Catching up

It's seems every couple of posts I claim that I'm back to blogging regularly. As I only just remembered I even had blog after a three year break, I'm not convinced I'll keep up a regular outpouring of humerous brain dumps. 

So without making any claims that this will be a weekly or fortnightly thing, there have been a few things that have happened since my last blog and I thought I'd catch you up:

1) We had a baby - but he isn't actually a baby anymore. He's a 'big boy' now. I'm sure there will be more details in future posts but let's be clear, I don't actually like babies. I love my baby and I don't wish other babies any harm. But you definitely won't ever here me talking about how much I love babies. 

2) We bought a house. This was mainly driven by having a baby. We decided to buy a house with a garden. Something we couldn't afford to do in the inner city, so we now live in the suburbs... I miss inner city living but living where we do now has some advantages. Convenience after late night drinking binges isn't one of them. 

3) I haven't been out much since having a baby. So the convenience issue mentioned above is rarely an issue. This point isn't an update on what I've been doing since my last post, more of and admission of an omission from my life. 

4) I don't do stand up comedy any more. Again, mainly due to point 1 but I really haven't missed it. Turns out I liked being on stage but hated everything associated with being a comedian more. I got a proper job, earn more money than I ever did as a comedian and actually work a lot less than I ever did. Plus, the bank wouldn't have been as happy to give us a mortgage if I didn't have a proper job. 

5) Did other things that I'm sure we'll discuss later. 

Speak to you again soon... Maybe.  

Quiet Coach

So I am on the train again. I am, I think, quite an experienced train traveler. Most of all, I know what I want in a train journey - silence. Silence is by far the most enjoyable sound on a train. As such I take certain steps to encourage those around me to be silent, or as close to silent as one can expect without restricting their breathing. On this particular journey I booked a seat in the quiet coach, often the quiet coach is full of like minded people who expect silence. If this is not the case I have to take steps. I do everything that I can to avoid shouting SHUT UP!!!

Step one - display text books. This is often enough to initiate a short conversation about what I have the books for but this gives me the opportunity to explain that I want silence so I can get some work done. As much as I hate the awkward and stilted chitchat if it enables me to get some work done that is a win. Some people don't even require the conversation, they see the books and make the assumption that I want to do some work that's when general courtesy and common decency takes over and they SHUT THE FUCK UP.

If displaying the books doesn't work I have to rely on step two - a surly stare. Never underestimate the effectiveness of guilt. Guilt has been a powerful tool for getting shit done for a long time now. The catholic church for instance has fleeced billions over the years by guilting people into handing money over. Guilt created a country in the middle east and made me admit to stealing a bag of sweets when I was 8 years old... SHUT UP!

Given how effective guilt has been over the years it makes me wonder why guilt hasn't worked today. I am sitting here, I've got the text books in front of me and I'm staring like a surly superhero but I am still surrounded by a wall of sound. Why? The answer is simple - I'm surrounded by four old women from Kent. Selfishness is kryptonite to guilt and there isn't a more selfish force known like a retired woman from the home counties. SHUT UP!!

It's a complete lack of consideration for anyone around them that explains the behavior of these women. They actually had a conversation about how they were sitting in a quiet coach and how they were clearly going to annoy those around them... and then continued to natter. SHUT UP, SHUT UP, SHUT UP!!!!!

I will acknowledge that writing this blog and hoping that the woman next to me will read it may be the most passive aggressive thing I have done this year. I figure if I keep on writing SHUT UP in capital letters throughout this, she'll read it and get the message to SHUT THE FUCK UP... so far this hasn't worked. It's just not going to work. I'm going to have to say something, but how do you tell 4 women that the slack-jaw drivel coming out of their mouths conjures up phrases in my mind like 'justifiable homicide'.

...

Done. And by done I mean, I completely chickened out and since they definitely wont SHUT THE FUCK UP I'm going to watch a film on my iPad. What's the point?

Guilty as Sin

Forgive me father for I have sinned. It's been a shit load of days since my last blog and I'm feeling pretty guilty about it. Okay, I wasn't feeling that guilty until yesterday when a good friend reminded me that I hadn't posted a blog in a long time. I'm not sure what happened because I really enjoy writing a blog. I know it's low tech and that everyone is doing podcasts these days but it's the low tech aspect of it that I find appealing. If I'm going to do something I want it to be something that is already out of fashion... like a comedian actually writing a blog.

