barrington | Entries tagged with update

I'm home from the Fringe Awards. My venue, the lovely Caz Reitops Dirty Secrets, won Best Venue. Friends of mine won awards too. But the thing that's keeping me up writing this is that my show, A Record or an OBE, scored a high commendation from the judges in the Comedy category.

See you all soon. I'm going to sleep the sleep of the fucking awesome.

Stuff is happening!

I have moved into my new house. Once the furniture is arranged correctly and the shed of doom (which might contain something the Antique Roadshow would be interested in, and possibly has within its bowels a piece of the one true cross) is emptied to make way for a bit of surplus stuff, it will become the comedy geek bachelor pad of the ages. Yes, I'm living with two of my best geeky comedian mates, and it's working out splendidly.

I also have a show coming in the Melbourne Fringe, and several other projects on the go, though sadly both TheatreGames Live and Planet Nerd have finished. Hopefully Planet Nerd will return next year, but we'll see. I've just recorded a demo of a short musical (not my own work) about Walter "Icepick" Freeman, notorious lobotomist; that will be performed in even more truncated form in the 10-minute play festival Short & Sweet in December.

That, though, is after my current major project, the first under the banner of Shaolin Punk, which I always intended to be the name of my theatre company when I got around to making some theatre. Well, here I am, and my first project is A Record or an OBE, a "what if it all went horribly wrong" story set in 1975, in which Graeme Garden and Tim Brooke-Taylor have to cope with Bill Oddie having given them the arse to become a rock star.

Guess which of the remaining duo I'll be playing?

I do have another comedy gig coming up, a fund raiser for the RMIT Fine Arts photographic exhibition. It's called Punraiser and it's on September 19 at Roxanne Parlour in the city. Should be a great night out, the line up includes some of my favourite comics.

Current Mood: excited
Current Music: Dream On - Fisher

...bet you were wondering when I'd use that one, weren't you?

Life is back to being busy again, so it's time for me to pimp my next gig: Not the Nobel Prize.

This is a collaboration between the Melbourne Museum and the Comedy Festival to celebrate Science Week, and I'm very chuffed to have been asked. Four comedians will question four scientists in an attempt to determine which of them is presenting a real scientific concept, and which are making stuff up. I'll be on the comedians side along with some big names in comedy - Tommy Dean, Cal Wilson, and - wait for it - Sue-Ann Post! Should be a metric truckload of fun for fans of science or comedy, and if you like both, well, then it'll be a kilotruckload of fun - that's three orders of magnitude more fun!

It's on August 24 at 7pm, with a second show at 9pm (though I think that one's yet to be confirmed). I am but a humble entertainer in this enterprise, so if you want to come you need to book - I don't think it's a big theatre. Tickets are $12/$10, and the booking number is 13 11 02.

I finally saw Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, and most everything people have said about it is true. I can't believe people failed to tell me Natalia Tena (Nymphadora Tonks) is so attractive. It's been a while since my last celebrity crush.

I have moved into a house. A house, I tell you! With my own room and everything. I'll be sharing with two friends of mine, and yes, it will be a house of bachelor geeks, though I am quick to advise we are the chic kind of bachelor geeks with roguish good looks, biting cynicism and a collective wardrobe that puts Jarvis to shame.

So Planet Nerd (which is now also

planetnerd) went to one of the launches of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows on Saturday. It wasn't the biggest one; indeed, it was possibly the smallest one. But it was the one with a real Ford Anglia, and Cath Jamison (magician), and lovable mayor John So presiding over the opening of the first box of books, accompanied by "Acting Minister for Magic" John Thwaites (Victoria's deputy Premier).

Now, this is an extraordinary event: hundreds of people (thousands across Melbourne, very probably) coming out on a cold morning to line up to be the first to buy a book. Not to see a movie, or get concert tickets, or buy a new game console - to buy, and then read, a book. There were kids as young as eight there, all dressed up and excited, and some of them had read at least four of the books - not bad considering they hadn't been born when the first one was published. No doubt many of them were there because they knew that if they didn't get their hands on a copy and read it in the next week or so, all the unresolved mysteries - who died, who was evil, who found redemption - would be spoilt in the over-abundance of information that flows into our lives via the media.

