Our speaker on February 19th was Alex (Sandy) MacFarlane with the topic of his career in comedy.
Sandy (Alex’s stage name) is a stand-up comedian that has performed in various cities around North America over this past 10 years. Alex chose Sandy as his stage name as there were a lot of Alex’s in the industry, but not too many Sandy’s. He is a white belt in Karate (which is the one they give you when you enrol to hold up your pants). He noted, that generally it takes 14 days to prepare for a show but in that this show is at 7:30 am (an unusual time for comedy) he is just going to wing it and talk about his journey in comedy.
Public speaking is the #1 fear of most people. Comedy, especially in Canada due to distance between large cities and the weather, is a tough gig. Alex’s exposure to comedy began by writing jokes for others. At that time, he was 380lbs and self conscious about his appearance and preferred to be in the background but enjoyed making people laugh. After losing a lot of weight down to his current trim 220lbs, Alex entered a comedy competition at Yuk Yuks in London. He practiced for 5 hours a day for a complete month before the competition and walked away from his 7-minute set the big winner! After the competition was over, one of the audience of 50 people asked him if he would like to be the opening act at another club the following week. Fresh off his big win, of course Alex agreed as it was evident to him that he was a natural and was going to be do well. As he was a natural comedian, he didn’t feel the need to prepare for his first gig and when he walked up to the club and saw the 400 people in line for the show he started to get worried. Of course, he bombed terribly, and it opened his eyes to how hard it actually is to be a successful comedian.
Most of Alex’s comedy is rooted in reality. One funny anecdote that he shared was after the time his sister saw one of his shows at a staff event at the Elora Raceway. His sister came to the next family gathering at Thanksgiving raving about how funny her brother was to which his mother responded: “really, I never thought he was too funny”. Fresh off this stinging comment, Alex was driving home and fumbling (quite illegally) with his vibrating cell phone when the police pulled him over on hwy 7/8. The policeman said, “I’ve been waiting for someone like you all day” to which Alex responded; “I got here as fast as I could”. The somewhat annoyed office responded; “what are you some kind of comedian” and of course Alex responded; “my mom doesn’t think I am!”. The end result of the story was a $1200 ticket for improperly using a cell phone while driving quite ironically initiated by a message from his Mom warning Alex about the police presence on hwy 7/8. From that day forward, he was motivated to make his mother laugh.
Alex is a semi-pro comedian with 20-30 hours of shows per week. Last Wednesday, he did 5 shows all in Toronto one evening but is it a tough time in comedy with the current political culture. Some times it does work out as at a show in North Carolina at a show on a University campus on a day where Trump had done something stupid and was the topic of one of Alex’s jokes. A heckler from the room called out “Go back to Canada!” to which Sandy quipped back: “Can’t wait to get back to the land of universal health care and reasonable gun laws!”. Truly, comedy is different between the US and Canada with Canadians being a little more politically correct but at least we understand the satiric jokes that Americans may not. It can however also be a bit dangerous as there are recent legal judgements against comedians who cross the line.
Alex’s goal is to establish a comedy club in Waterloo Region as we are the only major metropolitan region in Ontario without one.