I Can’t Act – Part 1

Last week I went to a casting for a TV advert. Unlike Bill Hicks I love the idea of doing an ad. They pay well and I don’t have any real moral objection to getting paid well. The whole idea of artistic integrity precluding comedians from doing adverts is laughable when we do gigs in RSL clubs where the only concession that is made to the comedy night is to turn the volume down, not off, on the rugby league match on the TV at the back of the room. At least when you spend a week filming an advert the focus of the day is on the advert. It would be nice to be paid to be more than just a distraction.

I got a phone call the week before from an agent asking me if I wanted to go for the ad. I said yes even though I knew nothing about the part. The time for the casting was set and confirmed and then I was sent a script and brief for what they were looking for. (Spoiler alert: they are never looking for me.)

The first thing I found out, yet after I had agreed to go to the casting, was that the role required a British accent. When I lived in the UK I would be sent to the occasional casting for a Fosters ad where I would be told in no uncertain terms that I wasn’t ‘Australian’ enough for the role. It’s borderline hurtful to be told by a 50 year old man in skinny jeans that you can’t do the accent from the country of your birth. Couple that with the numerous times that Australian audience members have been convinced that I was British and I thought I might be okay with the accent this time. Nope, I sucked. I was told that I sounded American. It seems that whatever accent you tell me to do I will unintentionally do something else. If someone told me to do an American accent I would probably end up doing the most convincing Nigerian accent going. I suck at accents!

As bad as my accent may have been, and it truly sucked, I don’t think it was the reason I am still to hear back from them. The problem was with the brief. I just didn’t fit. I never fit these things because they always ask for the same thing. They wanted someone who was ‘wacky and quirky’. They even specifically said that they were looking for a Noel Fielding type character. Well if you want a Noel Fielding type character, why don’t you just pay the money and hire Noel Fielding. I hear Noel Fielding does a pretty convincing Noel Fielding. I can also tell you that I have never and will never make a convincing Noel Fielding type character. I am not wacky nor am I quirky.

I gave it my best. I tried to pretend that the script didn’t blow goats, I tried to be enthusiastic and warky. See what I did there? I have creatively amalgamated the words ‘wacky’ and ‘quirky’ into a new word ‘warky’ because it’s the off the wall wankiness that Noel Fielding would do. Yet still I sucked. I was wooden and awful but on the positive side, had I been what they were looking for I would have to hate myself. The money would be nice though, if only I could figure out how to act. I haven’t lost all hope that they’ll call me back even though the filming is scheduled to start tomorrow, although I’m willing to concede that it’s highly unlikely.

So why is this Part 1? Because I have a feeling my inability to act will be confirmed on Wednesday night. After my tree like wooden performance I thought it might be interesting if I tried to learn how to act. So on Wednesday night I’m going for a 2 hour workshop on acting. It’s at an acting school and it’s free. The whole point of it is obviously to try to sell me on doing more acting courses but I figure I might get something out of it. I’ll either develop a love for the art of acting and decide to pursue it further or I’ll get 5 minutes of material about how wanky everyone there was… either way it’s a victory. I’ll let you know how it goes.

I Went For A Run

A day after the London Marathon I went for a run. Not a long run, it only took 12 minutes to complete it, but it made me feel good about myself. I haven’t been doing any exercise for a few weeks now. We went to Melbourne for the comedy festival and I’ve been busy writing and we’ve been going to see other comics and there have been things to do around the house and I’ve had to take the car to get work done and I just haven’t had the time to go for a run.

I haven’t felt like doing any exercise actually, I’ve just been too busy. I’m normally an exercise freak, I love going in the gym 4 or 5 times a week. I love looking good and feeling good. What I love the most is the self-righteous glow of knowing that because I’ve been in the gym everyday for the last year that I’m better than everyone else I know. I’m probably better than a large percentage of people I don’t know as well which is uber satisfying.

Being a comedian I would get to feel a little extra smug every time I went to a gig and realised how fat and unhealthy a lot of comedians are. How could they let themselves go like that? Sure they’re good comedians but let’s look at the big picture, the lifestyle is killing them. Late nights, fast food, hours spent sitting in cars. The lifestyle was making them fat. They were getting fat because on top of the lifestyle they were leading they weren’t exercising. I was and that made me better than them. I was certain of it.

