Author Archives: Rob MacD

But Did You Like It?

Sketch-22 pushes show to the raunchy limit

by Charles Mandel

    Judging from the full house Friday night at The Guild, the word is out about Sketch-22.

    The suspicion, however, is people are jamming the venue not because the comedy quintet is especially funny, but because they’ve heard the show is especially raunchy.
    Make no mistake, Sketch-22’s second season is about as raw as it gets.  Much of the show can’t even be discussed in a family newspaper such as this one.
    But if foul-mouthed stand-up comedians strike you as funny, you’ll love this show.
    It’s not as if profanity is something new in humour.  Comedians like Lenny Bruce have relied on the shock of the outrageous to pull laughs from their audiences.
    It’s a little different, though, when the outrage overtakes the humour.  People forget to laugh.
    That’s exactly what happened at times at the Guild. The troupe pushed the performance so far that they lost their audience.
    During at least one skit in which Rob MacDonald played a lesbian stand-up comic, nervous titters adn giggles came from a number of people along with outright expressions of dismay, but the majority of the crowd remained silent.
    It’s not pleasant watching a comedian bomb.
    Josh Weale’s appearance as Jesus offering to take questions from the crowd also got off to an awkward start.  Finally, though, a couple of the questions loosened up the crowd.
    Elsewhere, at the end of the night, when MacDonald was threatening to give another cast member a full tongue "man-to-man" kiss, but backed off, someone from the audience heckled, "Thank you!"  That prompted one of the first full laughs from the audience in several minutes.
    It’s bad when the funniest lines come from the crowd.
    A segment featuring Andrew Sprague as a doctor visiting a nudist colony drew waves of helpless laughter from the audience – even if much of it was in disbelief.  Although the language of the skit was fairly juvenile, composed of obvious double entendres, people cracked up as members of Sketch-22 appeared nude but for strategically placed items.
    The Full Monty had nothing on this.
    Another piece that kept the audience in stitches featured MacDonald as a man who arranged swaps for unwanted babies.
    And why would they be unwanted?  Because, they were "from away".
    Advised MacDonald: If you want that boy to be an Islander, "make sure his first word is pogey."
    But the laugh-out-loud skits were few and far between this year.  The problem isn’t with the comedians.  MacDonald, along with fellow satirists Josh Weale, Andrew Sprague, Graham Putnam and  – new to the troupe this year – Dennis Trainor are reasonably funny guys.
    However, if their material is anything to go by, they have the minds of 13-year-olds.  The majority of their skits seemed designed to be as offensive as possible.  If that was the goal, they succeeded.  But bludgeoning their audience with scandalous language isn’t particularly clever.
    Occasionally, snippets of local or political humour made their way into the act, but for the most part it was just one vulgarity heaped upon another.
    Perhaps Sketch-22 believes this is what an audience raised on Trailer Park Boys, rap music adn MTV’s Jackass deserves.
    To be sure, one skit explicitly made reference to that whole culture when MacDonald introduced himself as "Teddy Goldman, producer of the Low Income Boys."
    The problem, though, with trying to make fun of something that’s already a not-so-intelligent satire is it becomes a question of how low can you go, and as Sketch-22 proves, they can go very low indeed.
    Given that Sketch-22 wrote their humour to be as outrageous as possible, what more can be said: they succeeded.  The show is appalling.

Here’s the review of our show by The Guardian’s Charles Mandel.  I’ll comment more when I get a chance.  Thought you might like to read it, though.  I think he liked it!

