I've Backed Myself Into A Corner

Today in the Gold Coast: sunny, sweaty brows, twerking womenz, and 1.5L of Ice Break sloshing around in my stomach. The sun woke me up at 5am, but I got to lie in bed until 6:40 which was seriously one of the highlights of the last few months for me after having either five hours of sober sleep, or nine hours of drunk blackout-time, seven days a week. Eight hours of sleep... yes, yes, and yesyes again.

We got to the field and set our shit up, then started pumping deep house out of the speakers and calling to people walking past. “Win $100”, “Come play the Ice Break game”, “when are you guys going to have sex?”. Real obnoxious shit. It's weird having the microphone and being in charge of bringing people over to the tent; the system is loud, and my voice is playing over fifty to a hundred people at a time. We had people coming back for repeat tries at winning the daily prize, and people hanging out and chatting for most of the day. We watched the games, I commentated poorly, and at the end of the day one team of girls twerked in unison when we put on a song called 'Ass” (actually I think it might be spelled 'A$$', I'm not sure).

I'm sitting in my room at the hotel right now drinking a sparkling red with a strawberry in, and in a second I'm going to go down to the pool and have another swim, and then I'm planning my set for tonight. I have a spot tonight at The Loft. That's kind of scary, none of these guys have seen me perform before, or know anything about what my comedy is about, but my gigs lately haven't been so good, as I've discussed previously, so I'll really need to pull it together to nail this one otherwise it's going to be an awkward morning. Pressure, pressure, FUCK, this is what I've gotten myself into.

Brad Oakes told me when I had lunch with him the other day that I should (or at least 'could') open with my 'room mate' joke – it's a good joke, but a little blue. I've got a good tag for it now, and then three more jokes involving my family, they're all a little risky and if they don't pay off then I might end up in a little bit of trouble, but I don't really have anything else to open with. This is frustrating. Once I get into it I can do my 'Girls' bit, and then the 'BrisTrain' story, and probably close with 'Herpes', I just need to get started. Eugh. It'll be fine, it'll be okay, I'm going to have a good gig.

Enough motivational self-talk, I'm off to have that swim.

Peace, Taco.

Evil Impulses

I'm not sure whether everyone has these mad impulses like I do.

When I was in primary school at BFPS in Adelaide we had a main road out the front of our school, and so every day after school I'd have to cross the road to get home. In year six we were trained as 'crossing guards' and we would have to stand two on each side of the road with a rope across the crossing and when the light went green we'd pull the rope back across and let everyone pass. After school the crossing was always PACKED for twenty minutes or so – maybe thirty or forty people (kids and adults) on the school-side of the street waiting to go home. I used to ride my bike. I used to wait out on the side of the crossing with my bike, along with all the other older kids who rode home. And I used to think:

“What if I pushed my bike out into the traffic?”

Sometimes when I'm in important situations with people I don't know very well who hold major decision-making power over my life – job interviews, meeting friends-of-friends, some sort of reviewer-interview (that one is made up I think... I don't know, I have a particular image of this one in my head, hopefully it will become clear) – I tune out to what the other person is saying. I have trouble maintaining concentration at the best of times, and often catch my mind wandering in the middle of a conversation in which I am having to do a lot of listening. Sometimes I think people can see it in my eyes. I'm sure they can, but no one ever says anything. Some of the time, when the window to my soul gets cloudy, this is because it is being spoken to by the most reckless part of my brain, and that deranged corner of me is urging, begging, pleading with the screaming laughter of an imagined possibility.

“Kiss them.”

Eugh. Sickness, that's what these thoughts feel like. When I catch them like butterflies in a net, I always reel back with horror, but also chuckle a little inside for a second, remembering that part of myself that still wants to start the fire that burns down the city. Self-destructive. What would the point of leaning in with eyes half-closed to kiss a bank manager accomplish? Absolutely nothing. I'd probably get thrown out of the bank, and maybe have to pay some sort of Kissing Fee.

Today while I was sitting next to the pool at our hotel and reading my book – 'Naked Lunch' by William S Burroughs who shares my birthday, and whose apparently seminal, beat-masterpiece is causing me no end of grief. My attention was failing, but I didn't want to flip ahead and see how long the current chapter had to go, because that would just be shamelessly displaying my urge to finish the book like a chore. I should be enjoying it as an activity in and of itself. I am glad that I am able to read books. I like reading. I like that I bought this book. I am happy with myself. I am happy. I am a good person.

“Throw it in the water”

FUCK OFF! FUCK! FUCK! NO!! PLEASE! I DON'T WANT TO THROW IT IN THE WATER. I had to stop. I let out a quiet sob, caught myself, and went back to peacefully reading. No one saw.

I don't know what these thoughts mean, if anything. Anything? Probably not. They are just brief flashes of madness that should not be indulged or pursued, and to be honest, should probably not be given any more thought than absolutely necessary. Writing some six-hundred words about some perverted desires to act like an insane person is probably not a good way of dealing with those perverted desires... at least I haven't tried to kiss anyone though.

Peace, Taco.

Gold Coast: First Impressions

This morning I got up at 4am after a five-hour sleep and caught a cab to Southern Cross Station, a bus to the airport, a plane to the Gold Coast, a $70 taxi to the rugby field, and now am back at the hotel at 2:22. Our massive inflatable thingy that people throw rugby balls through to win money while we yell at them through the PA system fell down – the wind was fucking with it and it wasn't inflated at a high pressure, so we packed up shop at about one. Here I am now, wondering what to do.

I tried to contact a guy about a gig on the Gold Coast that's going on tomorrow, but he hasn't gotten back to me and I'm not holding out high hopes for my chances of getting up, although maybe if I just bring the whole crew from this job and tell the guy I've brought people he might be lenient. MAYBE. That's the plan from where I stand right now anyway.

What else? It's hot up here. I have to keep re-tying my hair, and my body feels sweaty. The people I'm working with are dope, and there are heaps of students playing the actual sports around the place as well, so no shortage of faces to meet and adventures to get up to no doubt. Richie has been down here for a few weeks now so I might link up with him on Wed and do something, and also my mate Michael is down here playing ping pong (OF ALL THINGS) and we said we'd do something one afternoon as well.

I think me and the girls I'm staying with are about to head out for some lunch after the early finish today. I can hear birds outside, although I'm not sure that they specifically remind me of nature as much as they just remind me of birds making noises. This place feels very nice, that's for certain, but there's also a white, bricky plastic-ness to the buildings set against a clear blue sky that is slightly disconcerting. Like, does it really look that nice? Is this scene being rendered by the GTA: Vice City engine? Is Ke$ha about to jump out from behind a palm tree and start sing-raping passers by? Who can tell really, anything could happen, it's only Monday.

Undecided. Eyes open. Ready to make something happen. Gold Coast, you're all right.

Peace, Taco.

Gold Coast Pre-Departure

I'm going to the Gold Coast tomorrow for this Uni Games thing, and I'm super excited about it. It's still not really sunk in that the thing I'm going to do in order to earn $1000 is something that I would probably do for free if I wound up in the place anyway, and didn't have anything on that afternoon. Being the centre of attention? Yes please. Talking to people? Holding a microphone? WEARING A PROMOTIONAL T-SHIRT!!! All great stand-alone activities, this week is going to be great.

Today I'm running a pretty tight schedule – the fact that I've still remembered to write this is pretty impressive of itself. After I finish writing I'm going to head off to the laundromat and do my washing, most of the clothes I'm taking away are still dirty, and I think I need to buy a new pair of socks as well. Then I'll be heading straight to Little Hunter to clean there for a couple hours and finish working for the week, then to the Melbourne Central Lion to MC the 100% Nuts show there, after which I'm doing '36 Hours' again. I'm not too confident that there'll even be an audience for the second show, and to be honest I'm kind of hoping there isn't, as much as I want to do the show, because I'd like to get as much sleep as possible ahead of my 6:10am flight tomorrow morning.

My fingers and hands aren't working very well today, they feel sluggish and non-responsive, so I think I might leave this post here – another short one. I need to find some time to squeeze in some meditation today as well, maybe once I get to the laundromat. New setlist tonight. New jokes. Writing. Reading. Errands. Life. Busy, busy, busy.

Peace, Taco.

Too Inebriation

Late night blog huh... okay, not even late night, it's 5:18am on the day after. Nope, actually I can't write this. I'm pretty drunk.

How did HST do it? All those years, drunk out of his mind on Wild Turkey and disgusting drug-cocktails. He didn't think they were disgusting, but that's not what made him able to do it. Drugs effect the mind, change people's bodies and brain cells from normal, functioning organs into distant relatives of the status quo. I can't take drugs – or drink – and write normally. Look at this. This gibberish. What am I talking about?

If nothing else, this post will serve as a warning to the future versions of me who wistfully fancy that they might be able to live out their life (my fucking life, more like it) as a high-functioning substance abuser. No chance. My body and mind cannot take such incursions on a weekly basis, let alone hour after hour, day after day, as long as my eyes are open.

No thankyou.

I'm feeling really tired now. I was feeling really tired before too, but I am now also. Not more so, just tired. Still tired. Still writing. Still tired. I don't want to do this again. Writing late-night notes is a bad idea.

