Author Archives: Rob MacD

I Saw Your Balls

Well, our first show of the summer is finished.  What a relief.
The house was pretty much full, the crowd was ready for a show, and they got one.  It felt really good to hear laughter at the places where we were hoping laughter would occur.  It felt really good to hear gasps  at the places we thought there might be gasps.  Overall, I was somewhat overwhelmed by the positive response from the audience, both during the show, and afterwards, talking with those who stuck around, and who showed up at the Opening Night party at St. James Gate.  I believe much of the positive commentary was honestly offered, too, which is nice.  But maybe I’m necessarily naive in that respect.

Comment of the night, as it related to me:  At The Gate, talking to a couple of people, and this pretty young lady that I didn’t recognise walks past me and whisper-speaks:  I saw your balls.  As for the context of how that might happen during the show, I’ll leave that to the imagination of those who haven’t seen the show yet.  I was left speechless when she said it.  I almost asked her if she liked what she saw, but I was afraid her reply might be in the negative and I’d be forever scarred emotionally by her potentially cutting remark.  So, I didn’t say anything.  I was kind of wishing she’d have said "nice balls" instead, though.

As for the rest of the show, I was very pleased with the way we performed it, and the way the audience reacted to it.  I was very nervous about performing my Debbie Gaudet monologue (especially with my in-laws in the audience), since she is, well, let’s say she’s [understatement} a bit potty-mouthed [/understatemnt].  I walked out and there was probably about 30 seconds of huge laughter just at the costume.  After that, my fears disappeared and I launched into a speech that I found very therapeutic.  That sketch was probably my personal highlight.
I am, of course, very fearful to perform it again tonight.

To those of you who came out to the show last night, thanks for laughing and being generous with that laughter.  You are all very kind.

Sketch22 or Sketch Two, Too

Well, our second season gets underway this Thursday evening, a mere 23 hours from now.
I’m pretty nervous, wondering how the audience will react.  I have a lot of confidence in most of the material, although there are a few sketches for which I wonder how an audience will react.  We are, of course, fearful that the audience won’t share our group’s sense of humour, yet we also know that much of the show makes us all laugh a lot.  And the few people who’ve seen snippets of the new material have been genuinely laughing at it, so that’s good.  Still, the "Will They Like Us" nerves are definitely there.
It’s going to be a long 23 hours.  We have a late night dress rehearsal tomorrow night which should wipe us out.
Gulp.  What have we gotten into?  Whose bright idea was it to come up with all new material for this summer?  It sure would have been safer to rely on the successful sketches from last year.  But then, I probably wouldn’t have this pit of worry and nerves in my stomach right now.
The payoff, assuming that audiences dig it, will be worth it.  And the excitement and anticipation of giving the audience all new material is pretty intense.

Stay tuned…

OK Go

I like the band OK Go.
I like their bass-heavy upbeat pop rockiness.

After seeing this video (quicktime), I like them even more.  To take the time and bother to learn the choreography, they endear themselves to me.

Only, not ‘endear’ because, well, that word’s kinda pussy.

Happy Anniversary, Darling Wife

Today is my and my wife’s 18th wedding anniversary.  We got married on Canada Day in 1987.  We chose Canada Day because we thought that each year, we’d both have our anniversary off to do whatever we pleased.
I think in the past 18 years, we’ve maybe had one or two Canada Days only where we’ve both been off work.  Karyn is a summer tour guide and most Canada Days she works.  I’ve had probably a third of my Canada Days in the past where I’d have a show performance or rehearsal…
Oh well, so much for those "day off" plans.  We’ll have them in our retirements, perhaps.

So, on this day of anniversary, both personal and national, a day that was spent by me cutting the grass and helping my father with a couple of computer questions, I’d like to say to my wife, who has spent the day telling tourists the history of our Island, that I love her.
And so, I will.

I love you Karyn. 

You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me or my world.
Many more, okay?

