Welcome to Fully Insured

FULLY INSURED

Stream-of-unconsciousness sketch comedy for (im)mature adults.

THE SHOW

Fully Insured’s seamless, non-stop train ride of eclectic ideas was a format devised for several reasons:

                           * It provides a killer pace for the show, a keen idea for comedy
                           * It doesn't allow the audience to reflect on bits that didn't work
                           * The boys have trouble with punch lines

With their stream-of-unconsciousness presentation style, Fully Insured breaks free of the "black out" structure of standard sketch comedy, allowing intuitive, concentric journeys through the show's concepts while providing a flexible platform for the maintenance of show-specific themes. And doesn't that sound like a lot of fun?

A BRIEF HISTORY, MOSTLY FABRICATION

Fully Insured was conceived in 2001 at the request of an entertainment booker at The Brunswick Hotel in London, Ontario. His idea to present live theatre in what was London's most infamously low-brow tavern was originally balked at by group founder Jayson McDonald, but then, later, embraced, for no reason whatsoever. The group, consisting of McDonald, Niall Cooke and Jeff Werkmeister, did a series of shows through the fall (or was it the spring?) to increasingly packed houses (twenty people) consisting of friends, colleagues, bar staff, malcontents, stranded Greyhound passengers and career drunks.

Several years later, Fully Insured has performed twenty different shows, written over two hundred comedy bits, earned two best-of-venue awards at The London (Ontario) Fringe Festival, and shot mirth into the eyes of literally dozens of people.

THE PLAYERS

NIALL COOKE is an actor and director heavily involved in London alternative theatre. He has received a Brickenden (London's keychain version of The Tonys) for his work in legitimate theatre, but has received nothing for his comedy but vague threats.

JAYSON MCDONALD is a writer, actor and director in London. He has received numerous nominations for shit, has won prestigious and not-so-prestigious awards for his work, and is best known for The Adventures Of The Boneyard Man, a live theatre series parodying "radio noir" from the thirties and forties, seen provincially on Rogers Television. No outstanding charges.

TYLER PARR, the "erstwhile" member of the group, is an actor currently living in Victoria, BC. He has appeared in numerous independent films and civil suits, and keeps threatening to return for the next Fully show. But where is he? Getting baked somewhere, likely.

JEFF WERKMEISTER, formerly the sexiest man alive, is an actor who sells combustible gasses. He was host of Rogers Television's "Daytime" program for a year, which meant that he always got the best apples at Valu Mart. He's also a cast member of The Boneyard Man and a fierce proponent of Truck Rights.

AARON YOUELL is a London-based musician and comedian who knew Jayson when Jayson was his manager at a toy store in a mall. Now Jayson's his manager in a comedy group. Jayson will always be his manager. As the "New Kid," Aaron plays most of the female roles.

SKETCHOGRAPHY

"The Fully Insured Hops and Barley Engine" Spring 2001
Niall, Jeff, Jayson
Our very first show at the fabulous Royal Brunswick Hotel on the rough periphery of beautiful downtown London, Ontario. Surprisingly well received, but it was late at night, and everyone was drunk. Included such imaginary culinary fare as "Bed And Breakfast" (the first appearance of Niall's troll-like character Rory), "I'm So Mad About My Hat Back There," "Deadeye Dick," the first "Emergency Operating Room" and "Psycho Furniture Warehouse," easily our loudest and most annoying bit.

"A Fully Insured Dating Service/A Fully Insured Organized Religion" Spring 2001
Niall, Jeff, Jayson
The Brunswick escapades continued, and for seventy-five dollars and two jugs of leftover beer we performed lovely slice-of-life dramatical vignettes with titles like "Masturbate Theatre," "Manly Man Full Body Wash," "The North American Trouser Snake," and "Johnny Penis and Susie Vagina." Bit crass, this one.

"The $64,000 Toe Stub/A Fully Insured Rock Opera" Summer 2001
Niall, Jeff, Jayson
The last of the great Brunswick performances. We needed a bigger venue! That's what we kept telling ourselves. We went out with a bang, introducing such soon-to-be-timeless classics as "Union Busters" (listed in the yellow pages under "parakeet food"), "Operation Kidney Transplant," "United States Of Chicken," "Electrozilla," "Emergency Crisis Compounders," and "Three Irish Tenors," a spine-tingling tale about water safety.