I don't know what's happened in the comedy world lately. Every comedian is doing a podcast. A couple of weeks ago I was a guest on a friends podcast and I've been asked to be on a fair few other friends podcasts over the last couple of months. Sure podcasts are easy to consume, I'm currently trying to learn French via podcast while I run to work each day, but are they really better for a comedian than the art of writing. Surely if you're going to write comedy for a living it's beneficial to occasionally write something down for consumption.

So I thought I'd give you a quick update on what's been going on since I last wrote a blog. The wife and I did a show together at the Adelaide Fringe Festival. It was great fun and we managed to sell out each night for the whole week run, which was a huge surprise to us both. This week we've been doing our tax returns and have tallied up our income and expenditure from the trip. We would have done okay from it except we couldn't drive to Adelaide like we'd planned because the roads from Sydney were flooded so we had to pay stupid money for last minute flights. Also we ate extremely well and often in fancy restaurants so we blew any chance of making a profit on food and wine. If you're going to work hard you should totally reward yourself by spending more than you earn. It's the attitude that has fostered a growing world economy for generations.

I have also just done my first solo stand up show. It was a 4 night run at the Sydney Fringe Festival. It was a great experience really and I need to thank all of my friends for coming along and supporting me. It took a few nights to work the show out and naturally I had industry people come to see it before I had got the show to where I wanted it to be but that's how the comedy industry works. What I found really odd about it was that since I knew a large percentage of the crowd I couldn't do any crowd work. One of my strengths is working through the crowd but that was removed from this show. It made the show harder by admission but also kept me from getting sidetracked and not finishing the show.

Originally the show had a introspective thread through it reflecting on my comedy career. By the second night I got rid of that and replaced it with a joke about a butt-plug. I realised that I'm a standup and I do standup. I find those honest and frank shows really wanky and I just couldn't sell it with any conviction. I tell jokes and by the end of the run that's what the show was, an hour of jokes. Just the way I like it.

Not a lot else is going on... oh yeah, the wife's pregnant. That's kind of a major thing that's going on in my life. It's due in January and I'm starting to get marginally weirded out by the whole thing. I guess future blogs (and yes there will be more) will talk about this in more detail but I can say that everything is going well. I can also say that I'm really happy the whole strange body transformation and carrying the unborn baby thing is happening to the wife and not me. It looks really hard!!

I've been doing some reading on this baby thing and books talk about how amazing the miracle of child birth is but it just looks really hard. There's a uncontrollable sick feeling and now the baby is constantly moving and kicking inside the wife causing discomfort and complaining. I'm just saying, better her than me.

I guess that's probably my first blog back. There will be more although I have a few rules with my new blogging focus. No editing. These blogs may on occasion not make much sense and that'll be because I won't spend hours editing and perfecting them. Sometimes i found that I'd spend too long on them and that discourages me from writing as often. I'm going to operate a more is more policy. So you'll see a more honest and more regular blog but with more grammatical errors and more incoherent ramblings.

Don't blame me. Blame my friend who guilted me into it.

Exercise is Boring

I'm sitting at home, the West Wing is on, the stove is on and I'm cooking some pasta. I have just hung up a load of washing and there is a strong likelihood that after writing this blog I will vacuum the house. This is my Saturday afternoon.

My wife has gone to the hairdressers and I am home alone. This is why my day is full of structure yet will ultimately end with very little actually getting done. This is what I do. This is not what I had planned. I should be doing some exercise right now. That's what I said I would be doing right now. But here is the thing - exercise is boring.

My wife and I spent this morning rehearsing for our show. Trying to remember lines is almost as boring as exercise but we're getting there. If anything I'm proving to be the weak link, in my defense I'm actually very good at delivering lines once I've remembered them, unfortunately I'm not very good at remembering them. So what I thought I would do was use my afternoon wisely and do some exercise because as soon as my wife gets home I'm going to have to do more rehearsing.

Which brings me back to my initial point, exercise is boring. I always feel better after exercising but it's all about the motivation to start the exercise that trips me up. I was going to go for a swim, but I would have been equally happy to go for a run. Just doing some exercise would make me feel like I've achieved something with my day. But the motivation isn't there because the actual exercise itself is boring.

Any exercise that I do today would be by myself and exercising by yourself is boring. Sure I can listen to my iPod (I probably wouldn't listen to my iPod if I went for a swim), but if I wanted to listen to music I could do that on my sofa and eat Doritos whilst doing it. Listening to music does make it less boring but it doesn't completely mask the fact that exercise is still boring.

