Comedian John Beuhler is no stranger to Whistler, and he's no stranger to strange Whistler moments.
"I did a little mockumentary for Global TV there when I was about 20. It was this terrible, no budget story with one cameraman about me moving from Pickering, Ont., to live in Whistler. I don't know what the heck it was for; I think it was the producer's excuse to hang out in Whistler," he laughs.
"They gave me lines, but they weren't worth remembering. I shudder to mention it, lest anybody track it down and blackmail me."
Then there was the time he had to be pulled off the mountain with a concussion.
"Lots of fond memories. I know Whistler very well," Beuhler says.
The White Rock native says his current standup material is coming from a new interest in evolutionary psychology.
Hmm, nothing to do with the concussion, eh? Is there much comedy in evolutionary psychology?
"Yeah, it's hilarious! There's, like, this scorpion-head fly and if he wants to mate he has to kill another bug and take it to the female. He holds it out to the female and as she eats it he has sex with her," Beuhler explains.
"And it takes 20 minutes for him to 'complete.' So he has to find a bug big enough that it takes her 20 minutes to eat it, and the whole time he holds on to the dead bug so she can't grab it and fly away.
"The parallel can be drawn with people who think they are so much closer to God, and when you look at it, it's all pretty basal. I look at the parallels of what we are, as opposed to what we think we are. There is plenty of funny in there."
And he's pretty safe from ordinary comedy dorks stealing his ideas about humanity's crises.
"It's kind of high-minded, but I like it," he says.
"Humans are in the middle where they're looking for spirituality, but it's all this Oprah garbage. We're in a transitional period that is tumultuous, and that's pretty funny. We're too smart to think we are magic and we're too dumb to know how everything else works. It's a kind of no man's land."
Beuhler, a winner of the Corner Gas Comedy contest and the Just For Laughs Homegrown Comedy Competition, is the second of five comedians performing each Wednesday until the end of February at the Crystal Lounge. He's on stage on Feb. 3.
The comedy night is hosted by Whistler comedian Jonathan Baum.
Other comedians include Damonde Tschritter on Feb. 10, Kathleen McGee on Feb. 17 and Brett Martin on Feb. 24.All shows start at 9 p.m. Admission is $10."I will definitely not go up there and talk about scorpion-head things, but I will definitely know where people are coming from, where we're trying to re-establish sex roles and men and women's frustration with each other," Beuhler says."I won't do entomology jokes."