I think I'm done now.

Peace, Taco.

Impregnated With Wonder

I love thinking about the future. I just read an article about Japan's K Computer that, in August, took forty minutes to simulate one second of human brain activity. (http://io9.com/this-computer-took-40-minutes-to-simulate-one-second-of-1043288954) It wasn't actually organized to simulate human brain function, just the volume of processing power, or at least that's what I understand from the article. Fuck man, I love this shit.

Before I was reading this article, I was reading something else from Reddit about how the Curiosity Rover just found water molecules on Mars – the estimate now is that about two pints of liquid water in every cubic foot of Martian soil (fuck off with your dumb imperial measurements, NASA, why change it to stupid-metres for the press release?). (http://gizmodo.com/nasas-curiosity-rover-just-found-water-in-martian-soil-1403908591) Apparently a manned mission to Mars is still a long way off because the levels of cosmic radiation astronauts would be exposed to would give them an untenable risk of developing cancer, so they either need to develop better radiation shields, or make the journey faster. One commenter suggested hijacking an asteroid and building habitation inside it before propelling it as a makeshift spacecraft to Mars and disembarking there. Fuck yes, I love that shit.

One of my favourite Reddit stories is the one about the guy who played a game of Civilization II for over ten years, and go to a point reminiscent of the global political situation in Orwell's '1984' (I should get make a tattoo-tally on my ass for each time I reference that fucking book IT'S SO GOOD!). (http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/uxpil/ive_been_playing_the_same_game_of_civilization_ii/)In the game there were three civilizations vying for global dominance, stuck in a state of eternal war with extremely advanced technologies and democracy having failed. Scary, foreboding stuff. Civilization, as a simulation, may be flawed though, and we have no way or knowing whether that guy's game is a scary omen of things to come, or just a curiosity with no bearing on the real world. Well... we have no way, right now... (cue music – DUN DUN DUNNNNNNN)

Moore's Law states that “the number of transistors on an integrated circuit doubles roughly every 18-24 months. This means that processing power doubles in that time for a machine of the same size. This means that the K Computer capable in forty minutes of processing an amount of data equivalent to that processed by the human brain in one second, will be able to do the calculations of a human brain, in real-time, in roughly twenty-two years. Two human brains two years after that. Four two years after that... in sixty-six years, a computer capable of simulating the operation of eight and a half billion human brains in real time will be as large as the K Computer is now. That's assuming Moore's Law holds, which it probably won't according to the current theories. Growth may increase at an increasing rate, making the time even shorter. It could do that, or alternatively, the time span could be reduced, so it could simulate an entire human lifetime in the blink of an eye, or hundreds of thousands, or millions of human lifetimes...

So what does any of this wild posturing by a twenty-two year old comedian who dropped out of first-year university physics to 'study' goon in Adelaide actually mean? Well, what it means, is that whenever a computer exists that is powerful enough to simulate a human life in the blink of an eye and retain all of the information accumulated over that life for analysis, we essentially would have the data available to predict the future. Run simulations on the past. Recreate events, or see how events are going to play out.

Suddenly Sid Meier's 'Civilization II' becomes the ancestor of a real-life program that could be used to determine the trajectory of current world events, with every reasonably possible variable accounted for. World Peace talks taking a sour turn? Run the simulation, see where this chain of events is leading us. Nuclear War imminent? Run the simulation. Climate Change Sceptics still busy talking about how the entire solar system is heating up and 'historical variance' and bullshit, bullshit, unfounded, rhetorical bullshit? Run the simulation. Oh look, your house was swarmed with angry, starving climate-refugees and while you were busy taking a shit. Unlucky for that Mr Bolt, lucky for you, here in the real world, that it was just a simulation, now how about those solar panels?

AGH! There's no way of telling what the future will bring, I know that. I'm not banking on any of this happening, but it's so much fun to speculate, just for now, while we run around on errands and the world spins.

I've been listening to Pete Holmes' album this week, it's called 'Impregnated With Wonder'.

Peace, Taco.

Comedy Musings 002

I've been feeling like the last week or two have constituted a relative drop in the quality of my gigs, which is super frustrating... I guess the fact that it's happened during Fringe time isn't really that terrible, and if anything could be seen as a bonus as now more than ever, no one important is watching my sets. This decline in quality may even be because of the fact that it's Fringe time, but whatever it is, I'm going to work through it... NOW.

So first of all I want to say before I get anything else out here; Melbourne Fringe kinda sucks. Well, I don't know how much money they have to work with or what kind of angle they're going for with it, but as far as comedy is concerned, I see little to no point of putting a show on outside of one of the truly established venues. Even though we (Line Up Comedy) are at the Portland – a venue at the heard of festival comedy in Melbourne – very few if any people are aware of our existence. Flyering the streets before shows we might as well be flyering for a regular, stand-alone, ticketed showcase. No one I've talked to knows that the fringe is on, or even what it is. The bars in Fitzroy are conspicuously lacking any Fringe promo posters or even guides, and the laundromat I go to every week, with it's full wall of free promo material, magazines and give-aways, has nothing either. Today on the 109 tram I saw a lonely A5 poster for the Melbourne Fringe in one of the frames on the wall, and rather than assuage my pessimism, it only served to make me feel sorry for the people staking some sort of reputation or hope on this lonely, forgotten carnival. Never mind though...

In the month or so leading up to the Fringe I promised myself I'd stop writing so much and concentrate on making the material I have work well so that I could consolidate a strong ten-minute set. The bits I was thinking of including in the set at the time were:

• Girls: about how I'm never going to pick up doing comedy
  
• Dog: a pun that turns into a rant at the audience about living lives devoid of wonder
  
• Anal: story about writing a bit on the tram and having a girl see the word 'anal' in my notebook
  
• News: “I don't like the news” going into a political bit
  
• Herpes: fabricated story about a friend's new girlfriend, that ends with a strong, jokey punchline
  
• BrisTrain: story about a train billboard in Brisbane that pretends to be intellectual before ending with a dick joke
  

Of those bits, I still do all except the 'News' one, which I had to drop after I tried doing it post-election and discovered that it was only really floating along with the political maelstrom leading up to September 7. 'Girls' is now my opener, after Beau Stegmann and Brad Oakes both said it's a good joke – I trust their judgement and sort of understand their reasoning, but I think I'm still trying to come to a complete agreement with them within myself. 'Dog' and 'Anal' I feel are fairly similar, in that they contain parts that I like very much, but neither ever really fleshed out to become a solid bit to rely on. 'Herpes' started out as my best joke, but lately has been receiving diminishing returns, possibly in part, I've been thinking, due to the fact that I've been getting a bit vague with the setup, or partly because I'm sick of it, or partly because it's a bit blue for no reason, or maybe all of the above. 'BrisTrain' started as a silly idea I had – it took me two months from writing it down before I even tried it – but I'm growing to like it more and more with time and I think it provides a welcome respite for audiences amidst a lot of my rather intense attitudes/jokes/subjects.

So the reason why my gigs have been a bit shit lately though, I still can't quite put my finger on it. I mean, my expectations haven't taken a sudden jump upwards... I don't think they have. They are constantly rising as I continue to improve, but never in big jumps, they just rise to meet my last ten or so gigs and where they have left me. It's possible that not writing so much has left my act slightly stale, although the reason I wanted to stop writing was because I wanted to figure out how to perform more effectively, without the crutch of having new bits to invigorate me. The situation with 'Herpes' is the most interesting, I think, because it's been, and continues to be, a reliable bit, although I think it was working better as a three-and-a-half minute bit with a long lead-in, rather than just a quick one-and-half-minute thing out of nowhere. Launching in to a story about “my friend's new girlfriend” might shock some people and appear bitter and pointless. Maybe that's it?

Also I've been focussing on writing my show – although 'focussing' really is a generous way to term it. I've been thinking about the show a lot, but only in the last few days have I come to some conclusions about what is to be done to resurrect what only a week ago seemed to me to be the flailing carcass of a good idea executed with not enough skill and experience behind it. I just need to work at the thing, and I finally have some ideas for where to start.

So yesterday and today I've written some new jokes, and I'm trying to bridge the gap between my 'material' material and my 'show' material, by writing observational bits specifically for my show. It needs to be funnier, and I need to be working on it week in week out during my spots or the months will fly by and I'll find myself all of a sudden at the Adelaide Fringe with the same show I have right now, and it'll suck, and I'll be embarrassed. And fuck that. Fuck that right off.

Peace, Taco.

Frustrated

I had a pretty decent gig at the Rochester last night, maybe a seven out of ten, and maybe a five out of ten at the Port Melbourne Local before that. I just now read an article from the Guardian about a proposed ban on secondary boycotts which made me angry and upset. Also this morning I meditated for ten minutes. This day is slipping by without me, I need to get out and do what I'm supposed to do.

Today I'm supposed to be sanding the floors in my new room above Station 59, but I can't get onto Mick to let me in – I really need to just get a key and sort this out. Fuck, today is not going well from the outset. I'm actually a little frustrated with myself for letting things slip this far already. FUCK. I really don't want to write this post.

