Quebec Bound!

THURSDAY

MONTREAL--We struck out from southern New Jersey before the sun was even up. A couple hours later, we were thundering through the bedroom communities of North Jersey on that broad, flat band of racetrack called the Garden State Parkway. In a studio on Times Square (about 18 miles to our extreme right), the people who perpetrate Good Morning America, had just kicked off an 18-hour laugh-a-thon called "Make Me Laugh All Night Long." We suspect that the title was shortened from "Make Me Laugh All Night Long, Give It To Me Harder, You Big Stud You!"

SHECKY! Editor Brian McKim was approached about doing 5 to 7 clean minutes in the 11 a.m. slot, but it would have required his presence in Manhattan the following morning had he been chosen as a "finalist," and he would have been summoned back to the Times Square studio with a 5 a.m. Friday phone call, with only one hour to get there. It was rather like one of those crazy radio contests from the sixties where the D.J. gives tickets to the first ten people who come to the studio...or the first person to bring a goat to a particular prominent intersection in the middle of town.

It would have also caused the cancellation of SHECKYmagazine.com's coverage of Just For Laughs (their third such Festival coverage!) and that is something that we just were not prepared to do.

Positive fallout: The abcnews.com website is pumping the laugh riot with a weeklong feature on standup comedy. It's in a section, a rather wittily written section, called "cud." Last week's cud was on fast food. This week's is on standup. The broadband producer, the guy in charge of cud, in compiling the info for the feature, solicited information from your humble SHECKYmagazine.com editors and credited us with a factoid on their site, resulting in a spike in traffic.

So we opted to opt out of the "contest" and we pointed the SHECKY! Limo northward to Le Grande Festival du Yuks, Just For Laughs, and we lit out early enough to avoid the horrific traffic that inevitably clogs the arteries that flow into and out of Philadelphia, New York and Montreal.

We timed our arrival in Montreal for early afternoon and checked into our accomodations without incident. The folks here at Royal Victorian College are swell and they act just the people who man the desk at a real hotel. Last year we spent some jack on such a real hotel (le Nouvel) but, due to the grueling schedule of covering the world's largest comedy festival, we were hardly ever in it! No more, said we! So we made a few phone calls and whaddya know, we're paying the equivalent of $40 US per night! Hey, we stagger into our dorm room every night at 4 a.m., buzzed...it's just like being in college!

The Delta is a three-minute walk from "The Royal Vic" (That's where we'll tell people where we're staying if they ask...it sounds enough like a legitimate hotel!) and a healthy wave of industry and talent (that's how they categorize all who aren't media.) is washing over the two-level lobby of the Fest's main auberge. There is a rumor going 'round that folks are holding off flying into Montreal until late Wednesday or midday Thursday and it does indeed seem as though a lot of the handshaking and backslapping is a direct result of recent arrivalage (arrivalation?).

We hop down to the press table and gather a fat sheaf of various hued papers that contain all the raw data and details of the next three days' activities. We say "Hey!" to such fest fixtures as Andy Kindler and 3Arts' Dave Rath. We also run into Brad Reeder and Joe Lowers, in town to put on "Mike & Tim's Totally Stupid Game Show, starring Brad & Joe" at the Comedy Nest (In it's brand new location) at midnight tonight.

While hovering near the press table, with our sparkling new media I.D. tag dangling from our neck, we score our first tchachke: a hat from The Marijuana-Logues! It's a dandy, too--a stone washed denim affair with the logo for the show embroidered in black. The show? Oh... the show is called The Marijuana-Logues and it's written and performed by Doug Benson, Arj Barker and Tony Camin and it's all about...weed. It's at the Centaur Theatre over the next four nights...we will try to catch it.

We discover the following by perusing the pulp:

Bubbling With Laughter--Jebb Fink, Jimeoin, Daniel Tosh, Karen Williams, Adam Bloom, John Fugelsang, Brendan Burns, Larry the Cable Guy, Allan Havey, Dave Hughes, Ron White, Mike McDonald, Lewis Black and Ron James.

New Faces--Kareem Matthews, Andrew Donnelly, Rebecca Corry, Russ Meneve, Kristeen Von Hagen, Dean Edwards, Adam Bloom, Kevin Hart, Buddy Bolton, Demetri Martin, Carie Karavas, Michael Junior, Kjell Bjorgen, Amy Barnes, Corey Bailey, Eddie Gosling. Hosted by Anthony Clark

The Gala--Megan Mullally hosts Greg Morton, Sean Lock, Vanessa Hollingshead, Simon V. Cotter, Bill Engvall, Ger Copper, Rick Ducommun, Roman Danylo, Heath Hyche, Super Girly.