There’s just not much money in it:

Scott and Maggie Cassella discussing equal opportunity sex toys:

Deep in the gooey grey mush of sexual nuance with Scott and Maggie Cassella at the Flying Beaver Pubaret:

On Toronto’s downtown-east side sits a quiet, unassuming, and intimate little comedy club called the Flying Beaver Pubaret.

The establishment is split into two halves: one a traditional Canadian booze can and the other a sliver of a (usually) comedic performance area. I’d find it shocking if a forty people could find room to watch a show and a hundred would probably fill up the place entirely. These capacity limits have not, however, been big concerns whenever I’ve visited.

Basically, the aptly named Pubaret isn’t spacious or particularly remarkable, and while it features many struggling and up-and-coming comics it’s not the kind of place you’d think to rub elbows with the likes of Kids In The Hall’s Scott Thompson or the incomparable Paul Bellini (also of KITH fame).

Yet the Flying Beaver is exactly the place to experience this juxtaposition in a truly intimate way — “rub elbows” can be taken literally. This is one of those iconic places, those awesome and seemingly undiscovered spots in which you can feel history being made. And did I mention that most of the interactive, meaty, uncensored, off-the-cuff discussions can be experienced for the price of a beer or two (and you get the beer)? That shit still blows my mind.

Here’s an example of the magic in which Pubaret co-owner Maggie Cassella asks Scott to recount his experiences performing at the Griffin Poetry Prize awards:

How many of us grew up on The Kids in the Hall? How many of us have wished for a fish dinner with Paul Bellini, the mysterious and ephemeral fifth Kid, at a convenient airport hotel?

Well, believe it or not, Bellini hosts a more-or-less regular show over at the Flying Beaver Pubaret which is, mind-blowingly, cover-free! Yeah, you can actually just waltz in off of Parliament Street (near Carlton), order a beverage, and rub naked or clothed elbows (your choice) with the one and only Paul Bellini.

The Flying Beaver is a delightfully intimate venue with room for maybe 80 to 100 people if everyone stood shoulder to shoulder, and has not ceased to amaze me with some of the personalities it has managed to attract. I’m sure owners Maggie and Heather‘s seemingly endless connections to Canadian comedy, the best form of comedy, help a lot.

What I’m trying to get at is, basically, that The Flying Beaver is an incredible Toronto-gem-hosting Toronto gem that has thus far managed to stay brow-furrowingly audience free. Even during its bigger shows, Sarah and I have never had a problem getting a table. To me, this must be simply because most of Toronto has not yet been made aware of the wonders of the Flying Beaver, meaning you still have an opportunity to experience it, and its incredible personalities, very much in the flesh.

Can you believe it, dear reader? Another contributor? And this time it’s a whole gang!

The vigorous young go-getters preempted my typical introductory post; unusual, but great!

So, please allow me to go back in time a couple of days and introduce to you The Raisin Gang, a Toronto comedy troupe with connections to Ryerson University. The gang is comprised of Marissa Caldwell, Kye Fox, Mikey Kolberg, Daniel Kurland, Michael Peddle, Mary Kelly, Tom Conway, Dan Ramos and producer James Boyd.

I don’t remember exactly how I discovered The Gang (and they are 100% genuine gang), but it was laugh at first sight. When James Boyd returned my email saying he’d be interested in contributing to the blog, I was over the moon.

As with previous contributors, I don’t want to go into too much detail. The Gang have a Feature Contributor account here which means they can post, comment, etc., almost as if they own the place.

Understandably, producing video of this caliber takes a little more time so James suggested that The Gang post on a weekly basis. Or less. I know, I know, I want more too, but what can ya do?

Ah, weekends; two days to remind you of how good life could be.

It’s not that I think Mondays are bad, per se. They’ve simply been relegated to being the first days to shatter happiness and joy, to be the harbingers of pain and sorrow. And so on.

The gosh-durn WordPress update never seems to go smoothly (it’s always one plugin after another, isn’t it?) and, well, the weekend was so interesting, I almost forgot that the War still lurked just around the corner — with a bat and a belief I owed it some money.

Sadly, our own local detention center has now moved off-court onto (I believe) wood-chip-covered earth:

Can you believe that it’s been almost a month now?

But luckily there’s a curious twist at this point, otherwise I’d just be regurgitating the same old war stories again. That’s gross.

If you look at the photo again, right at the back on the left are two guys in DayGlo-yellow shirts. They’re actually taking trash from people’s cars and hauling it in here themselves. Somehow, the 416/79 cavalry have managed to miss my little enclave; these guys were actually helping people get their trash in. Most excellent service too, if I may say. I’ll definitely have to ask more questions tomorrow.

But you know that even if they were strikers, which they were not (?!), it wouldn’t stop some kind of festival from happening. With genuine regret, I managed to completely miss the Festival of India parade, but at least managed to fill my crowd quota for the day with the big balls of Just for Laughs:

All the comics must’ve been on their smoke breaks because everyone there was definitely not funny. Well, there was this one funny part where a gymnast flew dangerously off course, and oh-so-close to the audience:

The look on his face as he lifted himself off the canvas was a masterpiece of raw human emotion; disbelief, horror, embarrassment, relief, self-doubt, and anger; the kind of face you make when you’re in the privy trying, grimly, to eject a particularly unrealistic log. OH, C’MON! WE’VE ALL BEEN THERE!

Anyway, it was funny.

Funnier than cleaning my sofa when I got back to my place:

Eureka, leave a comment and I’ll contact you about where you can send the royalty cheques. What? You didn’t think it’d be just one, did you? Just like foxes, you are.

Now, dear reader, before you berate me for the frequency of my house-keeping, I would like to point out that this is a week’s worth of collected Ollie hair and open-window city exposure.

Plus, we’re in the middle of a war! A dusty, dusty war.

Those among us who were hoping for a swift end to the War had our spirits crushed today as Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty announced that he would not be getting his hands dirty.

During the 2002 conflict, the provincial government legislated and end to the assault and brought in an arbitrator to lay down the conditions of the peace pact. This time around, with cooler temperatures making the trash less goopy, there is no call for immediate action.

Our provincial government has forsaken us.

Chritie Pits is already at the breaking point. Residents are fending off mutant rats (those that survive the poison are necessarily mutants), and hell-spawn mosquitoes (ditto re: the poison, but much more satanic). With an area the size of two football fields and about 3 meters (10 feet) deep, government forces evacuating, and hot weather moving in, that’s sad news for the folks of the Pits (apropos, no?). Like your kitten getting hit by a car during your birthday party kind of sad. A birthday party no one came to kind of sad.

Even though I’m convinced that trash is no longer the evil force driving this conflict, I don’t think anyone would want this near their home:

The Toronto Star’s baffling story on a San Fransisco travel advisory was another shot to Toronto’s groin. And the city itself  is making matters worse by preventing citizens from proactively trying to defend against the onslaught. Permits for these actions are nice but wouldn’t it be tough to get them when the permit office is on strike?

Guerrilla vigilantism is clearly the only answer. I’m ready to do my part.

Respect mah authoritae!

As the sun sets on another miserable day in our blighted metropolis, and I struggle to fit just one more bag into my building’s garbage shed, I see one faint sign that pierces the bleakness. A yellow sign.

Somehow, despite the trash and slowly blooming odour traipsing in from just down the street, the brave men and women of the entertainment industry march on resolutely, producing questionable (but improving!) content. God bless ’em; they’re tryin’

Hope they clean up after themselves when they leave.