We decided to break with tradition. In years past, we lit out just before dawn, getting out in front of the NY Metro traffic that plagues upstate New Jersey, driving for eight hours or more, straight through to Montreal, arriving tired, soggy and irritable. And without any nap, we would bull through night number one, eventually staying up for nearly 24 hours. Not a good way to kick off four days of Fest coverage.

This time, we decided to do our trip up to Montreal in two halves. We headed out Tuesday night at 11 PM, under cover of darkness, and got as far as the appropriately named Catskill, NY, before checking into our hotel. On Wednesday AM, we cruised in a leisurely fashion up 87, arriving in Montreal just after 3 PM.

This time, we’re tan, rested and ready.

(Turns out it was a doubly good idea, since the weather from D.C. to Boston– and beyond– was craptastic. And a good chunk of I-87 between Albany and Plattsburh was torn up by small squadrons of men and machines supposedly laboring to re-pave the road.)

This year’s logistical jiggering was made necessary by the fact that the Female Half is scheduled for surgery on Tuesday. For each of the past eight years, we’ve so devastated ourselves physically that we’ve ended each tour of Fest duty as husks– physically exhausted, emotionally drained, zombie-like. It just wouldn’t due to show up for an appointment with the surgeon’s knife in that kind of condition. So the decision was made to try to give ourselves some sort of physical margin. Rather than start out our mega-weekend in a sleep deficit, we resolved to ease into things gently.

While disgorging the contents of our rental car and humping our belongings up to our room at the Royal Vic, we were assisted by the just-arrived Sharilyn Johnson (FOS and Winnipeg journo), who was also lodged at the Royal Vic.

Johnson and The Male Half strode over to the new Fest HQ– this year, it’s the Hyatt on Ste. Catherine– to pick up this year’s Media laminates. The Male Half’s is missing his name and the Female Half’s has a little too much name! (Johnson suggested that the “Traci, Traci Skene,” identification is akin to the “Bond… James Bond” signature introduction made popular by Sean Connery.) The Female Half says she’s going to insist that everyone address her as “Traci Traci.”

Terry Turner (l) and Joe Satterfield (r) of Last Laff Productions flank The Female Half of the Staff

The Hyatt is on a hot corner of Montreal– just across from the Place des Arts, at Ste. Catherine and Jeanne Mance– and the hotel is a postmodern monstrosity that incorporates shopping (lots of shopping, an entire four-floor atrium full of shopping), dining and entertainment into a confusing mess of concrete and glass and terazzo. It took us several minutes (and a whole lot of squinting and pointing at a “You Are Here” diagram) before we found our way to the elevators. The only way to get to the hotel lobby is to take elevators! Who dreamed that up? “Welcome to the Hyatt– We hope you’re not too pissed!” It’s the ideal hotel for people who like riddles. (We later found another pair of elevators that takes one directly to the lobby… sort of. But it’s a bit off to the side and they’re rather nondescript. They rather look like elevators that might take you to CONTROL Headquarters if you push the wrong button… or, worse, to the offices of SMERSH!)

The Male Half of the Staff (l) with Reno Collier at the Hyatt

Once up on the sixth floor (That’s right, the lobby is on the sixth floor!), we noticed the vast expanse that was the hotel bar. It’s huge. It’s dark. It’s got plenty of schmooze space. This place has potential!

(Side note: While taking the elevator up to the lobby, a gentleman in our car asked, “Hey, do you work for SHECKYmagazine?” To which the Male Half replied, “Work for it? I am SHECKYmagazine!” Hey, who needs a name on his media pass? Obviously not The Internationally Recognized Male Half of the Staff! The Female Half of the Staff, however, points out that, not only is she not recognized on the street, she is seldom given given any credit for the mag. “So, not only do I need a name on my tag, I need it on there twice!” says she.)

Joe Matarese(l) and Robert Kelly at the Hyatt

The Daily Schedule lists, among other things, the major American cinema release “Hairspray.” We heard a news report/review of the film on the way up in which it was said that Travolta affects a “dead-on Baltimore accent.” We concluded that he merely sounds like Dr. Evil from the Austin Powers movies. This is not the first time that Travolta has failed miserably trying to mimicked a regional accent. In “Blow Up,” the miserable turd remake by Brian DePalma, it was said that he brilliantly captured a Philly accent. Trust us, as folks who suffer through the Philly accent on a daily basis (and as two people who went to great lengths to expunge the cursed accent from our own speech), he embarassed himself on that count. The PHL and the BALTO accents are nearly identical… and equally annoying.

The big show tonight, it seems, is The Homegrown Competition, at Cabaret Just Pour Rire. It’ll be hosted by John Dore and will feature Nick Beaton, Paul Bennett, Claire Brosseau, Casey Corbin, Ivan Decker, Sean Lecomber, Brendan McKeigan, Don Wood and Peter White. (Editors note: Sean Lecomber and Nick Beaton came in first and second respectively in Wednesday’s Homegrown Competition.)

Russell Peters (l) and Mark Saldana at the Hyatt

The sked accidentally listed the Zach Galifianakis show’s description under the heading of “Defending The Caveman,” at the Centaur Theatre (the second of twelve showings up here). Boy are those Zach fans going to be confused! Will the Caveman fans stay away? We’ll see. (The slick Horaires des Spectacle, or show schedule as us mere mortals call it, lists the Caveman show, but, mysteriously, it doesn’t say exactly who will be portraying the title character! Hmmm… perhaps they’ll merely pluck someone from the audience and run the words to the monologue on a discreetly placed monitor. It’ll be “Cave-e-oke!” If that’s it, it’s brilliant!)