O-Dear

I just found out today that one of my close childhood friends just overdosed and died.
This, of course, makes me sad.
We were very close during the first twelve years or so of my life.  A Top Four Friend who sometimes elevated to Best Friend.  As we grew into mid-teenagers, though, we began to lose touch with one another.  Him choosing to explore the more wild, troubled, rebellious side of teenagedom, and me perhaps more comfortable remaining within the confines of sensibility.
He was always a very smart person, one who perhaps, as such, over-analyzed everything. As a result, he had, I’d say, a hard time finding himself, and as he grew into an adult, those troubles manifested themselves and he began to experience all manner of difficulties, psychologically speaking.
He kind of disappeared from my life for the past 20 years yet I’d frequently think of him and wonder how he was coping.  I never really bothered to actually find out though, selfishly preferring to keep his troubles out of my life.  About as far as I’d go in that respect was to ask my parents if they heard any updates about him from his parents, who live a few houses away.  It was rare that his parents offered any updates on his status.  And when they did, it was usually more of the same kind of news: trouble coping, rough times, hard news.  Not exactly the kind of topic you want to bring up.
I felt guilty about 15 years ago, when our lives briefly intersected again.  He was not in the best state, mentally, yet desired us to form a friendship.  I rebuked him with what I thought, and still do think, were valid reasons why I couldn’t, at that time, entertain the potential for rekindling a friendship that would likely be rather needy from his side.  I still feel bad for that.  Not because I think I did the wrong thing, but because I wasn’t able to give him the support he needed at the time.
I hadn’t really heard a hing about him in the last 5 years, but tonight my mother called me to tell me she found out he died. 
Overdose.
All kinds of implications in that word, but I’d rather not speculate on that. 
I’d rather remember that he was the first friend I remember.  I can still remember the first time we met, him a year older than me, arriving in short pants and introducing himself to me in my house, me playing alone at the time in my caged playpen.
I’d rather remember the incredibly fun times we had together as kids.  Playing all kinds of sports, all the time it seemed. Inventing and playing all kinds of games.  Going to the beach and riding in the back of his parents car, not seatbelted in child-seats, but unbuckled on the top of a couple of orange crates so we could see out the windows, laughing our heads off as the crates would tip over as we went around sharp turns.   
I’d rather remember that, as teenagers, his musical taste and knowledge was leaps and bounds beyond mine and how his music appreciation ignited a similar fire in me.
I’d even rather remember those times when I saw him going down what I thought were the wrong paths in life and not being able to pull him back.
He always seemed to be searching, way too hard, for a simple, easy, peaceful state of mind.  I hope he found some of that, at least for a brief moment or two.

.

Extras Extras Read All About It!

I downloaded the first two episodes of Ricky Gervais’ new “sitcom” and watched ’em. It’s really hard to watch Extras and not compare it to The Office, but I’m a man of exquisite talent, and am thus able to.

Extras is a great show. Ricky plays Andy Millman, a guy who considers himself ‘an acTOR’ even though he’s only ever had roles in film and television as non-speaking extras. Each episode, so far and I assume will continue as such, finds him in yet another production. His main goal each time is to acquire a line in the production and the episode casually follows his attempts to cajole someone of import in terms of the production to get him a line.
He has a female friend, Maggie Jacobs (played by Ashley Jensen) who is also an extra, but her main goal each episode seems to be to find a successful person to marry. She is supposed to be a rather dim-bulb and Jensen plays her as wonderfully dense yet likable. Together, they make a great team and take turns tossing off some really funny lines.
Ricky is great at creating characters you simutaneously like and loathe. Andy Millman is not David Brent (there goes my self-declared “exquisite talent” credibility), but they do share some similarities. The world doesn’t revolve around Millman as it did around Brent. Whenever David Brent was on screen, he was the centre of attention. In Extras, Andy Millman in rarely the centre of attention, just like a good extra should never be. In many of the scenes so far, he is on the fringe, trying to bask in the glow of the “talent” that he tries to associate with on the set. Gervais does this brilliantly and it’s really a pleasure to watch him. Only when he is alone with Maggie, or with the whomever he’s trying to get to get him a line, does his more Brent-like insenstivity and selfishness come out.
A difference between this series and The Office seems to be that this series, so far, doesn’t seem to have any episodic arc like The Office did. Each episode of Extras seems to be more of a stand-alone piece. This is neither good nor bad, it just is.
Each episode seems to involve a guest appearance by someone famous. First episode had Ben Stiller playing himself (a wonderfully serious and rather egotistical version of himself) as the director of a “serious” film about a Bosnian tragedy. The second episode had another Somebody (a British somebody I assume, one I wasn’t acquainted with) playing himself as an actor in a Napoleonic period TV series. I was worried at first when I heard there’d be guest appearances each episode, worried that they’d not be able to pull off the subtlety sometime required to play themselves in a comedic way. So far, those fears were ill-founded because the casting and writing and performances have been great.