So imagine my horror when I realised that the first thing John So did, on getting a copy, was to flick to the last page and read the final paragraph. Aloud. There was a kid standing right next to him who had won the honour of opening the box in a competition; there were at least thirty people within earshot. We got this on camera, though thankfully So wasn't on mic at the time and so I couldn't hear him and you'd have to be listening on purpose to make it out on the recording. This kind of stuff isn't supposed to happy in real life, where there's no spoiler space.

Lovable Lord Mayor John So is, therefore, clearly an evil mastermind, and we intend to expose him for the nasty man he is on this week's edition of Planet Nerd. 10pm Thursday, Channel 31, or via the usual electronic methods. (Don't worry - we'll protect you from all spoilers.)

Current Mood: outraged

Ah, hangovers...I had forgotten thee. Thank you brain, for remembering to drink water last night, otherwise I might be worse off than just a thumping headache. My mortality is firmly re-established. I am sitting on a mate's couch as I type this, having crashed here in the aftermath of a party for what must be the first time in a couple of years. Also good to know I can still flirt up a storm; pity she had a boyfriend, but it's important to practise. My mobile phone battery is flat, and the host and his lady have gone out for breakfast with her parents, so use someone else's Internet time until they return.

There's some good stuff coming up for Planet Nerd. Indeed, there has been some good stuff on it recently. If you don't live in Melbourne, or can't get C31 where you are (and if you haven't tried for a long time, it's worth doing so again - they had a bigger transmitter set up in the last year or so) you can now see us online not just at planetnerd.tv but also in glorious video podcast. You can subscribe via iTunes or, if you use some other podcasting solution™, there's the full episodes feed (be warned, each episode is around 300MB) or the segments feed (still quite big, around 50MB each).

And, hey, just to blow my own trumpet (fnar), I am featured in the July issue of Australasian Science magazine as the monthly "cool scientist". Shame there's no mention of my web site or Planet Nerd in it, but still, you know. I'm on the way.

Sorry I'm not on here much at the moment; my Internet access is mainly through work at the moment and its been too busy for much goofing off. You'll all know when I get a new place though, because I'll be too excited to contain myself.

I didn't get a chance to write about it on here, what with moving in the intervening five days between being told and the event, but yesterday was the last Impro Sundae for The Crew. I've been with them over a year now, and I've always been immensely proud to be part of a team that have produced a weekly impro comedy show consistently for more than six years...and now it's over, with hardly any notice from management and so no time to organise a proper send off. It's very sad...but while it may be the end of Impro Sundae, we will return with a regular show somewhere, sometime.

But in happier news, tonight I will watch, with the usual suspects, the last two episodes of series three of Doctor Who. I am excited. I mean, Utopia's main plot was nothing special, but that last half...? Derek Jacobi as...well, as you-know-who, assuming you do? Awesome. And of course I won't do more than vaguely allude to what happened after, but hot damn.

I've had The Sound of Drums in my hot little hands for a week - and not watched it. I've managed not to spoil myself for it either. Or the last episode, about which I know bugger all except that it's 51 minutes long. It's...well, how much television can cause this much excitement? In my case, almost none. Doctor Who's effect is magical. I mean, come on - anything that can make me take leave of my reason and cause me to watch Torchwood must be putting the 'fluence on me, surely?

Current Mood: mixed

This is pretty much just a reassurance post: I haven't been shot, and I work quite a few blocks from the shootings that happened in the Melbourne CBD this morning.

Just in case I'm the first place you're hearing about it, and you want to know more, The Age article is pretty comprehensive.

Take care all.

Current Mood: busy

Man, sometimes, I just get obsessed with getting something done. Sometimes this is appropriate. But even so, I did not plan to stay up until 5am two nights ago. I'm still recovering. Even my ability to function on little sleep can't handle three hours.

