Just for laughs – Bermuda

Just for laughs is the largest comedy festival in the world, they are also behind the somewhat funny mostly "leave you with that ripped off feeling" TV series by the same name, and their Gags show where weird looking french people go around and trick even weirder looking french people that look like they have travelled through time from 1988 to now and generally attempt to scare the crap out of what seem to be generally nice people just trying to be helpful.

 

The festival is huge and it would be tough to find people who don’t think it would be neat to see live.  Well someone in Bermuda from Montreal thought it would be swell if they brought the festival to Bermuda, instead of forcing the entire island to charter an ark like boat and make the trip to "la belle province".  I believe this is the crux of the if you can bring the mountain to Muhammed….saying.

 

Anyway so this past Saturday a small division of the festival was brought to the island for 4 shows, featuring real comics and a local guy from Bermuda who most onions agree is pretty funny for a cab driver and should be on TV.  The lineup features the winners of NBC’s Last Comic Standing for season 2 and 3, a popluar Canadian guy, (who now lives in LA like all other successful Canadian comics), a weird juggler and some other "star of comedy central" not named Dave or Chappelle.

 

This was not a half-assed production and was actually extremely entertaining and funny, with the host Alonzo Bodden being by far the funniest. The crowd was amost all Canucks, not sure why maybe the rest of the island isn’t as familiar with the whole just for laughs thing.  It was so full of ex-pats I was concered that we had found ourselves in an accounting/insurance convention or the island’s largest Grey Cup party.

 

A couple of Seinfeldian observations from the night:

 

• We got to sit next to a loud laugher – which is fine because in general the more people laughing the funnier it seems.  Either this person doesn’t watch enough funny movies, or needs to pace himself on the dark and stormies a bit better.  He even laughed when they weren’t making jokes, and was a "shouter-laugher" and had to embellish the end of the a laugh with the out-loud sigh so that rest of us knew he was laughing.  At one point I thought he might actually pass out from his hilarity.  Sue had to plug the left ear to prevent damage. 
• General seating is tough on short people like me.  I seem to have an uncanny knack for picking the seat that will be filled in front by former Austrian powerlifters or giant Amazon women.  Saturday was the amazon’s turn.  Is there a reason that giant amazon women need to have giant 80’s frizzy hair? 

Either of these people could have been involved in a Seinfeld episode don’t you think?  I picture George tapping the amazon lady with the frizzy hair and asking her to move only to find crazy joe divola being her escort who would then get into an argument with Frank Costanza.  Meanwhile Jerry is tryig to impress some talent scouts on the tonight show but the loud laugher is laughing so loud he can’t concentrate.  This poor showing results in Elaine and her man of the week arguing about the "I thought you said that Jerry was funny, funny" and Kramer taking matters into his own hands and eventually ending up with his own special on HBO, using jokes that he and newman had stolen from Jerry’s trash.

 

Well maybe not….

 

Did you know the just for laughs gremlin is named Victor.  See more than just odd stories and bad jokes, we provide information too!

 

Shawn & Sue