What a cool and weird stand-up week for yours truly!
I’ve been working like a mad-woman; editing, re-writing and re-working material for my set at Humber’s upcoming Showcase “exercise” at Yuk Yuk’s. The showcases are taking place on Tuesday March 27th & April 3rd – (mine’s on April 3rd – keep the date & come on out!)
To get ready for it, I’ve tried my stuff out on some different rooms over the past few (months) days. This week, I went to London, ON’s Big League Comedy Club for the first time – and folks, it… was… DEAD! I don’t know if it was because the weather was great or because London had already exhausted its other comics in the previous rounds, but by virtue of only having two comics “compete” on Tuesday, both of us automatically moved forward to the next round!
“Default? The two sweetest words in the English language! De-FAULT! De-FAULT! De-FAULT!” – Homer Simpson
Then, last night, I performed in Night 12 of the Gauntlet Round of the Toronto Comedy Brawl, a local comedy competition put on by Ian Atlas, initially as a way to ensure comedians keep performing over the summer months – but that has now grown to such huge proportions, they’ve had to start what was a summer contest, as early as March!
The Gauntlet Round is weird. Usually great crowds because comics try to bring out as many of their friends as possible, because you get voted by the audience to move on in the competition. However, it’s tough for some seasoned comics to bring out big numbers, since they spend the rest of the year using guilt and harassment as a tool to drag friends out to countless other events.
Luckily, some good pals came out to my round last night (THANKS CAROLYN & LINDA) and I moved forward to the next round of the Brawl which, won’t be happening until May. That’s how many gauntlets there are!!! We don’t continue until May!
If you’re interested in checking out any of the Gauntlet Rounds or following this awesome local comedy event, check out the Toronto Comedy Brawl’s Facebook Page.
And come check out my damn showcase on April 3rd! <— it’s my birthday for Pete’s sake!
clown college confessions 
If there’s one thing London does really well, it’s being unsupportive of live shows. The sign on the highway says “Welcome to London – We’d Love To, But The Bachelor Is On”.
The good thing about Brawl is that the scoring doesn’t just reward people who bring the most audience members, like a lot of contests. Audience members are forced to choose more than one person to allot points to. So if you bring nobody, but rock it, you’ll earn more points from being everyone’s second choice than you would from sucking and being 10 people’s first choice. Gotta love math.
I like that you have to choose. A lot people are SO certain about their top 2, but jeez, I don’t envy the people who had to vote on our night. Everyone did AWESOME!