I Got Rejected By A Homeless Lady

A few weeks ago after a show I was standing around on the street with a friend having a smoke when a homeless lady approached us and asked for some money. There are a lot of homeless people in Shoreditch, and while I was living in The Dictionary Hostel we'd get asked at least a handful of times every day for coins or food, but every situation is different.

If I'd thought about this sort of situation a few months ago: being approached in the streets by beggars multiple times a day, often by the same beggars, I would have guessed that the tendency over time would be towards hard-heartedness. Less, “sure thing man, good luck”, slowly giving way to more, “Fuck OFF! Why would I PAY you to interrupt me?!” If I'm honest, there have been times when I've thought both – of course there have or else I wouldn't have been able to think of something to say for both examples. Overall though, I think being asked more has actually made me more likely to stop and listen to one of these guys in any given instance, and more often than not give them a little money.

So when this lady walked up to me and my friend outside the Comedy Cafe in Shoreditch, and asked for money, I gave her everything that I had in my pocket – 14p. That's not a lot of money, and I was looking forward to my first paycheque the next day, so the fact that it was all I had really didn't matter that much to me. After the previous three weeks of serious day-to-day poverty and walking to work and gigs because I couldn't afford the tube, and stealing food from the hostel kitchen, and counting the cents in my tips jar, finally my first pay-day was coming tomorrow: at this point the next twelve hours was just a Victory Lap. It still meant something though. I knew from my walks to work and careful area-scouting that the off license just after the Old St Roundabout sells oranges for 29p, I knew that because I'd been eating those oranges every morning on my 55-minute walk through central London to work. 14P: it's not much, but every penny counts.

Except maybe not, apparently, because as I handed her the coins, the lady held out her hand and looked down at them, then looked up at me and said, “look, I don't know what to do with this.” Then she held her hand back out, and gave the money back.

I have a lot of feelings about this, my first instinct right now is to write a big “FUCK YOU!” But I think after a bit of reflection that the reason I want to react that way has more to do with the fact that I felt personally slighted by her not accepting my charity.
       “What do you mean YOU don't know what to do with it? I've been buying oranges with only twice that amount every day for the last three weeks motherFUCKER! Are you calling me homeless? I'm not HOMELESS! I'M A MAN!” Etc. Etc... the first thing I felt when she gave the money back was that it bruised my ego, and I wanted to take her into a muted room and sit her down on a couch and communicate to her how that made me feel inside, and I thought maybe I should do it with puppets?

Okay that's dumb, sorry.

After a few days of thinking about it I realized I was being a self-important douche and that I needed some other people's perspectives on what had happened, so I decided to go straight to the source and ask the other homeless people around Shoreditch what they thought, so I did. A few around Shoreditch, one guy near my work in Soho, and another guy I chatted to while I was drunk at Old St Tube Station (is chatting to a homeless person while you're drunk condescending? I don't know? Do they want to be chatted to? Fuck, being liberal is hard... I'm tired of constantly flitting between feeling evil and feeling like a pussy... anybody?). My survey turned up pretty much identical responses the five or six times I asked, that this lady who asked for money from me but then when she saw the amount of money I had to offer turned it down, was rude, and awful, and possibly addicted to drugs. That sounds like I'm joking, I'm not. Honestly, that's what they all said, only two or three of them suggested the drugs thing, but they all said Fuck Her, basically, and that she was a piece of shit.

So back at the Fuck You thing again huh? Although now for a different reason than I first thought. And now for a joke:

“She gave me the money BACK!... are they ALLOWED to do that?! I didn't know homelessness was a profession open to wage negotiation, how do I contact the union?”

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!! Oh man! Phew, fuuuuuuuuunnnnYY!

Seriously though, once I tried to get away from my feelings on the issue, and started thinking about it more in terms of how it could affect other people as well, what I came up with was this: begging is a pretty sad thing to have existing in the world. Asking for money from strangers, it's a pretty awful thing to have to submit yourself to, and so when you happen to be that stranger, it's a pretty shitty spot to find yourself in because you're then in the position where you basically have to (get to?) decide whether someone else is 'worthy' of your aid. It's shitty on both ends, and so it goes pretty much without saying that to initiate that sort of behaviour, you'd have to be pretty desperate, like, totally desperate. Begging should pretty much be anyone's last option, they do it only because they need to. Have to. MUST! (*POW!* Synonym!)

