Improv U’s Adventure with Scouts Canada
I don’t even know how to start this article any better than just saying exactly what we did. Improv U (CBU’s finest/funniest/most offensive improv group) was asked to play a Provincial Scout’s Canada Jamboree at the illustrious Camp Carter! Of course, we immediately jumped at the opportunity to do thsi show, most of us being former Boy Scouts, most of whom went to Camp Carter many times. This would be our comeback to a thing we pretty much forgot about. This would be the greatest show ever put on by anyone. Ever. And we got pictures.
Here we see, at my house, our adventurous group of improvers getting ready for the greatest trip of our lives. Those precious few being: myself, Brent, Dave A., Christian, and Dave B. Wait a second... Christian wasn’t a Boy Scout... Though, he DOES have a car. So he was allowed to come along/drive! Also, notice that Dave A. had somehow fit into my Beaver vest from when I was 6. That’s impressive, sad, and frightening all in one!
For most of the drive there, we discussed various things we did as Boy Scouts, including ghost stories and whatnot. Also, we bickered about which troop was the best. 13th Sydney is okay, I guess, but 2nd Westmount is frickin’ awesome. Snooty, rich-kids at 49th Guelph? They suck. Totally suck. It’s basically just fat camp for rich Ontario kids.
Once we got there, we had to look the part, and of course all of us had our old uniforms (or at least parts of them. Except Christian... he had to borrow a shirt. Loser. Also, notice that I look like a hippie. Oh, how I wanna punch myself and then light myself on fire...
The theme for the Jamboree this year was “fantasy” though apparently that means only LOTR stuff. It was fairly consistent though... ‘cept some of the councillors got it confused with Captain Planet with his various rings. Weird. Anyways, we had to explore this strange fantasy world, mostly because most of us, while going to some Jamborees before, had never been to one this big.
Brent started us off by trying to tackle some kid. He missed, and the kid just looked confused, but ya just can’t get Brent down. What a happy fella!
On our quest through the camp, we got kinda lost, as all the places were fictional and poorly marked. However, we found our path quickly enough due to this complicated sign. And the fact that there was only one path through the whole thing... Very clever, Scouts... very clever indeed.
It’s a good thing there were absolutely no fires around anywhere (which I was surprised by... I also saw little to no knot-tying) because this was the only fire-station in the whole place. And it was the forest. With small children. Very clever again, Scouts.
Them trees totally got MO’D!
Eventually Kris showed up. He’s “special” because he got a “special” badge for something. Despite that, he couldn’t find us/didn’t know we were there, even though he parked right next to us. Evidently the badge was for... um... not looking... very hard. Yeah.
They totally had a castle there and everything. It was straight from Rohan...
... and so we stormed the damn place! We took all that was inside, which consisted mostly of logs, trees and a big tent tarp. Looked like a circus tent actually.
There were also giant puffins! The one CB stereotype I truly love is puffins, and we had them! They were wearing tartan tams and complaining about their shoes. How like them!
And there they are - the Scouts we would soon be entertaining... or would we...?
Actually, yes. Here’s me and Dave playing a game of “puppets” with a couple of Scouts moving us around. Right off the bat the whole audience got really into it. Of course, the Bullet wasn’t there to see any of this, as he’s never there for really good shows. He was probably off at a Guide sleep-over or something. Chump.
A game of Superheroes came next. Dave was almost offensive, and therefore just looked kinda weird. Oh well.
This is my favorite picture of the collection. If Dave had a golf-club right then, he would look exactly like Bob Hope with the USO. You know, assuming Bob Hope was a gangly, bird-faced dude.
We did 2 short sets (15 and 20 mins) around a local cover-band “Evolution.” They were pretty good, doing a lot of pop-punk covers and whatnot. I like old pop-punk (think old Blink and Green Day... not Simple Plan) so it worked. The highlights were: “Out on the road today I saw a Spyder sticker on a Cadillac...” - we were the only people there that got it. Zing. Another highlight was playing “Enter Sandman.” I didn’t know how we could top (for humour value) playing “Enter Sandman” outside at a Boy Scout Camp.
I should actually note here, that it’s not actually “Boy Scouts” anymore. It’s now just “Scouts Canada” as girls are now involved. Yet there’s no boys allowed in Guides. ‘Cept Bullet. He has a season pass. I don’t know what that means.
The guy with us in that pic is a leader named Al. He was the bachelor on “the Dating Game” with us. His options were a septic-woman, Paris Hilton, and a meatball. He went with Hilton.
For the second set, since it was quite dark (around 10pm out in the middle of the woods) the audience had to sit much closer to us. This was alright, as they were all there anyways from the band.
They got... different during the break. Now for almost every game they suggested both Jesus and Michael Jackson. It was now our typical crowd. And thus we broke Scouts forever.
After our set (which concluded with the audience chanting “Improv U! Improv U!” much to the shock of all of us) Dave was interviewed by the media. He is such a media-darling. You can hardly tell that he’s gross when you see him on TV.
This is Knuckles, and he was a fan of ours. He’s called “Knuckles” cuz he plays Sonic a lot. Makes sense. He got us to sign that shield, which was his troop’s team over the week (or something). We hung out with him for the rest of the night actually.
We were so taken with Knuckles that Dave actually gave him his very own hat! What a guy! Of course, what good is a hat from one of the Improv U. guys without a bunch of signatures on it? So, here we are on a search for markers to do some signing. We actually signed a crap-load of autographs that night. I think it was because we were taller than everybody else by at least 2 feet.
Finally, to cap off our trip to the Seal Island camp known as Carter, Knuckles made us official unofficial Riders of Rohan. The shield is in my room now and everything. I took it, cuz I’m the tallest, and thus I figured it was my right. Also, as I mentioned earlier, 2nd Westmount is awesome.
After leaving the camp, with many lovely memories and friendship cards, we did the only thing that made sense. We went to the casino. There we ate meat, and I won 20 cents. Of course I spent 75 cents. I’m a bad gambler.
The moral of the story is: if you misbehave enough times when yer in Beavers or Cubs, eventually they pay you to come back. Sweet.