Comedy Fest Comclusion

UN-FREAKING-BELIEVABLE!!!

What a week we have had...

Let's start with Thursday night...

Dan Nainan, who's flight had been delayed causing him to miss his show on Wednesday, ended up being put on the show on Thursday. He was amazing! After the show, we met him, and hung out for a bit. He invited me to come to the after party at a local club. What a great experience! I got to meet a bunch of the comedians. I got to be right in the middle of some really great conversations, which helped me learn a lot about the industry (which was, of course, the main purpose of the trip).

I got to hang out with Jebb Fink, Dan Nainan, and Simon Rakoff, and got to meet guys like Paul Myrehaug, Damon Tschritter, Irwin Barker, etc, and see people like Mark Critch (who continues to be really great to us!)

These guys have been so incredibly kind to us...

Friday, we went to the lunch time comedy show, where we got an opportunity to see a lot of them again (and it was nice to see some of them remember me from the night before). We got to see Mimi Rodriguez whom we had met earlier in the week, too.

Friday night, we went to the show at the Rebecca Cohn Auditorium. Most of the best talent we have seen this week was on the show that evening. After the show, we hung out a bit with Dan Nainan again, and then he and some of the others decided to head down and play poker (again. They do that a lot. lol) but he and I made plans to meet for breakfast the next morning before he flew out.

On Saturday morning, I met Dan at the Marriott, where he was staying, and we had breakfast. During that time, Bill Santiago, whom we had met briefly earlier in the week, joined us. Bill wanted to have his picture taken with Theodore Tugboat, who is resting at the Halifax harbour. Dan had to pack, so I agreed to take Dan's camera and go to the Tugboat with Bill. We took a few pics and then he decided that he'd like to head down and try to get on the tugboat. He snuck down and I started clicking away. Then a security guy started hollering at him to get off the boat. I just kept clicking away, trying to get a good pic in, lol.

Bill and I had a really good chat, and he asked if I could help him with some of his MySpace/Facebook/YouTube/marketing stuff, to which I gleefully agreed.

I returned the camera to Dan, and we chatted a bit more. He is a real sweetheart. I am so pleased to have met him and to have had the opportunity to get to know him. He was incredibly good to me, introducing me to more people than I ever imagined meeting... He promised to email Bill and I the pics we took.

Then I met Matt Sadlier again. He is so awesome. He is the only comedian who's stuff Bobbie and I quote up and down the street when we walk around. LOL. He is probably one of the best comedians we have discovered on this trip.

Other great talent we have discovered are people like Carl Banks, Jennifer Grant, Mimi Rodriguez, Bill Santiago, John Wing, Simon Rakoff, Paul Myrehaug, etc... wow....

We went to 2 afternoon shows at the Lower Deck Pub on Saturday. At the beginning of the 1st one, Mark Critch actually pointed Bobbie and I out to the crowd, indentified us BY NAME, and had the crowd give us a round of applause for being here from PEI and going to all of the shows this week. How cool is that?

It was great at that show to have a bunch of the guys come up to us and chat. Paul Myrehaug gives the best hugs *sigh* lol.

We then went to the show in the evening and were a bit disappointed as we were seated at opposite ends of the room (my seat was also mostly obstructed view) and had seen a lot of the other acts' material in some of the other shows, but Simon Rakoff blew us away. He was so funny and all of his material was new to us.

We did have a wonderful day, but were pretty pooped afterthe show. We went back to Venus Pizza and had some delicious chicken Shawarmas before coming back and turning in for the night.

Simon Rakoff, who we've actually gotten to know a bit over the past few days, called me this morning and when I told him how exhausted we were last night, seemed to tink it was perfectly normal given that we had been to 3 comedy shows yesterday. It was nice to have a comedy veteran like him "justify", if you will, our exhaustion...

All in all, this has been an absolutely fantastic week......

Now, back to the real world.....