So for the last few weeks I haven’t exercised and I’ve kind of missed it. While I was running I got to thinking (it was a quick thought as I wasn’t going to run around the block again) what could have been so important to occupy the time that I could have used exercising. The answer is simple. I was being creative instead.

I haven’t been as prolific in my writing since… ever. I have written pieces for a character I’m working on, I’ve written stand up, I’ve been editing a sitcom I’m working on and I’ve been writing these blogs. On top of that I’ve been out to gigs, meeting people and making contacts with agents and promoters. Oh, I also started planning my festival show for next year and began editing the Mr&Mrs show with Liz to take to next years festivals as well. I even went for a casting – I’ll write a blog about that later, it was a disaster as they always are.

This is why the fat unhealthy comedians are funny. They take the 10 hours a week that I’m in the gym plus the 10 hours a week that I lie around recovering from being in the gym and they work on their craft. They write, they edit and they speak to actual human beings. The people you meet in the gym are never inspiring human beings. They’re shallow, self-involved parodies of people. The good comics are more rounded both as people and physically.

Maybe Zoolander was wrong, perhaps there is more to life than being really really really good looking…

Tired

I’m officially tired… sorry for the delay in writing this blog but I’ve been busy. I’ve been to Melbourne to visit the Melbourne International Comedy Festival. Festival time is always a tough time for a comedian. There are shows and drinking and reviewers and drinking and audiences and drinking and other stuff and most importantly there is a little drinking.

The Melbourne festival is like all other comedy festivals in the world in that it has THE hangout that you totally have to go to. It’s normally a particular bar or gig that everyone who’s anyone goes to on a nightly basis to party. I shouldn’t go to parties as a rule anyway. This isn’t because I don’t like parties; it’s because every party has at least one absolute dick-weed that I always end up stuck talking to. It’s my own fault. I start talking to them by accident and after realising that they’re a dick-weed I like to see how long I can be flat out rude to them before they notice. Normally they don’t notice.

That’s the thing about a dick-weed: their immense ego precludes them from immediately thinking that someone thinks they’re a dick-weed. The larger the dick-weed the longer it takes for them to look past their ego and realise I think they’re a dick-weed. Luckily a comedy festival has enough ego on display for someone like me to be an absolute asshole to pretty much everyone without anyone thinking much about it.

I would love to tell you stories about how I told that untalented guy who’s on TV all the time how much everyone (and by everyone I mean me) hates him. But unfortunately I didn’t do that this time. I didn’t go to THE bar for the entire time I was there. I didn’t get involved in all of the ego stroking and drug taking. Instead I had a good time.

I sat down in a quiet hotel bar with a handful of my favourite comedians, none of whom are untalented nor are they on TV as often as they should be. We drank, not excessively but consistently. We went and had average Chinese food at night and a rather scrumptious hot chocolate during the day. We chatted about life. Sure we chatted about the festival and about each other’s careers but we cared about what the other person was saying and honestly asked for others opinions. Dull hey!!!

It’s not that I didn’t want to tell the dick-weeds that they were dick-weeds. I wanted to, a couple of times I was just drunk enough to tell them what everyone (and again I mean me) thinks about them. But I didn’t. I didn’t spend any time with anyone that I didn’t genuinely like. I have spent all day today trying to figure out why and I have just worked it out. I am at the same stage with comedians as my parents are with me.

There is a point in every parent’s life, and my parents are there now, where they realise that they no longer have to give a shit about the crap that their children are saying. Sure they’ll listen, but it’s clear that it’s not all going in. They still care about certain things but on a whole they have stopped pretending to give a shit about things that they don’t give a shit about.

That’s where I am with other comedians and people in general. Mostly I don’t give a shit about them. I have my friends and I’m making new friends with new people but only the nice ones. If you’re thinking, ‘we talk regularly it must be because we give a shit what the other person is saying,’ you’re probably right. I probably do care about what you say. Although I might not. It’s entirely possible that you’re a massive dick-weed. But luckily for both of us, you’re probably too much of a dick-weed to notice.

Google update:

I failed. I don’t know how you did but it wasn’t until writing this blog that I remembered I was going to avoid google and all search engines for a week. I don’t think I can do it. I avoided all the dick-weeds and dick-weeds tend to google themselves a lot so I guess I avoided a lot of google based ego… surely that’s a little victory.