What I don't want to acknowledge is that I'm nervous. All guys get nervous when they're in my position. We don't like to admit it and we won't talk about it amongst friends down the pub but this, right here, is as tense as a man's life gets. It's my nerves that is causing my lack of motivation. But why am I nervous? Because my wife is at the hairdressers!!

When your wife goes to the hairdressers one of two things is going to happen. The first option is that she goes and has a haircut but you don't notice the difference. That is a problem, you need to notice. Not noticing is wrong and not an option. Men hate change but, Ladies, there needs to be enough of a change for us to notice so we can comment on how nice the hair looks. Commenting that the hair looks nice is also the only acceptable response by the way, don't even entertain the notion of saying that it doesn't look nice. If you are a man who is contemplating saying that your lady's hair doesn't look nice I have one word for you - DON'T. Given that I already know she's at the hairdressers, and actually drove her to the hairdressers myself, it seems unlikely that I won't remember that she went to the hairdressers. I need to remember. I must notice.

The second option is a tricky one. This is what I'm sure I'll be facing when my wife gets home this afternoon. This is where there is a sizable change to the hair, either in colour or in cut. It's the not knowing that causes the stress. After a couple of days I'll get used to whatever she has done, men are adaptable that way. But she said that she was going to go from blonde to brunette. That's a lot of change for a man (me) to deal with in one day.

The thing is, it doesn't matter what her hair looks like, my wife will always be beautiful to me. But if this haircut sucks my beautiful wife will be upset, and then I'm going to have to make her feel better. That will involve romantic gestures and a trip back to the hairdressers at a later date to 'fix it up'. Then I'll have a whole day of stress again next week. So next weekend will suck as well, all because the hairdresser fucked up. No man can deal with 2 weekends in a row of haircut stress. Do hairdressers know how important they are? Do they realise the ramifications of their mistakes?

So you see, I can't exercise today. I'm a nervous wreck. I'm going to start drinking. Maybe if I'm asleep when she comes home it'll buy me some time. I'll figure out a plan... after the next episode of the West Wing.

Note: The wife returned an hour after writing this blog and her hair looked very different. I can happily report that not only did I notice this change but my wife is also very excited about her new hair colour. This really was the best possible outcome for everyone (and when I say, "everyone" I mean, "me"). By the following day I was used to the new colour and, apart from a minor hiccup in the supermarket when I couldn't find her because I was still looking for a blonde, life has returned to normal.

The Christmas Break

Hope you had a good Christmas break. Sorry about not writing for a while. I've been quite busy rehearsing for the Adelaide Fringe show my wife and I are doing. I've mentioned it before, it's called Mr&Mrs and you should totally come... or at least read about how it's going (when I get around to writing about it).

The rehearsals are going well. We've pretty much written it all now, although some minor editing is going on with every rehearsal. I'm not sure I'll remember all of the changes so there will be bits that we just have to wing. You don't get to do that when you're an actor performing someone else's work. But since we wrote it in the first place I guess we can screw it up as much as we like on stage and just pretend like we originally wrote it that way.

I find rehearsing so mind numbingly tedious. Given that we've got another month and a half of rehearsals ahead of us I'm super excited for all the fun I'm going to be having in February. It's a weird thing, you write it and you're proud of it, but the learning sucks. After you've actually performed it you get this sense that it was all worthwhile and you can't wait to start working on the next show... that's why I'm writing about it now - I want to remember what it's really like.

So, on a different topic, I was pretty surprised when I found out that the comedy industry pretty much shuts down over Christmas in Australia. I'm used to the UK when comedians make half of their yearly earnings in the month of December. So when I found out that for a month from the middle of December I wouldn't be working, I was understandably quite confused.

You see, the British love to drink. Christmas is a time to celebrate and a fantastic excuse for a drink. So since comedy clubs serve alcohol, the British love going to comedy clubs in December. Comedians, of course, hate doing gigs in December because the audiences are drunk twats. But the money goes up in December and there are more gigs so we do as many of them as we can in the hope that we can pay off the debt we accrued in August at the Edinburgh Festival.

This December I hardly did any gigs. It seems that in Australia Christmas is a time to spend with your family. I can only assume that this forced time with your family causes many to drink. They could be doing that drinking in a comedy club and I could be earning some actual money.

Now we're approaching the middle of January and the comedy clubs are starting to open back up again. I'm doing a gig this week, I'm MCing actually, and the audience will expect us to be at the top of our game. Lofty expectations given that the entire bill won't have gigged for at least 3 weeks. It'll be a gig of mistakes and missed punchlines. That's not to say it won't be a lot of fun, but it certainly won't be slick.

