Another Road Show, Another Success

Last Updated on: 27th November 2020, 10:48 pm

Last year, Steve and I went to the Just for Laughs Road Show and had a pretty good time. This year, we went again, and the shoe thief came too. It was a pretty good show, but for some reason it didn’t quite top last year. I don’t know why, but hell, it was still a pretty good time.

The host was Mark Forward. What a quirky guy, but a funny, quirky guy. I don’t think I’ll be able to eat soup and sandwiches with mom without thinking of him. I guess the front row didn’t look too enthused about him, so they provided the source of many of his jokes. That worked pretty well, right along with some dork’s phone going off. At the beginning, he did a whole thing about not liking nicknames, and then a few minutes later, the guy’s phone rings, so he goes “Turn your phone off, asshole, or I’m gonna have to start over…so I don’t like nicknames…” For a second I was wondering how far he was going to go with the whole starting over thing. Then I swear I heard someone else’s phone going off, and I thought we were all doomed, but I guess he either didn’t notice that one, or chose to tune it out, so we didn’t get the third nickname jag. The poor guy must have thought we were a bunch of squares. I couldn’t figure out what his problem was, because it sounded like we were enthusiastic, but I guess the shoe thief could see the front row from where we were sitting, and he said the front row looked bored. Dudes, why would you buy front row seats to something you don’t care about? Oh, you read it in the paper? Right, that’s it.

Next up was Pete Correale. It’s funny. He doesn’t sound like he did at the River Run in these videos. This is terrible. The problem I’m having writing about him is I keep mixing him up with the next guy. The one thing that made me laugh that I know was his was he was talking about forgetting people’s names and how awkward that is. He was talking about when he knows someone can’t think of his name, he throws it in there to bail them out. He’ll say something like “I locked my keys in the car and I thought to myself, ‘way to go, Pete Correale.'” but then they’re calling him Petey like they’ve known him for years. Another thing that made me laugh was his take on Ikea, and how putting together their furniture could destroy a marriage because it’s so frustrating. He talked about how they could have a reality TV show where only one couple survives the Ikea challenge. Sadly, the originator of the Ikea bit remains a mystery.

After him, Sebastian Maniscalco came out. I laughed when he talked about how no kid ever loses anymore at sports, and how they don’t even keep score because “everyone’s a winner on this field.” I also had a good chuckle when he described people dressing up their dogs.

But the one that made me laugh the hardest was Carl Barron. Good god that man made me laugh. I wish I could find a clip of him talking about that coughing noise that he’d heard a kid make in his class. I kept making that noise, or trying to, when Steve and the shoe thief were coming back from the bathroom at the bar after. I can’t do it justice though. Steve does a better one. I can’t narrow it down to one thing he did that made me laugh. His silly observations about things we do, his talking about people trying to speak other languages and using the wrong emphasis and sounding totally silly when they’re trying to be sophisticated, even his talking about farts made me laugh.

So I think they’ve done it again. I hope they come to Guelph next year. Please come to Guelph again. Don’t let the front row fool you, Mark Forward, we did enjoy ourselves.

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