Sketch22 Summer 2005


We are less than one week away from opening our second season of Sketch22. Last year was a pretty big success for us. We decided early on in writing for this new season that we wouldn’t rely on last year’s characters or sketches and that we’d come up with all new material. As daunting as it was, I am glad we made that decision. We have some great new sketches, plus a couple that I’m a bit nervous about, due to content, not necessarily quality.
Come and check us out!

A Burning Desire to Scream & Flash

I have a very strong desire to do the following:

Go to the beach late at night with a few people (probably my wife and son).  Requirement is that it is dark.
One at a time, someone will scream as loud and as intensely as is possible for them to do so.
While screaming in the dark, their picture will be taken.

I expect the results to look rather interesting.

When I succumb to this desire, I will post the results here.
Is your breath baited?

Grrrrr-ill

We have some nice looking pork to barbecue and cause salivation.  We have some "new potatoes" to boil and drool over their melted-buttery goodness.  Some potato salad, bread, various beverages cooled, etc.
I’ve been looking forward all day to making and enjoying this meal.  We get home, I open the barbecue lid to preheat the barbecue and discover the grill is gone. 
Someone stole our barbecue grill!
We could, I suppose, bake or fry the pork, but it’s not nearly the same and there really isn’t time to do so before I rush off to rehearsal.
So, Karyn, bless her, has offered to run off and get some substitute fast-food.
Pork, you’ll have to wait until tomorrow, when you’ll be grilled up nicely on a brand new grill.  Potatoes, be thee boiled on the morrow as well!
To the prick who stole our grill: May you sleep peacefully tonight and wake up dead tomorrow.

Yeah, Wapner’s On!!

I like movies, but I don’t go to a lot of movies (I also don’t go to a lot of anythings).  There are many reasons why I don’t go to more movies, none of them really very good reasons, but I suppose, taken as a whole, they add up to me not going to movies.
One reason I don’t like going to movies (and to theatre, too) is the potential (no matter how small) that it’ll be sold out, or I’ll be late, or some sort of minor inconvenince will occur before hand that will keep me from sitting in a seat in a smart, timely manner.  Yes, I realise I’m rather Rain Man in that regard.
So, last night, almost at the last minute, we (the family) decide to go see Batman Begins.  I check online to see when the movie starts and I see 6:45…  It’s 6:25 as I check, and we’re about a 5 minute drive away.  Good, let’s go.
We get to the theatre and the marquee says Batman Begins  6:30.  It’s 6:30 as we see this.  Stanidng outside in the rain (man) I have a small little breakdown and we (I) decide not to bother.  Yes, there are probably 15 minutes of previews, yes we’d likely get in before the actual movie started and really so what if we missed a few minutes… but… there was a heck of a long lineup for tickets (yes I could have used the robot-tellers in the foyer but there were lines for them too), we had to get some munchies because we were forgoing supper because of this last-minute decision to go and the lineups for food were likely long too.
So we didn’t go to the movie.  I am turning into an autistic.  But where is my savantism?

Three-Fifths of a Fist of Chicken

Remember the good old days, when I’d update this site fairly regularly, with sometime entertaining (at least attempted), sometime inane postings about Nothing In Particular?
Then I kind of fell off the Blog Bandwagon.  I began to have trouble justifying to myself the bother of writing my stupid little bits of uselessness, and my number and regularity of posts dropped dramatically.
But, now, though, I feel I must return a bit to the old days and report on the saga of the chicken fingers.

