Fare thee well

If you are reading this right now, it means that I will have played my last weekly show at Shannon’s Irish Pub.

For those of you who don’t know, I’ve been performing musical comedy every week in Winnipeg for the last five years, but have recently had to stop due to a hectic school schedule.

This week, I’d like to take advantage of this column to reminisce about the times I’ve had playing dirty songs over the last five years.

When I first started doing musical comedy, I tried to find venues around the city that would let me perform my filthy, filthy songs about poop and dinks and cat vaginas.

There were not many takers. I was actually banned for life from four of the first five venues I ever played, none of which even paid me to play in the first place.

One of these places was Citytv’s Breakfast Television program. This came as quite a surprise to me, as I didn’t swear or do anything dirty on the show. My plan was to use the first appearance to test the waters, and to swear and be insanely profane during my second appearance.

The reason they banned me from the show was that, during a performance of one of my songs called Cannibal Vegetable, I looped my guitar and voice, made a hat out of tinfoil, put on an apron and oven mitts and danced around the studio.

Although the hosts and crew loved the performance, the show got a lot of calls complaining that I was “too weird” for morning television.

This really upset me. It meant I would never again have the chance to wake up at five in the morning in order to play a cheesy breakfast TV show for free. Damn!

Finally, I got a weekly gig at Shannon’s Irish Pub, where they not only allowed me to play, but actually paid me.

And unlike other places in Winnipeg, they didn’t censor what I could and couldn’t say. In other words, they didn’t tell me before I went on that I wasn’t allowed to say the word “cunt” onstage.

In my time at Shannon’s I had a lot of great experiences and met a lot of really great people.

I also got sprayed in the eyes with hot sauce, heckled to the point of absurdity, and pelted and soaked to the bone with rotten produce (I’m not kidding about that; the bar stunk for three weeks after that show).

All in all, it’s been a great experience and I hope you’ll all forgive me for using this week’s column to thank everyone who’s come out to support me over the last five years.

You’ve all made my life a lot better than it would have been without you, even you, asshole who sprayed hot sauce in my eyes and then got the shit kicked out of him.

Mainly, I just want to say to you all: Fuck you too! (And thanks!)

This is about as sentimental as J. Williamez gets.

Published in Volume 65, Number 5 of The Uniter (September 30, 2010)

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