"The Best Of Fully Insured" Autumn 2001
Niall, Jeff, Jayson
A round-up of what we imagined to be our best material, presented for a rapidly growing audience at the late, lamented 123 King St. Included popular bits like "Spanish Love Poetry," "Doobie Dylan" and "Bed and Breakfast," but also included a hell of a lot of new material like "Acting," "Semi-Pro Darts," "Sexual Engineers" and "Hamlet Vs. Eddy Grant." Later, Eddy Grant sent us a letter which read: "I have a deep respect and admiration for William Shakespeare. He was a fabulous dramatist and master wordsmith. His works have endured through the centuries because they illustrate themes and ideas which are universal in scope, yet speak to the audience on a deeply personal level. However, I'm glad that you have conjectured that I would win in a sing-off with Hamlet. I've always thought that I would."

"Cramps Galore" Autumn 2001
Niall, Jeff, Jayson
Our first show at the late, lamented Bacchus Lounge (it's not us that closes down these bars...it's economics. Economics, goddamn it!). Included our first "Fine Art of Improvisation" sketch, which, in spite of its clever title, was entirely scripted. Also on the program were "Charades," "The Ass Mirror," "Attorneys At Large," and Niall's now-legendary "Hungry, Hungry Sharks," a nasty bedtime story told by an unhappy Irish mother who is determined to psychologically destroy her young son. Laughs galore! This was also our first march into Meridian Falls, a one-horse community that would become the meta-fictional context for a variety of material to come.

"Hot Spit" Spring 2002
Jeff, Jayson, Tyler
Around this time Niall was becoming increasingly frustrated with his brain, and so he decided to shop around for a new one. In his absence, we recruited a short young man by the name of Tyler Parr into the group. Having an energy completely, one hundred percent different than Niall's, Tyler resisted being hammered into Niall's shoes and instead opted to go barefoot. Tyler's introduction at The Bacchus Lounge saw him tromping through numbers like "Smack-In-The-Box" (from Spiteco!), "Let's Shut This Operation Down," "Police Diaries" (the first of our innumerable police brutality sketches), "The Run-Around," "CIA Brand Quality Acid," "Emergency Elective Surgery," and "Joachin, The Tactless Teen," our eulogy for the lost art of parenting.

"Eat, Drink and Be Scary" Summer 2002
Niall, Jeff, Jayson, Tyler
Our first Fringe Festival, in London, at the late, lamented Black Lodge theatre, former home of Theatre Soup and three black ring. Also our first four-man show. Tyler and Niall got along great (after the fistfight) and we exploded all over the Fringe. Timeless fare such as "Pure Sump," "The Antique Scat Show," (featuring way-too-real skid marks on gigantic underpants, courtesy of Niall's wife Michelle and the good people at Bovril, which elicited our first mass audience shriek of horror), "Pony Boy and Pony Master," "Public Masturbation," and "Summer of '86" (a nostalgic triptych about our wasted youth), won us a best-of-venue award and an additional show on Sunday in which fourteen shy senior citizens giggled nervously and applauded politely at the end.

"The Journeyman Experience" Autumn 2002
Niall, Tyler, Jayson, Jeff
Back to the Bacchus Lounge as a four-man troupe, we ripped through low-brow prole humour like "Good Cop/Bad Cop," "Ancient Rome-a-Rama: Caesar Conquers The Congo," "I'm Selling My Cabinets," and "Meathead and the Bologna." This was the first show we took up to the Grad Lounge at the University of Western Ontario. Good thing we took our audience with us, because the students have no interest in mirth, apparently.

"Superlatives Abound!" Winter 2002
Niall, Tyler, Jayson, Jeff
Our pomp and circumstance continued at The Bacchus Lounge in the winter, and many fine folks braved inclement weather to witness spectacular jocularity in the guise of sketch comedy. Sketches like "Jim Norton's," "Pantomime Fly Fishing," "Trash Bash," "When There Is No Air" (our first musical number, penned by Jeff and Niall), "After School Special: The Cat," "Interrogation," and "Goin' for the Jugular," had the audience smiling politely and buying drinks. The John Labatt Centre had just opened and brought with it Cher. Other wildly famous international acts would follow one after another, draining the population's entertainment budget, which would have disastrous effects for amateur losers like us.

