- WINSTON SILL/Freelance Photographer
Christopher 'Johnny' Daley and Donald 'Iceman' Anderson at Caribbean Christmas Crack-Up held at Hilton Kingston Hotel, New Kingston on Sunday December 26, 2004.
Tanya Batson-Savage, Freelance Writer
THE CARIBBEAN Christmas Crack-Up at the Hilton Kingston Hotel on Sunday was a long, though funny event. The night of stand-up comedy featured comedians from Dominica, Trinidad, Barbados and Jamaica and was hosted by Claudette Pious and Owen 'Blacka' Ellis.
Ice Man and Johnny were the first of the scheduled performers to hit the stage. In tribute to their days doing Half-Time Crack-Up, which introduced them to stand-up comedy, they took the audience down memory lane. First, they sent "greetings", a sketch which actually allowed them to touch some current issues.
The anti-deejay debate from England was brought out through that route, as one greeter declared "I'm sorry for all those deejays who cannot come back here, but it's just for a Beenie, Beenie time. But what can I say? The Bounty has unfolded. It's just the vybz."
TRIP DOWN MEMORY LANE
The trip down memory lane also included a touch of old advertise-ments and show tunes. The audience chimed in with talk of 'Miss Mattie big daughter' and yelled 'Thunder Cats Hoooo!' with vigour and sword hands pointed in the air in memory of the old cartoon. The duo also touched on the issues of "beggage" and its counterpart "soliciting", which is introduced by the line "license and registration please."
Franklyn Moses presented more than just laughs as he wound in some black consciousness into his set, which also celebrated Caribbean diversity. He explained that despite all the negative words associated by blackness, there was no black toilet paper because "Black people don't take sh-t from nobody."
Though his stint took in talk about sex, at that early point in the evening he used indistinct sounds and actions to indicate anything sexual, which was itself quite funny.
The sexual language would get quite bolder as the night wore on, culminating with Haddad's raunchy stint. Before her time came around, however, Mac Fingal took the audience from talk of crime in Barbados to orgasms. He explained that with the new rehabilitation policies the country had implemented resulted in more educated thieves. So, according to Mac Fingal, a thief would introduce himself by saying "excuse me. How you doing today? I'm a robber", while a rapist may state, "I'm not one of those guys who take women out on dates."
FUNNIEST BITS
Mac Fingal would again turn to the issue of rape, producing one of the funniest bits for the evening when he advised against rape, advocating purchase instead. He suggested that if the young man had made multiple attempts at purchasing but had not yet received the desired sexual encounter, at that point he should "take matters into (his) hands." At first there was only a little laughter, but at the true meaning of what he said trickled around the room the audience erupted.
The first Trinidadian of the night, Errol Finnegan, went from describing his flight in to his first job as an actor, through to taking swipes at Monica Lewinsky and Lorena Bobbet. He too kept the sexual content light, as he detailed his recent encounter with extra-marital fluff (his renaming of the vagina).
Donna Hadad took a no holds barred approach to her sexual content breezing through topics such as strip searches, child birth, homosexuality, anal sex, lousy men and the trials of sex with a pot-bellied man. The night ended with Ity and Fancy Cat, who drew largely from their repertoire of relationship jokes.