If this lady really needed to be begging out there that night, if she was really so desperate for my money, or someone's money, some stranger, just any money so that she could keep on living, then she WOULD have taken my 14p. But she didn't, which means she didn't really need it, which means that she's out there begging when she doesn't need to be. I'm not going to guess at what her reasons would be for doing that, but I will say that there are plenty of people out there begging for the exact reason that I've just described – they have no more hope left in them, and they are all out of options. To disguise yourself as one of those people, and then run around Shoreditch asking for money on false pretences is pretty fucking disgusting. So yes Homeless Lady, Fuck You. Fuck You for effectively stealing from those people. Fuck You for effectively stealing from the people you've accepted money from. And Fuck You for making me think about you for A WHOLE FUCKING MONTH! FOR MAKING ME THINK ABOUT YOU MORE THAN I'VE THOUGHT CERTAIN ABOUT GIRLS I'VE DATED AND SLEPT WITH. I do not want to sleep with YOU, Homeless Lady, so FIGURE THAT OUT!!

Phew... finally, some righteous anger. Oooooh that felt really GOOD.

Finally though, a few weeks later I was walking down Shoreditch High St and saw a guy under the overground bridge, sitting on a milk crate, sobbing bitterly against the wall. Clearly homeless, broken. I tapped him on the shoulder and asked him what was going on and he started railing off against people on the street that would come up to him while he was talking to someone like me who'd stopped to offer him some help, but then interrupt the conversation angrily saying that he didn't deserve their help.
       “ 'He's here every day!' they say” - is what he said, tearfully recalling how people who were about to offer him money had been persuaded away by other folk who apparently see him all the time. “But I only need 8 pounds to get into the hostel for a week and they wash your clothes and give you food and everything!” he wailed bitterly. I went across the road and split a twenty, then came back and gave him a tenner, meanwhile thinking “what the fuck hostel is this dude talking about and how have I not heard of it? I'm paying 15 a night... do you HAVE to be homeless to get that deal?...”

I've since heard from a bunch of people in the area that he is in fact under that bridge all the time. As soon as I stated telling the story about a crying homeless man at a party that night up the road in Seven Sisters, they knew exactly who I was talking about, and now that I remember him (ooooh that hurts, because before I made the effort to he was just white visual noise playing in the background. Ouch)... now that I remember him, I see him there all the time too. Crying bitterly, just like he was before when it made my heart hurt to look at him. But it doesn't anymore.

Homelessness is something I still don't fully understand. Of course I don't, how could I, I've never been homeless. I have read 'Down and Out in Paris and London' by George Orwell, which is a bloody great book by the way, you should all go read it so we can feel self-important together.... ugh STAY ON TRACK!

I've never been homeless, but I feel like I can empathize with feeling stuck in a shitty spot. Or feeling like money just keeps flying away from you and not knowing where the numbers go. Or feeling a little hopeless... so when a homeless guy (or girl, bitches can beg too!) comes up to me with sincerity in their eyes and asks for some help, if I have some coins in my pocket I'll probably, 50% of the time, grab those coins and hold out my hand. Because I still hope that out of all of them, someone is still trying.

Eugh. I'm an idiot aren't I? I'm paying for beer and heroin aren't I? Who knows man.

Peace, Taco.

I Can't Focus

The world is so fucking hard to take in. In the early hours of yesterday's morning I was drunk and sent a message to the effect of “comedy is hard, life is hard, agh agh AGH! Sadthings HELP!?” to Melanie in France, and after passing out, awoke at midday feeling hungover but contrastingly happy about life. It was sunny in Edinburgh, and I went to the park to enjoy a sit in the warm grass, the length of which should surprise every weatherman in a 10km radius. After grinning while watching a young couple be in love with each other and giving them a round of applause as they walked off hand-in-hand sighing into each other's eyelids, I checked my phone to see that I had a response from Melanie. A beautiful, thoughtful, and concerned response to my saddened messages the night before.

“But I don't feel like that anymore?”

