Still standing and grinning

Finding a laugh in these grim days of disease and isolation is as difficult as trying to light a candle in a snowstorm. I mean, even if a comedian thinks of something funny in the current situation, it’s probably inappropriate to say it out loud.

So here I am scrolling through the nightly TV doomsday reports when I stumble into a barrel of laughs. On the CBC, of all places.

The CBC isn’t exactly known as the fun channel, but there they are, guffawing faces on a thirty-minute show called Still Standing.

The laughter is generated by Jonny Harris, a Newfie comedian with a bedhead hairdo and a mischievously goofy look. (He also plays Constable George Crabtree on the television series Murdoch Mysteries).

“The population here is not even a fraction of what it was back in the 60s,” he chirps in an episode from Bell Island, in Newfoundland’s Conception Bay.

“A decline in population . . .  you don’t expect that in a place called Conception Bay, right?”

Then he gives the audience that devilish grin and adds: “Dwindling population, I mean, that might be the case over in Contraception Bay . . . .“

Still Standing is a hybrid comedy/reality show premiered on CBC in the summer of 2015. It has Harris visiting small Canadian towns that have seen better times. He gets to know the people, their struggles and how they are overcoming them, then gathers them together for a stand-up comedy performance that has them laughing at themselves.

In an episode from Schreiber, Ontario last fall he explored the town’s Italian heritage - making Italian sausages and talking about the Filanes Falcons Junior B hockey team, named for the Filane-Figliomeni business family that is involved in everything from restaurants to sports clothing to entertainment.

“I thought there was a bunch of kids on the team named Owen,” Harris says during the stand-up part of the Schreiber show. That was because the coach told him that “early in the season the team was 0 ‘n 4, then later on 0 ‘n 10 and at the end 0 ‘n 28.”

“I think it’s hard for Italian-Canadian kids to play hockey ‘cause your parents keep taking your hockey sticks to prop up tomato plants,” he jokes.

The towns Harris visits are all small, tight-knit communities that you might say have seen better days, although Still Standing highlights how the residents are fighting back and living good lives. They are towns where a main industry has left, businesses have closed and young people have moved to big cities to find work.

Schreiber for instance once was a bustling railway town, a Canadian Pacific Railway divisional point 190 kilometres east of Thunder Bay. Railway jobs declined and a mine that provided significant employment closed.

Joking about the towns and their people before a live audience of residents can be a bit tricky.

“It’s got to be a little bit saucy and cheeky,” Harris has said about the stand-up comedy part of the show in which he singles out individuals, the community’s difficulties and how it has responded to them. “But it also has to be respectful. I’m not there to make anyone feel uncomfortable.”

He has found that folks are “not overly sensitive, and are just up for the laugh.”

He knows the importance of humour to small, struggling towns. He comes from Pouch Cove (pronounced Pooch) a short drive north of St. John’s. It was founded as a fishing and mixed farming community but as fishing declined became more a bedroom community for the Newfoundland capital.

Viewing Still Standing can leave you nostalgic, even sad. It hurts to see so many small towns where prosperity left to live in another place.

But Harris’ light-hearted antics bring out what’s really important about these places: the good-hearted people and how they make the best of lives for themselves, their families and their neighbours.

A bonus of the show are the gorgeous landscapes and histories of seldom-heard about places scattered from one Canadian coast to another. It gives you a deeper sense of our country and its people.

When each show closes, often with Harris pretending to talk with his mom back home, you get a nice warm feeling about being a Canadian.

#

Laughing out loud

It is indeed a wonderful life, especially when we begin laughing at ourselves.

Laughter is a magic elixir that improves our lives. It is a bonding agent that calms conflict and helps us get along with each other. We need more of it in an increasingly troubled and angry world.

Judging by some recent television viewing, we are getting more if it.

For example, NBC’s Saturday Night Live (SNL) is giving us strong doses of laughter by poking fun at the train wreck of American politics. A train wreck that is causing hardship and division around the world.

SNL’s recent parody of the 1946 movie It’s A Wonderful Life is an example of how laughing at ourselves better equips us to face the madness surrounding us.

A little memory jog: In the movie, George Bailey, played by actor James Stewart, is overwhelmed by problems and decides to jump off a bridge and end his life. A wingless  angel named Clarence appears and shows him what George’s town would have looked liked without all his work over the years.

The SNL version has Donald Trump, overwhelmed by problems, wishing he had never become president. Enter Clarence the angel who shows Trump what life would be like if he had not become president.

Melania is divorced and speaks clearly and without an accent. “They said being around you was hurting my language skills,” she tells Trump.

Mike Pence is a DJ at a White House Christmas party, happy and thankful that he did not have to sit in meetings as vice-president and look stone-faced bored and stupid.

Near the end of the 1946 movie the little daughter of George Bailey tells her dad that whenever a bell rings, an angel has received its wings.

In the SNL version, Kellyanne Conway, one of Trump’s mouthpieces, says to her boss: “Every time a bell rings, somebody you know quits, or goes to jail,”   

Canadian television also has us laughing at ourselves with the popular CBC show Still Standing. It is a hybrid comedy-reality series in which Newfoundland comedian Jonny Harris visits small Canadian towns that have gone through hard times.

Harris, also seen in the Murdoch Mysteries TV series, gives stand-up comedy shows in front of locals who have stuck it out in their towns, getting them to laugh at themselves. Along with the stand-up routine are video clips of Harris doing stuff with some of the residents.

For instance in a recent show from Wells, B.C. (population 245) Harris takes a side-by-side four-wheeler pedal bike ride along a snowy street with resident writer-actor-director James Douglas. Douglas is the filmmaker behind The Doctor’s Case, an award-winning movie based on a Stephen King short story.

During the ride Harris and his TV audience  learn about the town’s founder, Fred Wells, who discovered gold there. Wells was a mining boom town during the 1930s but as mining waned so did the town. Then in the 1970s hippies moved in, buying vacant houses and properties and established an arts community.

The town now is a mix of artists and miners, a dichotomy that Harris explores along with its stories and aspirations, weaving in jokes about the town and its people.

The towns Harris visits all have something sad in their past. A fishery collapsed and young people moved away. A logging operation closed, cancelling most of the town’s jobs.

Still Standing recognizes the melancholy produced by past events but finds humour that helps the residents laugh, or at least smile, at themselves. It also recognizes their resilience in staying on and working at building a strong community spirit.

It is a show that makes you feel good despite difficulties and reinforces the age-old message that good people overcome bad things when they laugh and work together.

Here’s how one person on Twitter described a Still Standing episode: “I needed that. The world (and my twitter feed) has been so UGH. @jollyharris and @StillStandingTV gives hope, spreads light & humor and shows us the best of people.”

We all need more of this. Hopefully we will see more of it as we enter 2019, which some folks say will bring continuing social, economic, political and climate upheaval.

Email: shaman@vianet.ca
Profile: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K8FY3Y