My Last Bank Blog (for a while anyway)

It’s my 3^rd blog and already I was starting to wonder if I had it in me to continue with this blog writing mission. It can’t be a good sign to start getting the first twangs of writers block after only 2 scantily read blogs. I think the problem was that things were going okay and no one wants to read about someone telling you that they’re doing just fine. When things go fantastic you can’t write about it either but you don’t really care, because your life is fantastic and the people waiting to read your musings can go get stuffed. But when things annoy or amuse you, that’s when the inspiration flows.

I shouldn’t have been concerned. I live in a city with millions of people. That’s one of the benefits of living in such a populous place, inspiration is just a trip down the road away. Today’s particular trip involved a journey to the bank. I’m aware that my last blog was about a trip to the bank and I’m sorry but hopefully you’ll understand why I had to tell you about this.

It’s my fault. I went outside of my comfort zone and apparently outside of the banks comfort zone. I did something that I don’t think I’ve ever done before, I asked to speak to the financial advisor. The financial advisor and I have never really had anything to talk about before. A financial advisor normally advises you to put your money in some sort of savings or investment account where you can’t touch it and I normally advise them that I’m going to take my money and spend it. Probably on wine and chocolate, because deep down I’m a middle aged woman.

But today was different, given the financial turmoil in the UK and the imminent collapse of every UK final salary pension plan I decided to see if I could transfer my three shiny silver coins to a superannuation fund in Australia. This is something I don’t know how to do, so I went to the bank seeking advice from an expert.

Unfortunately for me, the expert was on holiday so I had to speak to the branch manager. When I first told her my cunning plan she didn’t immediately give the impression of being an expert at anything but she said she could help, and I’ve had a relatively dull week, so I sat down in the little office and waited for the advice to flow.

The advice didn’t immediately flow, instead she paused, and then reaching for the computer screen she turned it so we could both see the glowing beauty of the knowledge she controlled. This, I thought, was a good start. I liked that she was taking her time, building the tension. She obviously knew what she was doing. Apparently there was a source that would provide the answer to my simple little question and she was so confident that she had turned the screen for both of us to see her genius. But what was this magical oracle that was going to answer my pathetic little child-like problem… that’s right kids, she then opened up internet explorer, moved the curser to the address bar and typed in the G word.

She went to the oracle of Google. Right in front of me! Then she had the balls to wonder why I became surly with her. Society today relies on Google. We all reach for Google on a daily basis and it generally helps us at time when we can’t be bothered to think for ourselves. It’s a crutch that I lean on more than I like to admit.

But she didn’t just reach for Google to find the address of a specific web page that she had previously used to answer this question. What she actually typed into Google was:

“How do I transfer my UK pension fund to an Australian superannuation fund?”

She even used a question mark, as if Google gives a toss about punctuation. Why tell me that you could provide any help? I could have sat on a step outside the bank on my mobile phone and come up with that answer. In fact,as soon as I left, I did. I think what angers me the most is that it was actually quite helpful.

Maybe this will make a good blog, maybe it won’t, but in a protest to this week's Google based incident and in order to justify my superiority complex, I’m going to ban myself from using the Google search engine for the next week. I’m actually going to ban myself from using any search engines all together for a week. I want to see if I can survive without it and I challenge you to do the same. Please feel free to leave comments or tweet me (@counterproduct) about your Google free week.

Lunch in the Bank

One of the main benefits of being a comedian is the ability to do things in your own time. Going to the shops when you please. Being able to post that letter at a time that is convenient to you. Whilst this is a benefit for someone who works odd hours, mostly in the evenings, it isn’t just comedians who can use these services all hours of the day. The 10am trip to the post office is also the time that another group of social outcasts also like to go to the post office. For the remainder of this post I shall refer to these people as ‘scum’.

We all know a sub-group of society that we may refer to as scum, bankers, real-estate agents, personal injury lawyers, et al. These ‘scum’ are the unemployed leaches that stalk the daytime like vampires unafraid of the sun.

I am not saying that all unemployed people are scum. The scum I refer to are a specific subset of the unemployed and you know who you are. They are not ‘in-between jobs’, they have long since given up finding that next job and many never had a job in the first place. They are unclean, poorly dressed; often smelly, shunned and ignored by the working people… they are essentially comedians without the gigs in the evenings.

With the exception of the short snippets of footage they see on the evening current affair programs the working people of the world don’t really encounter the scum in their day-to-day life. The employed people quickly duck into the bank in their one hour of break at lunchtime, they then complain loudly about how busy it is, but lunchtime is when the unemployed scum know not to go to the bank so again their paths do not cross.