But still, I stayed up last night to watch some DVDs with some friends, something I hadn't done for quite a long time. We watched one of Mick's favourite films, My Favorite Year, starring Peter O'Toole (magnificent) and Cousin Larry from Perfect Strangers (I could give you his name, but really, would you recognise it?). It was a great film, and I found my anglophile prejudices showing when I found myself surprised that this American comedy, produced in the early 80s, managed to pull out some moments of quite sophisticated comedy amongst the otherwise fairly broad (but nonetheless excellent timed and thoroughly enjoyable) schtick.

I was planning to have the guys watch Planet Nerd with me, but alas, the only television available had only digital reception, so Channel 31 was beyond our reach. I was rather excited to discover that we have a Wikipedia entry, though considering it was created by the programme's creator, there's a fair chance it'll be deleted under Wikipedia's rules against self-promotion. That didn't stop me from correcting a link on the page, or adding us to the template for Channel 31 shows, of course...

Don't forget, too, that if you're an impro fan, Theatregames LIVE! starts on 31 tonight, featuring The Crew's very own Janelle Koenig. I'll be appearing later in the season, around week seven.

And I just want to say, I'm not terribly sad that The Sideshow is being given a rest by the ABC so they can play series three of Doctor Who. Especially when the new series of Doctor Who has kicked seven kinds alien arse, one horrible two-part story excepted. The last couple of episodes - another two parter, adapted from one of the original novels written during the time the show was off-air - were particularly excellent television.

Now, Channel 10, see how I talked about that without giving anything away? Unlike your ridiculously over the top promotional campaign for a certain Torchwood programme? It'll be interesting to see how it rates, and it's also interesting to note that it's playing on 10 around the same time (though not directly opposite) as the new Doctor Who. Coincidence? Or deliberate, smart move? You be the judge.

Contact lenses are weird. Especially when your prescription is something like -3.5 (for astigmatism, my short-sightedness is minor and my long-sightedness in the other eye apparently more or less insignificant), and the highest prescription you can get for trial disposables is -2.25. So everything is much clearer, but still not quite right. I'm not sure I like how they feel on my eyes, either; I'll give them a few more wears for proper testing, but I'm still tossing up whether to get them.

Now, others (hi

p_cat!) have already pointed out that Alan Jones has been axed from Channel 9's Today programme (The Age), but I think the worrying thing is that the spokesperson refers to him as "a voice of authority and an integral player in the setting of Australian's news agenda". How does someone come to wield influence that, rightly or wrongly, can be described in such terms? He's not a statesman, or an expert in an important field, or an established leader of a community. He's just opinionated and aware of public opinion - at least where it strongly agrees or disagrees with his own. That's my reading, anyway; but then I thought for years he was Alan Jones the racing driver, whereas he's actually an ex-rugby (union) player. The list of his offences is long, though, and an account of any background or experience that justifies his exalted media position (at least in Sydney) is severely lacking.

It's a little reassuring to know that he only made it as high as number 78 on the Reader's Digest list of Australia's most trusted public persons, though he's just in front of Julia Gillard and five spots ahead of Bob Brown, which is less comforting. Still, I'm heartened to see several doctors and scientists in the top 20. (Not that I take the whole thing too seriously; the 100 mentioned were the only ones asked about, to "a representative sample of 750 Australian adults" who ranked their trustworthiness out of 10. Still, John Howard was rather lower than Kevin Rudd or the other politicians I mentioned, so perhaps that's pleasant support for the possibility of "annihilation"...)

I love numbers assigned to random properties. According to the analysis behind the cut, my "weirdness level" is 22 (lower than the LiveJournal average of 27) and my writing style is "intellectual". It's fascinating; there's even a pie graph!
( Do you want to know more...? )

Current Mood: contemplative

A while ago I complained about how my glasses were broken and I needed new ones, and that frames were expensive. Well, I solved that by buying an $80 pair of frames on eBay. Now I've put them in to have lens fitted, and let me tell you, severe astigmatism is a bitch. I can't complain much really - after all, my eye problems are entirely correctable with glasses - but I still have to get specially ground lenses, and they're going to cost me around $400. The optician also warned me that they can't guarantee any work done with the frames, since they were bought online. I guess we'll see if I just blew $400 on lenses that will destroy my new cheap frames. (They seem sturdy enough, and though they're a little small, they're very comfortable.)

