SHECKY! A magazine about standup... treks to Montreal for the second straight year to bring you daily slices of the world's largest comedy festival!

\Mark Rennie Benefit!
\Festival Gathers Steam!
\The Delta Hangathon!
\Rumors & Innuendo!

The late MARK RENNIE interviewing DAVE ATTELL at the Just For Laughs Festival 1999.

Comedy Nest proprietor ERNIE BUTLER goes over the lineup for the second of two Mark Rennie Fund benefit shows.

L to R: DAVID JOHN McCARTHEY, PHIL SHUCHAT, JIM SARINO, DAVID PRYDE and FREDDY CHARLES in the Comedy Nest green room.

L to R: LENNY SISSELMAN, SHECKY! Editor BRIAN MCKIM, JEFF ALLEN and JACKIE FLYNN stand four abreast at the Delta.

MONTREAL--One of the great things about the Just For Laughs Festival is the size of it. At any given moment during this week, there are dozens of comics, agents, managers and others flying into one of Montreal's two major airports and shuttling into the center of town. There are also a good number of comics living in Montreal and a ton who live in Ontario and Quebec. So you're never more than 30 seconds away from a comic during the Festival. It's no accident that the world's largest comedy festival is held here in Montreal. The town is nuts about standup--the newspapers, the television and the radio up here have always gotten behind it.

Another unique feature of the Festival was the late night broadcasts from the Delta. One comic after another would sit at the banquet tables set up just outside the din of the Delta bar and be interviewed over the airwaves of News Talk Radio CJAD 800. Those interviews were mostly (all?) conducted by CJAD's afternoon drive host Mark Rennie. Shortly after last year's Festival, Rennie was diagnosed with a brain tumor. He died earlier this year. He was a friend to many comics and to standup comedy in general.

So when Comedy Nest proprietor Ernie Butler planned a benefit for the Mark Rennie Fund (The Mark Rennie Comedy With A Cause Gala), eleven comics and two packed houses showed up at the Nest on Monday night. By evening's end, the McGill University Health Centre was significantly closer to their goal of raising $200K to establish a facility in Rennie's name. Info? Go to www.muhcfoundation.com

The comics who participated were Phil Shuchat, David Pryde, Freddy Charles, D.J. Hazard, Heidi Foss, Joey Elias, David John McCarthey, Steve Levesque and SHECKY! editors Brian McKim and Traci Skene. Also on stage were CJAD's Terry DiMonte and Tommy Schnurmacher. The comics kept it tight (as per Ernie's orders) and everybody smoked the room like a Christmas ham! Ya just can't beat those benefit crowds!

Montreal's alternative weekly, the Mirror, made a rather unfortunate error: In their listings section, the entry for Comedy With A Cause read "Mark Rennie holds a gala..." Ooops. Don't these people read the papers?

Speaking of unfortunate errors, here's the best story of the Festival so far: Last week, in the opening Nasty Show, host Bobby Slayton, reportedly repeated an entire chunk of material during the course of the evening. The Pit Bull of Comedy allegedly lapped up too many bowls of vodka. Rumor has it that Festival organizers are proudly displaying the very empty bottle, autographed by Slayton himself. If you're worried that SHECKY! might end up in court for libel, fear not: Slayton himself has been blabbing about it to the entire world via his internet show. Slayton and Sue Murphy co-host a cyber-radio show (playfully titled "The Bobby Slayton and Sue Murphy Show") Mon-Fri, 6 to 8 PT on comedyworld.com. The folks from comedyworld.com have staked out primo real estate in the lobby of the Delta and they are giving out whoopie cushions along with the invitation to their Thursday night party. Rule number one, partygoers: DO NOT SIT DOWN!

Also happening last night: At the New Club Soda, Laugh-Rodisiacs: The Relationship Show with Maryellen Hooper, Andrew Grose, Jeff Allen, Orny Adams and Monique Marvez. Later that night, Jim Breuer hosted Bubbling With Laughter and brought up Sue Murphy, Suzanne Westenhoefer, Jackie Flynn, Joey Elias and others. Globecom continued at the Comedy Works, while Britcom began its run at Cafe Campus with Ardal O'Hanlon, Jenny Eclair, Tommy Tiernan, Chris Addison, Harry Hill and Danny Bhoy.

Hanging at the Delta later on was a positively mellow experience. Many comics were breezing through, lighting briefly and then heading for their respective hotel rooms, consciously conserving energy and brain cells for the upcoming schmooze tsunami that threatens to engulf us all. It was our extreme pleasure to run into Jeff Allen. SHECKY! editor Traci Skene worked with Mr. Allen in New Orleans in 1987. Somewhere in the intervening 13 years or so, Allen gave up his wicked partying ways, made a pact with God and, in addition to being one of the top touring comedy club headliners, he's now also a white-hot Christian comic.

Now it's time for the SHECKY! TRIVIA QUIZ! What do gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson, still-alive comedian Red Skelton and seminal astronaut John Glenn have in common? They all share a birthday (today, July 18) with SHECKY! editor Brian McKim!