the Humber students to volunteer, except, then I might not have got my spot and would have had to fight more people off to get into the after-party. So. Yeah, stay at home and watch TV, kids!
Holy Crap. I can’t believe I haven’t posted anything since the Moneyball review. I have been BUSY, ladies and gentlemen! Time feels like it keeps speeding up. I’ve been completing assignments the day before they’re due, staying up past midnight, despite having to work super-early in the morning at the Career Centre.
It seems in each class, we’re working on major projects. There isn’t really one in which we’re working less hard than the other. It’s crazy! The workload is by vastly greater than last year, but folks, I am loving it.
I’m working on a chauvinist male “bro” character called Brian for my Acting class. It’s both liberating and challenging to portray the type of male I absolutely despise.
I’ve written and submitted the first draft of a 10-minute play (more dramatic than comedic) play about a soldier of the First World War who visits a French brothel. Apparently, I’m feeling very nostalgic about my time spent in France. Like it or not, talking about hundreds of thousands of dead guys for 5 months straight two years in a row really gets into your head.
We’ve completed our clown pieces in physical comedy and are now moving onto different techniques.
In sketch writing, we’ve been working on two major projects: a parody of a TV show (I chose Star Trek, obvi) and a monologue script based on a person we know upon which we’ll be building characters.
In stand-up, Larry’s teaching us what it would be like to work in a writing room, working on a late-nite host’s monologue. The humour is very topical, news-related, so it’s been helping us with the LaughDraft news as well (which we will be filming this week after a long hiatus!)
Finally, we’re working on writing a sit-com. I won’t reveal too much about that at the moment, in case anyone reading this blog decides to steal my class’ ideas and prevent us from ever working on this project in the ‘real world.’
And then there’s all the ‘outside school’ stuff… and work…
I wanted to try writing amusing film reviews. This movie came out too long ago to try to send to any magazines or newspapers, but if you’d still like to take a look, you can check it out at:
Little did I know, turning down that offer would lead to one of the most overwhelming culinary experiences of my life.
…..
My friends refer to me as a “supertaster.” This term refers to people who like to pretend to have an over-sensitive pallet preventing them from eating spicy or overly flavourful foods. What it comes down to is that my Dad was a “meat n’ potatoes” kinda guy and I adopted those qualities, not venturing beyond “Chinese” as ethnic food until I moved out of my parents place to go to university. Even then, the first year I was there, I tried pho and sushi.
“Meh.” I thought.
Upon moving to France, I was forced to change my eating habits, because food options were different there and I lived with many people with varying appreciations for different types of food.
“Let’s go to the Carpe Diem!” I would say.
“Brie, we’ve been there twice this week already. We’re going somewhere else!”
And that’s how I discovered Moroccan food. (That, and I went to Morocco.)
Back in Ottawa, I discovered an Indian restaurant down the street, which I frequented often and miss dearly.
Despite having traveled around Israel, I didn’t get into shawarma until moving to Toronto, just a few months ago.
But today’s adventure is about Thai.
I’ve been watching The Big Bang Theory. So naturally, when my boyfriend asked me what I wanted for dinner last night, the thought of take-out thai food was at the tip of my brain. He said he knew a place. I ordered a cashew chicken meal (having tried a similar dish at other Thai restaurants in the past.)
It was delicious. Hands down, best Thai food I’ve ever had. (Not that that says much, I’m still very much a beginner.) It was just spicy enough. A little more spicy than pre-France Brie could have handled, but Mmm mmm mmm it was tasty.
And what else? Leftovers? Somebody up there likes me! Or does He?
I brought the leftovers to school today and decided, despite having been asked to go out for lunch, to stick to my leftovers and to stay on campus. I microwaved the dish and got pop as a drink.
“Mmm. This is tasty!” I said to myself. “I wonder what this black thing is? It must just be a burnt onion or something.”
No.
It was not.
What happened next is somewhat of a blur. All I remember is thinking: “Crunch! HOLY SHIT that’s not an onion! Do I… do I eat it? Do I spit it out?”
Quick scan for a napkin.
No napkins in sight.
“Bite the bullet Brie.”
I bit one more time and swallowed, knowing any more chewing would only result in further pain.
I tried to continue eating my meal, but CRIPES was that spicy. The pop wasn’t helping. My eyes began to water. I got up and went for a drink of water out of the fountain and headed directly for the washroom because my nose was running. I wondered if I would make it. I was feeling faint. Suddenly, the room was spinning and I felt like I was in some alternate universe where I could see myself suffering the pains of that god-forsaken pepper. It reminded me of something out of the Johnny Cash episode of The Simpsons.*
Finally, I snapped out of it. Slowly, I began to regain control of my tear ducts and nasal passages.
My only hope is that the pepper doesn’t entice such a painful reaction on its way out.
*
Also, watching this scene is different languages has been illarious:
Brie Watson 