I'm not going to.

Sometimes I Feel Hopeless

I want to start this blog with the phrase, “I just decided that when I have children, they won't be consuming digital media without me.” But that's bullshit, isn't it. Sadly, but yes, it is. Who the fuck has the time to raise a kid and be there every step of the way until the child is of thinking age? – ten or eleven I guess – no one.

I have a lot of trouble responding to 'conspiracy theories' – look at that, I have trouble even deciding on a tone with which to say the words themselves. Conspiracy theories: they stand out in my mind as the great determiners of gullibility. To claim something like we never landed on the moon, seems to me to be so out-and-out ridiculous, while also being so enormously inconsequential that my brain audibly bleeds every time someone says, “but DUDE, whyyyyyy is the flag waving?” SHUT THE FUCK UP.

But then, when I'm presented with something like the article I just read, about a meeting that one music industry head apparently went to in 1991 that determined the direction of rap music from the conscious rap of the late 80s to the gangsta, criminal vibe that started to prevail in the mid 90s... when I'm presented with that, well I can't help but sit up and pay attention. Why? What is this suspicion? What do I really think is going on?

I've often said to myself, and in arguments with others, that I sternly believe humans to be too stupid and disorganized to be able to perpetrate the kinds of whole-world control conspiracies that people like Alex Jones talk about. Even controlling hundreds of millions of people seems a bit far-fetched in my opinion, we just don't have the organizational skills to get such complex schemes up and running, especially not in total secrecy, for hundreds of years ongoing. If we can't even create Western Democracies that can effectively represent the interests of the people in their governance, then how can we really suspect that there are a small group of people capable of infiltrating our minds and telling us what to think? We can't even figure out what brand of butter to buy.

But then why does my sense of deep paranoia persist. I have answered my questions, apparently; why do I have to keep answering them over and over again, every day, why can't I just let it rest?

For fuck's sake.

It's interesting that the genre-defining comic at the moment, Louis CK, has an act that – for the first time in the history of genre-defining comics (Lenny Bruce, George Carlin, Richard Pryor, Bill Hicks...) – openly admits to flaws and inferiorities. He openly admits in his act that he is part of the problem, rather than simply pointing out the problem, and saying, “hey, isn't that fucked up?” Maybe we are finally reaching the point as a race where we are unable to fight the overwhelming pressures of conformity, as our spirits fold and snap, and our once-lived lives, give way to a wasted, zombie-death existence. Maybe. Sometimes that's what I think anyway.

I should write a last few lines about fighting harder or something. Whatever. Sometimes I think it's too late.

Peace, Taco.

Day to Day

I need to re-write my show. On Monday last week when I did it at Situation it didn't really work very well, especially the second half, and it needs way more jokes to be something that people will WANT to sit through and pay attention to. It felt like the narrative was the only thing directing the thing, but it didn't have any real ebb and flow, I could feel the story just plodding on and on and on and on, like the incessant “and then... and then... and then...” of someone whose stories fucking SUCK. I am not that person in real life, I need to work hard to not become that person on stage though. Half an hour – later it's going to be fifty minutes – is a long time to fill.

I figure if I can get the narrative to some sort of workable point tonight in the two shows I have, then I'll have something substantial to play around with. It's a bit frustrating that the MC Lion shows are only realistically twenty minutes, so I'll have to speed things up, but I have a good idea for something to do at the end of the third act to replace the awkward wandering around the 'park' that I did in the first show that never really went anywhere. If I make it uncomfortable like I did last week, and then just call that, saying that I felt uncomfortable, “much like this is right now”, that should get enough of a laugh to get me out of the act-out. Then I wrote a little bit about wandering around aimlessly looking like a young paedophile, and why do you never seen twenty-something paedophiles? Etc. Etc

I meditated today, after having a chat with Tom from Meatballs – a restaurant I clean Monday, Thursday, and Friday – and him saying that the probable reason for my inability to concentrate whilst reading some books is my mind being clouded. It does make complete sense. I often find my thoughts wandering and have trouble following a passage of text when I'm reading the words. I can't keep my brain on track. It's hard to focus. I need to train myself to have discipline, but that's something that needs to happen over time, it's not just something that I can just push myself back to in the moment, because if I'm thinking about concentrating, then I'm still not really concentrating on the book itself, and the whole process of reading becomes an exercise in concentration, rather than me reading a nice book about heroin and homosexual orgies (I'm reading Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs at the moment, it's pretty intense).

I didn't write anything in here yesterday, which is annoying, but I was super-hungover... I'm going to have to make myself write something else tonight to catch up, and also I missed a the Sunday previous as well. Sigh, this daily blog is hard to maintain. Richard Herring, how DO you do it?

Peace, Taco.

I'm Very Tired

These back halves of each week are fucking killers lately... not killer enough to stop, but I think I'm pushing myself to just about where my limit is in terms of sleep, and I'm trying to figure out whether it's worth continuing with this pattern or whether I'm losing productivity by burning myself out so much three days/nights in a row Thursday-Saturday.

On Thursday I get up at 5:30am to do cleaning, I finish that around 10:30, then go to the gym and get home around midday. If I haven't caved and bought breakfast by this point, then I eat something, write in this blog, and then figure out what I'm going to do for the rest of the day. I can pretty easily go without any sort of nap on Thursdays, because even if I've been drinking on Monday and/or Tuesday, I'm still pretty well rested. Comedy on Thursday night, and I get to bed in the hour before midnight.

Friday I wake up at 5:30am to do cleaning, I finish around 10:30 again, I don't go to the gym on Friday so I go home and hopefully haven't caved and bought breakfast so I eat something, write this blog, and figure out what I'm going to do for the rest of the day. If I didn't see anyone during the day yesterday, then I probably will today, maybe I'll have a random appointment to keep in the afternoon or something, and I'll always try and do some writing, and if I get time, read some of whatever book I'm on. I spend way too much time monging out on social media. I go to comedy and get to bed in the hour before midnight.

Saturday I wake up at 6:10am promising myself a nap after I finish cleaning, go to the gym, and get home around midday, by the time I've cleaned and exercised though, six hours have passed and my body is well and truly awake. No sleep. I shouldn't sleep anyway, I have shit to do. Most professional comics say they aim to write three hours a day. They don't actually do it, but they say they should, and so I should too, but I don't. I should though. All the time I was cleaning and at the gym I was thinking about comedy, maybe stopping for five minutes here and there to write down ideas that have been repeating in my mind for the half-hour previous. I remember to eat something. I write in this blog. I toy with the idea of lying down, but know that that will get me nowhere.

By Saturday night I am absolutely fucking ruined, and I get to bed in the hour before midnight, unless I'm going out, in which case I will find my sheets sometime in the twelve hours after midnight. Sunday I still have gigs though, so I can't sleep all day, and the Monday I have to get up at 5:30am again, clean, and go to the gym. Maybe I need a full rest day, or maybe I need to sleep in the afternoon, although I'm really hesitant to fall into that pattern as daytime sleeping feels like laziness.

There's no conclusion to that, so I'll leave you with this: the other day I almost used the word 'furtive' in a sentence. I thought about it long and hard – about thirty seconds, maybe not that 'long', but pretty long to be sitting thinking about one word when you consider it. In the end, I decided against it. To do something 'furtively', as I understand it, means to do it with a degree of secrecy due to embarrassment or shame, although I haven't looked it up just now, so I could be a little bit off. I noticed a few months ago that I didn't know what the word meant, so I looked it up, tried to retain the meaning, and now I'm almost at the point where it's part of my vocabulary – I'd say that point is definitively reached the first time the word is used correctly in a sentence. So I nearly got there the other day, but not quite. I reckon I could almost get away with a little furtive usage now though...

Maybe? Yeah? No? I don't know... that feels pretty close. Close enough for jazz I reckon. Tired, midday-Saturday jazz.

Peace, Taco.

Mysterious Lady De-Mystified

She was the queen of the tram stop. Well, she was the only one there, sharing the bench with me in her worn, pink hoodie and smoking a cigarette while she screwed the lid back on her bottle of Carlton Draught. Eleven AM, even. When I first saw her she looked like a broken angel, breathing out lung-fulls of ashen smoke and looking around at her surroundings, eyes darting back and forth.

She didn't seem to notice me, but I sat with my back towards her so as not to intrude. She was in charge, and sat upright with her spine arched – postured like the queen. A stripper bag at her feet ('stripper bags' are the ones like businessmen have in airports, with the pull-out handle and wheels on the bottom; too big to be a backpack, and obviously full of clothes) made me guess that her life was not in order. No one ever carries that bag around at 11am with a clear plan in their head. She had either just finished work (no strip clubs in Richmond) or had been staying somewhere and had to leave. These were my conclusions, to my eyes, the bag said it all. She was smoking and drinking, but those were just plain quirks.

The tram pulled up, only five or six stops to the end of the line, but it's always quicker than walking. We got on, and I sat in the booth across the aisle from her, my eyes peeled to the left as she lugged her bag up the stairs, sat down, and then cursed as she remembered to put out her cigarette. No boundaries. Perfect.