I however am less organised than the scum so I recently found myself in the bank at the same time as the working people. I think every one of them either sighed, tutted or loudly voiced a complaint about how few tellers there were and how slow the ones who were there were working.

I have been to the bank with the scum and I have been there with the working people and let me clear a few things up. The banks do have too few people manning the tellers at lunchtime and the banking experience would be much more pleasurable if the tellers were quicker at their jobs. But trust me when I say: the lunchtime employee is without a doubt the best employee that the banks have to offer. Lunchtime, believe it or not, is when the banks play their A team. The A team may not always bring their A game but what you see is as good as they’re going to get.

Sure they don’t always smile when they serve you and they may seem unmotivated but, working people, this is for you, don’t complain! These people work in a bank, which I’m sure wasn’t how they hoped their life would work out, and with the exception of the 1 hour ‘lunch time crowd’ they spend the remaining 7 hours of their working day dealing with the scum. You don’t deal with them. They do.

With my own eyes I have witnessed bank staff threatened with violence because they had to inform the scummiest of the scum that if you don’t repay your credit card you can’t buy another 50’ LCD TV with it. They bring their children into the bank with them and they display examples of bad parenting that will eventually lead to the state legislating against their right to breed.

But despite all of their flaws, if I was a bank teller, I would prefer to serve the scum than you, the employed people. You have a sense of superiority towards the bank staff which, although possibly justified, is just downright rude. They didn’t personally wrong you. They don’t want to have to ask you if you would like to speak to someone about your savings accounts. They have targets to meet and a boss who cares less about them than they care about you. If you look closely you can see that it upsets them that you have any money and they clearly spend their time staring at your face while desperately fighting the urge to delete all record of your accounts from the computer.

So in summation:

Working people – try to be nice. You don’t have to be super nice but at the very least be understanding and patient.

Scum – do what you want, you may as well.

Comedians – be more organised and avoid the lunchtime crowd, just play video games for an extra hour and go to the bank in the afternoon.

Stuck at Home

It’s raining. It’s been raining for 2 days straight now and I’m sick of it. The worst thing about it raining in Australia is that socially you aren’t allowed to complain about it. You just have to sit there and take it. Any complaint made will be followed with the standard retort of, “still, we need the rain so you can’t complain.” This statement holds 2 falsehoods: needing the rain and my inability to complain.

Firstly, we don’t need the rain!! The entire east coast of Australia has been either under threat of floods or actually under floods for the past 3 months. Rivers have been destroying their banks faster than toxic debt all year. Brisbane was a swimming pool and the rural Queensland was apparently so devastated by flooding that it gave me another reason not to go there. Explain to me why we need any more rain.

Secondly, I can complain. I can complain with the best of them. I’ve just spend the last 10 years living in England where complaining isn’t just the national sport, it’s your constitutionally confirmed right. I have done a decade long internship in complaining about irritants far inferior to 2 days of rain so don’t you dare question my ability to complain about this.

I know that water catchments are a sensitive issue, especially in the Murray Darling Basin, but there is one important point that every one of the ‘can’t complain’ brigade have failed to take into account: I was going to go for a walk along the beach today and because of the rain I can’t.

Does this make me a selfish person? No it doesn’t. Does it contribute to my many personality traits that make me a selfish person? Sure, but as a selfish person, I don’t care. I wanted to go to the beach. I was going to have fish and chips and possibly even an ice cream so now I’m in a bad mood.

Worse than being in a grump at something you can’t actually do anything to rectify is that I’m stuck at home. Imprisoned by inclement weather. Normally I enjoy being at home. I close the door to the outside world and revel in solitude. What could be more satisfying than having the option of being out in a loud tacky bar and choosing instead to sit at home and get some writing done? But today I haven’t made the choice. I’m stuck and I’m resenting my lack of free choice. Even Catholics get free choice and I’m way more deserving of free choice than them.

Whilst stuck at home I will watch a documentary on Wikileaks staring Justin Bieber and Nate Dogg. During the Supermoon I think it only fitting to discuss the Prince William trip to Australia with Rebecca Black (whoever the hell that is).

As this is my first blog I am concerned that the readership will be quite low. With this in mind the last paragraph is filled with key words that will hopefully draw peoples attention. I think it’s called search engine optimisation or something like that.