I spent half an hour this evening trying to relearn my own jokes. That's a weird time for a comic. Once you learn a joke you kind of take it for granted that you know it. But after a bit of a break it becomes something you need to think about. I get jittery when I haven't done a gig for a week, having not done a gig for a month is a very strange sensation indeed.

The other option of course would be to just assume you know the jokes and then work out you actually don't know it when you're on stage and halfway through the joke you can't remember the punchline to... I've done that before.

To recap, I'm currently learning jokes that I should already know and, simultaneously, I'm learning jokes that I wrote with my wife about our marriage. But tonight I'm writing about learning stuff that I should really be spending time learning. When will I ever learn...

The Emotions of Writing

Sorry I haven't written a blog for a while. I genuinely am sorry. I should have made the time and I feel guilty for not doing it. The problem has been I've been having too much fun. That's kind of how I am with writing. I write best when an emotion overcomes me.

I'm not the only comedian who's like this. Last night I was chatting to a comic who confessed he writes best when he's angry. I can totally see his point. I need different emotions for different types of writing.

I write my best standup when I'm angry or pissed off, or a combination of the two. Standup, for me, seems to come from a sense of frustration. An audience relates to that feeling of hopelessness when you can't seem to catch a break and a situation turns against you. Then they want to live through your anger or revenge, even if they know the situation is made up, because they want to hear about someone getting the upper hand in exactly the way they wish they had.

I write for TV and radio shows much better when I'm feeling poor. It's not that I don't enjoy writing for other people (it is a little) but I tend to lack any focus and discipline with my writing. When I need the money and can't afford to get fired for not doing anything, that tends to focus my mind and dramatically increases my output.

But to write this blog I need to be bored or in need of a distraction. Thing is, I haven't been bored lately. I've been having a lot of fun and I've had too many other things going on to distract me. That's not to say that you're not important to me too. It's just that the sun has been out and that means picnics and that means drinking wine. It's raining this week and so I'm writing this blog, and drinking wine. Wine is the constant in my life.

Professionally I've been really busy. I've been writing a show with my wife. It's called 'Mr & Mrs' and we're performing it at the Adelaide Fringe and the Sydney Comedy Festivals next year. It's about how we're both standup comedians and the strain this puts on our marriage. If I'm being honest we fight more when we're working together than at any other time in our marriage. So I haven't been able to write the blog because I've been writing the show and I've been getting yelled at. And you can't write a blog when someone is yelling at you, that just tends to make them yell more.

I've also been doing a few more gigs. It's been fun to get out there a bit more lately. I've been writing new jokes and stuff. It's always exciting when you do new material, it give you a real jolt of adrenalin. So I haven't been able to write a blog because I've been too self involved.

A little while ago I planted a little herb/vegetable garden and I've really enjoyed pottering about with it. I've been eating lettuce, basil and mint that I grew and that's made me stupidly happy. Also we got a new BBQ. This is a triumphant event in an Australian man's life. So I haven't been able to write a blog because I've been growing, cooking and eating stuff. And a well fed man is not bored enough to write a blog.

This isn't just a writing thing. A friend of mine admitted a little while ago that when he's on holiday he only takes photos when he's bored. He said that that's why his photos are always there dull scenery shots. It's because when he's doing something awesome and exciting he's too busy having fun to take photos of it. I always thought that about the people who always take photos of everyone when they're down the pub with friends. I never take photos of friends when we're down the pub because I'm enjoying the moment too much to interrupt the fun by taking a photo. These people spend a whole evening watching fun through a camera lens and have to look at the photos the next day to make sure they had a good time the night before.

So why am I writing this blog? Guilt. I felt guilty. It's not like I've had loads of messages from people asking me where my weekly blog has been the past few weeks. I've actually only been asked 3 times and given how many people I get reading my blog it's a little insulting that only 3 of you noticed I wasn't around. But I've felt guilty because I told myself that I would write this blog each week and as a lack of discipline in my writing is one of my many flaws I need to actually write each week.

So I'm back and I'll be back to writing this thing each week. Or at least until I get a new distraction, or I get yelled at. Given that the show is currently in the editing phase that's a possibility.

Don't forget to follow me on twitter: @counterproduct
And check out our website with details about the show and things:
http://counterproductives.tumblr.com

Pick Your Targets

I make my money from making fun of people. Sometimes it's not clever but it's what I do. It's not all that I do, on occasion I also tell carefully nuanced stories and comment on the struggle of life... but often I resort to making fun of people because it gets a laugh and that's what I'm paid to do.