"The Best Of Fully Insured" Winter 2002
Tyler, Jayson, Jeff
Niall's wild excuses continued unabated, and this time he was too busy to rehearse because he was "getting a hair weave." Bullshit! Tyler, Jayson and Jeff did a "Best Of" at The Bacchus Lounge anyway, remounting classic fare such as "Baby in the Scrum," "Emergency Brain Surgery," "Summer of '86," and "Public Masturbation." Niall showed up unexpectedly, and uninvited, to tear through a scorching version of "Hungry, Hungry Sharks" that brought the house down around us. There were no survivors.

"Explode Everything" January 2003
Niall, Tyler, Jayson, Jeff
Niall's parole officer allowed him to join us for a new show at The Bacchus Lounge inspired by the military-industrial sector's increasingly popular antics. Thinly veiled social criticism such as "General Panic," "Basic Training," "Meathead and the Bologna Dodge The Draft," "No War Today!" and "Ladies and Gentlemen, Your Salad Has Arrived," had folks arching their eyebrows, nodding, and wondering, "I wonder if the kitchen's still open." Later we took the show to The Spoke at UWO, for a group of kids who were too drunk to heckle properly.

"You're Never Serious When You Touch Me" Spring 2003
Tyler, Jayson, Jeff
So Niall found a brain he liked and made the necessary preparations to have it installed. Meanwhile, Tyler, Jayson and Jeff continued doing the same shit they always did, entertaining the masses with gems like "Cooper and the Boys," "Benny and the Jets," "The Tough Love Faith Healer," and "Disneyland." We got some great corporate sponsors for this one, including Phillip Morris, that gentle tobacco giant. Tyler was unhappy with this, and threatened to quit, and we threatened to beat him, and he relented.

"Different Kinds Of Wet Naps Vs. A Mouthwash Bath" Summer 2003
Tyler, Jayson, Jeff
We took our carnival of pain to the Thunder Bay Fringe Festival where we met laid-back California dudes, unbelievable man-lifting Australians, flamboyantly gay performance artists, generous club owners, fanged transvestite contortionists, self-obsessed stand-up comics, unhappy teens, lithe British dancers, Winnipeg Mennonites and the American women who love them, liars, rockers, police, hippies, and a fabulous woman who made plaster casts of her uterus and dressed them up in little outfits. We jumped off the rocks into a freezing lake (a miraculous event in Jayson's life, as he was forced to put aside his hydrophobia so as not to appear a wuss). We drank ourselves stupid on the steps of a gigantic church. We sat in our van, silent, the rain pouring down, contemplating packing it up early and making a run for it. We played in a gay bar about a mile away from the rest of the Fringe, a much-maligned edifice where they whitewash the homophobic graffiti off the front door every morning. Twenty-five people saw our show, which included "General Panic," "Antique Scat Show," "The Summer Of '86," "Charades," and "The Tough Love Faith Healer." It was actually a great show, we just couldn't get anybody to come see it. At the gay bar. On the other side of town. In Thunder Bay. The highlight of the trip was being dubbed "Biggest Bunch of Downers at The Fringe." Well, bite me.

"Moon Over Trenton, Here Comes The Ding!" Summer 2003
Tyler, Jayson, Jeff
Our London Fringe Festival entry was all about our trip to Thunder Bay, and it won us another Best-of-Venue award and an extra show. We were envied for our good fortune, because anybody who's in the know knows that Sunday afternoon at one is the absolute best time to do sketch comedy. Anywho, we chronicled our adventures with a through-line about a sketch comedy group doing a Fringe tour. Sketches like "Moose!" "California Dreaming," "The Four Chambers Of The Heart," "On The Edge Of Nowhere, With Nothing To Do and No Plans To Do Anything," "People's Republic Of China Festival Acrobatic Workers," "Lakefront CSI," and "The Only Gay Man in White River," were all built upon the bones of actual sensory experience. It's funny because it's a half-truth! This was the year The Lights Went Out Across North America. It hit exactly in the middle of The London Fringe. Factor in regular torrential downpours and a venue that would come to be known as "The Swamp," and you'll understand how Fully Insured's Fringe Tour-a-Ganza this year didn't quite measure up to our modest daydreams.