An elderly couple waddled across the crossing while the tram waited for the lights to change, the driver signalled to them that he was waiting, and they waddled faster, shaky on wavering limbs. The man made it up first, his wife followed twenty seconds later – they were very old. I heard m'lady whisper. Something under her voice, maybe? Surely not speaking to me. No, definitely under her voice. Sharp. Hissing; “Don't think I can't understand you.”
Who? Who can you understand? The elderly couple? They seem to be speaking Greek to eachother.
“Fucken hurry up, you're gonna fucken die soon anyway you old cunt.”
That was definitely her, holy fuck, I think she's out of her mind – well that broke the spell a little...

So now I'm sitting there like, holy shit, this fucking insane woman is about to lose her shit because two old people have made the tram wait like twenty seconds at the lights because their old legs couldn't get them across the crossing as fast as she could. She's muttering under her breath at them. At the next stop an elderly Asian woman got on with her cart full of whatever, and pink-hoodie chick said the same shit, only worse, probably. Something along the lines of “don't fucken touch my suitcase”, when the elderly woman's cart bumped her stripper-bag as she hobbled up the steps. So much anger, so much resentment, so much blind spite seething out of her brooding form in the corner. She was no longer a queen, but a serpent hissing viciously with a piercing gaze. Still looked pretty though.

It's strange how much I want to like people who I can immediately see are in some way 'damaged' or at least from the areas of our society that are sick with something. Drinking from a bottle of beer and screwing the lid back on before midday on any day of the week is not an action borne of confidence and a life well going – she was scared to finish it and be left alone, it seemed. But the first thought I had when I saw her sitting proud and upright was, “what a woman!” I wanted to tell her that she was amazing, until she opened her mouth at least, when I wanted to tell her that her scathing half-remarks were “neither intelligent nor funny.” (quoting my own thoughts now)

The only action I took while watching the whole thing play out this morning was to stare openly in her direction. I don't know what I was trying to accomplish – maybe if she'd looked back I would have had to decide whether to fall in love with her or hate her for her spitefulness to her face – but now that she's gone, I'll never know. I will confirm this though: I stayed until the last stop, just so that I could remain a spectator of the performance, or maybe out of hope that she would glance. I honestly don't know why, but I know I could have gotten off one stop earlier.

Peace, Taco.

Creating Real Happenings

Last night was the first night of the split Fringe show I'm doing with Geoff Setty, Brett Blake, Megan McKay, and Dick Wakefield – Brett wasn't in last night so Simon Cantwell took over guesting duties, and we actually had a pretty solid turnout of around fifteen people. That alone made the show much better than I expected; I haven't been assuming that it was going to be bad, I've just been trying not to think about it to be honest, but now that we've had that one, and we had some bookings before the show even, I'm starting to re-evaluate. Of course, that could have been a fluke... but I mean, how did they find out about the show at all? Maybe the Portland as a venue is so well known that we'll be able to pull some people in just off the back of that... maybe?

I didn't have the greatest set though, I did okay and definitely held it down, but I got a little shouty and angry and I think I started to make people uncomfortable which is annoying... I had another gig afterwards at Station 59 which I MCd, and in which I succeeded in completely alienating the audience through a series of frustrated outbursts over the course of the night, but I don't really want to talk about that.

I think the trouble with my set at the Portland last night was that I wasn't really living 'in the moment', I was too intent on going up there and just getting my material out, and so when the front row turned out to be happily boisterous and chatty, I wasn't prepared to play with them. That sucks, because I could have really brought them into the performance, bounced off of them, done some riffing, and turned the whole thing into a really great set, but as it was I think I just managed to scrape by with a six out of ten. I think that just comes down to preparation again, because while I did go up there with a rough idea of what bits I wanted to do in my head, I was still under-prepared and hadn't thought much about my set that day, so when the opportunity came to do something real and in the moment, I was too focussed on my set. I hadn't thought it through, so it was still occupying my mind when crunch time came. I need to think about it, finish the thoughts, and then banish it from my mind. The material should be a fall-back when I run out of things to talk about – to paraphrase Bill Hicks.

Okay, so maybe I will talk about my set at Station. I think (I hope?) I realized something about the whole 'in the moment' thing last night; it's not good enough – and doesn't even really count as riffing – to sit side of stage and think of jokes about what's happening on stage at the moment, and then say them when I get back on. Okay, so maybe that works for MCing, but only if the crowd is up for the type of quipping that those half-formed jokes will inevitably be. But if I'm not MCing I need to be able to ACTUALLY riff, rather than just write material very fast... I mean... hmmm, maybe there isn't much difference once you get to the high end of the scale, but for where I'm at now, I need to be able to just take a thought and run with it without knowing where I'm going. I need to be able to think and talk at the same time, and make the talking compelling enough to stall the audience while I think of something to cap the thought off with. That's what I want to do tonight.

Tonight, when I get on stage at the Portland, I'm going to be prepared, with my set all thought-out in my mind, but also ready to abandon it at the shortest notice in favour of actually talking to the audience. Kirk's set at Station last night was a great example of audience interaction that wasn't contrived and wasn't centred around the tedious 'what do you do for a living' routines that passes for engagement in the minds of so many hacks and bored idiots. Real questions, or engaging observations, that's where actual interactions come from. To create something real between the audience and the performer, the performer has to actually be interested in the performer's input, and to create that, the question has to be something worth asking. No one cares what they do for a living, nor do I care what anyone does. I want to know why that person is wearing an interesting hat, what they think of the people sitting next to them, or why they came to the show and what they expect out of me as a performer. The question, I guess, is how to icit that kind of information in ten minutes, and still make it funny for people.

Learning learning. So many questions.

Peace, Taco.

New Room

I just went over to Station and checked out what will become my new room, I have a feeling it's slightly smaller than the one I'm in at Baker St, but the facilities around the place are pretty sick with a common room and three toilets in the place with two showers as well. Shit, I forgot to ask about internet.

Tomorrow Blake, Luka and I are going over to paint the room which is currently filled with the last guy's piles of crap – some of it maybe salvageable, some of it rank and shitty. Painting the room and cleaning it all up, washing the floors etc., is going to be a bit of a task, but once that's done it shouldn't be too hard to keep clean, and living upstairs at that place looks like a good call. There are a bunch of other dudes living up there and there's a common room so hopefully there's a bit of a community thing going on as well.

I don't really know what else I'm going to write today, we're about to head out and start flyering for the Rochester – I feel like tonight is a bit of a do-or-die night for the new setup, if we can't get crowds in with this new arrangement the nights are going to be really hard for the MC and the acts. Then again, I feel this way before the show every week. Do or die. Important night. I constantly think it's about to start going downhill. Anxious etc. This post really does suck, I'm glad I remembered to do it, but I'm going to cut it here before anything too drastic happens.

Peace, Taco.

Feeling Aaite

Today feels very, very good. I just got back from the gym (groan, SHUTUP) and had music playing all the way to Aldi, where my phone died, but I kept cruising along to my own little rhythms. Maybe it's the endorphins from working out, but my world feels flooded with good vibes today.

I just had a MASSIVE brain wave concerning the start of my show '36 Hours'; so I never really know how to start a standup set anyway – as Louis CK says at the start of one of his specials it's such a strange thing to just walk out onto a stage and start talking to people – but that's what we do, and there has to be an organic way to start it, surely. What I've come up with as a way to start my show is this: I have picked six songs ('Turn the Page' by The Streets, 'Como Ves' by Ozomatli, 'Uplift' by Horrorshow, 'Go' by Illy, 'Not Tonite' by Embee, and 'My Favourite Clown' my Asaf Avidan and the Mojos), and before each show, as I sit on the stage and wait for people to come in so I can start the show, I'll roll a six-sided die, and depending on what number comes up, I'll play the one of the six songs assigned to that number. That way it'll be spontaneous for me too, although not completely spontaneous as the six songs I've chosen are all very familiar to me, but it'll give me somewhere to start and a reference point in real-time to refer to, rather than just launching into the narrative of my show. Breaking down the fourth wall is important, and establishing that the 'show' is a thing that is happening in REAL-TIME, and not just a rehearsed performance is important in drawing the audience into it as an event so that they feel more connected with the experience.

So I'm super excited about that (as an aside, I've been saying 'super-***' a lot lately, like 'super-excited' or 'super-high' or 'super-keen to not die today', but I just realized that while I really like the sound of it verbally, on paper it looks PRET-TY FUCKING GAY), also I'm excited just because tonight is my first show at the Situation Comedy Alternative Comedy Festival. This will be the first time I've performed my show, in any incarnation, from start to finish. Granted I doubt I'll have time to include half of the stuff – although I doubt that the amount of material I've written would stretch to fifty minutes at this point – there's still a fair bit that I'll have to leave out. I really have no idea how it's going to go or how the bits are going to play out or where the beats are going to sit in the grand scheme of the thirty-minute set. Fuck! FUCK! This is crazy, that this thing that I've been writing since late April is finally happening. God damn it, I'm excited.

