I’m a loser Baby … the redux

Yep, thats right, “I’m a loser baby, so why don’t you shoot me.” My preliminary round night is over, and I had a great set. I feel it was one of the best sets of my career and it felt great to get out on the stage in front of such a great crowd. Unfortunately, on my night, there were 7 other VERY funny comedians on the bill, and I didn’t make it into the top three, or into tonight’s final for $25000. That said, I have no issues with the way it was judged, and I am extremely happy with the way my set went, and for that matter, the whole week.

My intention coming out to Toronto was to do the best set I possibly could, and I feel like I did that. Winning the contest would have been great, but honestly, I didn’t come out here expecting to win the $25000 … I knew that i had a chance at it, but I also knew that there were 63 other very funny people who had a chance as well. My main purpose in coming to Toronto was to do a solid 8 minute showcase set in a big club, in front of Mark Breslin, and from that perspective, I did everything I wanted to on this trip. I had a very nice conversation with Mark after my set, and not only was he very nice and considerate, but he showed a lot of insight into me and my material, and gave me some excellent advice about how to move forward in my comedy. In that sense, I actually got more from the experience than I expected.

It was great to hang out, and have a chance to visit a few other clubs, and see a lot of other funny comics. I also had something of a surprise addition to the week, as an old friend from my Lagos days happened to catch up with me as I arrived in Toronto, and we ended up spending the weekend together. It was a really nice surprise addition to my expected week, and really made this into a VERY memorable week all around.

I also had a nice chance to catch up with some folks from my old school, Upper Canada College. Apparently, there is such a thing as a free lunch, as I discovered when I went up to my old campus this past Thursday. I had really just planned to say hello to a few people, and wander the grounds with my camera a bit (pictures will follow, for the record … watch my Flickr account). However, I was offered a free lunch in my old school cafeteria and it was actually very good. Some staff from the school came down to check out the show, and it looks like they may be interested in having me do an interview for the school magazine, and possibly some shows in the coming year. Will be interesting regardless, and was very nice hang out at the old school again for a bit.

I really couldn’t have asked for more out of this week, even given the fact I didn’t win. Granted, leaving Toronto with $25000 would have been nice, but realistically, I didn’t expect that to be the end result anyway. Its been a ton of fun, from the perspective of a vacation, comedy, and catching up with old friends. I want to say thanks to Mark Breslin, Kyle Harbour (who has put a lot of time into organizing the contest) and all of Yuk Yuk’s for the chance to come out and do that … I’ll definately take the invitation again if it comes around … even though I paid my own way to Toronto, it was well worth the expense, and I’d do it again in a second given the chance.

Tonight is the final round, and I’m looking forward to catching it. The winners of all the nights I’ve seen have been very strong, and tonights show should be one of the funniest I’ve seen in a long while. Tomorrow, I fly back to Calgary, then drive back to Med Hat Monday night (after a quick stop at Comedy Monday Night on the way out of town) before I dive back into my exercise season. The sad part of this trip is that this really marks the end of my “comedy season” and the start of my “work season” for 2008 … while I’ll be doing some shows here and there over the next few months, the comedy is pretty much at the pleasure of my work from now till October or November, instead of the other way around. I have to say, however, that so far, 2008 has been a great year for me, from a lot of perspectives, and this past week has just added to that.