That's not to say that I have given myself a license to make fun of everyone. Yes, for the record, I am in charge of issuing licenses entitling the holder to vilify a target of their choosing, what of it? Even so, there are certain groups of people that I don't make fun of, or if I do, it's not because of their association with that group.

For instance, I would never attack someone for being gay but I would point out if someone, who happened to be gay, was being a dickhead. Whatever the joke I made wouldn't be based around their sexuality but on their action that, I felt, made them seem like a dickhead. On one particular occasion I told a joke about a conversation I had with a gay person I knew. In the story I didn't once mention that they were gay because it wasn't important for the story/joke so I left it out. This didn't detract from making it funny but it did detract from making it mean. Maybe I'm old fashioned but if the audience doesn't have to work out if they're 'allowed' to laugh at something it allows them more time to actually laugh at something.

A few weeks ago I told a joke around the topic of anorexia. The joke wasn't about anorexia specifically but was about a woman who voiced her objection to the joke before I had told it. She was offended by the topic before I had finished the joke and my piece was lampooning her reaction. I took great care to avoid voicing any opinion or criticism of those suffering from anorexia for 2 reasons, firstly because I know very little on the subject and secondly because I don't think it's right for an ill-informed jester to poke fun at people suffering from a mental illness. But that's just my opinion.

Many years ago I was told that a joke that I did about a conversation with my then girlfriend (who later became my wife) was misogynistic and that, by implication, I was a misogynist. The joke was about a conversation with a specific individual who happened to be female and never once generalised the view of any gender or group. I hadn't stated or implied that my girlfriend's reaction was 'typical of women' nor anything of the sort. The only reason the audience knew her gender at all was because, by stating she was my girlfriend, it quickly addressed why we were lying naked in bed at the time, which was important to the joke.

The person who said this to me, who's gender is not important, told me that she (whoops) didn't like the joke and that I should change it because it was offensive to women. At the time it upset me and it still makes me angry that someone could construe that because of this joke that I was misogynistic. I think that it's just as offensive to avoid telling a joke about an individual because they are a part of a subset of society as if you generalise about the entire subset. I continued to do the joke because I thought this person was wrong and hey, sometimes women over-react (that's a joke - the author would like to state that both men and women are equally prone to over-reacting).

What i've noticed on the circuit lately is comedians telling jokes that are really mean and disparaging to people who have lowly paid jobs, simply because they have lowly paid jobs. People such as cleaners or staff in fast food restaurants. Again, not every joke that mentions these groups of people is offensive.

A friend of mine has a fabulous story about ordering food in a Red Rooster and the ridiculous events that followed. But that is a specific persons actions, my friend doesn't generalise and say that he did this because he is part of a group. It's very clear that the actions of the person working in the store are the actions of an idiot. Comedians can make fun of people who act like idiots, it says so on our license... which I issued.

What I'm saying is, pick your targets. Don't make fun of someone because they are a cleaner. There could be a thousand reasons why this person didn't become a brain surgeon and instead works the nightshift in the office you work at. To do so is insensitive and mean. But if that individual cleaner does something or says something that is funny then feel free to tell me about it.

I'm just a bit annoyed by people being mean to groups who didn't do anything as a group. If they act as a group then the can be judged as a group but if they act as an individual don't belittle them just because it's easier for you to be lazy and judge them collectively. A good example is the train drivers who work on the underground (tube) in London. They are often criticised by comedians as a group, but they also act as a group and take strike action as a group. It is their willingness to act as a collective that justifies them being judged as a collective. Of course you can judge groups as a whole but do it fairly. Another example, I don't think it's right to say that all Catholics are 'something' but I think it's entirely appropriate to say that the shared actions of the catholic church are hypocritical and harmful to humanity.

I'm not really sure what I'm getting at. I guess the hypocrisy of comedians annoys me sometimes. Comedians do some shit jobs to 'pay the bills' while they wait for their career to take off. It makes me angry to see a comedian on stage call someone a moron because they have a retail job when they themselves work in retail. I love comedy but let's keep it funny, too often people are mean because they're too lazy to write a better joke. It does get a laugh if you're just plain mean. There is a shock value that generates a laugh from an audience but that's lazy and you should aim to be a better comedian than that.

If you focus your jokes on your interaction with the person as an individual or an organised group it's harder. It takes time to find the personal twist that makes that interaction funny but it's also the way to write truly brilliant material. Pick your targets and lampoon away, make fun of the right targets as much as you want, I'll give you a license for that.