Oh Canada...

So I've been back in Canada over a month now. Managed to see some sorely missed people and back to some much needed places of rest.
I've been working steadily while in town thanks to the folks over at Yuk Yuk's. Just finished my first headlining weekend at the downtown club on Richmond St. I got a chance to not only work with some great acts that I admire, but also follow them. To get up and do 45 minutes after Tim Steeves and Ryan Belleville just crushed 10 minutes was a good benchmark to convince myself I haven't been wasting the last eight years of my life. I've started developing the 'Speechless' act, which has one simple rule...don't talk. After talking so much, and often too fast, it's been interesting to slow down and not say a word. I got the idea after watching some acts in Australia demonstrate it with amazing effectiveness. I've been working on my own version of it. I don't throw this around, but when I opened with it in Toronto, it absolutely killed, which set me up for a bit of a disappointment in Montreal, when it wasn't nearly received at the level it was in TO. There's a lot of factors to weigh in there. The layout of the Yuk's club on Richmond is one of the best in Canada, and the numbers for the week were much better than Montreal. One of the bonuses of this past week in Montreal was working with friends Kirsten, DeAnne, and Tim. These are all very funny, intelligent people who helped make the week just by being there.
I'm currently sitting in the Comedy Nest condo in my underwear, listening to Friendly Fires, a band who I discovered thanks to James and Karen (my new pals from South Australia). There are two days left until I get on stage again at Just For Laughs. I've got two days to put together what I think is the funniest eight minutes of material I have, in the hopes that someone will notice. Having worked closely with the festival for so many years, I know the reality of people actually getting picked up for anything is extremely slim, but that doesn't mean I can take the opportunity any less seriously. Of course it's a fine balance between getting focused and just enjoying the performance. I hope to find it before Thursday night.
Only two weeks left in Montreal and then I fly to Edinburgh. All the adjectives I hear people use to explain the Edinburgh Fringe festival are; 'insane', 'overwhelming', 'amazing'. I look on the horizon and begin to get excited about the insanely overwhelmingly amazing month ahead.