Louis C.K. makes a memorable night for Vancouver’s local comedy scene
Tuesday nights at the Comedy MIX are pro-am nights. First timers, seasoned amateurs, and local professionals all share the same stage. So, with that in mind, audience members were already buckled in for a night of anything possible for comedy.
Sometimes first-timers surprise you and are really funny, but sometimes they bomb miserably—which is usually due to nerves. Well, if last night wasn’t nerve-racking enough for newcomers, imagine if they were just starting comedy and a standup comedy superstar dropped in to do a spot? That's exactly what happened Tuesday night (December 6).
After watching a first-timer struggle through a Jim Carrey impersonation and jokes that his mom thought were funny, we got to see Joe List, who is Louis C.K.'s opener on tour. Joe had a great set and had the audience laughing, especially with his bit about hiding under breastfeeding blankets to mask the shame of 3 a.m. fast-food meals.
If that wasn’t a surprise guest enough… host Ivan Decker came out to the stage to bring out the one and only Louis C.K. himself!
Louis came out and the crowd went crazy. He started his 20-minute set by berating an audience member’s choice of nachos and why places insist on putting those shitty black olives on them.
He then began to get into some material. He was working on some new stuff from a notebook on a stool. It was fun to watch someone who packs stadiums develop new material because it shows that jokes usually aren’t perfect right off the bat; you need to keep reworking them until they are great. And that’s part of the process we got to see last night.
Mind you, the new jokes were already really funny, but you could tell he was still trying to punch them up. He almost didn’t do a really dirty joke until the audience convinced him to—which was great, because it almost made the joke better to have the audience insist and the joke be so vile. It was about a bucket of cum. That’s all I’ll say about it.
Louis finished with a bit about not being gay, but that having a boyfriend would be nice for some things. It was one of his strongest bits of the night.
Before he left he praised the host, Decker, for being really funny. “I don’t take the bus, but those jokes really made me laugh,” he said. He also brought up the point that most of the comedians on the show were amateurs and to give them a bit of a break.
Louis then did the honours of introducing the next performer, Justin O’Hearn, and left the stage only to go across town to Kino Café to do a 40-minute set (which I am told was really amazing).
Talk about a standup standup guy.
Louis C.K. plays the Doug Mitchell Thunderbird Sports Centre on Thursday night (December 8).
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