The relentless up-and-down sickness of day to day life is... well it's relentless is what it is. If ever I manage actually pin down one specific feeling at any moment in a day, I've learned that the best bet is that that feeling will be gone the next time I have the chance to take stock. It's like being below deck in a ship during a storm, and the light keeps flicking off for long periods of time, only coming on for a few minutes at a time, and during those minutes of valuable clarity I quickly scan my surroundings checking the position of the bed, desk, chair, chamber pot, stove, various spoons etc. The storm doesn't stop, but at least when the lights go out again I'll have something to go by. And they go out again, and again I'm tossing and turning below deck in the dark, fumbling around for a spatula.

That's why it's so hard to grasp at any particular thought for an extended period of time and flesh it out. That's the most frustrating thing, it's what keeps these posts flailing around the 1000-word mark, and what keeps me sending messages full of emoticons to the phones and laptops of friends across the world telling them that I just found a penny.

I read something yesterday about a guy who spent 18 months without a phone or computer or anything, and he made a great point that I've heard made before about how the internet is another dimension of our world. It's amazing that we are able to traverse this new dimension, full of information and entertainment, and connectivity to other people, but while we try to focus on this new dimension, the physical one we already occupy is still all around us, so we can never fully BE in one or the other. We're stuck in limbo, with one foot in each of these worlds, and therefore never experiencing anything. That's why these thoughts that I keep having come and go like lightning strikes, so bold and clear one minute, then racing away the next. A flash, a shadow in the sky, and then gone.

I had two great gigs yesterday, and met some cool people in my dorm, but I also read about the outbreak of police brutality and attacking of protesters in the US town of Ferguson. So I made new friends, and then was made angry by something happening overseas. And then I went for my walk, and witnessed young love, and clapped, and then it rained and my shoes got wet, and then I did some great gigs, but before that I had to flyer in the rain and someone was a dick to me. And I remember it all so clearly, I must have been up and down three or four times, and that's worrying because I know there's always a danger that with too much colour in a palette it can all start turning to grey.

I guess I just need to slow down a little with this life shit. Don't want to blow a fuse now. I'm wearing a really bright shirt today, for no other reason than the guys in my dorm were drinking Jim Beam at 10am, and I wanted to match their enthusiasm. I wish these blogs would turn out better, but they're really not right now, they're just coming out like quaint little travelogues, but I guess that's just one more thing that I'm going to have to be okay with.

Peace, Taco.

Okay Okay Okay! I'm Leaving Already

This last week has been probably the best week of my life.

From going out to a horrible bar at 1:30am on a Thursday, after having two great gigs that night, and meeting someone amazing, to reliving old memories with old friends from Adelaide in a loud nightclub on Friday, driving around until 10am on Saturday, and passing out in my room surrounded by friends. Saturday night, the best comedy night I've been to out of a solid pool of around 500 or so in my last two years in Melbourne – a night all about ME(?!) no less, oh the gratuitous ego-stroking. My parents were there, and everyone DESTROYED and I was reminded how lucky I am to have found the community of people I have in Melbourne and the friends that surround me. Rob putting a smoking log from the fire inside his jacket, me selling Mark Bozworth's washing powder to the highest bidder in a final, deliciously sweet act of revenge. Getting a frankly terrible portrait made of me by a girl in a bar who “[doesn't] smoke, but I do smoke weed, because I'm an artist.” and showing it to people in the line at KFC at 4am. Sleeping on my floor again. Waking up with a numb shoulder and fear in my heart, realizing that everything was almost finished.

Listening to a history podcast about a Manson-like siege in a German village in the 1530s while lying sprawled on my rug-covered-with-fitted-sheet and waiting for 3:30am. Watching Germany win the World Cup. Getting drunk again, and again, and again, and again, and thinking my body was about to give up as I danced on the beer-soaked floor of the German club until 10am Monday morning – someone painted their flag on my face, and for a few hours I didn't care, I just wanted to be part of the celebrations.

In theory, I hate conga lines.

Seeing my fam – Mum, Dad, and Brother – off with a throbbing hangover and jittery from the shakes as we sipped coffee and prepared our goodbyes. Giving my Mum a Hug.

