The Interesting Times

I was invited a while ago to talk about nerds on television on the pre-eminent Australian TV podcast, Boxcutters. My episode is up as of yesterday, so if you want to hear me talk about why I don't like The Big Bang Theory for around twenty minutes or so, give it a shot - and even if you don't like my ranting, you will probably enjoy Josh and John's weekly ruminations on all things television.

Also in TV: tonight's a big one for the ABC, as their new Wednesday night comedy line-up appears in full for the first time: In Gordon Street Tonight, followed by Woodley, followed by Outland. I am in one of these shows, for one night only - tonight! Can you guess which one?

No-one in my family ended up in any of the wars of the past century, as far as I know; they were always too young, or too old, or (in the very early days) too Irish. On the other hand, the one Italian branch of the family could have veterans in it. But regardless, today is a reminder of all wars, throughout time and place - specifically a reminder that they can - and should - be brought to an end.

I know I haven't been here for a while, and today seems an odd day to resurface. It's been hot (mid 30s!) in Melbourne, and I've been busy. My first proper stand-up spot in years turned out to be a pretty great tight five (that's comedian lingo for five minutes of very good material), and the character piece I performed at the same gig went down well too, though being in a suit in this heat in the small front room of the Brunswick Green, crowded with nearly 80 people... That was suffering for my art, I can tell you. Great to do some more comedy acting, though, and I'll be coming back. If you like political comedy, be sure to check out our room - Political Asylum is the name, and there's even a web site (there might be video footage of my spot on there, eventually!).

This week and next are full. I'm doing some extra training work for my main day job employer, which is good because I get to charge what I used to earn while training - and I need the extra cash for my upcoming trip to New York (I'll be in the US and Canada from November 23, and NYC from December 5 to 15). This does mean that, while coming down with some kind of throat infection and hayfever, I did a gig on Sunday night, then talking all day about Word 2007 on Monday, and then yesterday talked for half a day straight to a camera and then just a microphone about the evils of fast food (it was another education video job).

So, things are good, but I'm feeling a bit rough. This holiday will be just what  I need - assuming I can figure out exactly where we're going between our first few days in Boston and our last week and a half in NYC... (I'd like to do a circuit of Montreal, Toronto and Niagara, but I'm not sure it's practical.)

Oh, one last thing - I have a climate change related gig on November 20, at Trades Hall, titled Laughmageddon II: The Copenhagening. It's raising money for the ACF's "Towards Copenhagen" campaign, and I've been assisting the main brains behind it, Dan Walmsley, in giving it some shape. Should be a good mix of comedians presenting a comedy version of the "an inconvenient truth" presentation, so if you're free, come along!

The 2009 Victorian bushfires are the worst Australia has ever seen. The Age now estimates the fires may have claimed 300 lives, with weather conditions pushing the fires so fast, and not always in easily anticipated directions, that many people were caught in their homes before they could be warned to leave. I'm not sure how well or otherwise things were managed, but I do know these fires are not what even seasoned bushfire veterans are used to.

If you want to help, consider donating blood or money or both to the Red Cross Victorian Bushfire appeal. They'd prefer you to use the web site, though it was not coping with the load when I tried using it on Sunday. I have also heard that they have enough blood for immediate use but will need to replenish stocks in the next couple of months, so you needn't go immediately.

I've tried contacting the people I know in regional areas, but there aren't many I still keep in touch with; I hope all of you are safe. Here in suburban Melbourne, it all feels oddly distant. I spent Saturday safely hiding from the heatwave inside my house playing Fallout 3 - later, some of the scenes from Bendigo and Kinglake seemed indistinguishable from the post-apocalyptic Capital Wasteland setting of the game.

Meanwhile the UK is getting unusual amounts of snow, and temperatures here have dropped by nearly 30 degrees in a few days. Regardless of the cause, surely no-one can deny that our planet's climate is seriously  fucked.

It's been a busy few weeks as the sun peers down upon Melbourne for the first time in many months! But now Fringe is over, and with it, the first ever proper season of Set List, a new musical improvisation format with a great deal of potential. We only got near to realising that potential on the last night, though I still think the second show was very good, too. It was a product of not enough time spent on the right things, and there'll be a lot of words and discussion before I get involved with another season, but I hope we do bring it back and do it right.

I am proud of that last show, though, and of some of my improvised lyrics, including our very last song, a "We Are the World" style charity single which ended up being for that much forgotten cause, feline AIDS. My favourite line: "People think that cats get AIDS from havin' unprotected sex like mugs / but the truth is most cats get feline AIDS from usin' intravenous drugs". The refrain was also cute: "Get spayed, not kitty AIDS"...I like to think there was a little serious message mixed in with that frivolity.

This week is still busy, though; we've had a short cycle for this month's Anarchist Guild Social Committee, so we've been putting hard yards in rehearsing our arses off; its particularly interesting for me because, while I'm not performing in it much, I am directing this month's show, so in a way it'll be a more me show than usual... We'll see how it goes. I'm excited about our guests: we have Die Roten Punkte - who've been getting JJJ airplay! - and my old friend Scott Gooding, whose return to the stage in a one-man sketch comedy show, Eric, was nothing short of a triumph. Plus the usual Anarchist nonsense. For all the stress and occasional confusion, it really is a joyous show to be involved with.

The other surprising news is that I've had a bunch of corporate gig requests come out of nowhere - one for tonight for the CSIRO, one for Thursday at Melbourne Uni (which admittedly was booked six months ago), and one in December on the Gold Coast. The Gold Coast! I'm still waiting to find out how they heard of me up there...

