We picked up the Programme Officiel du Festival at the Bureau de Change as soon as we crossed the border into Canada. (There's a Touriste Info Centre there, as well as a place to get your funny money.) And it wasn't long before we were cruising along at 100 kilometers per hour and choosing which shows we might want to catch (and making fun of the wording in the program). There's a few new twists in this year's festival.

Talk of the Fest, Wise Guys, O'Comics, Dating It, Big City Comedy are all shows that, to our knowledge, have not been presented before. And they moved Confessing It to the nighttime. (Last year's C.I. was in a function room at the Delta, in the afternoon, with the house lights up!) Talk of the Fest is a curiosity: "Come and see the comics who caught the eye of the bigwigs during the most important week of their lives!" says the program. Where do we begin?! Apparently, all the bigwigs share one big eye! And, we wonder: Is it the most important week of the comics' lives? Or the most important week of the bigwigs' lives? And do the bigwigs all share one life? So many questions! Actually, we're still stuck on the idea that "the eye of the bigwigs" sounds rather ominous-- like some sort of hideous medieval disease ("Methinks I hath caught the eye of the bigwigs! Shun me if you wish to live another day!")

In all seriousness, though, we hope that this showcase is what is says it is-- A show featuring some of the folks who rose to the occasion earlier on in the Fest and actually caught some (non-manufactured) buzz-- not a show that's already set in stone, the roster of which was hammered out via negotiations between bigwigs and agent-wigs. JOE STARR filled in for another comic on the Wise Guys show on Tuesday night. And, according to all accounts, he kicked ass. Might he have "caught the eye of the bigwigs?" It is devoutly wished. (We hear that Bruce Hills, Wiggest Biggest, was in the audience.)

Also: there seems to be a shift in the the tectonic plates of Planet Standup. We were perusing the copies of Variety and the Hollywood Reporter that they're handing out up here this week and we were fascinated by the tone of the standup coverage. Three headlines point out the shift away from the planet's recent obsession with Actor/Manchild talent and toward seasoned, veteran standup comics. "Next Best Thing: With the coasts picked clean, scouts scour middle America (Variety), "Standup Reborn via Tons of Tube Ventures" (also Variety), and "Old School: With years of experience in their favor, the masters show the newbies what it's all about" (Hollywood Reporter).

The Masters show seems to have magically picked up a little cachet in the last 12 months. It seems that three out of eight of the Masters from last year's Fest were signed to some sort of deal (MARC MARON, GREG BEHRENDT and RON WHITE) and this year, the stamped of one-eyed bigwigs seems to be away from New Faces and toward those grizzled, mature veterans. Hosted by Christopher Titus, this year's Masters Show is doing the coy, keep-it-a-secret thing by not revealing all of the acts. So far, however, we know that three of our faves, JIM SHUBERT, BILL ENGVALL and DREW HASTINGS, will be on the boards at the Kola Note theater.

As usual, we here at SHECKYmagazine.com are taking credit for focusing that one fabulous eyeball of the bigwig crowd on the standup comics who know how to do this thang called standup! (Hey, if we don't take credit, no one will just give it to us!) We won't go into the particulars right here, but we pissed and moaned about the youth obsession until we sounded like a broken record (For the New Faces crowd, we sounded like "a scratched CD.") (Hop on the JFL Update Archives at the top of the page if you wanna re-live the whole sordid affair!) Of course, all those fine Masters deserve the real credit-- they're the ones who "showed the newbies what it's all about." And it can only do them (and standup in general) a whole lot of good! We're also taking credit for the music in the Delta bar-- last year we moaned about the way the techno was altering our cardiac rhythm. This year, it's kinda samba, kinda bossa nova-- very nice! PS: The Delta Bar Rimshot Award goes to Ed Regal (Owner, Emerald Isle, Dorchester, MA): In a conversation about the Masters showcase, "Hey, I understand they're going to let a woman in the Masters this year." Actually got me for a second or two!

Last Comic Standing (LCS) was cited by Variety as one of the "tube ventures" (along with National Lampoon's Funny Money-- co-produced by friend of SHECKY! STEVE OCHS, aka Ask Steeves) that is contributing to a rebirth of standup. "After years out of the spotlight, standup comedy on TV has returned with a vengeance." Hey, wait a minute... WE THOUGHT TELEVISION KILLED COMEDY! Oh, well...yet another thing we bitched about to anyone who would listen that has been embraced by the powerful conventional media. (And, didja notice that Variety doesn't hyphenate "standup?" Oh, yeah --we're taking credit for that, too. We're insufferable.)

And, speaking of LCS, we heard a rumor, from several sources, that Barry Katz (manager of LCS host/co-producer Jay Mohr) has purchased a controlling interest in The Comedy Store and that big changes are in store (we hadda phrase it that way)... stay tuned. Another rumor was that DREW CAREY was in the house. We're classifying it as a rumor because we didn't see him! He's in town as part of the Improv All-Stars show-- a special event in this year's Festival.

The first English language Gala was Wednesday night, hosted by BRAD GARRETT. The Montreal Gazette's three experts (Bill Brownstein, Denise Duguay and Kevin Tierney) really liked GREG GIRALDO (On North Korea's Kim Jong Il, "Do you know how short you have to be to have a Napoleon complex in Korea?"

And we got a little more detail from DAN ROSENBERG on the opening of LA's newest comedy club, the Comedy District (scheduled for a January 2004 launch). It's going to be comic-friendly, it's going to have plenty of free parking, it's going to be, from all accounts, unlike any club in LA currently and a welcome addition to LA's westside. We hope to get a peek at the property when we visit LA in next month.

We talked briefly with All Comedy Radio co-founder Kent Emmons about the impending launch of his venture later this month. It will be comedy on the radio, 24/7! Lots of comedy CD snippets, tons of original bits combed from morning zoos around the USA, gobs of original, live, digitally-recorded comedy performances from select clubs around the country. Sounds like a very positive thing for live standup. (How soon before someone posits the theory that radio killed comedy? I can hear them now: "Why go see comedy in a club when you can listen to it at home?!")