booed off!

Booed off
Victoria, September 6, 2009

So how come I manage to get a standing ovation and booed off within ninety minutes of each other?

And booed off by a standing boovation

How come?

Well it's typical, as you might have gathered by now, of the great grand updown fringe crashbang rollercoaster…

I'll try to explain, but this is a bad place to start.
How should I start?
…
Urrrrh
Hh
Grggh
Urrrh
Its all gone a bit murky but I'll try to piece it together…
Trnd nto a pmpkn
Bllcks
Urrrh

So it's been a long long day and I'm on stage. It's going great, just excellent, a hundred punters, with Colin Thomas from the Georgia Strait, who seemed to be laughing, a lot, especially at the riskier political stuff, and even the bad jokes … but well, sometimes when a show goes extra well it wears you out because it gets that much more intense … and you make mistakes in places where you shouldn't be making mistakes.

And my mistake was using the word Americans for the word Canadians … as in referring to the audience as: you Americans.

Which is a decent-scale clanger.

Ouch.

So I work extra hard after that to be super-tight and well-enunciated and it goes great, standing ovation etc, except next thing I know I'm in the Fringe Club cabaret and next thing I know I've been booed off.

Ouch.

So what happened? I don't quite know, errr, I got there at eleven and jumped in a lake of beer and, well, the way I remember it, which is probably wrong, is that a few years back I used to be one of the best things on at these mixed-up cabarets … which is no longer the case … 'Cos everyone has got much better … and well, one large bloke with a big voice has trouble cutting it next to a well-written well-choreographed spoof-Bollywood dance routine … So there was some booing thing instituted by Dan and Anders, who host the killer cabaret in Montreal (the 13th Hour) and I walked right into it … so I gave up on the poem half way through and said sod it, I can't be arsed, which meant I had to be punished … and my punishment was a standing boovation.

So I have a hazy memory of standing on stage, swearing insultingly at the audience so they would boo me off with a bit more un-Canadian vigor.

Which is funny, 'cos just ninety minutes before that I was getting the biggest standing ovation of my tour.

Aah, the ups and downs … and after that I'm not sure what happened, a lake of wine, Britt Small's house and a cab … into a very murky morning.

Blimey, defeat from the jaws of victory. Blimey, the ups and downs. Blimey, the fringe. Bloody hell.

And also, I have to say I'm feeling very important, 'cos I just got displaced from my ride to Vancouver in Lana Schwarcz's van by Gemma Wilcox' and Darren Boquis''s luggage …? …!

…?

…!

So, all in all, I don't have an inflated sense of my own importance right now.