BANGOR – Is the Funniest Employee in Town still the funniest employee in town?

As a matter of fact, yes. In Eastern Maine Community College’s second annual Comedy Institute, 2004 Valedictorian Chris Quimby of the Bangor Daily News returned to defend his honor in the classroom comedy challenge.

With a classroom making up the funniest employees from some of Bangor’s cornerstone businesses and organizations, seven acts competed for top honors April 1 at Rangeley Hall.

“Dean of Comedy” Gary Crocker presided over the mayhem, teaching his class of clowns a thing or two about comedy by opening the evening with his own brand of Maine humor.

Warmed up with tales from the master, including Crocker’s moose-calling education from Gagnon the Frenchman, the audience got to know Tammy, a “single wide” (trailer) kind of gal peddling a line of Home Depot-inspired fashion, aka Cyndi Rollins of Sargent, Tyler and West; a badly behaved deck of cards whose kings and queens acted like commoners in a soap opera while participating in the slippery sleight of hand magic of EMCC’s own Bob Brown; and the adaptive style of life that crops up when relying upon Marden’s for home maintenance solutions as observed by Tyler Yeo, John Bapst Memorial High School senior, among others.

But in the end, even the really distasteful – and funny – cat behaviors recounted by last year’s returning salutatorian Dave Rode of Q106.5 couldn’t take Chris Quimby down off the mount of highest academic achievement.

Chris Quimby once again took the cake with passionate tales of his love for food, expressed in song, that drove him to fickle, indiscriminate relationships with various local restaurants. Plus, he doesn’t sing half bad.

How else to authoritatively judge such an event but with the real thing? The Hon. Margaret Kravchuk, William Anderson and Bruce Jordan provided the highest order judging based on a seven-category index, and, indisputably and with full agreement, deemed Chris Quimby the 2005 Eastern Maine Community College Comedy Institute valedictorian.