Back at the Eton House, Standing at the Danforth hosted by JoAnna Downey

February 25, 2009 by vongsundara · Leave a Comment 

One of the great parts about moving to Greektown, Toronto, is that I’m right around the corner from Eton House, home of one of the best open mic comedy nights in Toronto. Standing at the Danforth, as the show is called, is one of two fantastic weekly shows produced by long-time comedy pro JoAnna Downey.

Standing at the Danforth is the second show I ever performed at when I moved to Toronto last year, so it will always have a special place in my heart. I wish I had recorded that performance, as it was one of my favourites. In fact, all my top performances in Toronto so far have coincidentally been hosted by JoAnna Downey.

Yesterday’s show was a special show produced for Mike McQueen, and his dad was in town. I was lucky enough to get to see three of my favourite Toronto comedians: Ted Morris, Nikki Payne and Debra DiGiovanni.

Ted Morris is incredibly likable on stage, and I hope to see a full set of his sometime soon. I’d love to see where his comedy goes when he has more time to expand his stories on stage. Nikki Payne, well, what can I say? Her aggression and energy on stage are absolutely unmatched.

Debra DiGiovanni is an interesting one. It took me a while to warm up to her style, but in the long run I think that’s a good thing as I appreciate her more for it. Debra is very wordy on stage and speaks very quickly. She also leaves no pauses for audiences to applaud. In fact, she’ll talk straight through laughter in a way that I’ve never seen before.

Now that I’ve gotten used to it, though, I think it’s quite amazing. With the speed that Debra speaks, she has to write probably double or triple the material to cover the same amount of time. I also quite enjoy her material.

Anyhow, that was my week at the Eton House. I can’t wait to be back on the stage, probably sometime in April. I’ll post the date once it’s confirmed.

Filed under: Performing
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25 Things About Vong Sundara, Facebook’s Cool New Viral Sensation

February 22, 2009 by vongsundara · 2 Comments 

This new “25 Things” viral sensation spreading across Facebook is a great example of how social networking can enrich our lives. I’ve learned so much about my friends that I would not have known otherwise. Below are the rules being sent around on Facebook:

“Rules: Once you’ve been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it’s because I want to know more about you.

To do this, go to “notes” under tabs on your profile page, paste these instructions in the body of the note, type your 25 random things, tag 25 people (in the right hand corner of the app) then click post.”

Now, I’m going off the ruleset a bit and writing my 25 Things note on my blog instead. Feel free to leave a comment below as you would have on Facebook or comment on my Facebook status where this note will be showing up.

1. I always have a jar of pickles in my fridge to ward off emergency headaches (most headaches are caused by lack of salt or water).

2. I have never learned how to swim despite several valiant attempts.

3. I am lifetime banned from separate gay bars in both Calgary and Winnipeg.

4. I spent the first three years of my life in a Thai refugee camp.

5. I had five bicycles stolen as a child and now refuse to ever ride bicycles again.

6. I shattered my knee in a tragic badminton accident (yes, badminton).

7. I was diagnosed as being clinically obese (over 30 per cent body fat) after gaining 20 pounds following a year of inactivity after the knee accident.

8. My parents’ house in Winnipeg was robbed seven times growing up and another four times last year alone.

9. I’m a huge sports fan. I used to host an annual Super Bowl party in Winnipeg but have been unable to find a new group of sports fans to hang out with since leaving Winnipeg.

10. I wrote the obituary section for both the Winnipeg Free Press and Calgary Herald for many years.

11. I moved to Toronto specifically to pursue my dreams of becoming a stand-up comedian.

12. Everything I speak about including all stories in my comedy routine is true and reflects my actual life and opinions.

13. It’s been almost four years since my last actual romantic relationship.

14. My hero is Leonardo da Vinci because he showed the world that creative ability as an artist and technical ability as an engineer can be complementary and reside in the same mind.

15. I built this entire website myself by taking a week off of work and catching myself up on all the new advancements in the website design and build world.

16. My favourite movies of all time are Beauty and the Beast and Scream.

17. I captain the SuperPowerBottoms volleyball team but am not actually a bottom. I’m actually celebate. I just thought it was a great cause.

18. There was only one white kid in my elementary class, so I never felt like a visible minority growing up.

19. My entire wardrobe is from Club Monaco and Banana Republic (yes, every single piece).

20. I worked as a freelance photographer early in my newspaper career.

21. I compare my current career as Project Manager in Toronto to living a real-life version of Donald Trump’s The Apprentice (it’s really not that far off of reality).

