All Hail the Bacon Over-Lord!

July’s installment of BattleCOM happened this Friday July 5th at The Comedy Nest. I always enjoy the late show at the Pepsi Forum, and I was interested to experience BattleCOM after having Paul Ash as my guest on Mobtreal’s Comedy Corner segment on “Upstage” on CKUT 90.3FM. The game show – style geek comedy battle of wits tackled the topics of: the apocalypse, wrestling, cartoons and aliens. As I walked in I was handed a card that was lime green on one side, bright orange on the other. The stage was being dressed with green and orange curtains, which both sported a proud BattleCOM logo. I didn’t really make the connection between the curtains and the cards until later, when we were asked to vote on our favorite answers by flashing green or orange.

From Left to Right:
Mathieu Lorain-Dignard, Walter J Lyng, Paul Ash, Tim Riel, Greg Hamilton, Jason Boudreau

It was a very small crowd, my theory is everyone was at Jazzfest or up north at a cottage escaping this crazy humid weather. We were greeted in Round 1 by the sexy “ring girl” Jason Ochs which had all of us cracking up with his catwalk. The first round was about “the coolest apocalypse”. The roster of competitors for the evening included (in order of appearance): Jason Boudreau, Greg Hamilton, Tim Riel, Walter J Lyng, Dan Derkson, Mathieu Lorain-Dignard (host of the French version GladiaCOM), and it was hosted by Paul Ash.

I was chuckling at the first two apocalypse scenarios, with Jason Boudreau in the green corner representing the “everyone gets their period” ending and Greg Hamilton in the orange corner with the “Mayan” argument. It was just like when I’ve seen a group of guys playing Tekken or Mortal Combat, eliminations in a 3 round style, cycling through the line-up for each topic.

Jason went on to face Tim Riel who bumped him out with his speeches about “the rapture” apocalypse, going on to face Walter J Lyng, who gave me a Hunter S Thompson (minus the hat and cigar) vibe and who had the audience on their toes with his creative entrances. Former BattleCOM champion Walter was assigned with the movie “The Happening” tree apocalypse scenario and knocked out Tim’s “Rapture” with the great line “Angels aren’t real, trees are real!” argument. Then came the intro of the Bacon Apocalypse with the booming Dan Derkson who rocked the house all night with his baconisms. Dan was maniacal and fun, saying things like, “How would you rather die?” and the confident “All hail the bacon over-lord!”. This round came to a end with Dan knocking out Mathieu Lorain-Dignard who battled well with his “title wave of female orgasms” apocalypse.

Paul Ash, Dan Derkson

Walter J Lyng, Paul Ash

As you can tell, it would take a fucking long time to do a play by play of the entire night, so here are some of my favorite quotes :

“I shaved the bat signal into my chest!” – Greg Hamilton

“Ladies and gentleman, he shaved the bat signal into his chest for this!” –  Paul Ash

“Wrestling is cool, moms are not!” – Dan Derkson

“John McLean’s partner would have to be the top of a building” – Tim Riel

and of course

“ALL HAIL THE BACON OVER – LORD!” – Dan Derkson (BattleCOM Champ!!)

All in all it was an entertaining night. The music playlist was jam packed with fun theme songs put together by morning cartoon enthusiast Matt Shury and there were raffle giveaways from Cross Over Comics and Skunk Magazine happening throughout the night. For an interactive taste of what BattleCOM is all about, check out the Battle Contest videos on the Battle-Com TV Facebook page. I guess the one thing that I’m wondering is: Will Jason Ochs become the permanent number promo girl for the next BattleCOM? Click HERE for updates on the next event!