"The Musical Brain" Summer 2004
Niall, Jayson, Jeff
A whirlwind year passed before our eyes. We were the most popular malcontents on the local theatre scene, which meant that Fully took a back seat for a bit. Tyler, always emotionally distant but now more wistful than ever, decided to take his dog-and-pony act to British Columbia. He has since been in a number of films, and is doing well, but at the time we all rounded up our happy photographs of him and burned them, the tears streaming down our faces as the flames rose ever upwards, sending ashen memories drifting up to Heaven. But after a while Niall, growing more comfortable in his new brain, and Jeff, having exhausted his networking opportunities, and Jayson, more busy than ever before in his whole life, decided to get the unit up and running again. The Musical Brain premiered at the now-defunct Suz' Blues House. Again, another venue that everybody thinks we put out of business with sketches like, "The Return of Niall," "Fucko," "Emergency Penis Enhancement," "The Mysterious Cowboy," "Murder One," "Christopher Columbus Vs. Moby Dick," "Ram Power," "You Might Remember Me From When We Were Married," and "Jerome Loses a Sale."

"The Fully Insured Cash Grab-A-Thon" Autumn, 2004
Niall, Jayson, Jeff, Aaron w/special guest Vito D'Amico
Okay, so we decided we wanted to film our stuff like a TV show and put it on DVD and shop it around and shit! Still working on that. Meanwhile, we thought up a great way to start earning a grubstake: put on a show! Ha, ha, what a unique idea! And we'll do it at a venue that's still open, The Last Drop! We also decided we needed a gimmick to bring the folks out, so we recruited a new guy, Aaron Youell. He's a real baby-faced fellow, but as it turns out, he's actually a six-hundred year old undead lich. We didn't know that at the time. Aaron careened headlong into the proceedings, heedless of consequence, landing in sketches like "Love In An Elevator," "Blackwell Steel, Master Mesmerist," "Shit Liquid," "Aspheroin," "What Is This, And Why Is It On My Desk?" and "Soul-A-Thon 2004." Later, we asked people if they liked the new guy and they said, "yeah, he was fine."

"Attack Of The Crow People" February, 2005
Niall, Jayson, Jeff, Aaron w/special guests Mike Van Holst and Jeff Leeson
Jeff convinced Jayson that paying for a venue could be a good thing, so we bought a Saturday night at The London Music Club, a relatively new venue that turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to us. Lovely folks! Proper sight lines! Working bar! Good acoustics! Central location! Swell, swell. Crow People, with a War Of The Worlds type of story, was a narrative-driven show like Moon Over Trenton, and featured bits like "Wild Mountain," "Can A Man Give Another Man A Massage?" "Campaign Against Innuendo," "Inside The Dinner Theatre Actor's Studio," "2000 Bananas," "A Grown Man Naked, Crying," and "Corrode Your Way To Success!" A lot of people showed up afterwards, asking, "Oh, were you guys playing here tonight?"

"Making Money For Our Friends" April, 2005
Niall, Jayson, Jeff, Aaron
Channel Surfing was having a fundraiser for their new show The Underachievers, which featured Jeff in the cast, at The Arts Project. So we signed up and shared the bill with Channel Surfing and Sector 7G, and some rollicking local bands. Sort of a mini "Best Of," featuring a truncated version of Crow People. Sketches included "Murder One," "Caesar Conquers The Congo," "Can a Man Give Another Man a Massage?" "Inside The Dinner Theatre Actor's Studio" and "Escape From Wild Mountain." One patron was heard to remark, "You guys are the shit!" We hoped it would be the last time the word "shit" would be used to describe our work.

"Hateful Kittens" May, 2005
Niall, Jayson, Jeff, Aaron w/special guest Jason Dickson
Another narrative show at The LMC, featuring a nasty little feline called DIABLO! The Devil's Kitten. The audience sat mute and agog as we barreled through mind-blowing strokes of genius like, "Diablo vs. The Witchfinder," "Celebrity Crawlspace," "The Cultural Divide," "The People vs. Galaxurg, Destroyer Of Worlds," "Celebrity Meet My Gaze," and "Fully Insured vs. Ken." Then we all patted each other on the back and shared a lemon. After party at The Last Drop: Jayson's drunk again! Wheeee! Go, cat, go!

