Montreal

Our main reason for being in Montreal was not the shopping or the people-watching but the Montreal ("Juste Pour Rire") Comedy Festival.  I was surprised to find what a small-scale thing it is, I had assumed it was bigger than Edinburgh, but it wasn't even a quarter of the size.  

Accordingly, since there were fewer shows and venues, they had all booked out and the only thing I could get us into was the "Canadian Comedy All Stars Revue".

This took place at a club called "Ernie's Comedy Nest" and we arrived early enough to get seats right at the front, which can be either a good or bad thing depending on how abusive the comedians are likely to get.  Fortunately, we weren't alone - we were joined by a couple from Montreal.  

They were very interesting in that they were native English speakers, who were both born in Quebec and were becoming increasingly bitter about being made aliens in their own country.  They told us that eventually Quebec will obtain its independence.  "They keep having referendum after referendum - and they keep rephrasing the question in more and more obscure terms so you're never quite sure what you're saying yes or no to."

REFERENDUM QUESTION:   Do you definitely not disagree with the proposition that Quebec should not under no circumstances definitely not be seceding from Canada with the proviso that today is Opposite Day and anything you say actually means the exact reverse ha ha ha.

Anyway, we were still in the middle of this discussion when the lights went down.  We had no idea who was on the bill, so were delighted when Sean Cullen was announced.  

He is rather a tubby man, but one of those rather balletic, graceful types of fat men, like Oliver Hardy, very light on his feet as he dances around the stage singing one of his own compositions like:

"When you're alone and feeling blue,
 Just don't know what you should do,
 When you're feeling all folorn,
 Remember - you got a friend in porn."

The Porn Song was very funny ("I think my friend that you will find/It's the only friend you can rewind/So when you're feeling on the shelf/Just get some porn and play with yourself.")  He immediately picked on poor Loretta and sang a song to her about being in love with a pair of Siamese twins, ("They got my heart even though they share a liver.")

Sean also commented on something we had noticed while in America - the number of ads for medicines, all of which seem to cure very little (wind, headaches, etc) but have HUGE lists of side-effects.  

SEAN: I saw an ad for something called Lipitor.  It sounds like something from a Japanese monster film, but it's a cure for baldness or something.  The side-effects include dry-mouth, constipation, bleeding from the eyes, headaches, fever, heart palpitations, old men coming into your room at night and licking you, and Mothra levelling Tokyo.
He then noticed Caroline:

SEAN: Oh what a lovely accent - where are you from?
CARO: New Zealand.
SEAN: New Zealand and Australia.  It's a bit like us and the Americans isn't it?  We know we are  better, cleverer and more cultured - but they have all the money.  If only we had the money things would be SO much better.  Everyone would be drunk.

You get the feeling when you watch him that it's all new material.  Like Eddie Izzard, he just seems to make it up as he goes along.  For example, he sings one song called, "Tonight, You Shall Die By the Food Of Your Choice," in which he invites audience members to call out food types and he sings them back to you.

AUDIENCE: Pizza!
SEAN:              I shall take pizza, and bake it in a 4000 degree oven
                        Until it is rock-hard and then FLING it at your back
                        And it will stab you and you will say, "Mmmm - pepperoni"
                        And you will DIE BY THE FOOD OF YOUR CHOICE TONIIIIIGHT!!

Then he turned back to Caro and explained why there would never be an Australian James Bond villain.  

SEAN:  It would just sound SILLY wouldn't it.  "Okay James - here's what I'm gonna do.  I've got this 'ere crocodile and I've FILLED IT WITH KNIVES!!"  

So that was our experience of the "Juste Pour Rire" festival.  It was all good stuff and I was feeling so good about it all that I suggested we go to the restaurant in our hotel for our last night in Montreal.  I had no idea what I was letting us in for.  You see, this was a training restaurant, yes - but the staff were apparently all in training for a career in rather classier establishments than Caro "Burger King" Sharman and Symon "Can You Supersize Those Fries" Parsons are used to.

As a result, we had to have the menu EXPLAINED to us by the maire d' and we both had to work very hard to try and remember which options sounded safe.  ("I think he said that one was tuna!"  "Oh my god!  Which one did he say was sweetbreads!?")  We were given a complimentary sliver of raw salmon on something that looked like a Pringle but undoubtedly wasn't which, I have to say was FUCKING DISGUSTING.  Then dinner arrived, and the waitress did that whole thing where they SCOOP the silver lid off the plate with a cry of, "Et Voila!!"  I felt like I should break into a round of applause or something.

Yes, the atmosphere was a tad oppressive.  It didn't help that we were two of only six people in an enormous dining room.  Meanwhile, the waiters hovered about us, voicing great concern over the fact that Caro hadn't finished her salad.  Truth to tell, she wasn't sure what it was.  At one point she asked, "Symon -do you think these are potatoes - or is it ham?"

But despite that, it was all good.  The food was undoubtedly too upper-class for my illiterate palate, but I didn't care.  The maitre d' turned out to be extremely friendly and we ended up having a good chat with him about Las Vegas, and from the window next to our table, I had a splendid view of the sun going down on Montreal.  Outside, a spider was spinning her web, each strand glowing golden in the fading light.  I like spiders when there is no chance of them running across my face while I'm in bed, so I came very near to having a Spalding Grey Perfect Moment.

I usually have these when it's almost time to leave somewhere, and become increasingly sad which is very bloody perverse of me, because I spend most of my time in one place imagining how great the next will be.  

Holidays are wasted on me.

The next day we packed up our shit, bid "au revoir" to the friendly staff of the institute and hailed a cab.  The driver was a frail-looking old man, who was actually smaller than my backpack.  We asked him to take us to the airport and -

WHOOOOOOOOSH!!

He was off!   French drivers are the same everywhere.  I was pushed back into my seat by the same sort of g-force that Neil Armstrong must have endured and we raced to the airport, being tossed about like errant kittens in a washing machine.  When we got there, we had a scary moment when the check-in staff couldn't find Caroline's booking.  They had booked her under the name "Charmin", but it took them about 20 minutes of clickety-clicking on their side of the booth to discover this (when the first question I asked was, "Could it be a mis-spelling?")  
We got on our US Air flight to Boston, which was a bit shit.  But that's okay because it was taking us on the next leg of our adventure.  Back to America.   Back to a land where I could buy fast food without fear of humiliation.  

Back to a land that was definitely NOT Canada.