Column Chronicles: Questionnaires, Skip Mozart, comedian

Questionnaires: Skip Mozart, comedian

Frank Cotolo
June 12, 2025

Each year we send out a Questionnaire to semi-celebrated people. We ask them to answer the same questions (with some exceptions). Our third for 2025 was completed by Skip Mozart, ballerina.

What makes you happy?
I smile ear to ear and sometimes ear to elbow when people laugh at a bad joke. Makes me feel superior to all comedians and immune to ear infections.

What trait do you admire about yourself?
The one that makes me see serious things in a funny way. I do a bang-up bit about failed heart surgery that makes people - especially those surviving heart surgery - crack up.

What is your favorite type of joke?
The ones that make people laugh. Duh. Seriously. But also void of comedy, I like jokes that are tight and well-phrased and never use adverbs.

What is your greatest resentment?
Hecklers. I want them taken away to be drawn and quartered or worse oil painted and halfed.

On what occasion do you lie?
Every joke is a lie. Every attempt at using language to make people guffaw, giggle, chuckle, cackle or chortle is a device. Like using a thesaurus to add similar words when one will do.

Orange or apples?
I don't accept the choices. Screw them both.

Who are your favorite comedians?
Dead Classical Music composers. Their compositions are music to my ear. In fact, music to both my ears. Especially Mozart. That's why I changed my last name from Beyerwitz to Mozart.

How would you like to die?
Any way as long as it's long after you do.

When do you experience utter peace of mind?
Never. A mind at peace is a mind surrendering to mediocrity.

Did you ever laugh so hard you got a hernia?
Is that a joke? You trying to do comedy? Not funny. I take hernias seriously. My fathers, all three of them, died of hernias.

Frank Cotolo can be found hosting the talk and interview programme Cotolo Chronicles. You can send him an e-mail at this address: frank@148.ca.