In the lead-up to Sad Mag’s epic com­edy night, Laugh/Cry, on March 16th, which is TOMORROW (!), Sad Mag published a series of inter­views with some fine and funny people. Our comic line-up features some of Vancouver’s most notable, potable comedians. But when the interview pressure is on, who really delivered? Hereforto: the Best of the Best…

Best “Why I Became a Comic” Story… Alistair Cook!

Darren Li: Is it true you had a spon­sor and were plan­ning on becom­ing a pro­fes­sional snow­boarder, until you broke your leg? 

Alistair Cook: I was a young man in high school [and] I took drama instead of phys­i­cal edu­ca­tion when I was in reha­bil­i­ta­tion, and found that act­ing gave me an excit­ing adren­a­line rush equal to the rush I expe­ri­enced while snowboarding.

Best Inauguration into the print pages of Sad Mag… Tegan Verheul!

Carmen Faye Mathes: How were you involved in Sad Mag’s Glam­our Issue?

Tegan Verheul: I got to be in a real cool photo shoot with some of my favourite local come­di­ans and they made me look much pret­tier than I do in real life. You can’t tell, but I’m wear­ing a corset and it hurt so much that any time I laughed I also cried.

Best Quin­tes­sen­tial Van­cou­ver moment… Ivan Decker! (as told to Maegan Thomas)

I was walk­ing through Gas Town on the way to Water­front sta­tion. It was a cold rainy day in Novem­ber. Tourists were tak­ing pic­tures of the steam clock and the 12 o’clock cruise ship horn that sounds like the open­ing chords of “O Canada” could be heard over the hus­tle and bus­tle of home­less peo­ple ask­ing for money to look after the cars of peo­ple park­ing and cab dri­vers honk­ing at every­one and everything.

I had just pur­chased a 16 oz Amer­i­cano from an inde­pen­dent cof­fee shop and scoffed slightly as I walked by Star­bucks with my unmarked cup proudly dis­played in front of me. As I arrived at the steam clock I became annoyed by the amount of peo­ple block­ing the side­walk to pho­to­graph a rather unre­mark­able out­door grand­fa­ther clock. I decided to try to avoid the crowd by dart­ing in between a tree and a line of news­pa­per boxes fea­tur­ing var­i­ous pub­li­ca­tions con­tain­ing pop cul­ture non­sense and sudoku puzzles.

As I stepped on the metal grate that cov­ered the tree roots I real­ized very quickly that painted metal coated in rain water didn’t exactly have the trac­tion to sup­port my cur­rent speed and direc­tion. Before I could make any math­e­mat­i­cal adjust­ments to my travel how­ever, I hit the ground so hard that every­one around stopped what they were doing and looked just in time to see me throw my pre­ten­tious cof­fee across the street, nar­rowly miss­ing a bike courier. I quickly apol­o­gized to every­one and attempted to untan­gle my head­phones from my scarf as I hur­ried away to get on the sky train with­out pay­ing for a ticket.

It was embar­rass­ing at first but then I real­ized I’m prob­a­bly inter­net famous on some sort of Korean “Fail Blog” equiv­a­lent.

Most enviable future plans… Andy Kallstrom!

Carmen Faye Mathes: What are you most excited about right now?

Andy Kallstrom: Gen­er­ally: That guy who wants to send a retired cou­ple to Mars.

Per­son­ally: There’s a good chance I’m mov­ing to Eng­land soon.

Best use of organic consumables in a comic role… Rachel Burns!

Jackie Hoffart: If the com­edy of Rachel Burns was a bas­ket at whole foods, what would be inside?

Rachel Burns: I’d say there would be some com­fort foods – maybe a chick­pea curry; some­thing that will make you feel secure and also full but not stuffed. Def­i­nitely an item with incon­gru­ent pack­ag­ing, like tofu with a pen­guin on the out­side. A dented egg­plant that you kind of feel sorry for, but not enough to send it back. Some­thing you’ll never actu­ally use but you bought impul­sively, like a giant bag of organic pine nuts. Dried beans that you’ll never get around to soaking—even though you promised your natur­opath you would do it, over and over again.

Best rendition of an audience seduction… Cameron MacLeod!

Maegan Thomas: What’s Cam MacLeod expe­ri­ence?

Cameron MacLeod: At the return of the HERO show I opened the show by seduc­ing the audi­ence with Roses, cheese­burg­ers and shots of Blue Alize to the song “Thinkin bout you” by Frank Ocean. That’s about as close to the Cam MacLeod expe­ri­ence as you can get.

…and finally, dare we do it? Funniest response?! Let’s ask the audience: Who do you think deserves to take the cake?