I found the best fucking laundromat in Melbourne that night, it has a cafe and phone chargers and a communal laptop and WiFi and Blackadder playing on the TV and a back yard smoking area and you take washing powder for a dollar a scoop, and you put the dollar because no one is looking and you don't want to feel like a bad person. I had a great conversation with my ex-girlfriend/divorced wife Rachel, and she is doing great. I had a solemn goodbye to Jess, who is having a hard time right now, but I know she's gonna pick it up, cos she a strong, modern lady. And boy, that chica can SING!

My last gig was on Tuesday night, my last night in Melbourne, and I had a good one. And then Oliver Clarke CRUSHED the room and closed by singing a frankly moving love song to a sandwich and I could not stop laughing. Then we went to Noodle Kingdom and acted out noisilly, and a busker played No Woman No Cry on the street so I sang along with him, and the homeless man next to us didn't quite know the words. Some guy in the toilets at Exford put his phone in his mouth to do up his fly, and I commented on the brilliance of his move, because I'm always scared if I try it the phone will fall out, to which he replied, “yeah man, I've got a pretty deep mouth.”

Of course you do...

This last week has been the best week of my life.

Now I'm sitting here on my bedroom floor, looking at the writing on the walls that Luka, Blake and I painted ourselves nine months ago, scrawled on a handful of drunken nights, messages to myself from these last frantic days in Melbourne. I'm sure I can be forgiven for feeling very, strangely scared. Out into the abyss again... just when it was all getting to feel comfortable.

Thankyou to everyone who has been a part of my life for the last two years, it's been amazing. Don't worry, I'm leaving already, I promise I'll stop talking about it soon.

And now I will quote from one of the great poets of our time, the inimitable Prodigy, of Mobb Deep: “To all my niggas: get the money, frontin' niggas: get deceased.”

Sorry for cursing.

Peace, Taco.

Week 2 - Failures

[Thursday 9/1]

And so continues my week without money, I woke up this morning to the realization that I have lost my phone charger and need to either: wait until 4pm when the pub opens and use their charger; or find around $35 and buy another. This grim realization really happened in two parts. Last night when I went to bed I saw that I didn't have my charger on me, but I assumed I'd left it downstairs yesterday, plugged in from when I was cleaning the pub in the early arvo. Only once I woke up did I remember that I had taken it to the library after cleaning with the intention of watching the new episode of Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee, not because it's a particularly good show, but because this one features Louis CK... only, just now, as I write this, I'm remembering that that actually happened on Tuesday, and so my charger is, in all probability, still downstairs where I left it yesterday. Look at that folks, that shit was in REAL TIME!

I'm still poor though.

[Friday 10/1]

I find myself today thinking about my friends from back home in Adelaide, the guys I came up with (aside: I want to start using that phrase more often, it's such a solid, street kind of phrase and is so fun to say, makes me feel like a big man. EH?!). I've been thinking specifically of my friend Sketch, a guy I've known for the better part of ten years, and what he is up to. Honestly, what he's up to can probably be fairly described as 'not much', but I love the guy and I think about him often, even if I only see him once or twice a year nowadays.

The fact that I would so readily sum up the contents of my friend's life with the phrase 'not much' is hardly a friendly thing to do though hey... I mean, I think I'm being honest, and I even think if pressed, Sketch would probably agree with me. But who am I to say that my life is going so swimmingly? Who am I to so openly assess that of someone else?

I had a terrible fucking gig last Monday – maybe my worst ever upon reflection; although when I came off it only felt like a 2, after running over it again in my mind and experiencing the shame and hurt that emanated from it for at least two days afterwards, I might re-evaluate it as absolute bottom of the pile. Zero out of ten. It was at the Cornish Arms music open mic night, which I've performed at before and done well at before. I went on after not having done – and barely having thought about – comedy for two-and-a-half weeks, and decided that the best thing was to try new stuff mixed with riffs. “I might just talk.” I remember saying to the bar girl as she asked whether I was going to try new that night or what the plan was. GENIUS! No. Idiot-dickhead. That cockiness creeping in always signals impending doom.

I've had a long week and a few gigs to reflect on Monday's terror-performance, and I've been rebuilding my ego and slowly recovering confidence... a bad gig like that one really does something to you – it did something to me. It shook me, and made me question my position in the comedy scene and my validity as a comic, it made me wonder whether what I am doing and have been doing is good, whether I deserve (a dangerous word) to be here pursuing this or whether I am just parasitically coasting along on charisma and the hard work of others. In short, Monday made me take a long, hard look at myself.

