Guy Montgomery

JFL42, Toronto ON, September 25

BY Julianna RomanykPublished Sep 26, 2018

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Guy Montgomery knows you have a short attention span. Why? Because he is as addicted to his phone as you are. He jumps between the same three social media platforms for hours on end. The only way he can write his standup is by leaving the house without any technology on him and locking himself in a café. He even makes a point of practicing "sleep hygiene," which is when you don't have any screen time in the last hour before you go to bed.
 
In order to keep our scattered brains focused and prevent us from wondering how much of the show was left, Montgomery did the most logical yet ridiculous thing he could do: he brought a massive clock on stage. At any time the audience wanted, we could check how much of the show was left, but we didn't feel the need to very often. With Montgomery's novel New Zealand accent and his love of the silly simple things in life, time flew by.
 
The greatest laughs of the night appropriately came from Montgomery's love of speed. His bit about how all the people who have tried to beat the time for the fastest boating speed of all time "are now former people" was hysterical. Likewise, his joke about how Usain Bolt goes faster than the speed limit around schools was amusingly smart.
 
Montgomery also had some unique observations about the crazy brunch prices in Toronto, the lonely nature of moving to New York, and what it's like when an American realizes he's from New Zealand. They were all engaging jokes, but ultimately Montgomery's closer was what brought the show to a triumphant close: insisting that he was actually Wanda Sykes doing an impersonation of Guy Montgomery, he acknowledged his privileged perspective as a straight white man with equal parts of cheekiness and pure absurdity.

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