As for contacts, well I've decided to give them a go, for performance if nothing else, but again, standard disposable ones don't come in my prescription, so I have to order specific ones. Given I want disposables (they're cheaper and easier to deal with in terms of hygiene, and I'm only likely to wear them a few times a month anyway), the base cost is at least tripled - they're more expensive to start with, and the minimum order is double for ones that aren't off the shelf.

Still, once I get the new glasses, I can send my old ones off to be repaired, because the good news is my prescription hasn't changed.

This post is not terribly deep, but it should bring y'all up to speed:

The Crew's sixth birthday will be celebrated this Sunday with an Impro Rumble! Come and cheer me on. Please? 5:30pm, at the Comic's Lounge. The usual drill except it will be an improvised battle royale and yours truly is in the running. If you only come to impro once this year, make it this weekend.

After two months of screwing things up and occasionally blaming me for said cock-up, I have finally been paid by one of my employers for work I did back in March. Only they've double-paid me, and now I have to go through the hassle of figuring out how to give the money they accidentally gave me back. Perhaps I should have said nothing and seen if they worked it out.

Probably moving very soon - haven't had any luck finding people to move in with me here once Darren and Emma leave. Got a few more tricks to try this week, but after that I'm out of time and will need to start looking.

Several possibilities for more science-comedy work have come up; nothing concrete, but all interesting.

Make sure you get good Channel 31 reception (and if you haven't tried for a while, tune in again now) - I'll be on two shows there in June/July, Planet Nerd and Theatre Games LIVE!

I have so far managed to avoid buying a PlayStation 2; I don't really have the time to play, as much as I would like to. But now I find out that Guitar Hero III is coming, not only with a Gibson Les Paul style controller, but with songs including Sabotage, Knights of Cydonia, School's Cult of Personality and...The Metal. By Tenacious D. It will be harder, but I shall continue to resist.

I like series three of Doctor Who a lot. Except for the Dalek two-parter (I like to pretend it didn't happen), every episode has at least been fun, and several have been great. Fan opinion tends to disagree, of course, though this is notable because I thought the last series was a lot worse. And now I'm looking forward to the next two-parter, Paul Cornell's Human Nature/The Family of Blood, which is based on a novel he wrote. Could be a corker. I'm excited.

Current Mood: tired

So the 2007 Melbourne International Comedy Festival is finally coming to an end. I say finally...I was kind of enjoying it. I mean, some things were less than ideal. But I've had a successful run of my show, appeared in multiple other places, and had a whole mess of fun.

Life will soon go back to something approaching normal. Probably. But then again, I have more plans. And the Fringe Festival is only five months away...

In the meantime, I will be trying to catch up with people. There will probably be various social invitations coming your way. I'll rest a while, and try and reconnect. And maybe even write some more stuff in here.

For now, let me just say that performing my show to a room mostly full of year six students, with a few teachers, parents and older students in the mix, was an experience I won't quickly forget. The best question was from the girl who asked "Is your hair real?" Some older rake up the back then had to ask, "Are you real?" Somehow I managed to avoid any kind of existential crisis over that one.

The Festival is consuming my life at the moment, but thankfully, there are some awesome upsides in the works. For starters, here's a date for your calendars: on April 21st, as part of Trade Aid, I'll be performing as part of BirdHouse, a tribute to the songs of They Might Be Giants. How cool is that? I'll be singing up there with Scott Edgar (of Tripod), Casey Bennetto (of the Drowsy Drivers), Tim Minchin (of Tim Minchin), Geraldine Quinn, Andy McClelland... It's going to rock! And it's all for charity: the proceeds benefiting the Asylum Seekers' Resource Group.

I bet you can guess one of the songs I'm going to sing. Go on, give it a shot. I'll give you a clue: someone else is doing Birdhouse in Your Soul.

