Had we only taken the time to read our own magazine, we would have saved ourselves the trouble and expense of a trip to Boston.

Way back on July 12, 2005, we posted about the winner of Sierra Mist’s quest to crown the “Next Great Comic”…

…Ryan Hamilton won and he’ll be pumped through the 23 Improvs along with Jim Gaffigan or Aries Spears.

Fast-forward to the evening of September 12, 2006.

We enter the Comedy Connection. The Male Half is scheduled to be in Bracket 5 of the preliminary competition of the Boston International Comedy Festival Contest. On each table is placed a free bottle of Sierra Mist. The walls are festooned with Sierra Mist banners. (The front page of the B.I.C.F. website has a Sierra Mist logo prominently displayed, we hazily recall. Hmmm…)

And, going up onstage that evening, as one of the 12 contestants was… (Do we hafta finish this sentence?) …Ryan Hamilton.

That’s right– The Male Half was about to compete in a contest (sponsored by Sierra Mist) that was part of a festival (co-sponsored by Sierra Mist) onstage at the Comedy Connection (flanked by banners bearing the Sierra Mist logo) in front of people who were drinking complimentary soft drinks (which were bottles of Sierra Mist, provided by Sierra Mist), up against 11 other comics… one of whom is The Next Great Comic, as determined by voters who visited www.nextgreatcomic.com, a website/shrine (erected by Sierra Mist) to honor The Next Great Comic, Ryan Hamilton (Pictured above, earlier this year, at the Improv with Pablo Francisco).

Bracket 5 contestants Jan Davidson and Mark Serritella flank Bracket 6 contestant Frank Santorelli, in the Connection green room which, as you can see, is actually green.

To make things even more surreal, one of the judges was Michelle Weissbaum of Levity Entertainment Group. (According to the Levity website, she’s executive assistant to Robert Hartmann, one of two principal partners of Levity Entertainment Group. Hartmann, our more knowlegable readers may know, is a principal owner of, and primary booker for, the largest chain of comedy clubs in America, the Improvs. The Improv chain, our more alert readers may remember, was the very chain that Hamilton was pumped through as part of his “prize” for winning the coveted title of “The Next Great Comic.”)

The Rev. Tim McIntire, Bracket 5 contestant Renata Tutko and Bracket 1 contestant Mike Dorval

Ryan Hamilton won the Bracket. Kjell Bjorgen was second.

We know what you’re saying: It’s a contest.

We know it’s a contest. We’re the first ones to say that contests are strange and capricious beasts. And we’ve said so in the cyberpages of this very magazine. To wit:

Keep this in mind: You were in a contest. Contests are notoriously unpredictable. Anyone who enters a contest expecting logic, order and justice is a fool. Yet we enter them anyway. We also buy lottery tickets, play the occasional hand of blackjack or go for the girl who is “way out of our league.” Sometimes, things actually go your way.

So, we didn’t expect logic, order or justice when we walked in last night. But we at least expected the appearance of logic, order and justice.

For the record: This is not the assessment of a sore loser. If logic, order and justice prevailed, Lamont Ferguson would have advanced to the next round from Bracket 5. He went on last. Feguson, the one-time winner of the Seattle Comedy Competition is a 24-year vet who proved he knows his way around a 5-minute contest set. And, under normal circumstances, we might have chalked up his failure to advance to the typical quirks, peculiarities, vagaries of The Contest. But, on this night, his expulsion just… looked… bad.

We were told that our introductions would include no piece of information other than our name. This, we were told, was necessary “to keep the playing field level.” (How does this desire to level the playing field square with the situation described earlier in this post?)

We were also told that two comics from our bracket would advance. Yet, in Bracket 6 later that same night, three comics advanced. Both brackets contained 12 comics. Using rudimentary math skills, this means that the folks in Bracket 6 had a 1 in 4 chance of advancing, yet the folks in Bracket 5 had a 1 in 6 chance. This would be your unlevel playing field. (We’re sure the Fest officials had some sort of explanation, but we hear from at least two sources that neither the crowd nor even the comics were apprised of how that discrepancy occurred.) We hear that similar discrepancies occured in other brackets. (Indeed, the Fest’s own website front page congratulates the two comics who advanced from bracket 1 and the three comics who advanced from Bracket 2. Curious.)

We all have our reasons for entering comedy contests. And we enter competitions fully aware that, depending on how things go, we may end up feeling like a loser. But it is always our fervent hope that we don’t go home feeling like a sap.

For a detailed account of the rest of the competition, check out Sean L. McCarthy’s blog for BostonHerald.com

Editors note: The Male Half of the Staff was screwed by fate– he drew the number one spot. Upon informing the Female Half of his number, she instantly replied, “I’ll go pull the car around.” Bracket 6-er Frank Santorelli, upon hearing of the Male Half’s slot number, said, succinctly, “You’re fucked.” The Male Half later told Bracket 6-er Brad Upton: “If I had any advice, I would tell you to hold off picking your number until dead last if you can!” (Amateur statisticians may know better but the logic is that waiting until the last possible moment to pick the numbered pieces of paper out of the Tupperware tub increases the chance that other contestants will pull the number one.) Upton advanced, as did Santorelli.