Ron James, Centennial Theatre, Friday, April 21, 7:30 p.m.
If there’s ointment he’s a fly, if there’s works he’ll gum them up, and if you need someone to hold a monkey wrench, for goodness sake don’t choose Ron James.
It’s a bit too early in Banff, which is likely why it takes the veteran comedian a good seven minutes to cover Conservative leadership hopeful Kellie Leitch (“she’s a chrysalid”), media reaction to the U.S. missile strike in Syria (“Once again the American press is on board with their flag waving bogus patriotism”) and life in the information age (“One day coffee’s going to kill you, one day coffee’s the best thing you can have”).
Most of all, James talks about what it means to be a standup.
James’ jokes hit but don’t hurt. His height, his Maritime lilt and warmth all allow him to upset the apple cart without hurting the apple cart’s feelings.
“If there’s one thing I’ve learned with my 20 years travelling Canada, it’s we don’t like our funny mean. We just don’t.”
The conundrum he faces is giving the audience “an authentic experience” while assuring they get what they paid for.
He doesn’t mean pandering, he explains, instead it’s about an obligation to “respect the expectations of those people who paid to laugh.”
“If somebody’s paying 50 bucks to see me they need to get a show that’s going to make them feel good.”
Despite his notoriety, or maybe because of it, James sounds downright contemptuous of fame, at least as a pursuit.
Rather than fame, a comedian should scrawl out what James calls, a “roadmap to the universality of the experience of living a life,” he says, shortly before recounting a conversation with Scottish comedian Billy Connolly.
“I said, ‘How did a Glaswegian welder from the docks in that hard city become an international comedic sensation?’ And he said, ‘That’s a question of fame, lad. Just sing your song,’” James says, adding a perfect Scottish burr.
It’s why his shows feature “life, death and taxes, the absolutes that nobody can escape.”
He goes micro and macro, switching from stories in his mother’s kitchen to “how we manage to find any kind of balance in this rapidly changing planet.”
Google’s former CEO once estimated the amount of information contemporary humans create every two days is roughly equivalent to the entirety of human information between Mesopotamia in 3100 B.C. and the Bush administration. Part of James’ role is to find some sense in it all.
“When you’re living in a world of these polarities bombarding you – and we’ve got more information than we ever have – I think to find balance on this constantly shifting terra firma beneath our feet is a chore for everybody,” he says. “Whether you take a Bikram yoga class, start meditating or buy yourself a Harley, you’re just looking to cut the edge on life’s bright fury.”
James looks to cut that edge with stories from his schooldays, ruminations on the way a human body breaks down; but there’s also Trump.
U.S. President Donald Trump and the attempt by his acolytes to “march America backwards to the wrong side of history” is a difficult topic to avoid, according to James, whose buoyant mood seems to sag when discussing the real estate tycoon.
He notes that in his last comedy special the one joke that was cut was a Trump joke.
“The joke they cut was a good one, man. … Donald Trump said women who get abortions should be punished. Beg to differ, the only woman who should be punished is Donald’s mother for not having one.”
But James sounds like his old self when discussing how he can “get some mileage” on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. It’s a contrast to the “Orwellian jackboot of the Harper-cons marching across the country,” he notes. “They weren’t a very self-deprecating bunch.”
B.C. also fails to make it through the interview unscathed.
“It’s just like five countries in one province,” he says of B.C. “I don’t know how it’s governed and clearly the government who you have right now doesn’t know how it’s governed, either.”
James’ show is set for Friday, April 21.
Apple cart vendors are advised to take out insurance.