UPCOMING

"Get Your Head Off My Shoulder" Winnipeg Fringe, London Fringe, Summer 2005



	FULLY INSURED Stream-of-unconsciousness sketch comedy for (im)mature adults. THE SHOW Fully Insured’s seamless, non-stop train ride of eclectic ideas was a format devised for several reasons: * It provides a killer pace for the show, a keen idea for comedy * It doesn't allow the audience to reflect on bits that didn't work * The boys have trouble with punch lines With their stream-of-unconsciousness presentation style, Fully Insured breaks free of the "black out" structure of standard sketch comedy, allowing intuitive, concentric journeys through the show's concepts while providing a flexible platform for the maintenance of show-specific themes. And doesn't that sound like a lot of fun? A BRIEF HISTORY, MOSTLY FABRICATION Fully Insured was conceived in 2001 at the request of an entertainment booker at The Brunswick Hotel in London, Ontario. His idea to present live theatre in what was London's most infamously low-brow tavern was originally balked at by group founder Jayson McDonald, but then, later, embraced, for no reason whatsoever. The group, consisting of McDonald, Niall Cooke and Jeff Werkmeister, did a series of shows through the fall (or was it the spring?) to increasingly packed houses (twenty people) consisting of friends, colleagues, bar staff, malcontents, stranded Greyhound passengers and career drunks. Several years later, Fully Insured has performed twenty different shows, written over two hundred comedy bits, earned two best-of-venue awards at The London (Ontario) Fringe Festival, and shot mirth into the eyes of literally dozens of people. THE PLAYERS NIALL COOKE is an actor and director heavily involved in London alternative theatre. He has received a Brickenden (London's keychain version of The Tonys) for his work in legitimate theatre, but has received nothing for his comedy but vague threats. JAYSON MCDONALD is a writer, actor and director in London. He has received numerous nominations for shit, has won prestigious and not-so-prestigious awards for his work, and is best known for *The Adventures Of The Boneyard Man, a live theatre series parodying "radio noir" from the thirties and forties, seen provincially on Rogers Television. No outstanding charges. TYLER PARR, the "erstwhile" member of the group, is an actor currently living in Victoria, BC. He has appeared in numerous independent films and civil suits, and keeps threatening to return for the next Fully* show. But where is he? Getting baked somewhere, likely. JEFF WERKMEISTER, formerly the sexiest man alive, is an actor who sells combustible gasses. He was host of Rogers Television's "Daytime" program for a year, which meant that he always got the best apples at Valu Mart. He's also a cast member of *The Boneyard Man* and a fierce proponent of Truck Rights. AARON YOUELL is a London-based musician and comedian who knew Jayson when Jayson was his manager at a toy store in a mall. Now Jayson's his manager in a comedy group. Jayson will always be his manager. As the "New Kid," Aaron plays most of the female roles. SKETCHOGRAPHY "The Fully Insured Hops and Barley Engine" Spring 2001 Niall, Jeff, Jayson Our very first show at the fabulous Royal Brunswick Hotel on the rough periphery of beautiful downtown London, Ontario. Surprisingly well received, but it was late at night, and everyone was drunk. Included such imaginary culinary fare as "Bed And Breakfast" (the first appearance of Niall's troll-like character Rory), "I'm So Mad About My Hat Back There," "Deadeye Dick," the first "Emergency Operating Room" and "Psycho Furniture Warehouse," easily our loudest and most annoying bit. "A Fully Insured Dating Service/A Fully Insured Organized Religion" Spring 2001 Niall, Jeff, Jayson The Brunswick escapades continued, and for seventy-five dollars and two jugs of leftover beer we performed lovely slice-of-life dramatical vignettes with titles like "Masturbate Theatre," "Manly Man Full Body Wash," "The North American Trouser Snake," and "Johnny Penis and Susie Vagina." Bit crass, this one. "The $64,000 Toe Stub/A Fully Insured Rock Opera" Summer 2001 Niall, Jeff, Jayson The last of the great Brunswick performances. We needed a bigger venue! That's what we kept telling ourselves. We went out with a bang, introducing such soon-to-be-timeless classics as "Union Busters" (listed in the yellow pages under "parakeet food"), "Operation Kidney