THE CAN AM COMEDY JAM
with Jebb Fink and John Wing
November 5 and 6
Yuk Yuk’s (Blackfoot Inn)
Comedian Jebb Fink has learned the wheels of bureaucracy can turn very slowly. The American-bred performer has lived in Canada for 15 years and says, "I am still a landed immigrant. I’m waiting for my permanent resident card, as are many others." Seeking to explain the delay, he jests, "I think they do one of those cards then a gun registration, another one of those, then another gun registration."
After seven years on A-Channel Calgary’s Big Breakfast, Fink left his early-morning gig to host a national late-night talk show on Global. Four episodes of Global Late Night were shot in Toronto this past June and July, but contrary to popular belief, Fink did not move to Ontario – he still resides in Calgary. This is not the only common misconception about the comic.
"When those shows first came out," Fink says, "everybody’s big shebang was to say, ‘Oh, you’re replacing (Mike) Bullard,’ which wasn’t true." Alhough Global Late Night did run in a time slot once owned by the cancelled Mike Bullard Show, Fink was not brought in to do the same kind of program. Fink’s show is driven by roundtable discussions that featured everyone from hockey coaching legend Scotty Bowman and former Kids in the Hall star Mark McKinney to outspoken former Liberal MP Sheila Copps.
Still, it’s hard to escape the shadow of Bullard, who was a long-running talk-show fixture on CTV and The Comedy Network before making his ill-fated move to Global. "I have a lot of people ask me how I am going to succeed where he failed," says Fink. "He was on the air for seven years – where I come from that is not a failure."
While Global Late Night is not currently on the air, there is much talk of its possible return for the spring of 2005. While being on the tube is great, Fink contends that his first performance love is, and always has been, live stand-up comedy.
He is teaming up with comic John Wing for two nights of comedy at Calgary’s Yuk Yuk’s this weekend. While Jebb Fink is a guy from America living in Canada, Wing presents the other side of the coin as a Sarnia, Ontario native now living in Los Angeles.
Wing, who started his stand-up career back in 1980, describes himself as a personal-experience comic who can bring his own perspective to almost anything. He is also a musical comic who performs funny songs.
A greatly accomplished comedian and author, he has made multiple appearances on NBC’s The Tonight Show and at Montreal’s Just for Laughs Comedy Festival.
Wing says he and Fink in a double-headliner show make for an interesting dynamic.
"Jebb is a hell of a comedian," says Wing, "and so am I. We bring particular perspectives to both countries in an odd way. Jebb’s idea of Canada I find very humorous, because he looks at it from the perspective of an American. And while I am not an American and never will be, because frankly I’d have to wait until my parents were dead, I can give perspective on both countries as well.
"I am a bit of an Americanized Canadian and he’s a little bit of a Canadianized American,"adds Wing, "so it all just works." |
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