He Who Laughs Last

Posted on the April 7th, 2011 under KB's Word by kb

I pride myself on hanging around with folks that are interesting. For example I have a male friend who pees sitting down (something I do once in a while when I feel like treating myself, or when I’m too inebriated to aim). I also know a very successful lawyer who has bizarre sexual practices when the sun goes down (we all enjoyed childhood, but to get off on it? C’mon dude!). I even know doctors that I would trust with my entire family’s lives, but in some sort of werewolf or vampire-like twist, they become complete stoners when they are away from surgery, ER, a clinic or a hospital.

Of course of all these strange and wonderful people (Really? Wonderful? I’m sure some of you are starting to question my sanity now), I love comedians the most. Sure we all love to giggle like little high school girls walking past Steve Smith during lunchtime (because he’s SOOOO HOT and he’s the rugby captain, that damn hunk), but above and beyond that, they help us look at life from a completely different perspective. I’m not playing favourites because my brother is Mumz (say WORD!), or that I myself once stood in front of crowds and had them eating out of the palm of my sick psyche, but because I truly believe and that’s MY WORD!

This is why a small amount of pee went Michael Scofield on me, leaving tears down the front of my pants when I found out that Chris Forrest would be performing at The Purple Turtle comedy night this past Tuesday. The man has the ability to make Zuma laugh himself into honesty, and being such a veteran in the field, he is an absolute natural and one of the wonders of SA, like Julius Malema’s public behaviour, lack of morals and thought process (or lack thereof). Of course as it is with every Tuesday evening, there was the usual line-up that consisted of open-mic candidates and some other regular acts.

At risk of sounding like an uber-fan, Dylan Skews was…AWE-SOME! Or to put it in another way, I was glad that Purple Turtle decided to Skew Up because hefore I progress I need to confess (yes, I am a freestyler who knows how to rhyme for a while-er???) I have been following my brother’s comedy evenings from their humble beginnings in Woodstock (Yes, he’s moving on up) and that is when I first encountered Dylan Skews and his act. In the kindest way, in those days his act was reminiscent to Electrolux (need I say more?), but that evening I witnessed what passion, hard work, commitment to your craft and bankie-loads of weeds can do for you (I am in no way promoting the use of the blessed herb, just stating facts). The beauty of his act is that it is personal, thus making it relevant (and filled with jokes about masturbation, balls, weed smoking and …wait for it…. Smoking weed).

There were also 2 UCT students (and I am not embarrassed to say that I have forgotten their names, purely for the fact that there was low blood content in my whiskey levels at the time spoke). To say that there is an abundance of talent in this country would be an understatement. One of the most memorable acts was an Afrikaans guy who got up and put it all on the line speaking about how Afrikaners perceive us blacks when there aren’t many of us. In his words “he went to a school with no black, well there were blacks because someone had to do the sweeping” (badly mis-quoted but you can get the idea. And he spoke about sitting next to a black girl for the first time and he nervously turned to her and said “No thanks, I don’t want to order anything at the moment” (The quoting is getting worse and worse-dammit you just had to be there). The great thing about watching him perform was that he was unafraid of being honest and he could care less about offending anyone because his word was just the truth.

Let me reign myself in because I have gone on such a tangent, the tangent itself is gathering other tangents to start a union and stop tangent abuse. The point is the evening rocked, harder than Pete Doherty on any given day at any given time. I think I’ll make a habit of going there.

KB OUT!