LITTLE CURRENT—A good crowd showed up in the bar at the Anchor Inn on Friday night, June 9 in the mood to laugh. They were not disappointed. Charlie Adam, a local comedian, had organized the event and he was pleased with the turnout. He was first up to the mic, thanking everyone for coming out; welcoming them to the Mid-North Comedy show.
“To get started, I should tell you you’re going to notice my hand tremoring quite a bit. It’s not because I’m nervous, it’s because I have Parkinson’s. I’ve had Parkinson’s for a little while now and, it turns out, my hand will tremor when I’m a little ticked off, or horny. You’ll have to guess which one I am tonight,” he said, adroitly incorporating the disease into his act, with an appreciative response from the crowd. “There are pros and cons to having a tremor, for example, when I’m on social media, this hand will sometimes hit the like or join button by accident. Just this morning, I joined a menopausal women’s group. I’m on a first name basis with the customer service people at Amazon; they help me return multiple purchases of a single item. I can fill up a shopping cart in a minute, I’ll tell you that.”
“I was walking through the mall at Christmastime and I didn’t realize the keys in my pocket were jingling so much. I made fifty bucks more than the Salvation Army guy.” And on he went. Charlie is well known and so well-liked by the local crowd, his timing and the inflection in his voice when he’d deliver his punchline were spot on. Carmen Adam, Charlie’s wife, is clearly his biggest fan. “I’ve been laughing at his jokes for 45 years,” she said. “I never get tired of the jokes.”
He then introduced the next comic on the roster, “All the way from Sudbury to the Sault, the queen of Highway 17,” is how Charlie introduced Leslie Lynn. Ms. Lynn told the audience she’s been doing stand-up for nine years as a fun hobby. “Recently, I was able to perform for the troops,” she said to applause. “It’s was just a bunch of Girl Guide troops, though.”
“I had my birthday back in February. I turned 35 the day before I was diagnosed with dyslexia.” Leslie Lynn, a sweet demure-looking woman with an engaging smile had a routine that was more adult humour than innocent family fare, and with the crowd at the Anchor, she was well received that night.
The featured act, headliner Michael Hamilton, was full of energy and completely engaged with the audience. The audience was completely engaged with him—lots of audience participation, throwing out their own lines to his topics.
“I’m originally from Mississauga; Mississauga is Ojibwe for the land of 1,000 malls.”
“You’re smart, you knew these wild fires were coming and you surrounded your island with water.” That got a big laugh, perhaps you had to be there. Michael’s jokes were more about asking the audience questions and seeing where things would go from there, obviously having a back-up plan for if things went off the rails, but by getting the audience involved, he had a happy crowd for the entire set.
He did a whole set on his smart car. An audience member called them ‘stupid cars.’ Mr. Hamilton began to explain to one audience member in particular what a smart car was, “A smart car can stop on a dime, not because it has good brakes, but because it can’t get over that dime. If we’re driving down the 69 highway, and I fart and you sneeze we’re going to be doing donuts on the highway.”
“People are in the mood to laugh,” said Dora Charlebois-Hews, “we’ve been too long without this.”
