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.
Hanging out with my friend Linda from the Winnipeg ghetto was fun
January 19, 2009 by vongsundara · Leave a Comment
Tonight I had the chance to hang out with one of my oldest and dearest friends from the ghetto. We talked about our lives now and then, and we had a great time. I’m fortunate enough to have a lot of long-lasting friendships that still feel current. Though we talk about our history, our current friendship isn’t dependent on our past lives and is strong on its own merits.
Some of our conversation reminded me of how I was when I was younger: absolutely fearless and in my own world. I didn’t even remember that I used to carry around a butt pillow (yes, a butt pillow) around the university and would take it out of my bag and sit on it. I was so in my own reality, that I truly didn’t care what others thought. I wish I had that type of total abandon now.
The visit came at a great time, as I am delving into my past Winnipeg life as the centrepiece of my hour-long set that I hope to have completed before the end of this year. I was contemplating whether I should go back to Winnipeg for a few weeks in the spring or summer to help bring back the emotions to jump-start my writing process. I think after tonight, though, I’ve decided to hold off.
I think the best method would be to complete the writing process while I’m alone in Toronto. I would then go to Winnipeg and do a private performance to only friends and family, where I would ask for input.
I used this strategy back when I was preparing for my first ever comedy show in Calgary, Alberta. Since my family and friends know my stories by heart, seeing as how they lived through them with me, I was greatly helped by the comments last time. In fact, the whole part of my first set regarding “magical powers” came from a simple comment from my engineering friend, Erin.
Clint Eastwood’s performance is the backbone of Gran Torino, a stellar movie
December 29, 2008 by vongsundara · Leave a Comment
Prior to yesterday, I’d only ever seen one Clint Eastwood movie, Million Dollar Baby. I didn’t know quite what to expect going into Gran Torino, but I shouldn’t have been too surprised that Clint Eastwood once again delivers a stellar lead performance as Walt Kowalski, a Korean War veteran.
There are plenty of sites out there to give summaries, so I’ll jump into my generally feelings about the film.
Surrounding Clint Eastwood’s rock-solid performance are some unknown Asian actors. They do a good job for the most part, though their inexperience shows through in a number of scenes unfortunately, and they are not always believable in their roles.
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Transfer of knowledge can take longer than expected in comedy
December 27, 2008 by vongsundara · Leave a Comment
I’m learning to work in smaller chunks lately. I have a huge project right now in that I’m attempting to write a one-hour-long one-man show. The first step in doing this is to organize all of my notes, all 45 pages worth.
My writing style is to doodle down little notes whenever I feel inspired and then come back and collect those thoughts and flesh them out later. I think this method works in that I’m never having to sit down and try to come up with jokes from scratch. The unfortunate part is that I hae a huge backlog of material to go back and flesh out (or maybe that’s a good thing).
To write my one-hour show, I have to reorganize the material into different sections such as Work Life, Family Life, Gay Life and so on. This helps me write stories for each of the different parts of my life. The unfortunate part is that the job of transferring my random notes into an organized book has taken me almost half a year.
The task of organizing 45 pages of notes was so daunting that I spent much of that time procrastinating. Now, if I can’t even transfer notes, how am I supposed to actually write one hour’s worth of material? It finally came to me today: I have to write in smaller chunks.
Instead of looking at the full hour, I’ve got to write little five-minute chunks that can be later spliced together. I’ll have to then build some narrative structure in later. This will be somewhat difficult as it is reverse to how I normally write. I generally have a narrative skeleton that I then add the meat to as I go along.
I hope this works. I’m really excited today, though, because I am on page 35 of 45. I really, really hope I can finally get this huge monkey off my back so I can move forward with my writing.
A stand-up comedian’s Christmas can be a lonely affair
December 25, 2008 by vongsundara · Leave a Comment
Another year, another Christmas spent alone, thus is the the life of a stand-up comedian. I ended up having a somewhat boring day, but at least there was some great NBA basket ball on television; Celtics vs. Lakers is always a fun matchup (unfortunately, my Celtics lost).
I suppose a bit of loneliness is never too terrible a thing. Being alone today reminded me of the sacrifices I’m making to pursue my career out in Toronto and be separated from my friends and family. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m having a great time in Toronto, but today reminds me that I have to focus on why I am here in the first place, otherwise I’m separating myself from my family for no good reason at all.
I got quite a few updates done to my website. I re-intregrated Twitter feeds and fixed a few of the WordPress and Facebook interactions. I’ve also been researching Podcasting and will be introducing those into my blogs hopefully very soon.
