| Comedy, as a great funnyman once printed on his comedy album cover, is not pretty.
"The great thing with the hot weather is the crap smells," says comedian Kelly Taylor to a noon-hour food court audience at Eau Claire Market. Taylor and some of his FunnyFest co-performers are here to promote the annual comedy event and to entertain patrons with a few laughs and the odd poke at their gag reflexes. They've also been asked to keep it G-rated.
Three of the crew are part of the festival's Saskatchewan showcase. Hailing from the birthplace of Canadian socialism, their jokes are often hard-hitting commentaries on politics and consumer culture. OK, so they're not.
"Visa: it's where you want to be," Taylor continues. "Britney Spears wakes up in the morning," he says miming the removal of an object from his underpants. "'Hey, what're all these Visa cards doing here?'"
Next up is Jody Peters. Host and fellow comedian Dez Reed introduces him as 100 per cent of Saskatchewan's African-Canadian comedy contingent. Hailing from the former breadbasket of the world, his jokes are wholesome and farm-fresh. OK, so they're not. He explains that he's recently been stuck in Saskatoon while his wife spent two weeks in Toronto before returning to him just a day ago. "Hit her with the cream truck last night, if you know what I mean."
"We didn't have the KKK in Aberdeen, Saskatchewan," he explains of his minority-friendly hometown. "Just a Scotsman named Angus." Peters gets the signal to keep it clean (kind of a hand-washing movement) from event organizer Stu Hughes. Things are verging on PG-13. "I can't do the rest of this joke?" he makes a pleading gesture to his comrades offstage.
Tip to aspiring comedians: keeping it clean is not as easy as it sounds. Even with repeated washings.
"These noon-hour shows," Peters says. "What can I do?" He does the cleanest thing he can think of. "This is my impression of Bill Cosby trying to pick up a chick. 'Hey lookit here!’" He addresses a woman consuming a plate of stir fry. "'You've got to be the most beautiful woman I've ever seen just sittin' there eatin' your food.'" He does, however, sneak in a line about his Jell-O pudding truck. Half the audience has a sneaking suspicion that this is some sort of dirty double entendre. The others are writing their own dirty punch lines for the Angus joke. No doubt most are spine-chillers having to do with credit cards and a kilt.
After the performance, the comics stand around making fun of stuff.
"What's it like to do a food court show?" I ask.
"It still hasn't really hit me after all these years," explains Reed. "While Kelly was up, I asked Jody to pinch me. What I really liked was the bad sound."
"Did you get that Stu Hughes is gay?" he asks, as I scribble his words in my notebook.
"And that's OK if he is," says Peters. He holds up a copy of Fast Forward featuring Hughes on its cover, standing at a microphone in an alley.
"That's his Sunday goin'-to-meetin' clothes," deadpans Reed pointing to Hughes's casual shirt-and-shorts combo.
"That's actually where he sleeps," adds Peters. "That tuft of grass."
Hughes's Sunday goin'-to-meetin' clothes! That guy cracks me up. "I can't get those pants hemmed, but here's a couple of free tickets to Funny Fest for you," Hughes says, offering me gratis passes whilst roasting my own blue jeans.
Through my tears I ask the Saskatchewan funny men what it's like to be professional side-splitters in such a thinly populated place.
Kelly Taylor is a son of Prince Albert, a small city on the North Saskatchewan River. "I'm the best of 35,000 people," he brags. "And surrounding area."
"And cottage country," adds Reed.
"In Meath Park (total population 325 soaking wet) there's another funny guy," Taylor concedes.
"Saskatoon is the eye of the storm for the comedy world right now," claims Reed. Saskatchewan, in his estimation, is full of funny folk. "A lot of good comics come from depressed areas. In rich communities there's nothing to joke about." Besides, he says, "You guys don't need comedians here because you've got the Stamps and the Flames – ba dum bum!"
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