Oh, and yeah, I have to do an obligatory plug: Science-ology is still on until April 29th. Plenty of tickets left at this stage, though if you want to come on a cheap Tuesday, you better book or buy tickets in advance, 'cos those nights are selling like hotcakes. (This coming Tuesday is already just about sold out.) I'm also performing with the Crew in Classic Impro Sundae (I'm hosting next Sunday, the 15th, at 8:30), Instant Order: Trial by Audience (had my first one last night - it's a great fun format), and Instant Musical Odyssey at Triple Trouble (got two of these coming up next week). Check out the Crew's line-ups for details!

Current Location: A net cafe in the city
Current Music: Cake - I Will Survive

My life is madness, but it's a good kind of madness...just like Impro Sundae! (Yes, yes, you all saw it coming, you're very clever.) This Sunday I am hosting the show, so come on down and watch me conduct the impro comedy monkeys into some kind of simian symphony of chaotic hilarity. Come on, say it with me: 5pm, the Comic's Lounge, this Sunday, every Sunday.

The busyness in my life can be summed up in five words: six weeks until Comedy Festival. If you'd like to buy tickets to my show, Science-ology, you can already book 'em online at Comedy @ Trades. And my hot tip for the Festival? Trades Hall is going to be the place to be.

Impro Sundae is free this Sunday. Just this Sunday. It's free. Two hours of top-notch professional improvised comedy for nix. Take as many people as you want. Just go. It'll be grand. Great lineup this week: MC Matt Elsbury directs the comedy madness of Adam Vincent, Adam McKenzie, Janelle Koenig, Benne Harrison, Scott Steensma, Andrew McClelland and of course Dan Walmsley on keys. Be there. 5pm, Sunday, Comic's Lounge, North Melbourne.

On an unrlated but surreal note, I feel like I have been living in a Richard Curtis romantic comedy since Friday. I am surprisingly relaxed about the whole thing. I'll let you know how it goes.

Current Mood: happy

So last weekend there was some roleplaying convention on in Melbourne, and yours truly brought a film crew to the party. It's all in aid of a pilot for a geek culture variety show, and I'm told we got 5-10 minutes of gold material at the con, which will not only be respectful but downright idolatry about the whole thing. For me, the highlight was my Top Gear-esque moment, hefting a lifesize model of an Ork shoota for the camera and describing the kick it would have if real. I mean, hell, if that's presenting for television, I have refined my calling in life and will be working all the harder to get a Lab Coat pilot off the ground (though I found out the ABC have given Dr Karl and Adam Spencer some money for a television program, so it's possible I may have waited too long).

I have a few other projects on the boil right now; it's an exciting time to be the Man in the Lab Coat. Now, I just need to work on it also being an exciting time for Benjamin McKenzie, and I'll have it made...

Also, Impro Sundae continues. Every Sunday. I mean, I'll keep on saying it until people keep on coming. I'm playing this weekend, if that helps. You know the score: 5pm, Comic's Lounge, North Melbourne.

Current Mood: relaxed
Current Music: The Tra La La Song - Liz Phair and Material Issue

As any fellow eye-cripple will tell you, breaking your glasses is a kind of miniature apocalypse. It's not quite as bad when it happens through natural wear and tear, rather than your own ineptitude, but that also serves to drive home the point that you really ought to be using that insurance you get instead of birthday presents which allows a certain amount of cash for new frames and lenses every year. Even with a bit of gaff holding the arm on (thankfully both lenses are intact) I'm getting a headache; having one shortsighted and one longsighted eye together with fairly severe astigmatism means I'm very susceptible to the lens being at the wrong angle, and it is hurting a little (though less than trying to do anything without them on).

I've wanted another pair for ages, a secondary pair in a different shape, and my plan was to then transition to a new pair of primary round frames afterwards (see below for why). But after months of looking around in both OPSM style cheap places and expensive boutique stores, I've not found a single pair I like. Frames are subject to the fickle whims of fashion designers, but sadly, unlike other clothing and accessories, there aren't any indie companies making cool specs for those of us who don't like the current trends (a shame, since every major clothing label makes at least one pair - my newly broken specs were Converse All-Stars, and the ones before were Esprit). Neither are there factory outlets where you can find the good stuff that Joe Public rejected.