We hung out on Ste. Catherine, outside the Theatre Ste. Catherine, and at about a half-hour after midnight, we were waved in to see “The Green Room,” the interview show cooked up by Paul Provenza. It was a hit at last year’s Edinburgh Fest and it’s here for three nights in a row. Tonight’s guests were Jim Jeffries, three of the five Kids In The Hall (Scott Thompson, Kevin McDonald and Dave Foley) and David Cross and Bob Odenkirk.

Hugh Moore (New Faces) with The Female Half of the Staff at the Hyatt

Jeffries, readers of this mag will recall, is the comic who was assaulted onstage at the Comedy Store in Manchester. The attack was made famous via YouTube, when video was posted a few months back.

The whole idea behind The Green Room is that comics talking to comics is an entertaining thing to witness. We couldn’t agree more. WHen it was just Jeffries out there, things moved well and, by golly, it was a hoot. When The Kids emerged from backstage, and the couch was crowded with bodies– and there weren’t enough mikes to go around– things slowed quite a bit. When Odenkirk and Cross came out for the final segment, upping the body count onstage to seven (and increasing the comic to mike ratio to over 2), the wheels fell off.

To be sure, many in attendance were thrilled to be in such close proximity to their particular comedy idol(s), and it was rather interesting to see these characters in a situation significantly less contrived than that which we normally see them. But it was maddeningly inconsistent.

We may go back and try to get into a second installment on Thursday night.

The Hollywood Reporter has their special Fest editions out on the tables. And, as usual, they’re packed with quotes– from the usual suspects– that range from the ridiculous to the insulting to the incoherent.

Laugh Factory owner Jamie Masada has seen many talents pass through his club and go on to show-stopping turns at Montreal’s annual Just For Laughs Comedy Festival… and he’s please about the changes he’s witnessed in the way today’s young performers command club and festival stages. “It’s a very different energy from the early ’80s, when comics stuck to a routine that went joke, joke, joke,” he says. “Now the audience wants more than that, and the best performers can do it.”

File that one under “Ridiculous.”

The author of the piece, Chuck Crisafulli, seems to have crafted a story in which the organizers of this year’s festival (and many of the folks interviewed for the piece) are all too eager to apologize for standup as it is traditionally defined. There seems to be some kind of bizarre, subconscious, accidental collective consciousness that holds that we’re all rising up as a nation and letting everyone know that we’ve had it up to here with comedians who are merely funny! We want “versatile, less-easily defined performers!” We want comics who will explore that “new and encouraging freedom in the relationship between comic and audience!” By golly, that’s what we’ve been missing all along! (Everyone– check your shoes… we smell horseshit.)

The Top Prize for Outlandish Statement, the Palm D’or for Horse Manure, must go to Greg Proops.

The biggest and best change over the years is that there are now Asians and women and gays all allowed on stage, and there are more than just a couple of black superstars,” says Gregg Proops… “Everbody plays to a general audience now, not just people like themselves. We’ve all become more egalitarian about comedy. A white boy can like Margaret Cho and Dave Chappelle and doesn’t have to sit around worrying about it.”

Saaaayyy whaat?!?!?

The above indicates an astounding ignorance of entertainment history in general and comedy history in particular. Asians and women and gays are allowed on stage? WHat planet has he inhabited for the last forty years? On this planet we have books that have all kinds of accounts of Asians and women and gays who were allowed onstage, as far back as 100 years ago. And, if you don’t dig books, there’s video, film and recordings.

We’re so thrilled that “everybody plays to a general audience now, not just people like themselves.” Is he serious? Has he ever heard of The Ed Sullivan Show? Or vaudeville? It was in all the papers. Has he heard of Bert Williams? Godfrey Cambridge? Minnie Pearl? Dick Davy? Moms Mabley? Tamayo Otsuki? Pat Morita?

In point of fact, however, with the advent of packaged tours and MySpace and Def Comedy Jam and Que Loco and computer-assisted market segmentation, and Cray computers crunching terrabytes of raw demographic data into multi-color spreadsheets, comedians are ever more willing to “play to people like themselves.” And the audiences that we’re seeing aren’t nearly as diverse as they were in 1986 or 1987. It seems that comics who seek out such arrangements– and the audiences who pay their money to see them– are exceptionally pleased with the current state of affairs. It is not an especially bad thing or an especially good thing– it is merely a thing.

It’s frustrating when someone tries to re-write (or deny) history. It’s doubly frustrating when someone seems to be in denial of the current reality.

We might remind Mr. Proops that he’s showcasing his talents at a festival that favors segregating its performers– Eve’s Tavern, The Wise Guys (Italian), The Asian Invasion, the Bar Mitzvah Show, etc. Once again, not a good thing, not a bad thing, just a thing.

Only Craig Ferguson and Tim Allen come to the defense of the merely humorous. Only those two are skeptical of this new dynamic that some insist is poised to revolutionize standup comedy as we know it. (And we sense that the author merely included the quotes a journo-speed bump, a dollop of texture before the big windup.)