I feel a little tired now, which is annoying, because I thought the high from my workout was going to last me through the afternoon so I could go over my show and write the structure of the thing as I plan to do it tonight out on a single page so that I could take that on stage with me as a reference, but I don't feel like that's going to be the case now. Maybe a little nap is in order, a little later on. For now though, I'm going to have a shower, which I'm super-looking forward to (nope, going to have to ban it) and probably later I'm going to go to the shaving store to buy some new blades, and also some shaving cream for sensitive skin, because I've just realized that that's the kind of skin that I have... did I tell you guys that? I don't think I did. I always cut myself shaving, I'm blaming the shaving cream for now, not the fact that I'm using a cut-throat razor that I have no idea how to use. I'm learning, okay? LEARNING. LEARNEDENING!!!

I can't believe there's no red line under that last word. OpenOffice must be sensing a distinct feeling of command in my aura today. DO NOT FUCK WITH ME, YOU OPEN SOURCE PLEB. I am better than you.

Peace, Taco.

The Eve of the Melbourne Fringe

The Melbourne Fringe starts tomorrow, and I finished writing my show yesterday. I'm doing two shows – well three actually, but two have only two dates each, and they're going to be the same thing.

The first is Line Up Comedy at the Portland Hotel, a fifty-minute group show with Dick Wakefield, Brett Blake, Megan McKay and Geoff Setty that will see us doing ten minutes each, every night, with a guest each night (only four of us will be on each show). Because I'm going to the Gold Coast from the 30^th of September to the 5^th of October for a paid gig (gig? I'm standing in front of a tent talking to people for a week for a thousand bucks) though, I'm going to miss five of the eleven shows, when originally we were only supposed to miss two each. That's kind of annoying. Still looking forward to doing those six ten-minute spots, I'm pretty confident with my material right now. Tonight I'm doing a ten minute preview at Voltaire, which I intend to use trialling some new stuff I've written, while opening and closing with the jokes I'll be opening and closing with during Fringe. So that's all looking fine.

The other show I'm doing is '36 Hours', the show I've been writing since the end of MICF this year, and, barring misfortune, will be taking to the Station 59 Free Comedy Fistival in January, Adelaide Fringe in February, MICF in April, and Edinburgh in August next year. This time around, I'm only doing it in a half-hour incarnation, the first of which is tomorrow, and I'm really looking forward to finally putting the entire narrative on stage from beginning to end. I've had this thing in my head for the past five months, only being able to trial certain parts of it five to seven minutes at a time, so playing it all out is going to do wonders for the form, structure, and hopefully, the jokes. I only finished writing this thing yesterday, so I'm not really expecting fireworks... or any kind of works to be honest. The writing has been a huge task, and I'm glad that now, as the Fringe season is about to commence, I have finally finished the first draft.

The next three weeks is going to be fucking insanity, I have nineteen (NINETEEN!!) shows between now and the 27^th of September, that's nineteen in fourteen days, including one night of three shows. It just occurred to me literally five minutes ago that I haven't made plans to see any shows myself, which I should probably do to get out of my narcissistic little bubble for a second, so I think tonight I might have to scoop up a Fringe Guide and make some plans to that effect. Also I just realized I haven't got my Fringe Pass yet. Fuck. COME ON! I guess I haven't been thinking that much about the festival in the lead-up, too busy writing my show and doing spots and writing new material and performing and worrying about jobs and places to live and food and money and my room and drinking and clothes and writing these blogs and why don't I eat more seafood?

About to go out flyering for the Situation Comedy Festival, which I'm lumping in as part of the Fringe, even though I know Alan would kill me if he ever knew. But he doesn't, and he won't, so there. Take that Alan. Why don't you go and rape somebody.

Peace, Taco.

Dream 002

 I just woke up from a dream that there was a giant storm that was going to be ravaging the world – the whole world – at some particular time, and so everyone had to go inside and weather it out, and it just so happened that in the ten minutes that the storm was happening (it was a dream, OKAY!) I was going to be MCing at Station 59. So the storm was forecast, and on TV there were images of buildings having already collapsed – for some reason I remember Ross from 'Friends' having had a bet with one of his architect friends about which buildings would stand and which would crumble... that sucks that in my dreams I watch friends.

I was on the tram just before the thing hit, and I was about to get off, but I left my jacket on the tram so I had to go back on, but then by the time I went back and got my jacket I couldn't get off he tram again, because the storm was about to start and no one was allowed to go outside. This part is confusing, because I remember being trapped inside the tram with everyone, but I also remember being in Station 59 MCing a show. During the actual storm I wasn't on stage, my friend Sean McGuiness was on stage. He doesn't do standup, but I've always said he has the kind of brain that spits out thoughts in ready-made jokes and would be perfect for it anyway – unconscious thoughts manifesting them in mid-cyclone comedy sets there.

As the storm hit and Sean did a set about how most people hadn't heard the real story behind why I have the nickname 'Taco', I watched out one of the windows in Station (as did the rest of the audience, Sean's set wasn't going great, although I seem to remember defending him against detractors and saying that actually I really do like his style of dark comedy) we saw the whole world moving by us in the wind like we were stationary and everything else was on one huge conveyor belt. There was no danger or effects inside, other than that the piece of paper that held my set list almost blew away so I had to rest a book on it and it was fine. Come on, 'My Dreams'... unrealistic.

I remember then that the wind stopped. I wanted to go on stage after Sean's set and make a quip about how actually, I do have material about how I got the nickname, 'Taco', and everyone has heard it. That's weird, because in real life, I definitely do NOT do material like that, for reasons I will not go into here. Also I remember the guy that was on next wouldn't tell me his name, and was dismissive of my comedic skills, he told me some stupid ten-word name and I was like, “you're a moron, no one's listening anyway, why are you unpacking some ridiculous tarpaulin to do comedy, you suck, shut up, you're goofy-looking”.

The last thing in my dream was everyone lining up along a rope for a picture; the rope was being held tight by someone out of frame and we were all holding onto it with our teeth to simulate being blown away, but our bodies were all facing the wrong way, and our hair was hanging down making it clear we weren't actually being blown to anywhere other than collective shame. I suggested we use a fan to simulate the correct hair position, and we all took a photo with the subtext, “I survived the Windy Storm Thingo”. Then I woke up.

Peace, Taco.

Saturday Introspection

 It's a hard struggle, that between the desire to live healthier and improve yourself – myself – and the responsibility to not become an ego-driven maniac. Sometimes in the heat of drug-induced introspection I have fallen into the trap of thinking that just because the ego can be a destructive force, it should be completely annihilated. I don't think that's true really, but sometimes in the vulnerable state that hallucinogens usually induce, the easiest way out seems to be 'admitting' that “I am a terrible person” – self-effacing to escape the torture of thinking about wrongdoings. This, however, is a false admission. Two reasons:

First of all, I'm not a terrible person, duh. Okay, I mean, maybe not, 'duh', let's not get complacent here, but to feel bad about something I've done wrong is a very good step on the way to being a good person, and so regardless of how bad something I've done may be, flagellating myself for it doesn't make it better. The danger in 'admitting' (and I use inverted commas here because really, an admission of something that isn't true is analogous to a 'discovery' of something that doesn't exist) that “I am a terrible person”, is that it leads me into absolving myself from whatever thing led me to this conclusion. So while I may behave for a while, sooner or later that guilt subsides and the cycle starts all over again. It goes from “I'm a terrible person”, to “I made up for that”, to “I'm doing sweet”, to “LOOK AT ALL THE IDIOTS, I'M AWESOME!” And then we're back to square one.

This then leads me to the second reason why simply reaching for the excuse of being a terrible person to justify past misdeeds is probably not the way to go; it leads on to the idea that the self should be destroyed completely. I remember a story John Lennon told during the 70s (if I remember correctly) about how he spent years following the Timothy Leary Acid Trip and thinking he was a worthless human being and should live his life hidden away within himself for fear of his dark inner nature wreaking havoc on the world around him. It took him years to realize that while the forces inside the human soul are sometimes destructive, they are also creative – the yin and the yang. We need both to survive, and to live lives worth living.

So when I reach out of well-worn reflex for the “I suck” card, I'm really being lazy and cheating myself out of an opportunity to improve. The self is required, as the whole of society, which is used as the basis for so many moral-political philosophies (“the most good for the most people”, “equal opportunity for all” etc.) is necessarily made up of multitudes of individual, indivisible 'selves'. The trick is to not let the ego run rampant and start sucking up too much attention and importance, it is a ravenous beast when allowed to run free and needs to remain as a player of equal importance as every other, lest it become, as Bill Hicks said, “another fevered ego tainting our collective unconscious.”

I don't know why I started writing about this stuff, but I'm very happy with my results, I just thought it all though as the words were coming onto the screen. I haven't done anything particularly wrong lately that I feel like I should apologize for – although if I had, this would be a great way of apologizing to my internal moral compass without having to do anything. GENIUS! But no, I was just thinking this morning that I haven't had any of those kind of self-effacing, 'Revolver' “my ego is ruining me”, I-just-fucked-up thoughts in a while, and I started thinking that maybe I was overdue for one. But then I thought, no, fuck that. I don't need to push myself back into another cycle of feeding and then starving my self of endearment, maybe I might actually be able to strike a bit of a balance for once, and maintain. Maintain. Ah, there we are.