That’s enough. It’s a great show, and well worth seeking out the weekly bittorrents.

The Greater Wow

Answer me this:
Would a person from, say, the year 1749 be more impressed with today’s indoor plumbling-slash-toilet, or more impressed with the toilet paper on a roll?

Now, on first flush, one might think that the toilet would make a greater impression, but when you think about it, you might be inclined to say the toilet paper would make more of an impact.

Discuss.

August Buzz Reviews

It’s that time of year, when The Buzz’s August supplemental "Caught In The Act" to be perused, line by line by those summer performers on PEI who have a vested interest in the reviews of summer theatrical productions.
First off, I want to say thanks to Joseph Sherman for writing an accurate review of Canada Rocks.  I think he’s spot on with his criticisms and it’s good to see them in print.  Especially on the opposite side of the page to the full page Confed Centre AoGG ad.
I’d also like to thank Norah Pendergast for her, well, positive review of Sketch 22.  While I find it hard to believe statements like "the show is as memorable and hilarious as any show, any time, anywhere", I do appreciate the enthusiasm.
I’m glad that Norah "got" the show (and I don’t mean that to sound condescending as if our show is not one that is easily ‘gotten’.).  Our fear with this year’s show (not just for reviewers, but for all who see it) is that they’d see the explicit trees only and miss the forest; that the vulgarities and obscenities would overshadow the comedy that we present.
We are glad that this is not the case.  Most everyone who sees the show is embracing the raunchiness, and that makes me glad.
Back to the review.  My criticism of it (and of others, particularly the 4 Skits Sake ‘review’) is that it reads more like a press release than a review.  But that is too much nitpicking on my part.
Thanks very much, Norah, for appreciating the show with such kind words.  I particularly liked: "Sketch 22 succeeds in leaping beyond the boundaries of social acceptability while maintaining moral integrity, therein lies its true brilliance."
Flattering.

Come Running Back

Ah, the madness in South Florida continues.  Last year, about this time, as I was trying to convince myself that the Miami Dolphins had a reasonable chance to make the playoffs and then who knows what might happen, the star of the team, the man the whole offense was built around, Ricky Williams, the guy whose doll I have sitting in my living room, left the team.
His reasons were many, mostly depending on what mood he was in… tired of football… needs to find himself… didn’t want to be penalized by the NFL’s drug policy… the Taco Bell dog told him to quit…  Anyway, his departure caused the Dolphins to have their worst season since the 1960s.

And now, after a year of living in a tent in Australia, learning meditation techniques in a holistic univeristy in northern California, after travelling to the oddest places (both geographically and personally it seems), after learning that he owes the Dolphins 8 million dollars because he broke his contract with them… after all that…

Ricky has returned.  Yes, Ricky Williams is back as a Dolphin.  He is at training camp, right now, as I type (I just checked the NFL football sites online and no reports of him leaving, so that’s a pretty safe sentence).
He’ll miss the first four games of the season because he’s a dope smoker (or was a dope smoker, he claims to have given it up), but I cannot wait to see him back in action.  Yes, I fully expect that he’ll never make it onto the field in a regular season game, that he’ll hear a bird tell him to become an astronaut or he’ll be caught with illegal substances in his system, but I also fully expect him to make a glorious return to the game and be the star of the entire season (except those first four suspended games, of course).
Who knows whether his return is motivated by the desire to play the game, or the desire to rid himself of the debt he owes the Dolphins – – okay, we all know it’s the monetary reason that brings him back – – I’m just glad to have him back.

So, Ricky, welcome back, you flaky nut, you.  All I ask from you is to run hard as a Dolphin until this season is over.  With you, that is a lot to ask, perhaps.

