Laughs replaced the sound of guitars and thumping bass Friday night as Comedy Night rolled into Timmins at The Working Class Bar.
The evening featured three talented funny men who kept the audience in stitches.
The featured act was Dom Pare, a quick witted, comedian’s foul-mouthed persona mined gales of laughter from audience members with whom exchanged of banter with hilarious results.
The outrageousness of his remarks translated into howls of laughter.
There was Ashley the HR woman, or the manager of safety, the twenty-something guy wearing a toque, or the fellow with the Amish facial hairs and, yes even the reporter with TimminsToday was not spared Pare’s rapier wit.
As Toronto’s Now Magazine put it: “Pare isn't afraid of appearing to be a bit of an asshole onstage. It gives his act an angry, unpredictable edge.”
And for those in the crowd who thought of matching wits, Pare had this to day: “I don’t know why you pick on comedians,” he shouted to the audience. “We always win.”
Pare’s comedic strength comes from his ability to size up the audience, offer hilarious often wild commentary on his perception of them.
This approach had the rest of the audience howling with laughter.
And he genuinely liked Timmins’ honesty and its penchant for deflating over-sized egos.
He told the story of the doctor from Toronto – who was hustled out of a bar by a local patron who didn’t appreciate his air of superiority.
“We Timmins-ed him,” he proclaimed.
Now Magazine has described Pare as “one of the best new stand-ups around”.
He has won the Border City Comedy Fest in Windsor and landed in the finals of the Just for Laughs Homegrown Competition and the Semi-finals of the San Francisco International Comedy Competition and the Runner Up for Toronto’s Best Male Stand Up.
The evening got started with Ryan Horwood poking fun at how far he had to drive to get to Timmins.
“I dread driving another nine yours to get back to Toronto – maybe I will find a job here so I won’t have to drive back.”
He praised the people of Timmins for being salts of the earth and, like people from Newfoundland are the hobbits of Canada.
Horwood launched into some outrageously funny routines on today’s sexual norms, touching on the difference between today’s internet pornography and pre-internet sources when, as a teenager, he recalled finding magazines stuffed in paper bag in a ditch by the road tossed out by some frightened husband trying to get rid of it before his wife discovered it.
Horwood waxed about various sexual appetites, gyrations, positions and proclivities to howls from the audience.
While Horwood waxed on sex and the single guy, local comedian James Judd carried it a notch further into the travails of married life.
He recounted the hard associated with trying to conceive a child with his wife.
Audience members, many of which were at that stage in life or approaching it, readily laughed at challenges of trying to conceive a child and how much work it takes to find the right moment of conception.
“It was hard work – I drank so much Red Bull that I believed my children would be born with wings.”
He talked about the challenges of being a father and the hazards of change his infant son’s diaper and later teaching his nephew how to cross Algonquin Blvd.
Judd who hails from Iroquois Falls brought a local flavour to the night. In one of his routines he poked fun at the fractured English of his French-Canadian grandmother who mangled the word “happiness.”
The audience went home satisfied with the raw, edgy humour presented at Working Class.
Indications are more comedy nights will be held at the young-adult oriented establishment on Second Avenue much to the delight of Timmins comedy fans.