The Struggle To Maintain.

Peace, Taco.

Heckling from Ignorance

 Last night I was MC at Station 59, I got off to a pretty slow start, dying on my fat, stupid ass trying to do material to the crowd, but after I made the decision to abandon material almost entirely, the show got a lot more fun, and we ended up having a great show. This post isn't so much about me though, as it is about the night itself. For what I think was the first time – unless my memory is missing a particularly brutal moment somewhere – I saw a comic get COMPLETELY BRUTALIZED by a heckler. It was harsh, it was rough, and it was very, very lame.

The heckler had been a little talkative during the show, but nothing malicious or even offputting, and I did actually promise him no one was going to burn him after he moved down to a table at the front. He piped up though, in the middle of a set of a guy who had never been on stage before, and was clearly having a tough time getting laughs. The guy was talking about conspiracy theories and government corruption etc. etc. and reminded me a lot of Alex Jones actually, like on that Stanhope video where they get Alex Jones to go up before Stanhope and he just rails at the audience for like fifteen minutes. This guy had the huge, muscly stature of Jones, and the crazed maniacal passion about conspiracy to back it up. I met him last Tuesday too, and he was a nice guy.

But this audience member down the front, who as just mentioned, was getting a little boisterous, piped up after four or five minutes of the new guy's set, in which there were, admittedly, very few to no laughs, and said, “come on man, it's a comedy night.” Stunned Silence. The huge Alex Jones figure on the stage was visibly deflated and almost immediately shuffled off, defeated, and I came back on and had to clean up the mess of tension left in the room after a bar full of people had just seen what looked pretty definitely like a guy trying to do something for the first time get cut down mercilessly by a cowardly prick.

The guy from the front table came up to me almost immediately after I introduced the next act and said he didn't mean to upset the guy, or ruin his act, and I believed him. Stupid as fuck though... he explained, “I thought he might be able to play off of me.” Feeble rationalizations, as far as I'm concerned.

I didn't tear into the guy, as much as I wanted to, because I'm almost certain that he was telling the truth and really didn't understand what he'd done, but I was like dude, look at the reaction, think about what you're doing before you do it, it's this guy's first time, he's already struggling, how is he going to be able to “play off of you”? Anything you say is just going to interrupt his rhythm and undermine his already wavering authority over the room. It sucked, it massively sucked. I made it as clear as I could to this guy that he'd done a really shitty thing to this guy who was giving comedy a shot, and then the unexpected came out.

“I'm getting up next week so we'll see I guess.”

Oh fuck yes. You'll learn very quickly then, brother, that authority over a stage is something that needs to be won, and no one but the comedian can win it for themselves. As much as this guy thought he was helping the man on stage by giving him “something to play off”, that act of, in his mind, charity, or in the audience's mind, spite, destroyed the performer's confidence, and ruined his evening. If the comedian knows what they're doing, you'll know that they're in charge. If they're still learning, then there's nothing you can do to help them out other than sit quietly, listen, and laugh when you think it's funny. Anyone reading this, please remember that if you ever find yourself in a crowd watching comedy. That's all.

Peace, Taco.

The Best Night

I had the fucking greatest night ever last night... okay, maybe I should steer away from superlatives, lest they become horribly overused in today's post, but suffice to say, last night was fucking sick.

On Thursday last week I bought a shirt from some shop on Brunswick St after Richie and I had SMASHED OUT A GYM SESSION, (still can't do it without irony) and I'd been waiting all weekend for a nice day to wear it out so that I could rock the thing with no jacket over the top. It's got a funky little lining on the sleeves that roll back and I didn't want a jacket diluting how good the shirt was, but yesterday I caved and righted myself with the idea that I was going to be inside at the Rochester all night anyway, so my shit would get ample airtime. That was the first good decision I made last night.

The Rochester was great, probably our best night yet (again) and the new setup in the front of the bar worked well, although I'm still a little worried about it in the case that we don't have a bumper audience like we did last night. Brad Oakes killed it MCing, and one of the coolest spontaneous little happenings I've seen on stage threw the whole crowd into hysterics around halfway through the second bracket: after taking some time to agonize over a girl's difficult name (it was something like 'Atoha', I forget, but it's important), Brad then went on to explain to everyone what a tow bar is, for those who didn't know. He started his explanation with “A tow bar...” and before he could continue, the girl, who thought he was trying to pronounce her name, corrected him. Everyone heard. Fucking hilarious.

I had one of my best sets yet, and after the show the fun times kept on coming, although I was a little upset about the two super-cute girls who I had chatted to at half-time leaving as soon as the show finished and waving goodbye to my stunned face as I raked my brain for ways to make them stay. By 'a little upset', I mean I said, “FUCKING GOD DAMN IT!” lots and lots of times, quickly.

I smoked just the right amount of weed in the beer garden, and then had a hilarious run-in with a girl whose name I didn't even catch: she told me to come inside and play table tennis with her, and was getting right up in my face about it, so rather than sit there and become a receptacle for her abuse, I licked my index finger, and shoved it up her nose. She lost her mind and was angry, but she stayed though didn't she? Yes she fucking did. And I laughed harder than I've laughed in a long time. She spent the rest of the night trying to get back at me but it was clear to everyone involved that the winner had already been decided.

We played pool.

After the Rochester closed we dropped Blake home – that in itself involves almost an hour round trip – and then afterwards Luka, Micaela and I sat in Luka's car and talked shit 'til sunrise, being interrupted once by police, and once by a stray cat. We also had a half-hour or so phone call with Phil on loudspeaker in the car, and I don't know, probably heaps of other shit I can't remember that will trickle through my brain over the next few weeks as I repeat the stories of last night to everyone I meet. Just me sticking my finger in that chick's nose by itself was probably in my highlights reel for 2013, everything else was just icing on that cake.

So happy Amateur Pilot Day everyone, September 11, 2013. I hope you're all doing well, I'm doing absolutely treacle right now. Have fun, and don't yourselves.

Peace, Taco.

THIS GUY

I'm posting lots of pictures onto Facebook today. Well, two, but it's three twenty-five and I've only been up for like four hours, so two is pretty solid at this point. Also I just found the melted, biscuit-end of a caramel Maxibon sitting in a glass on my desk from last night. Who knows to save the best bits for last, even when hideously drunk on a Monday? THIS GUY!!

I've been wanting to go to the Workers Club on a Monday for ages and take advantage of their criminally cheap beers ($1.50 pots before 11!!?!) but I keep blowing it and winding up at comedy nights instead. Last night though I resolved to definitely, definitely, definitivement attend, even if it meant going solo and winding up drinking brown water alone beneath the sink in the kitchens. At six I was headed to Lentil As Anything with Blake to get some dinner when I got a message from Steele Saunders, one of the room-runners at Spleen, asking if I was free to do a spot in about two hours' time.

So we had a quick dinner and then jumped on the tram and got to Spleen with heaps of time to spare, Mondays at Spleen are the best open mic comedy nights in the country, so I was stoked to have a spot there, but I still wanted to get to the Workers. Xavier Micheledes was hosting. Good. He was at one of my first gigs in Melbourne, at Soto E Sopra, and last night he did his 'slow-motion locking keys in the car' bit that I first saw on that night. Killed.

Upstairs at Blake and I chatted for a while before I noticed it was like ten minutes to showtime, so I bolted backstage to find it packed with killer acts and one Laura Davis who finally, after meeting two times previously and getting SUPER NEGATIVE vibes off of her, said hello in an amicable. I, of course, was too tired and nervy to respond with anything constructive, but I did ask her how she was and although we didn't say anything else, I felt positive about our interaction, which I always nice. I went up fourth and did fairly well, although not as well as last time – I think election/politics material is a bit played out now that the election is done, and no one really wants to hear it. I've never been one to subscribe to that sort of pseudo-superstition about material, but for now I think I'm going to settle on that.

I left Spleen at half-time and went to the Workers, and got super-fucking-drunk, and on the drive home apparently threw up out the car door. That sounds bad, I wasn't driving, Luka was driving, and I made him stop. So I've been told.

I'm feeling pretty god damn fragile today, but just went down the Centrelink office where a sinking feeling that I was going to be stripped of a sum of money for not looking for employment turned very quickly into a feeling of interior joy masked by exterior tiredness as I found out that the government owes me ELEVEN HUNDRED DOLLARS because I'm self-employed, not an employee. Fuck yeah, who likes living in a developed country? THIS GUY!

Peace, Taco.

Election-Related Injuries a Real Headache for the Left

A massive surge in head injuries thought to be the result of exasperated left-wing voters attempting to vent their frustrations against masonry has sent emergency wards across the country into a panic this weekend. These election-related injuries have been mostly concentrated in the inner-city suburbs of capital cities and have caused several Fitzroy coffee shops to designate certain walls as 'Non-Essential Government Resistance Outlet' or 'NEGRO Walls' in a bid to ensure structural integrity.