But there's no rest for the wicked. Adelaide Fringe registrations closed on Friday, and at the last minute I had to say no to doing a tour at the South Australian Museum, since they wanted to charge me a hire fee, plus the cost of extra security, to use their space - it wasn't tenable with that factored into the budget. I should still be at Adelaide Fringe for the Anarchist Guild, though, and hopefully I'll still do another comedy tour here for Comedy Festival - and I've a new show, or maybe two or three, in the works as well...

So many ideas, so little time!

So,uh...I'm in the Herald-Sun today. Not in a small way, either; you can't see it on the web site, but my face covers nearly half the first page of their education supplement, Learn. It's a weird feeling that my first major media interview is in a paper I don't often read, but hopefully the exposure will do me some good. I do really like the photo.

I should also mention that, while I don't write here much (though I'll try a bit more often), I am now regularly blogging about at least vaguely science-related topics over at labcoatman.com.au, which now runs on WordPress. You can probably add it as an RSS feed if you want to read it here, but if enough of you would like me to I'll set it up to automagically cross-post.

I've watched a little of the Olympics over the past few days; I'm not much of a sportsman, but I did enjoy the women's volleyball, since it's one of the few games I've competed in myself (though not women's volleyball, obviously) and thus understand. I was rotting rooting (thanks Halo) for Poland, but China beat them - it was a hell of a match.

The other one I enjoyed watching was the archery, the men's team event, where Italy took it down to the wire but were narrowly beaten by Korea. The Korean women had won the team event too, and scored a world record into the bargain. It reminded me that I keep thinking every now and then I'd like to take up archery; I had a go a few times in my youth and rather enjoyed it. It seems like a very relaxing and satisfying sport, though I must say modern bows are even more elaborate than I remember, with counterweights on the front resembling one of those toy lightsabers that extends outward...

We all know I love dinosaurs. Hell, I was quoted about them in The Age. So imagine my delight to find on Facebook an event titled "Act Like A T. Rex Day", with more than 100,000 people signed up?

Of course, most of them won't be in Melbourne, but a few might be. And we've sold around 50% of tickets already. The last night is going to be huge!

Which means, of course, that I'm already planning the next few comedy tours...

Helen Razer's review is now online at The Age; let me know what you think.

Tonight I'm appearing as the guest Scrabble player for Scrabble Unscripted, the impro show where Scrabble words provide the inspiration. It should be great fun, so if you're looking for an impro fix, come on down!

Remember if you're coming to OBE this week that it's only on tonight and the weekend; Wednesday to Friday is the Museum tour.

So: it's a week in to the Adelaide Fringe run of A Record or an OBE. And it's been a bit weird.

For one thing, the audience reaction has been completely different. In Melbourne, the audiences laughed a lot; only a couple latched on to the drama and ignored (or failed to notice) the jokes. Here, our first two audiences were virtually silent. Sadly, this is when the Advertiser came, and it's painfully obvious from the two-star review that our reviewer didn't get any of the humour. Our numbers fluctuated but we managed half houses on average, which isn't bad. But without the little push from a good review - or any comments at all on Fringe forum talkfringe, despite our second night being full of people who got free tickets from the site - numbers are seriously low for next week.

It's not all bad news: the only non-Murdoch paper in town, the Independent Weekly, gave us a lovely review which was printed on Saturday; that, along with putting the show on the 2 for 1 tickets list, got us very good houses considering it was the Womadelaide weekend. I've been playing with The Crew, both in our "Short Order Impro" show (which has been getting steadily bigger crowds), and our team in the local impro competition "Clash of the Theatre Titans", which are both great opportunities to plug the show to large, happy crowds. (We won all three of the competitions, by the way; I got to play a "Thank God You're Here" style scene tonight as our prize, and it was great fun!) Plus The Fix has been looking for editorial content, and will publish a "Top Ten Goodies Moments" article I penned early this week, which is more good publicity.

This city is weird, though. The people are largely lovely and very kind, but the city itself has multiple personality disorder. It's been beautiful: the Northern Lights exhibition, part of the International Arts Festival, is an awe-inspiring installation of art projected onto public buildings. (One of my favourites was the fossils, mostly trilobites and fish, projected onto the Museum - though that's also a reminder that I'll be leaving just before palaeontology week!)

On the flip side, the city's also trying to kill me. It has been stupidly hot every day this week, with the Mercury staying consistently above body temperature. The clear skies explain the heat during the day, but I'm still weirded out by how hot is stays at night. (Our venue The Fridge is very ironically named: it's not the actual fridge, but what seems to have been a loading bay. Unlike the rest of the factory floor there's no insulation or ducting in the roof; it's just a brick box with a tin roof. We've abandoned the jumper and jacket and we're doing the show in rolled up shirt sleeves.) It's also a long way between places, and I've discovered my shoes aren't quite the right size for hours of walking in hot weather...

I have seen some great shows, though. Mostly comedy, stuff I've missed previously or won't get to see in Melbourne, but today I saw Under Milk Wood performed by Guy Masterson with my friend Janine, and it was wonderful.

One week to go!

I know I more or less promised a part two to the last installment, but I've been busy. I will commit that story to screen, though, and soon. But the reason I'm here is more pragmatic.

I've finally got a YouTube video up of one of my shows; it's a 51 second clip from my play, A Record or an OBE, and I think it's a good funny moment that showcases the show well (even if the video quality isn't amazing). I've embedded it below; if you like it, please stick it on your own LJ, your blog, web sites, wherever. There are two seasons of the show coming up, in Adelaide and Melbourne, and the more publicity the better!

More news soon. Promise.