"…an entertaining distraction"

by Brian McKim & Traci Skene on July 18th, 2006

There’s a Toronto Sun article on third-year Toronto Argonauts (CFL) running back John Avery (“Avery’s laughing it off”), who is looking for something to do now that his team has hired Ricky Williams (suspended from the NFL for smoking too much dope). Apparently, Avery has been telling anyone who will listen that he’s the funniest person in the entire CFL, and that he’s so funny someone should build a sitcom around him. An important step toward that goal is an appearance on a new Canadian TV show.

With his playing time cut to nothing after the arrival of Ricky Williams, Avery has had a bit more time to work on his comedy, giving him an entertaining distraction. He had his first major standup gig last night at Club V downtown and is the star of one of 13 episodes of Punched Up, which will debut on the Comedy Network in the fall.

“It (comedy) has been therapeutic as far as me giving me something to do,” said Avery, who just recently broke his media silence. “When you’re not involved, you’re not playing, it’s easy to go crazy. I thank God for giving me some other abilities to kind of vent through, so that’s what I do.”

The show (linked above) is “a 13-episode mockumentary series satirizing makeover programs and reality TV. The series features a crack team of comedy writers who take the average Joe or Jane and make their (sic) lives better, or at least funnier.” Of course, Avery is far from your average Joe. And, we suspect that none of the folks they seek for punching up in their casting call (open until July 28) will be anywhere near average, either. (In fact, the Sun article says that the next subject after they’re done with Avery will “feature an anchorwoman from the Naked News.” You get the idea.)

The producers “want to turn him from a brash American into a humble Canadian. That, they think, will help Avery land a deal for the sitcom he has produced about his life, tentatively titled Avery-day Life.” Because, you know, brashness never got anyone anywhere in the television business.

While they’re there on the field, they should screen-test Ricky Williams… I smell big potential as the ganja-smoking sidekick! Williams confessed to the media that he was pathologically shy, suffering from a fear of people, but that he was treating it with weed and the more socially acceptable seratonin re-uptake inhibitors that all the kids are taking these days.

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