Conservative commentators and Liberal voters alike have condemned the leftists' actions, with some going as far as to suggest that the number of self-inflicted head injuries over the one weekend constitutes a coordinated effort to overload the cities' hospitals and manufacture a panic about the state of the health system. Others claim the behaviour is simply the result of the easy inner-city hipster lifestyle, and that this “faggy tantrum” will soon play itself out.

“Maybe if he stop readin' all them fuckin' books and did a bit o' work mate!” contented Dave, from Ceduna. Dave's son is currently in a critical condition in St Vincent's Hospital in Fitzroy, Melbourne, after being found next to a lamp post on Saturday, with his phone screen displaying a text from his father that read, “BLOODY0BOAT0PEOPLE!” [SIC]

Right-wing pundits are urging all voters who are disappointed with the election result to take their frustrations out in a more traditional manner, for example in competitive sports, or organized street-fights, while medical experts are suggesting that if the left is adamant that it will continue to beat its head against the wall, it at least wear a bike helmet.

From Richmond.

Peace, Taco.

More Politics

Okay, so the election was yesterday. Far from detaching myself from the whole process, I actually got slightly emotionally involved, which was nice... and interesting to boot. I think I'm going to start volunteering for the AYCC on a regular basis, it could be a really cool opportunity to do some public speaking and put the skills I've been learning in comedy to an effective and noble use.

I think the key to engaging emotionally in political issues in the way that I was bemoaning being unable to in my post last week is that I just have to become more involved. Rather than just sitting around thinking about them and waiting for emotional inspiration to strike, if I start engaging physically with the issues and actually putting in work towards the goal that I know I intellectually support, then I'll be able to attach emotions to that work, and to the community around it.

I also think I'm starting to understand just what it is that is messed up about our country, please forgive me now for working through the ideas in writing here, for those who care, I'm sure you already know, and for those who haven't thought about it, I'm sure you don't care:

When I used to read TakiMag it always made a lot of sense to me because I had missed the foul assumption that all of those right-wing thinkers make when they talk about national government policy; they assume that they only have the responsibility to care for those within their own nation-states. Or states, or nations, whatever. That's why they can morally rationalize harsh immigration policy and low taxes supporting a consumer economy. But how is that fair? It's not fair at all. Our economy is supported and paid for by raw materials and cheap labour in the poorest regions of the world, all so that we can continue to spend money on the consumer purchases that keep our economies afloat. So then governments like the Abbott-led Coalition that has just been elected in Australia campaign on the idea that we only need to look after our own, without making mention of the fact that us and our own have been and continue to be propped up by the suffering of millions beyond our shores. It's selfish thinking, but by omitting all mention of the source of our wealth, right-wing, protectionist governments give the masses in consumer-capitalist societies a way of absolving ourselves from responsibility for the suffering we create.

This is where the often-quoted, always smilingly dismissed 'hippie mushroom-rhetoric' about seeing all of us as one and forgetting the arbitrary distinctions of nationality should become so much more important than it is. People seem to accept this thinking readily, and espouse it wherever possible, but no one goes on to live by it. I don't, neither does anyone in our society.

I don't know that I feel guilty, because I don't think it's realistic to expect someone who is advertised to every single second of their life to be able to make decisions like 'what should I have for lunch today' whilst considering the global ramifications for their choice of salad dressing. I am angry though, firstly at everyone who voted for Tony Abbott for not recognizing the weakness that exists within ourselves that allows us to discount the suffering of billions of people that we are partly responsible for. Also though, I'm angry at myself for not recognizing sooner that I should have been trying to do something about the cause that I am and have always been so passionate about, and only expecting that if I sat and thought about it long enough, a concise, and developed opinion would avail itself of me, and I would be ready to enter the world, a fully-armed crusader for truth.

Ah the complacencies of affluence... it's a nice day outside today.

Peace, Taco.

TGIF

Today Seizure Kaiser, a comic from Sydney, arrived at my place with his bags at around 2pm; he's staying the night before he goes to a party tomorrow night in an attempt to stay up all night and catch his 4am flight on Sunday. I met him last night and saw his set which was cool, and after seeing his last-minute post on the 'Melbourne Comedy Rooms Hub' Facebook page, I offered my house up. This is the best way to meet and hang out with other comedians.

So we went to lunch with his non-comic friend, and another aspiring comic Micaela Moore, who is yet to do her first gig but has spent the last week hanging out at shows. After that, a nerd-shop called Minotaur. After that, beers at Rooftop Bar. Good day.

I feel a little light-headed now, not hugely, I've only had two pints, but enough to combine with my tiredness and fairly sap my enthusiasm for writing this entry right here. It's probably for the best that I decided against waiting until Luka and Macdonald finished drinking at the latter's house and headed to the workers, if I'd ended up joining them I would have been in no state to fulfil my duties as flyer hander-outerer tomorrow on election day. I'm actually pretty psyched about how much of a fun-times, positive experience that could be. Also a thing that's kind of nice is that suddenly, due to a venue that I clean regularly deciding to close on both Sunday and Monday, I have Sundays off of work. SATURDAY PARTY TIMES. Yessssssssssssssss. That's fun.

That's all I'm going to write for now, I think. Just a brief, jumbled note about the pithy events of the day, and my joy in anticipating those of tomorrow. I'm setting out Seizure's mattress in the lounge room, although I'm sure I'll be asleep by the time he gets home anyway.

Peace, Taco.

Money Money Money

Right now I have three-hundred and seventy six dollars and ninety-eight cents in my bank account. In my 'NetSaver' account I also have two cents, which I feel is a good buffer to maintain, but in ten days rent is due again, so I need to stop buying things.

In unrelated news though, walked into a dope little store on Brunswick St today; me and Richie had just SMASHED OUT A GYM SESH (oh god, I still can't say it without some degree of ironic self-parody, but I'll get there) and were walking back towards the Workers when Richie wandered into a shop. The guy at the counter was a huge chiller and we started talking about the day and anything. I picked up a Vice and put that in my bag for later – I just read it actually, there was some sick story about a reported who went to El Salvador to investigate the gang culture over there and ended up being the catalyst for a huge incident with the police force and local media because he was the first reporter to be allowed into the prison in ten years. That's neither here nor there though... we walked into the store and chatted to the guy for a while, Richie tried on some New Balance shoes that were pretty nice, and I found a tan shirt with these funky Mexican-style patterns on the pocket and cuffs, so I bought that for $39...

Fuck, wait, okay so right now I'm about to go to the Monet exhibition with Luka which I'm pretty excited about. It closes tomorrow, and I've literally been meaning to go since it fucking opened in like July, when I used to see the advertisements on the side of trams as I was giving my tours. I can't believe I don't give tours anymore, that's crazy to me, that was such a fucking cool job man, and I never did get around to executing my plan of putting my couchsurfing.org details on a business card and handing it out after every tour. That would've been a phenomenal tool for global networking... but now tours are done. So anyway, we're going to Monet, it's going to be great, I don't know quite what to expect as I've never been to an exhibition like this before but Phil went with Todd a few months ago and when I talked to him today he said, “don't take mushrooms.” So I guess I won't take mushrooms. I just looked online and it costs $26...

Ugh, okay so tonight I might be going out to Ferdydurke for a bit tonight for Richie's birthday, and also just to hang out with the boys. I might be doing something else but if that plan falls through then to the club it is, although I hope my other plans don't fall through, because Ferdy will no doubt entail expenditure of coin, which is kind of the theme of this blog post. I don't want to spend money. Why does everything I do fucking cost money? Why does EVERYTHING period. Fucking Cost Money? Ugh. Sigh. Groan. Self-inflicted anguish.

I looked through some more applications for medical testing today, but I can't reconcile myself with shifting gigs I've already booked just to stay in hospital for a relatively short (two day) trial that would only make me a thousand dollars or so anyway. I'm just getting impatient, really. Hurry up money, when will you cease to be a burden to me and my otherwise idyllic life. Go away, I want to be free for once.

Peace, Taco.

Engaging with Emotions

I really don't want to get dragged into this whole election thing... I mean, I do, because it's important, but also I don't, because from what I can see of this fetid election campaign, our country is fucked anyway. The circus of Dreadful Mediocrity versus Frightening Evil continues, and no amount of last minute self-education or concerted voicing of opinions can help. We're going down, folks, hold your loved ones and scream through tears and dangly mouth-saliva.

I don't know why it takes so much effort for me to engage on an emotional level, I've been trying to get to the bottom of this question for a while. I get a little jealous – although that's not really the word – of people who can convert their concern for our society into tangible passion about politics and issues of governance. I wish I could bring myself to care more, to do more, to get angrier and more proactive.

Yesterday I received a call from a random number – not blocked, just not saved to my phone – it was some guy whose name I have forgotten but who introduced himself as the co-ordinator of Power Shift, a climate summit I went to a month or so ago. I didn't have the most amazing time at this summit, mostly because I didn't really know what to do with it as an experience, and because I'd been up all night on one of the worst benders in recent memory, and attended the event without a wink of sleep... but the co-ordinator was calling, he was on the phone right now. He asked me whether I'd had a good time, and I lied poorly and said, “sure”. Then he told me about the AYCC's plans to man polling booths giving out information about the major parties' positions on climate change on election day, and asked what my plans for the 7^th were. I lied again, and said I was busy all day. Why?