But now my mind drifts back to Adelaide...

The last time I crossed paths with Sketch was in a shed at a mates place in Adelaide last January; a bunch of us sitting around smoking bongs. He started telling some story that I've completely forgotten now about how he took four tabs of acid and had to do something serious or something something something... I told you I'd completely forgotten it. But I remember after he'd finished telling it though – and after I had finished having my mind BLOWN out the back of my head with amazed laughter – that another of our friends turned to me and said, “now THAT's the kind of conversation you should be recording.” We'd had plans to try and turn the experiences of our group over the years from 2008-2012 into a collection of stories/book/novella/something of mild interest. Those plans are all but gone now, or at least, they are fading away into the background as slowly but surely members of our old team fall away one by one and we all get older. Until we drift apart.

The way that this connects – these memories attached to those times spent running aimlessly around the streets of my hometown with old friends I hardly see anymore – to my life now and to the terrible gig I had last Monday, is that these are the aimless days I am running from. That old life is the life that I'm afraid of. Much like the three hours I once spent roaming around Old Port Road in Semaphore, losing my mind on acid, repeating to myself the terrified drug-mantra, “it's not hard to be a Fuck Up”, that terrible comedy-death in front of five tables of underwhelmed strangers gave me fuel to run my work on. Something to glance at over my shoulder and think, “that's why I'm moving forward.” I don't want to go back there because it felt so terrible... or maybe it didn't even feel THAT terrible while it was happening, but now, as they fade in the distance, I know that those places are nowhere near where I want to be. And who am I to judge? Well, I'm me, and I know what I want for myself... wait... hmm... well, I know enough about it to have eliminated SOME options.

And so the conclusion? Push on. Accept that these bad experiences, these deaths, these little failures – overwhelming though they may seem at the time – are necessary, and ultimately beneficial. As certainly as I understand on an intellectual level that I need to keep working and improving my craft – in comedy and in writing, and anything else I do – to get to a place where I can sustain my life through it, I also understand that sometimes I get lazy, and so sometimes the hot hammer of failure needs to come down and put the fear in me. That wild fear that drives the machine, and keeps me running towards the light.

[Monday 13/11]

Today I checked my bank balance: $103.30 in the negative.

Yep, still poor.

Peace, Taco.

Open Mic Drive

 I haven't been writing in here every day AT ALL, for the last few weeks. I need to get my motivation levels back up again... as I lay in bed a few hours ago listening to the new Opie and Anthony Podcast – 'The Best of Patrice O'Neal' – on repeat, I found myself wondering at my recent lack of motivation. “Why have I suddenly fallen into this slump?” But then again, I found myself wondering the opposite, in equal measure: “What reason is there to get up in the morning?”

This question needs an answer, but the answer has to come from somewhere, and the best kind of somewhere I know of is me, so here it is.

OPEN MIC DRIVE!

Luka, Blake and I are starting a podcast called 'Open Mic Drive' (it was between that and 'Open Drive Life'; the title being a nod to the well known 'Open Mic Life' starring Doug Gordon and formerly Russell Wigginton, now Dilruk Jayasinha) about... well I don't really know what it's going to be about yet. It's going to be completely different from any other podcast, and I think people are going to love the idea... the basic premise of the actual audio is that the three of us, who share rides home at least a couple nights a week after gigs, will record our post-gig conversations and take the best bits to form an episode every week. If Luka gives someone else a lift home, then they'll be the guest for that week. If we pick up a hitchhiker, they can be a special commentator. We'll listen to music and talk about life and yell at people out the windows and rag on Blake for not having a dad... OH THE POSSIBILITIES!!

I feel though, that when we first announce the podcast, there will be waves and parades of eye-rolling throughout the open mic community – and so there should be. There are so many fucking comedians doing podcasts out there – funny and talented people all – but it's just too much. There's so much information to wade through, with only the faint promise of stumbling across something truly amazing. The next WTF? Unlikely... with every new podcast the herd gets thicker, and harder to traverse.

So what of us? What of 'Open Mic Drive'. What of the hypocrisy of railing against the never-ending tide of podcasts battering our screens and making it harder to find gold, only to join said tide and hope to find some arbitrary point of difference to stand out from the crowd? What of it indeed.