22. I owned and operated the number two Street Fighter website on the internet while I was in high school. I also travelled to different cities to take part in multiple Street Fighter tournaments.

23. I worked as Long & McQuade music store after school in high school and can play alto sax and euphonium (a.k.a. baritone).

24. I had a stalker in university and sent him to jail after discovering he was on Winnipeg’s most wanted list.

25. I am absolutely inept at household duties and have paid people in the past to do my laundry, cook my food and clean my house.

Filed under: Living
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SuperPowerBottoms up to G Pool in Toronto Spartan Volleyball League (TSVL)

February 10, 2009 by vongsundara · Leave a Comment 

The SuperPowerBottoms volleyball team, which I happen to captain, has made its way out of the H Pool in our weekly league play. I’m super excited, as it’s the absolute best we’ve played as a team. Everyone on the team truly deserves the victory. Hopefully we can maintain the stellar quality of play next week when we face the tougher competition of the G Pool.

This week’s move came on the heels of last week’s amazing play. We actually scored enough points to move up to G Pool last week, but we were deducted six points for various infractions. We weren’t too happy about it last week, but it kind of makes this week’s victory all the more sweeter.

I think the one missing ingredient from our great early success in the Montreal Big Jump tournament last autumn was our athleticism. We’re all fairly new players to volleyball, the majority of the team having never played competitive volleyball before, so we can’t match other teams on mechanics and experience. The one bonus we have over all other teams in our league is pure youth and athleticism. We’re the youngest team in the league by quite a bit. We’re also all good athletes, especially considering the height of half of our team.

Last week, one of the other teams’ captains mentioned that we made them feel old because of our hustle and effort. It’s something I had forgotten about for sure. This week, I think we did a great job of continuing to hustle to every ball.

I think our biggest hurdle to athleticism was our hesitation in not completely knowing where we should be on the court. You can be the quickest person in history, but if you don’t know where you should be, then it’s all for naught. I’m really excited that everyone has come together so well the past couple of weeks.

Filed under: Gaying
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My first new stand-up comedy routine in six months almost ready

February 5, 2009 by vongsundara · 7 Comments 

Today I was able to overcome my short writer’s block from yesterday to put together a really solid stand-up comedy set that I’m really excited to debut. As I mentioned yesterday, I decided to write about my sister, as I feel the best and most balanced comedy version of me to present on stage is the one that is brought out when I hang out with my sister Anne.

Yesterday I tried my best to write but ended up with nothing more than half-page of unusable nonsense. I suppose I should have expected it after not writing for half a year. It took me until about four hours into my writing process today that it finally all clicked.

You see, I have a unique way of writing which doesn’t really follow the usual rules of comedy writing: set-up, punchline, tag, tag, tag. My style doesn’t completely follow classical literary narrative structure either, though I do try to work that in. When I first started writing comedy a couple of years back, I was able to develop a unique style that worked for the way that I think, which tends to be a little differently. Yesterday I completely forgot what the style was.

I started out by trying to speak the words and form my routine off of that. When that failed miserably, I tried more traditional free-form writing. I don’t know why it finally clicked later on, but boy am I happy that it did. I won’t go into detail over how I write (sorry, I have to keep some things secret still).

After getting together a rough draft composed of about ten short lines of text, I then tried sounding out the routine to my roommate and improvised a lot of it. Now I have to go back and write down some of the new ideas that came during the spoken improvisation.

I’ve submitted for time at a bunch of the open mics in town, so hopefully you’ll be seeing this new routine very shortly.

Filed under: Living, Performing
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Dangers and rewards of taking a break from Toronto comedy shows

February 4, 2009 by vongsundara · 1 Comment 

Today was the first full day I’ve spent writing comedy in the past six months, and boy was it rough going. For all my hard work, I ended up with half a page of mostly unusable material. There may be a few reasons for this, though.

The first being that I decided to write about my sister and my life back in Winnipeg. I may actually have to shelve all my Winnipeg material for a while until I spend some good hard time in Winnipeg and get reacquainted with how life used to be for me.

The second reason could be that I’ve forgotten how to write. Now, I definitely don’t want to over-analyse it, as that could lead down to an even bigger mental roadblock, but I think six months is definitely enough time to forget some very important fundamentals of writing, especially comedy writing, especially when I was using techniques unique to myself since I combined my knowledge of comedy with my previous knowledge of classical narrative structure. It’s difficult to find that combination again after so long. So basically all the dangers I was worried about have come true. There are, however, some positive effects that I’m hoping will kick in shortly.