This is the same thing I'm talking about, right here. I don't even know why I lied, and why I decided that I didn't need to get out and do something to support what is probably the closest thing to a cause I legitimately care about in our political landscape on the most important day of my voting life thus far. If this election really is looking like sending our self-destructive patch of dirt down the tubes like I so resignedly fear it is, then shouldn't I be ready to act? Shouldn't I have jumped at his opportunity without a second thought?

I think the reason I am so reliably distant from my emotions when engaging (or failing to engage) with the Australian political landscape is because my emotions towards it are so overwhelmingly negative, exposing myself to them would wreak nothing but havoc on my mind. “Why bother?” is the overarching theme of this story. Why bother trying? Why bother caring? Why bother hurting myself and damaging my psyche when the slithering worthless cunts of the world armed with PR campaigns and professional liars in tow will undoubtedly do it for me regardless? Why? Why? What's the fucking point?

Well, the point is probably that me and my apathy represent a large section of young people in the electorate, and it is highly likely that me, and people like me, are one of the main reasons that I can go on Facebook and read status after status after tearfully frustrated, screamingly impotent, devastatingly hopeless status struggling to comprehend how Tony Abbott – the hideous face of democracy gone foul – will be running our country in under a week. From the 1200 Facebook friends I have, I've not seen a single pro-Liberal opinion in the last month, and know of only one person who might MAYBE hold one. Every young person I speak to says the same – that they are scared for our future, and wish there was a way out – so then how are we in this situation, drifting towards destruction, when everyone seems to be pushing the other way? Well, because no one's pushing. No one cares. Everyone has given up, and it's so heartbreaking that we can't even bear to think about it. Because we know we've betrayed ourselves, and come September 8^th, I challenge any one of us to look ourselves in the mirror and not see what we have become. Shudder in fright, friends, this is our tomorrow.

So I'm about to call back that unknown number, and speak to the man whose name I have forgotten, and tell him that actually, yes, I will be there on Saturday, handing out flyers and talking to the masses. Because I should. Because I have to. Because we all have to. We're still going to lose, but to be honest, I had only planned to sit in and watch porn anyway.

Peace, Taco.

Paranoid Dream

I'm MCing at the Comic's Lounge tonight for the Young Guns show, I guess it's a kind of important gig because if I can get people watching then I'll hopefully be able to book a spot on a Monday or Wednesday night there, and move into some of the weekday/weekend gigs. I'm a little nervous about it, although nowhere near as nervous as I was for my last Spleen gig, but apparently still pretty nervous, because the whole thing just played out in my dream.

It was showtime and there weren't very many people there, maybe twenty or so, which is a pretty tiny crowd for the Lounge, even on Tuesday, but the show started anyway. It started with Brad Oakes giving me a very poor intro from the stage, and then me running from my spot at a table (why wasn't I ready backstage?) to behind the curtain, and then having to push through the curtains which had been stapled shut. I got out and my opening line was “that was done on purpose”, which got a bit of a laugh. Then I noticed that about six or seven kids in the front row were wearing purple shirts, and so I guessed correctly that they had come from school... they were so close to the front they literally had their chins resting on the stage. So now about a third of my audience were school kids, and they were WAY TOO CLOSE to the stage. The gig was not going well.

I went into my opening gear and it was going all right – not great, but all right – but the audience were moving around a lot, this should have been an indication to me that it was a dream. At one moment they were ten metres back from the stage, the next they were all crammed in on two tables to the far left with no other furniture in the whole massive room, then they were all lined up together with the school kids right next to the stage so that the only way I could make eye contact with them was to hang off the side of the stage and do my bits there. I was leading up to the main punchline of my opening 3min chunk when a bigger-than-expected clap of approval swept through the crowd and I turned around to see Brad Oakes standing on stage, introducing the first act. Apparently I had gone over time and the show needed to be kept moving. I was blowing it. HARD.

When I got back on stage to introduce the second and third acts it seemed as if the sound guy was trying to edge me out of my role by introducing them over the PA instead, also I didn't have a list of who was on, and the only act that I got to the mic in time to introduce ended up being different to what I had written down on my sheet, so that was fucked too. I went to the sound guy to get the running order, and while I was there another act came on without me. Then I lost the run sheet as soon as I had it, then I went back on stage pointlessly and saw the crowd had about quadrupled because a teen song-and-dance act were taking to the stage to close the first bracket and they had brought heaps of friends. They were singing weird harmonies and were very good. Something like Step Up meets X Factor, only people didn't hate it and throw fruit.

Brad Oakes left through the back door which led to conspicuously more steps than it actually does (clue. IT'S A DREAM DUDE!), and when the break came at the end of the first bracket, the lights went out and no one was left in the room. My dream ended about here, as I was resolving to do a better job with more material in the second bracket. I didn't even get a chance to redeem myself.

So yeah, that was my dream. Pretty shit, I know the gig's not going to go like that tonight... to be honest, MCing is pretty easy because even if you go a little poorly at the start, you get about fifteen chances to redeem yourself; one in between every act. It's going to be fine, as long as I get a good chunk of solid material in – I'll probably aim for the 7-8mins at the start of the second bracket – then I'll have something to point to when I talk to the guys that make the decisions about Monday/Wednesday spots and say, “that's what I'll do, now put me on motherfucker.”

Comedy huh... it's really really fun.

Peace, Taco.

Sunday Evening Win

One of my many minor regrets in life is that I don't get to consume as many movies and TV shows as I would like. I always hear people talking about the latest shows and new movies and I'm sure I'd like them if I could figure away to penetrate the initial barrier of effort it takes to get into these things, but whenever I try and watch something on my laptop, I invariably lie down to get comfortable, and within half an hour at the very most, I'm asleep. Am I narcoleptic or something? Is my brain broken?... it took me a week to watch the four hour documentary 'The Century of Self' on YouTube, because I could only watch it in one-hour instalments, and even then I had to be sitting upright in my chair, focussing intently. No phones. No Facebook. Concentrate, Fuckhead.

Today was a slow starter, I woke up around midday and didn't feel like doing much once I had, I drank a cider and a half, and hung out with Team Weekend, who had been out all night taking happiness. I'm really glad I didn't chose happiness when it was passed around early in the afternoon – although I did wrap some in foil and put it in my drawer for later – but without a distraction to keep my day moving, sadness started to creep in. I found myself lying in bed at 5:30pm, drifting in and out of a useless sleep, comedy playing in the background. I was unable to listen, no focus. Once horizontal, my mind begins to switch off.

The decision to go to the movies was one borne mostly out of a lack of other options: I searched 'Melbourne theatre' on google, and came up with a few burlesque shows (eugh) and one show that looked really cool, but that started at 6pm and so was probably out of reach by that point. Then I thought about the cinema (do people still call it that? Awkward wording). I haven't been to a movie since The Dark Knight Rises came out last year – I went with a German backpacker called Ralf Elze who always introduced himself as English and it was like, okay dude, sure, you hold a British passport, but I don't care how well you think you can speak the language (no better than any other Northern European), I and any other native speaker can hear your German accent a mile away so sorry, you're still associated with efficiency... anyway. So I went to the movies this afternoon, Ralf is not in this story.

I chose the independent (I think?) cinema on Collins St because I knew where it was from a failed outing where Brodie, his brother, Nairns and I didn't get to the spot early enough to get in to see a new skate video (STOP GETTING SIDETRACKED), and because I felt like I'd be more likely to be able to see something interesting there. Regardless of how regularly I watch movies, I still maintain a healthy level of hipster snobbery about the whole exercise. First I looked at the Steve Jobs pic starring Aston Kutcher, but I decided that dated early '00s reference and went with the altogether more sophisticated-sounding 'Stoker'. Nicole Kidman, oh how I know nothing of you or any other cinema figures! Something something something...

The movie was pretty great, I won't say 'fucking great', as much as I was tempted to, as I wouldn't really give it Five Tacos, but for as much as my irrelevant, although admittedly VERY ENTERTAINING opinion is worth, it was definitely a solid four.

Now I'm kind of sold on the idea of going to see more movies, see what good one nice experience can do? (that rhetorical chiding was more for me than anyone else) Tomorrow I might go to Fed Square and watch some shot film thingo narrated by Tim Minchin, and maybe I'll be able to conscript a lovely someone to come along with me. Other than that though, when I was waiting at the tram stop to go home I had an interesting interaction with a guy who approached and first commented on the book I was reading ('On The Road', again), and then asked which tram I was catching (109, for the record). I think he wanted to find someone to accompany the lady he was with on her trip on the 112, at one point telling her that, “it's a big city!”, before leaving anyway. What a strange thing to ask of a stranger; I already used up the word 'conscript' before, but it's pretty apt again here I feel.

All in all, a really solid evening from me. Bad thing turned good, and I'm pretty happy with my outfit to boot, but even without all of these frills and little happenings, the overwhelming positive spin to today would definitely have to be the soothing fact that HEY! At least no one died.

Peace, Taco.