Transplant," "United States Of Chicken," "Electrozilla," "Emergency Crisis Compounders," and "Three Irish Tenors," a spine-tingling tale about water safety. "The Best Of Fully Insured" Autumn 2001 Niall, Jeff, Jayson A round-up of what we imagined to be our best material, presented for a rapidly growing audience at the late, lamented 123 King St. Included popular bits like "Spanish Love Poetry," "Doobie Dylan" and "Bed and Breakfast," but also included a hell of a lot of new material like "Acting," "Semi-Pro Darts," "Sexual Engineers" and "Hamlet Vs. Eddy Grant." Later, Eddy Grant sent us a letter which read: "I have a deep respect and admiration for William Shakespeare. He was a fabulous dramatist and master wordsmith. His works have endured through the centuries because they illustrate themes and ideas which are universal in scope, yet speak to the audience on a deeply personal level. However, I'm glad that you have conjectured that I would win in a sing-off with Hamlet. I've always thought that I would." "Cramps Galore" Autumn 2001 Niall, Jeff, Jayson Our first show at the late, lamented Bacchus Lounge (it's not us that closes down these bars...it's economics. Economics, goddamn it!). Included our first "Fine Art of Improvisation" sketch, which, in spite of its clever title, was entirely scripted. Also on the program were "Charades," "The Ass Mirror," "Attorneys At Large," and Niall's now-legendary "Hungry, Hungry Sharks," a nasty bedtime story told by an unhappy Irish mother who is determined to psychologically destroy her young son. Laughs galore! This was also our first march into Meridian Falls, a one-horse community that would become the meta-fictional context for a variety of material to come. "Hot Spit" Spring 2002 Jeff, Jayson, Tyler Around this time Niall was becoming increasingly frustrated with his brain, and so he decided to shop around for a new one. In his absence, we recruited a short young man by the name of Tyler Parr into the group. Having an energy completely, one hundred percent different than Niall's, Tyler resisted being hammered into Niall's shoes and instead opted to go barefoot. Tyler's introduction at The Bacchus Lounge saw him tromping through numbers like "Smack-In-The-Box" (from Spiteco!), "Let's Shut This Operation Down," "Police Diaries" (the first of our innumerable police brutality sketches), "The Run-Around," "CIA Brand Quality Acid," "Emergency Elective Surgery," and "Joachin, The Tactless Teen," our eulogy for the lost art of parenting. "Eat, Drink and Be Scary" Summer 2002 Niall, Jeff, Jayson, Tyler Our first Fringe Festival, in London, at the late, lamented Black Lodge theatre, former home of Theatre Soup and three black ring. Also our first four-man show. Tyler and Niall got along great (after the fistfight) and we exploded all over the Fringe. Timeless fare such as "Pure Sump," "The Antique Scat Show," (featuring way-too-real skid marks on gigantic underpants, courtesy of Niall's wife Michelle and the good people at Bovril, which elicited our first mass audience shriek of horror), "Pony Boy and Pony Master," "Public Masturbation," and "Summer of '86" (a nostalgic triptych about our wasted youth), won us a best-of-venue award and an additional show on Sunday in which fourteen shy senior citizens giggled nervously and applauded politely at the end. "The Journeyman Experience" Autumn 2002 Niall, Tyler, Jayson, Jeff Back to the Bacchus Lounge as a four-man troupe, we ripped through low-brow prole humour like "Good Cop/Bad Cop," "Ancient Rome-a-Rama: Caesar Conquers The Congo," "I'm Selling My Cabinets," and "Meathead and the Bologna." This was the first show we took up to the Grad Lounge at the University of Western Ontario. Good thing we took our audience with us, because the students have no interest in mirth, apparently. "Superlatives Abound!" Winter 2002 Niall, Tyler, Jayson, Jeff Our pomp and circumstance continued at The Bacchus Lounge in the winter, and many fine folks braved inclement weather to witness spectacular jocularity in the guise of sketch comedy. Sketches like "Jim Norton's," "Pantomime Fly Fishing," "Trash Bash," "When There Is No Air" (our first musical number, penned by Jeff and Niall), "After School Special: The Cat," "Interrogation," and "Goin' for the Jugular," had the audience smiling politely and buying drinks. The John Labatt Centre had just opened and brought with it *Cher. Other wildly famous international acts would follow one after