It had been quite a while since I went back for chicken fingers to that place where the guy treated me well (or did he?  perhaps he treated everyone equally well…) by giving me 5 big fingers of chicken and copious amounts of fries.  Why did I stop going?  Well, I got tired, for one, of eating chicken fingers once a week, and for two, sometimes I went and they didn’t have chicken fingers.  That was enough to keep me away for a month or two.
Yesterday, I went back, and the Generous Guy was nowhere to be seen (in fact, I noticed as I’d walk by that he’s been there less and less lately, usually replaced by a early-20’s girl). Now, there was an older woman who waited on me and an older guy who was kind of hovering.  It had a real feel of New Management.
How would that affect my chicken finger supply?  Well, as the title of this post suggests, I got three fingers only.  And not big fingers like Generous Guy used to give me.  Three piddly little chicken fingers (but still a large amount of fries).  I almost complained about how I used to get 5 fingers, but I didn’t bother.  I didn’t like the vibe of the new people and the chicken fingers’n’fries thing had been not doing if for me lately, so instead of complaining, I figure I’ll just not go back much, if at all.
While I was there, an old guy ordered after me.  He was probably in his 80s and walked around with one of those four-footed canes. I liked him right away, because he was on the ball.  Whenever I see older people like him at fast food places or take-outs, they often seem distressed trying to figure out the food and ordering, etc.  Not this guy, though, he was totally in command of his faculties and very fast-food savvy.  His order was ready before mine (as it took a while for the fingers to cook) and I saw he would have difficulty with carrying his tray, plus the package he had, plus the cane, so I offered to help him by taking his tray to a table.  He was thankful and I felt good.
When I got back to the counter, my food was ready.  I noticed that the fries were covering the fingers, and I assumed that they did that to hide the lame number of fingers they had given me.

Anyway, this may be the final entry in the saga of the chicken fingers.

The Oncology Show Report

We had a Sketch22 gig last night.  It was a 45 minute show for an Oncology Doctor Conference in Cavendish.  We used this performance as a chance to try out some of our new material for this summer’s show.  We also brought back a few of the sketches from last year.
Doing shows like this is usually pretty tough.  The venue is usually awful, the people aren’t really interested in what you’re doing and it’s generally a pain in the ass and something one just looks forward to being done with.  It was also a pain to re-rehearse those last year sketches because it took (precious) time away from rehearsing the sketches for this season.  But they had asked for some of the sketches from last year, so what the heck.
I think the performance went about as well as it could have, given the circumstances.  First of all, our dressing room turned out to be a deck outside the room where we’d be performing.  Okay, no problem, it was a nice night, and while the clouds were threatening rain, it stayed dry.  Secondly, the performance was late getting going because it was taking longer for the conference participants to come into the room to eat.  But they ate quick, the room was converted from dining to performance and we went on.
We weren’t expecting a lot of response from the audience because the sketches we chose are fairly PEI-centric.  Still there was hope that the universally comedic aspects of the sketches would shine through and that would engage them enough to enjoy the show.
The stage was quite a bit smaller than we were used to during rehearsals, and our first problem during the performance was to accomodate the small size to our sketches.  The blocking in the first sketch got all confused and discombobulated, but it went pretty well.  Of all the sketches we’d be performing, that was the one I was most worried about.  Because it’s kind of like – the audience is eating, enjoying, digesting and then – BAM – they’re taken to this kind of weird sketch universe and asked to come along for a strange ride.  It didn’t take them long to adjust though, and it went about as good as I could have hoped.
The next couple of sketches were from last year (Road Crew, Piping Plover and Moe Gorman) and they went over very well.  Our next new sketch went over fairly well, too, and our new finale sketch (which has an either hit-or-miss ending) got enough big laughs to make us feel pretty good about the evening.  The feedback from the audience was very favourable as well.
Now, with that show out of the way, we embark on the final week and a half of rehearsals for our July 7 opening.  A lot of work left to do, but now we have a couple of the sketches at performance level, so the Oncology show was good for forcing that upon us.
Plus we got a nice chunk of change for it too.
I think, though, that it will turn out to be our last such gig.  None of us like doing them, really, and despite the easy money, they’re not something we’re going to pursue in the future.
It may also have been the last time ever we perform Road Crew, Plover and Moe Gorman.  Time to put those characters to rest, we think.