Partly in reaction to the hell that was 7-Eleven on December 31, and partly because my 36-year-old body conceals the mind and spirit of a 72-year-old, we don't do much of much on New Year's. I can't even remember the last time I was awake to see the new year in: it's never struck me as important, really. I have faith that if I go to bed, the new year will be waiting for me in the morning.
That's not to say I don't enjoy New Year's Eve. In fact, I look forward to it as much or even more than I do Christmas. Christmas for kids is fun: two weeks off school, only your parents and maybe a friend or two to buy for, and all that stuff under the tree. For adults, it's a stress-fest. It's huge family get-togethers (and let's be honest, here: do you unconditionally love everyone in your family?)...it's agonizing decisions over what to buy for people you perhaps don't know as well as you should...it's trying (usually in vain) to keep to the budget...it's meals that take ten times longer to prepare and clean up than they do to eat.
New Year's, at least in our house, is completely different. We plant ourselves in front of the TV and stuff our faces. It's the one night of the year when CBC produces can't-miss programming that has nothing to do with hockey.
Three shows: the Just For Laughs year's retrospective, a Ron James comedy special that leaves us gasping for breath, and sandwiched between the two, for the last time, the Royal Canadian Air Farce.
If you go to the CBC's writeup and scan the comments, you'll find people either loved or hated this show. I suspect age has something to do with it: the Farce's style of comedy is what might be called "quaint".
There was never an edge to the Farce. It wasn't like the show that followed its timeslot, This Hour Has 22 Minutes. That one, particularly before Rick Mercer left it, had zip and zing to it. The Royal Canadian Air Farce, by contrast, was a gentle show that poked fun at people, rather than skewering them. That so many famous Canadians would line up to poke fun at themselves on the Farce really set it apart: on any given show, and especially on the year-end New Year's Eve specials, you'd find politicians, authors, sports stars...
I always thought this was a distinguishing Canadianism. You don't see people in the States begging for the chance to be objects of comedy, you know?
So the Air Farce was predictable, rather staid, and definitely tame. Comedy has pretty much passed the troupe by. Today's fare like Two and a Half Men and Family Guy would have been considered obscene when the Farce debuted on television in 1980; while names and faces change, a viewer of that 1980 show would have recognized and appreciated last night's broadcast. Which makes the Farce an old friend. It lost some of its spark when John Morgan passed away, but soldiered gamely on, packaging up the week's events into a half hour of simple comedy.
We went last year with friends to see it live, and really enjoyed ourselves. There's audience banter you don't see on TV, and watching the show unfold in front of you adds appreciation for the hard work the actors put in.
And it had its moments. The Chicken Cannon was something I looked forward to every year. Colonel Stacey ("some of my best friends call me Teresa") would march onstage and proceed to fire chickens at styrofoam portraits of really annoying people. The targets would disintegrate in a most cathartic manner. The person deemed most targetworthy would receive special ammo, the messier the better. Last night, Don Cherry's co-host Ron McLean got to fire off the cannon, filled to bursting with grapes, cherries, and a really ugly tie. (You have to be Canadian to get that, but trust me, it was hilarious.) The year's choice target was a portrait of Layton, Harper, Dion and Duceppe, spattered all to hell and gone with mud (for slinging), spoiled milk, "fragments of Jack Layton's mustache" and assorted other gunk.
It sounds cheesy--hell, it was cheesy--but, damnit, it was our cheese and I for one am going to miss it.
You betcha.
Tell me about it.
Oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah.
1 comment:
I hear ya, the new year is waiting for me in the morning and with two little ones, forget about it. I want to sleep.
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