another, draining the population's entertainment budget, which would have disastrous effects for amateur losers like us. "The Best Of Fully Insured" Winter 2002* Tyler, Jayson, Jeff Niall's wild excuses continued unabated, and this time he was too busy to rehearse because he was "getting a hair weave." Bullshit! Tyler, Jayson and Jeff did a "Best Of" at The Bacchus Lounge anyway, remounting classic fare such as "Baby in the Scrum," "Emergency Brain Surgery," "Summer of '86," and "Public Masturbation." Niall showed up unexpectedly, and uninvited, to tear through a scorching version of "Hungry, Hungry Sharks" that brought the house down around us. There were no survivors. "Explode Everything" January 2003 Niall, Tyler, Jayson, Jeff Niall's parole officer allowed him to join us for a new show at The Bacchus Lounge inspired by the military-industrial sector's increasingly popular antics. Thinly veiled social criticism such as "General Panic," "Basic Training," "Meathead and the Bologna Dodge The Draft," "No War Today!" and "Ladies and Gentlemen, Your Salad Has Arrived," had folks arching their eyebrows, nodding, and wondering, "I wonder if the kitchen's still open." Later we took the show to The Spoke at UWO, for a group of kids who were too drunk to heckle properly. "You're Never Serious When You Touch Me" Spring 2003 Tyler, Jayson, Jeff So Niall found a brain he liked and made the necessary preparations to have it installed. Meanwhile, Tyler, Jayson and Jeff continued doing the same shit they always did, entertaining the masses with gems like "Cooper and the Boys," "Benny and the Jets," "The Tough Love Faith Healer," and "Disneyland." We got some great corporate sponsors for this one, including Phillip Morris, that gentle tobacco giant. Tyler was unhappy with this, and threatened to quit, and we threatened to beat him, and he relented. "Different Kinds Of Wet Naps Vs. A Mouthwash Bath" Summer 2003 Tyler, Jayson, Jeff We took our carnival of pain to the Thunder Bay Fringe Festival where we met laid-back California dudes, unbelievable man-lifting Australians, flamboyantly gay performance artists, generous club owners, fanged transvestite contortionists, self-obsessed stand-up comics, unhappy teens, lithe British dancers, Winnipeg Mennonites and the American women who love them, liars, rockers, police, hippies, and a fabulous woman who made plaster casts of her uterus and dressed them up in little outfits. We jumped off the rocks into a freezing lake (a miraculous event in Jayson's life, as he was forced to put aside his hydrophobia so as not to appear a wuss). We drank ourselves stupid on the steps of a gigantic church. We sat in our van, silent, the rain pouring down, contemplating packing it up early and making a run for it. We played in a gay bar about a mile away from the rest of the Fringe, a much-maligned edifice where they whitewash the homophobic graffiti off the front door every morning. Twenty-five people saw our show, which included "General Panic," "Antique Scat Show," "The Summer Of '86," "Charades," and "The Tough Love Faith Healer." It was actually a great show, we just couldn't get anybody to come see it. At the gay bar. On the other side of town. In Thunder Bay. The highlight of the trip was being dubbed "Biggest Bunch of Downers at The Fringe." Well, bite me. "Moon Over Trenton, Here Comes The Ding!" Summer 2003 Tyler, Jayson, Jeff Our London Fringe Festival entry was all about our trip to Thunder Bay, and it won us another Best-of-Venue award and an extra show. We were envied for our good fortune, because anybody who's in the know knows that Sunday afternoon at one is the absolute best time to do sketch comedy. Anywho, we chronicled our adventures with a through-line about a sketch comedy group doing a Fringe tour. Sketches like "Moose!" "California Dreaming," "The Four Chambers Of The Heart," "On The Edge Of Nowhere, With Nothing To Do and No Plans To Do Anything," "People's Republic Of China Festival Acrobatic Workers," "Lakefront CSI," and "The Only Gay Man in White River," were all built upon the bones of actual sensory experience. It's funny because it's a half-truth! This was the year *The Lights Went Out Across North America. It hit exactly in the middle of The London Fringe. Factor in regular torrential downpours and a venue that would come to be known as "The Swamp," and you'll understand how Fully Insured's Fringe Tour-a-Ganza this year didn't quite measure up to our