Bitten by, "The Bullet"

On the 22nd, at 3:15 pm, I got a call. Would I be able to be in Saskatoon at 5:30 to catch a ride to the town of Leroy, 120 miles east of Saskatoon, to be a ‘Special Guest’ in a bar called, “The Bullet”? I’d been sitting at my desk organizing a pile of loose notes for the next night at Vangeli’s; I pushed them aside and said, “I’ll be there!”


In Saskatoon I joined the, “Maniacal Master of Madness and Mayhem”, the, “Crown Prince of Potent Punch lines”, and the, “Criminally Comedic Court Jester”. We were off, but the year’s first real snowstorm put us an hour late in arriving at the Bullet. I’d not looked at my material since it’s’ debut in Aberdeen, but felt I could wing it. It was a compilation of, ‘Hillbilly & Hamlet” humour, and had worked well enough in Aberdeen that I thought it should fly in any of the rural areas.

We arrived at the Bullet at 8:15. As we entered the bar I began to have my first misgivings. It was a damned rough looking crowd! Dirty calendars, (The Bullet’s Christmas Give Away), were lying on all the tables, with separate issues for each gender! A Porn flick was playing on the Karaoke screen at the back of the stage. Immediately centre left of the stage was a table of 12 young men, 18 to 22 years old perhaps. The remainder were the regulars; about 50 of them. They did not present a pretty picture.


The Master was greeted by the owner, and, in turn, introduced me. The owner said to the Master; “I hope you brought good comics. I felt sorry for that one guy last year; didn’t get a laugh at all. He was from Ontario. People here hate Ontario, and just don’t get the humour!” Ouch! I’d bitten the bullet on this gig ...and it looked like the “Bullet” was going to bite me!

The ‘Court Jester’ warmed up the audience and introduced me. I got through my act. The 12 kids at the front were great. The rest of the bar just sat and stared, with the occasional, quickly stifled, laugh. To give an example of the atmosphere, I talk about the Ontario hamlet I grew up outside. I explain that, in anticipation of the weekend, the residents begin drinking on Wednesday, ...and try to sober up by Tuesday. “You have to,” I insisted, “sober up ...or one week just blends into the next!”

I’d just got out the, “You have to sober up”, when an old crone, resembling, on her barstool, nothing more than the type of fungal growth you find on a rotten stump, ...except ...a fungus could not have produced that single tooth, spoke up! With her gnarled mitt clutching a tumbler of whiskey in a death grip, she looked at me dead pan, and, with a voice that filled the bar, said, “No! You don’t!” I suspected that her weeks may have been in the ‘blender’ for the last 30 years; but, I couldn’t bring myself to say it! Instead, I carried on, but never did gather any momentum.

After my ten minutes, the Crown Prince plunked a chair center stage, sat down and did his time. He got some laughs, but it wasn’t great. Then, ‘The Master’, was introduced; right away he laced into the table of 12 young men unmercifully, until the rest of the bar was laughing! Then, he turned the tables, and asked, “Why are you laughing at these nice young men?” He stepped onto a chair and his eyes swept the room as he roared, “You ignorant, red-necked C--- ------s!,” smiled, sipped his drink, chuckled, and said, “Just kidding!” From that point, the show was on! The ‘Master’ drove that audience between laughter and outrage, over and over again! I’ve never seen anything like it! To be fair, he was, if anything, harder on himself than he was on the audience. When the show was over we had to wait an hour while the ‘Master’ went table to table, laughing and chatting with the crowd.

I asked the ‘Court Jester’, “What happened out there?” He told me, “You have to understand, this is not a Comedy Club. This is a bar. Those twelve kids are just like the crowd in Aberdeen the other night. They paid money to see a Comedy Show. They came to laugh! But here, the rest are the regular patrons. They come here several nights a week. We are intruding on their world. This is the bars’, ‘Customer Appreciation’ night. They didn’t purchase tickets. They came for a great free meal, and either free or discounted drinks. They did not come here to be entertained, or to laugh!”

He went on, “I’ve been doing this for almost a year now. The first few times scared the hell out of me! You can feel the hate, in the eyes of the men especially, as soon as you come in from the street. They know that you are going to make fun of them, and their women. This wasn’t too bad. I’ve been in lots’ of places where they were drunker, they heckled, and I thought a brawl was going to break out. All that you can do is try to get them to like you, and get them to respond like an audience. The great thing about it is, if you can handle these kinds of shows, when you get on the stage of a regular Comedy Club, it will be so easy!

As we were packing up, I asked, ‘Crown Prince’, about his sitting in an armchair on stage to do his act. “When I started out,” he said, “three years ago, places like this would make me so nervous that the audience could see both my knees shaking. So I’d sit in a chair to control nervousness. Some nights I do it still!”

All told, it was a fascinating evening, and one I’m afraid that I will have to repeat over and over. As I left, ‘The Bullet’, I thanked the owner for having us, and I picked up one of his luridly graphic nude male calendars. “It’s for my wife,” I explained. Somehow, I have a feeling that he didn’t believe me!