The most important part of today, though, is that I’m finally going to get off my ass and start writing again. I’ve been resting on the material I wrote while in Calgary, and as proud as I am of that material, I know I can be much, much better.
I’m sure everyone makes lots of New Year’s resolutions, but I think my re-dedication to comedy in the new year will stick. All it took was a bit of loneliness to remind me why I’m out here.
2009 MCC Christmas concert at Roy Thomson Hall produced great musical performances
December 24, 2008 by vongsundara · 1 Comment
So I went to the annual MCC Christmas concert tonight at Roy Thomson Hall, which is a beautiful hall by the way. It was nice being back at the concert, as it was one of the first events I attended when I moved to Toronto last year.
The service was pretty religious, but I suppose that makes sense since it was a church service. Haha. It’s strange because I’m normally not much for the praying thing, but once you set that stuff to music, I am all over it.
It was nice seeing my old roomates, Lindsay and his boyfriend James. They were both so great to me when I first moved to Toronto, and it’s always nice reconnecting with them.
That’s all for now. I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas day. Celebrate with family and friends and have a merry old time, yo!
Twilight movie stylishly mixes adolescent love with vampires and werewolves
December 14, 2008 by vongsundara · Leave a Comment
This evening I went out with my roomie to see Twilight at the movie theatre. Twilight is a vampire romance movie based on a novel by Stephanie Meyer. I am a complete novice to the series and have never read any of the books, but I got caught up in the hype and have been eagerly awaiting the movie.
I’m generally not a fan of traditional vampire lore, though I am a super huge fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and its offshoot graphic novel Fray by Joss Whedon. In a lot of ways, I found similarities between the two properties: love stories at the heart of a crazy, vampire-filled world.
I enjoy what Stephanie Meyer has done with some of the old vampire lore mainstays, particularly her twist on why vampires don’t go out during daylight.
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Eagle Eye a solid action vehicle for new star Shia Labeouf
November 13, 2008 by vongsundara · Leave a Comment
I went to see Eagle Eye when I recently visited my family in Winnipeg, and I had a pretty good time. Eagle Eye stars Shia Labeouf from Transformers and Disturbia, and he is becoming quite the movie star. Unfortunately, it seems like every movie, he looks greasier and greasier, but I guess some people like him that way. It’s difficult for me to see, though, because I’m used to him from his clean days in Even Stevens.
Eagle Eye delivered on what it promised, hardcore action throughout. The majority of the movie involved running, running and more running, followed by explosions. Unfortunately, the plot didn’t work out quite as well.
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Vongizzo from Winnipizzo returns to the ghettos of Winnipeg for vacation
November 10, 2008 by vongsundara · Leave a Comment
I’m on a quick four-day visit to my old ghetto in Winnipeg. It’s been about a year since I have been back, and I always love coming back to visit. All my family and friends are here, and I’m reminded of just how lucky and loved I was growing up. I was able to build up such a large network of life-long friends here, and I would definitely be living here if Toronto hadn’t beckoned me for career reasons.
I arrived just after a huge winter storm. I guess it’s for the best, as this is how I remember Winnipeg anyhow. I have been on a whirlwind tour of family and friends, and I’ve just about fit in everyone I was hoping to see, especially my newly born nephew Jack.
The kind of sad part of my trip is that I also came here to grab my karaoke equipment for my upcoming party in Toronto. I’m about to go into my sister’s storage to look for it. I hope I don’t get charged extra for bringing the equipment with me on the plane.
Finding balance between dayjob, comedy career and gay life
October 19, 2008 by vongsundara · Leave a Comment
Striking the right balance between the different aspects of my life has always been difficult for me. I’m the type to concentrate solely on one project and sometimes lose sight of the bigger picture. For instance, it has been months since I have been on a comedy stage.
The four major aspects of my life are my dayjob, my comedy career, my gay life and my ghetto life (family and straight friends). At any one time, one of the four aspects of my life can fall off the radar. For instance, this summer I was concentrated so much on advancing my career at my dayjob that I kind of lost track of my friends. Most people wondered where I had disappeared to during the summer.
At different points in my life, I’ve tried to take a different approach and try to change the way I live my life, but it has never worked out too well. I work best when I just go with the flow of what interests me at the moment. This is how I work best creatively, and I only hope that my friends will get used to me disappearing at times while I concentrate on different aspects of my life.
Coming up shortly will be a much more prominent role for my comedy life, especially now that my website has launched. There is so much to do now for sure. The biggest project being my writing a one-hour show for next summer. I’ve basically got to sit down and devote the time necessary to getting it accomplished.
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