I know this sounds like blatant own-horn-tootery, but have faith, our podcast will be different. I can't tell you why yet, but I'm excited, friends. This is now my reason to get up in the morning... well, one morning a week, anyway. I'm excited right now. Yes. Yes. Open Mic Drive Yes.

Peace, Taco.

My Homework from 'A Brief Guide to World Domination'

Today I am in Adelaide, and like most days in Adelaide, I am spending this one at my parents' house doing nothing much and essentially waiting for something to happen. Is this what I want for myself? To wait? I don't know, that wasn't a rhetorical question.

Who do I want to be? I read something a while ago called 'A Brief Guide to World Domination' by some guy whatever who cares, which asked two questions that it said should be at the core of everything we do:

1. “What do you really want to get out of life?”
   
2. “What can you offer the world that no one else can?”
   

Tough stough... (just a little spelling joke there, before I start getting serious)

Okay, so number one. What do “I” want to get... out of... life... what do I want to get out of life? No holding back. Okay, what I want to get out of life, I think is... everything. No. Okay. I want to get everything that I want. I want to be able to have everything that I want at any given moment accessible to me as soon as possible. But what do I want? I think I want people to pay attention to, and like me. Pretty shallow huh...

I'm sure I can do better than that – the danger here though is trying to dress that fairly base desire just laid down there in careful rationalizations that make them look more altruistic... well I want the people that I care about to be happy. That makes me happy. But then, I do want their happiness to somehow involve me, like maybe I want people to be happy, BECAUSE of me. I want to make people happy. Yes. I don't want people to just be happy at random, I want to be responsible for peoples' happinesses – as many and as great as possible. That's right. Me! Taco!

That sounds realistically selfish while still being acceptable, doesn't it? The oft-quoted eulogism, “all he wanted to do was make people happy”, I feel can be translated to this selfish desire.

1. “What do you really want to get out of life?”
   “Well, Mr So-And-So Psychiatrist, I would like to be, through my own actions, personally responsible for as many peoples' happiness as possible. And it'd be nice if they knew about it too.”
   

Now what can I offer the world that no one else can? Fuck me, really? Ugh... okay... my blood? Fingerprints? This word - “Quertykoacquatlophyx”... ?

Stop being an idiot, idiot.

I honestly have no idea... okay, so currently, what I want to do with my life in the long term is I want to be a stand-up comedian. I guess that implies that I believe I have an unique point of view that no one else can offer the world. That doesn't really feel accurate though. Louis CK – arguably the best (Most original? Funniest? Most successful?) comedian in the world right now has quite a few AMAZING jokes about how if you're in your early twenties you are the most worthless kind of person and have nothing to offer the world. (“If you're twenty... okay... fine... we'll see.”) As degrading as that sounds, I can't help it from sounding pretty reasonable too. I have potential, but that's it.

But is that it? Potential? Eugh... Is the answer to question two that I have an unique potential, different from that of anyone else? I am now, being as I am at my wit's end with this question, going to attempt to unashamedly list what I perceive to be my positive attributes that I might better understand the nature of this disgusting 'potential' that is apparently so important to my happiness:

• I am good at communicating my thoughts
  
• I am driven and work hard
  
• I am generally likeable (queue sarcastic jeering)
  
• I am funny when given the opportunity ie. When I am sufficiently comfortable in a social situation
  
• I'm pretty good at mental arithmetic, and making lists
  

That's all, I think. I don't actually have any real tangible skills that have been cultivated or worked on, these are pretty much all either basic character traits, or things that I have developed over years interacting with people socially. But I guess the skill that I'm cultivating right now is stand-up comedy, which, for the uninitiated, is definitely a skill make no mistake.

So I guess that's it:

2. “What can you offer the world that no one else can?”
   “My potential, apparently, whatever that is.”
   

What is probably the most damning detail here though is that even after being so obviously affected by the two questions posed by 'A Brief Guide to World Domination', I couldn't be bothered remembering, or even looking up, the guy's name who wrote it to put in my blog. God damn it. I guess I'll have to reconcile myself with the fact that as endeavouring to bring happiness and fulfilment into other peoples' lives is an anonymous and largely thankless endeavour. But then WHERE DOES MY SELFISH PART GET TO COME IN??!