A part of my writing that I did purposely want to purge from my comedic style was my bitter viewpoint from my Calgary days. When I tried to write after moving to Toronto, I found my jokes were still too bitter, and it wasn’t the direction I wanted my comedy to take. This is a huge part of the reason why I wanted to absorb myself in Toronto life before writing any further. Considering that I couldn’t put anything on to paper at all, I would say that I have successfully purged my old viewpoints.

So here I am, starting with basically a blank slate. It’s both scary and exciting to think where my comedy will go from here. Don’t get me wrong, I am extremely proud of the writing I have accomplished in my year in Calgary, but now I’m in a totally different space emotionally. I’m going to workshop my material some more, but I should be ready to debut my new material in the next couple of weeks or so.

Filed under: Performing
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Ghetto-Winnipeg Vong is the best comedian Vong that Vong can be

February 3, 2009 by vongsundara · Leave a Comment 

I took this week off of work to get some comedy writing done. I’ve been working on my one-hour one-man show for a few months now, and I’m hoping to have it completed before the summer festival season, though I won’t debut the actual show until end of the year at the earliest. I haven’t been making a lot of progress lately, so I was hoping the focus off of my dayjob for a week would help me get a jump start.

This being my debut long-form show, I’ve been thinking long and hard about what I want to present and who I want to be on stage. After some careful consideration, I’ve decided to go back to my roots, the ghettos of Winnipeg. I already have a bit of material written about my life in Winnipeg, but now I want to really dig in deep.

I’m a bit of a chameleon when it comes to my personality. I’m very much different depending on whether I’m with my parents or my family or my friends or at work. Part of this comes from my upbringing, as there were definitely rules applied to how I should act depending on who was in the room (more respect, for instance, is paid to elders and people of authority and so on). The other side of this, though, is perhaps a bit of my comedic playfulness.

Different people bring out different parts of me. I’m more gay with my gay friends; I’m more ghetto with my ghetto friends. This is all common in most people of course, but I think with me it’s a little more pronounced. With individual friends, I tend to almost absorb a bit of their personality and reflect it back in an enhanced way. I didn’t realize this until recently moving in with a co-worker, and I found myself acting differently.

This got me thinking about which version of me I want to bring on stage. The answer is simple: I’m the best me when I’m with my older sister in Winnipeg. She brings out the me that I like best. We have a chemistry and connection that is pretty damn special. I think I’ve also suffered a bit from being away from Winnipeg too long.

Back in Winnipeg, I was able to maintain an incredibly balanced life as far as my friends go. One-third of my friends were straight guys, one-third were female, and one-third were gay. My personality back then had the versatility to appeal to all three demographics. Since leaving Winnipeg, my life has been dominated by my gay friends as well as some women from school, work and comedy. The part of me that appeals to the straight male demographic is slowly fading away.

This brings up the question of whether I am able to go back to that personality on stage while being so far removed from that place emotionally. I’m writing about a period of my life while being in a completely new life in a new city. I’m not sure how possible it will be.

I’m going to continue writing this week and see where it takes me, but I am seriously considering using my summer vacation days to go back to Winnipeg and complete my writing there. I’ll let you all know how it goes.

Filed under: Living, Performing
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Second City’s Level A improv class, week three, is all about environment

February 2, 2009 by vongsundara · Leave a Comment 

Week three at my improv class at Toronto’s Second City training centre focused on establishing and working with environment. As with all of the A-Level classes, this week served as a nice introduction to the topic of environment, but I am looking forward to learning more in depth about environments in the later levels.

I definitely have a ways to go as far as environment work. I think I somewhat grasped the concept, but no one in the class seemed to know what I was doing in my scene. I think I tried to go for too complicated a gesture: opening a deep freezer and taking out some ice. Next time I’ll try to choose something more obvious (or I could just get better at acting it out I suppose).

We had a great exercise where we pretended to be in a hotel lobby and each person had to come in and establish a part of the environment using a character. Our class was great at establishing the characters but at times forgot about the environment part. It was definitely intimidating going through this exercise, as I was paired up with my instructor, Natasha Boomer, as one of the two desk clerks. She was so quick and witty, it was tough and intimidating to keep up, but I welcomed the challenged and tried my best. It was definitely lots of fun to be stretched in that way.

The instructor made a great comment about how I tend to enter the scene the same way. I suppose it’s my stand-up experience coming back to haunt me, as I have worked so hard to establish my likable quirkiness, and I’ve been overdoing the same type of character over and over in improv, which is a big no no. I believe Level C will help us with characters, which I seriously need, as the only character I have to play in stand-up is a slightly enhanced version of my real self.

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