The DP Got Cranky

Early Sunday morning last (and sorry for saying "Sunday morning past"), my son, who had been sleeping over at his friend Keaton’s house, called and asked if he and Keaton could make another movie on Sunday.  Reluctantly, I agreed.
So for the rest of the morning and half the afternoon they excitedly dreamed up scenario after scenario, creating an epic film full of action and intrigue.  Being the one who’d have to try and make sense out of it all, and do the actual tough work of editing it into a coherent and not-too-long movie, I nixed most of their ideas.
What they finally decided upon was that Cameron would play "The Black Ninja" and Keaton would play "The White Ninja".  They would also elicit the help of a third person, Matt, to play "The Wizard".  Their after-Rob-rejected-the-too-complicated-plotlines truncated story was:  The Wizard appears to the White Ninja and tells him to kill the Black Ninja.  The two ninjas fight, Black Ninja wins, end of movie.
I suggested: How about the wizard appears to white ninja, tells him that black ninja is bad and to kill him.  Then he appears to black ninja and tells him that white ninja is bad and must be killed.  He appears a couple more times to each, each time telling the one to kill the other.  When the ninjas finally meet, they discover the duplicitous intent of the wizard and end up killing him together.
They loved this idea, and so we all waited for the next hour and a half or so for my wife to get home with the car.
We needed a car, you see, because Keaton had a "great place in mind" to shoot the movie.  It involved a drive of a few minutes to park the car near the Trail and then a couple of minutes walk to to a path, down which there was a great place in mind for shooting.  It had a bridge and a stream and a lake and some wooded areas.  Sounded good so I agreed that would be the location.
Car arrives, I ask Karyn if she wanted to come with us.  She declined and off we went, me and The White Ninja, The Black Ninja and The Wizard.  Parked the car and began walking down the trail.
It took about 15 minutes to get to the path.  I was not anticipating a 15 minute walk (not that it’s long, but you know, I was told a minute or two), so once I got to the path, my desire to continue (or to begin, really) the production was evaporating.  Still, I trudged down the path for another 5 minutes or so.
And we get to the ‘great place in mind’ and I see right away that it’s not going to work.  Too small an area, the bridge was situated in such a way over the stream as to render it useless, the lake was a large green-algae puddle, and the wooded area looks like it’s been used by witches and wiccans, what with the cauldrons and fire pits and corpses (ok, there were no corpses).  And the mosquitoes were infuriatingly bad.
So, I was not a hampy camper.  Still, we went ahead with the setting up of the first shot, which would take place near the firepit.  As I was setting up, though, the mosquitoes literally attacked me and not-literally carried me away.  I declared the fire-pit area a non-shooting worthy location and moved production over to the bridge.  Just as we were about to shoot the first shot, the rain started.  It poured.  Hard
So I aborted the shoot.  We trudged the 5 minutes back up the path, getting soaked under the rain.  We trudged back along the trail. After about 5 more minutes of rain, it stopped, the sun came out and we were dry by the time we got back to the car.
We drove home and spoke no more of the most unfortunate attempt to shoot our latest movie.

The Sixest Feet Under Ever

I’ve been enjoying… no, not so much enjoying… rather anticipating each week’s episode of the new season of Six Feet Under.  Well, last Monday’s episode had me on my knees (metaphorically) begging it not to stop when it did.
I almost couldn’t handle the ending.  I won’t give anything away, but, and I use this phrase entirely in its teenaged girl form: OH MY GOD.
How many more sleeps until next show?

Logo Design by: Ben Dover

A while back I posted a link to an unfortunate logo for a pediatric office.

Here’s a link to another one, this time for a Japanese pharmacy

Go Fish

I’m putting up here, for a very limited time, the lates MacDonald Family Film Production.  It’s called Go Fish.  It’s a study of the corruptive power of greed and its consequences.

It’s a fair sized download, about 40MBs, but this film contains some of the best acting and dialogue I’ve ever seen.  The tension that builds throughout is palpable and by the end of the movie, I dare say everyone who watches it will be on the edge of their seat, wondering what will happen.  And then, when you see how it concludes, well, it will blow you away.

Seriously though, this is a fun film.  My favourite, of the 3 or 4 that I made with my son and his friend Keaton.

Click on this link to download, if you like.
It will only be around for a little while, because it eats away at my monthly bandwidth allotment.

(I have removed the link.  It was pushing me over my limit.)