Circular frames like the ones I have (had) are rarer than hen's teeth around here, so I've been planning for a while to spend a bit of cash at RetroSpecs, an online frames dealer in the UK who specialise in, well, retro specs. The John Lennon/Harry Potter models (whose associations make it all that much harder for me to believe round frames are nonexistant here) are great, based on the old school simple NHS design (they're from Savile Row - do a search for SRround, I liked the ones with the hook arms), but at £137+ and in none of my preferred colours, I was dubious. Thankfully I've found another pair on the same site which are even better and only come in black, and they're only £97, which even with conversion and shipping is less than you can pay for decent frames here.

Still, that's a bit pie in the sky. The pay timetable is inconvenient this month (only one pay before rent is due), so I'll likely have to go with a cheap pair of frames as a workaround until I can save up for the real thing. Here's hoping that happens soon though, as I don't want to be wearing crap specs for my Comedy Festival photo shoot...

...or not. A massive power outage has apparently caused all kinds of chaos about the state of Victoria, including slow trains (not they need this kind of excuse, but 20-40 minute delays are something new) and the traffic going mental as people try and do hook turns without the benefit of traffic lights. Strangely my building - or at least my floor and/or office - is unaffected. Looking down on the city traffic is somewhat freaky, though I was pleased to see some kind of negotiation of turns at the nearby intersection of Lonsdale and Russell.

If you're in the city, be careful going home, yeah?

Current Music: Queen - '39

So I'm back from Mia Mia, which is where I went camping. There are some crappy photos, mostly crappy because I left my camera at home and we were taking them with mobile phones, so I'll probably not post them anywhere. Suffice to say it was relaxing and quite refreshing to get out of the city for a bit, though as seems to be the trend for my trips outdoors I managed not to be flayed alive by solar radiation until the last minute, in this case the final trip up the hill to the cars with the last load of equipment. How I managed that despite wearing sunscreen and a broad-brimmed hat I'll never know, but I guess my feeble sun tolerance will always find a way to strike me down. Even now I feel toasted, even on parts of my body that weren't exposed...and yet I'm only very slightly red. I guess it's good, otherwise I'd let my recent successful outdoors activities during daylight lull me into a false sense of invulnerability.

But enough of the curse of the ginger. I saw all the usual stuff you see in rural Australia, plus a few more grey kangaroos than I would have expected (one looked positively black), some goats (making trouble breaking through fences), and the happiest echidna I've ever seen. Oh, and some cows chewing on the bones of some dead sheep. Apparently they do it often, though usually its the bones of other cows; my minimal research suggests they do this not for Calcium, but for Phosphorus.

I also marvelled at the flora and the geology, of which I struggled to make sense. Lots of what looks like granite rocks strewn everywhere. The abundance of loose rocks in made more sense, at least in some areas, when I was told they used to mine Vermiculite there (I think that's right; it was certainly one of the things which, if it's low grade, they make into kitty litter). Despite enormous unexplained holes (I reckoned maybe a fox since it seemed too high up and too large for an echidna, the others felt maybe a wallaby) and mysterious late-night rock falls, I didn't see any bunyips or yowies either.

Current Mood: on fire (but okay)
Current Location: Brunswick, Victoria, Australia

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barrington

The Man in the Lab Coat

February 2012

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The Interesting Times

Entries tagged with update

It's anything you want it to be

A circus or a seaside pier

She blinded me with science

And here's to the health of each true-hearted lass

This is an outrage! Where are you taking me?

Vodka makes me happy, lager makes me mean

It's only the end of the world again

Tension / Too much to mention

I wonder should I get up and fix myself a drink

My brow is furrowed and my vision is blurred

For without his spectacles he appeared completely helpless

The Metal will strike you down with a vicious blow

And in the end

Not to put too fine a point on it...

But maybe from the madness something beautiful will grow

Like a bell that is ringing for me

Makin' up a mess of fun

My vision is so blurred / only you I see clearly now

You got the touch, you got the power

You better promise me I'll be back in time