modest daydreams. "The Musical Brain" Summer 2004* Niall, Jayson, Jeff A whirlwind year passed before our eyes. We were the most popular malcontents on the local theatre scene, which meant that Fully took a back seat for a bit. Tyler, always emotionally distant but now more wistful than ever, decided to take his dog-and-pony act to British Columbia. He has since been in a number of films, and is doing well, but at the time we all rounded up our happy photographs of him and burned them, the tears streaming down our faces as the flames rose ever upwards, sending ashen memories drifting up to Heaven. But after a while Niall, growing more comfortable in his new brain, and Jeff, having exhausted his networking opportunities, and Jayson, more busy than ever before in his whole life, decided to get the unit up and running again. The Musical Brain premiered at the now-defunct Suz' Blues House. Again, another venue that everybody thinks we put out of business with sketches like, "The Return of Niall," "Fucko," "Emergency Penis Enhancement," "The Mysterious Cowboy," "Murder One," "Christopher Columbus Vs. Moby Dick," "Ram Power," "You Might Remember Me From When We Were Married," and "Jerome Loses a Sale." "The Fully Insured Cash Grab-A-Thon" Autumn, 2004 Niall, Jayson, Jeff, Aaron w/special guest Vito D'Amico Okay, so we decided we wanted to film our stuff like a TV show and put it on DVD and shop it around and shit! Still working on that. Meanwhile, we thought up a great way to start earning a grubstake: put on a show! Ha, ha, what a unique idea! And we'll do it at a venue that's still open, The Last Drop! We also decided we needed a gimmick to bring the folks out, so we recruited a new guy, Aaron Youell. He's a real baby-faced fellow, but as it turns out, he's actually a six-hundred year old undead lich. We didn't know that at the time. Aaron careened headlong into the proceedings, heedless of consequence, landing in sketches like "Love In An Elevator," "Blackwell Steel, Master Mesmerist," "Shit Liquid," "Aspheroin," "What Is This, And Why Is It On My Desk?" and "Soul-A-Thon 2004." Later, we asked people if they liked the new guy and they said, "yeah, he was fine." "Attack Of The Crow People" February, 2005 Niall, Jayson, Jeff, Aaron w/special guests Mike Van Holst and Jeff Leeson Jeff convinced Jayson that paying for a venue could be a good thing, so we bought a Saturday night at The London Music Club, a relatively new venue that turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to us. Lovely folks! Proper sight lines! Working bar! Good acoustics! Central location! Swell, swell. Crow People, with a War Of The Worlds type of story, was a narrative-driven show like Moon Over Trenton, and featured bits like "Wild Mountain," "Can A Man Give Another Man A Massage?" "Campaign Against Innuendo," "Inside The Dinner Theatre Actor's Studio," "2000 Bananas," "A Grown Man Naked, Crying," and "Corrode Your Way To Success!" A lot of people showed up afterwards, asking, "Oh, were you guys playing here tonight?" "Making Money For Our Friends" April, 2005 Niall, Jayson, Jeff, Aaron Channel Surfing was having a fundraiser for their new show *The Underachievers, which featured Jeff in the cast, at The Arts Project. So we signed up and shared the bill with Channel Surfing and Sector 7G, and some rollicking local bands. Sort of a mini "Best Of," featuring a truncated version of Crow People. Sketches included "Murder One," "Caesar Conquers The Congo," "Can a Man Give Another Man a Massage?" "Inside The Dinner Theatre Actor's Studio" and "Escape From Wild Mountain." One patron was heard to remark, "You guys are the shit!" We hoped it would be the last time the word "shit" would be used to describe our work. "Hateful Kittens" May, 2005* Niall, Jayson, Jeff, Aaron w/special guest Jason Dickson Another narrative show at The LMC, featuring a nasty little feline called DIABLO! The Devil's Kitten. The audience sat mute and agog as we barreled through mind-blowing strokes of genius like, "Diablo vs. The Witchfinder," "Celebrity Crawlspace," "The Cultural Divide," "The People vs. Galaxurg, Destroyer Of Worlds," "Celebrity Meet My Gaze," and "Fully Insured vs. Ken." Then we all patted each other on the back and shared a lemon. After party at The Last Drop: Jayson's drunk again! Wheeee! Go, cat, go! UPCOMING *"Get Your Head Off My Shoulder"* Winnipeg Fringe, London Fringe, Summer 2005 All site content Copyright 2005 Fully Insured