from the Back of the Room


The more things change…
July 9, 2009, 3:14 pm
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I moved away from my hometown of Winnipeg in late 2007 to be closer to comedy. Mission accomplished. But if I were still stuck back in the ‘Peg, I wouldn’t be complaining about comedic starvation today: Louis CK will be crossing Canada (or part of it) this fall.

Immediately my thoughts turned to this epic rant Louis made on the alt.comedy.standup newsgroup in 2001, in a thread entitled “Your Worst Gig”. Behold…

photo © Sharilyn Johnson

photo © Sharilyn Johnson

“Winnipeg Canada, a club called Rumors, which I worked at for 2 weeks in November some time in the late 80s. This is in Manitoba, where you have to plug your car into the outlets on the parking meters even if you leave it for twenty minutes. You had to work the club for 2 weeks in a row. Usually about thirty people there on the weeknights and if you didn’t do a whole hour, the club owner made you go back onstage. Even if you looked at the crowd and could see they would like you to keep it tight, it had to be an hour exactly. You stayed in a hotel called the Vicount Gort. You could see the mall right across the parking lot but it was so fucking cold you had to take a cab to get there, literally a three minute drive. I tried to walk it once and my nostrils froze from the inside and started bleeding immediately. I’m not exagerating. It’s like Everest and your face is turning black. The club itself was fine, but people up there are so depressed inthe winter, it’s like every mouth is too busy having a gun in it to laugh. This gig is not as bad as some of the crazy road shit I did years ago but it’s the one that stands out in my memory like no other, I think because of the endurance factor. Two fucking weeks at the Vicount Gort. Never again. Not me.”

(Every Canadian road comic just read that and thought “yeah… and?”)

Because Louis CK is a self-Googling whore (his words), I want to assure him directly, should he wish to revisit this glorious experience, that Polo Park mall still thrives, the Viscount Gort is still taking reservations, and Rumor’s still has his youthful-looking headshot nailed to the lobby wall.

The tour is apparently being produced by Just For Laughs, however – say it with me now – information is not available on their website. Cities that have popped up on Ticketmaster thusfar are Toronto (Oct. 3, Winter Garden Theatre), Ottawa (Oct. 2, National Arts Centre), and Winnipeg (Oct. 24, Burton Cummings Theatre) [edit: in the 30 mins since posting, Winnipeg's date has been subsequently changed and then deleted; this is a TBA, it would seem]. Presale begins July 15, with a general onsale date of July 20.

With ticket prices under $40, expect these to sell out fast. Maybe fast enough to extend his engagement in Winnipeg by two weeks.

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Heck, plenty of comedy here. Just watch Kevin Lamoureaux in Question Period sometime!

Comment by nitroglycol July 9, 2009 @ 6:08 pm

Late October, eh? He can still relive the “balls off a brass monkey” experience then. We treat our comics right and dammit if they can’t experience our mind-numbing cold then they just haven’t had the full experience! (“Winnipeg! Come for the mosquitoes, stay for the cold!” (whose line was that?))

Comment by David July 9, 2009 @ 10:58 pm


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