Marty Younge is a Toronto based comedy journalist and a fan of all things stand up comedy. She’s in Montreal all week covering the Just for Laughs comedy festival.

I only brought two pairs of heels with me to JFL they are starting to wear thin. I refuse to don the uniform of utilitarian business casual so many other are rocking at JFL I stash some flats in my backpack and strut up to wherever I’m going. Nothing can break stride tonight tonight I am seeing The Patton Oswalt gala.

If you haven’t experienced a Just for Laughs Gala, then you haven’t really experienced Just for Laughs. And I knew that one helmed by Patton Oswalt would be a killer show.

Patton Oswalt is something of a folk hero. A niche comedian known for quick wit and slight absurdist tendencies, he was a comic who rose to fame over the past decade with slightly more angrier and nerdier sensibilities. After the sudden death of his wife Michelle McNamara in 2016, he has emerged triumphant over the that unimaginable sadness. With a more observational self actualized style, resulting in deeper laughs from a real place.

I had never seen Patton perform. For whatever reasons, plans had always fallen through. Yet tonight sitting in amazing floor seats at a Just for Laughs Gala, I knew it was all meant to be, and this was the way I was meant to see him perform. He looked great well rested happy and ready. A slight man with a massive presence. He kept the subject matter very light, riffing with playful energy; exploring the massive setting with the wonder of a drama camper in awe of the stage.

He set the energy for the night like someone who knows how to host an important evening; how to share.

Tight polished sets from Laurie Kilmartin, and Pete Holmes followed. Pete has really grown on me this festival. Something has changed. He is cooler now, more real on stage, more trusting that an audience will like him. A highlight of the night came from Vir Das, who is a total killer and gave a magnetic performance that ranged from political nuance to word play. He used all of the stage to get some very funny points about religion across.

Randy Feltface is a trip to watch. He is a puppet which is one level of brain scramble. A puppet of a stand up comic, and yelling like a wild beast about the parts of his purple puppet life, in the purple puppet region of Australia. It cracked me up it’s so joyful and bonkers.

Around this time I just got blissed out. At JFL you have such a rush of constant laughter. If you don’t rush around too much you can let it wash over you, which I did, as Patton — special, wonderful, Patton closed out the night. I knew this show simply could not happen any where else on earth.

I floated down the grand red carpeted stairs back out into the big bad world out there.

Finding comedy in everything and everything in comedy.

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