I guess, really, I only wanted to be famous.

Peace, Taco.


[if anyone wants to read the actual thing I'm referencing here:
http://www.psychologytoday.com/files/attachments/40787/worlddomination.pdf]

Comedy is Hard

I'm slowly piecing things back together after the shittiest few days I've had in a long time... yesterday it was confirmed that because my 'heart conductivity' (or something?.. don't ask, I didn't understand) is 0.05% above the necessary range, I can't go into the clinical trial I wanted so I lose sixteen-hundred potential dollars there. But the story about the blind girl is coming together somewhat, and I'm learning some valuable lessons about telling stories on stage in the process.

On Tuesday after I had probably a four in front of my parents at the Rochester, I had a chat to Jonathan Schuster (who CRUSHED it that night as the MC by the way) and he told me a great rule that he uses for storytelling. “Everything I say has to fulfil one of three purposes”, he said, “it has to either endear me to the audience, further the story, or be funny... and being funny is the most important one of the three.” He used his cum-eating story as an example, as during it he cites three (count 'em, THREE) times that testing whether drinking pineapple juice makes your jizz taste like pineapple was HER idea. He really forces that idea on the audience, and reiterates it, and spoon feeds it to them, stopping on it and emphasizing the fuck out of it every time.

Also they day before that, on Monday when I was at the Brunny only half an hour after that horrible death while my butt was still sore from the fucking, I had a chat with Beau Stegmann before his set and he told me what he was trying to do in his new bit about going to see a scary movie. He said that every punchline should – ideally, at least – feel like it could be the end of the bit, so that when you keep going the audience is pleasantly surprised, and all the energy that they built up on the last laugh that they thought was their last, is carried over, and so the story gains momentum. I remember him telling me that a tag/punchline (the bit didn't really have a punchline, but this cap I had at the end of it more of an afterthought and so sounded like a tag) that I had at the end of a long rant once was the best part about it because the audience thought I was done when I finished yelling, and so the afterthought was a surprise for them, and they laughed harder.

Armed with these two pieces of advice, I have rewritten the story about doing my set on Monday while being oblivious to the blind girl in the front row. I'm not going to introduce it as a story, I'm going to open by thanking the audience for sitting the right way as if it's an observation, or at the very most just a bit about it being good to face the front. Then I'll lead that into the story, which has individual jokes in it, and then when I walk off stage in the story, I'll do the punchline. I've also changed the punchline to a deaf girl, rather than a blind one, as someone who is blind could still hear the things I'm saying, and so even if they aren't aggressive or bad, I'm still an asshole, whereas a deaf girl couldn't hear the things, and so the joke becomes that I've just spent my whole set trying to get someone who can't hear me to turn around, and playing to the back of their head. I'm the loser, not her. Finally I'm going to use the line, “... but I thought 'I won't get angry, because I'm here to make people laugh'” as a recurring thought as I recount my set to endear myself to the audience and hopefully get them on side for the punchline which, even when it's a blind girl, still leaves me as a bit of a dick.

If I can make this story work, I think I'll be able to take these skills and use them to write a bunch of other stories that I've tried or wanted to tell on stage in the last eighteen months – peeing into a condom, getting yelled at by a homeless guy in front of a tourist group, bartending at a strip club etc. Then also I can apply these lessons to my show, which definitely needs some touching up in the opening twenty minutes as I regale the audience with stories of why I'm a fuckhead and how I needed to change.

Comedy is hard, guys. Every time I think I'm onto something, and I feel like I have a solid chunk of material that I can take around to rooms and do well with, I try to write something that in my mind is going to be the easiest thing ever, and it completely stumps me, and casts me back to square one. I spent the entire week before last trying to make a bit about 'the worst thing that's ever happened to me' (eating garlic paste on toast) work, and it just didn't. I kept trying to crowbar new jokes and ideas into it and engineer callbacks and new contrived observations in, but I was just battering my head against a wall. Sigh. Yep. Comedy is hard.

Peace, Taco.

Shit Week

This week, what a cunt.

On Sunday Luka, Blake and I drove out North in search of an open mic music room that was supposed to be on but turned out to be a jam rather than performers taking turns on stage, so we couldn't do comedy there. Then we came back down to Richmond to find an open mic that no longer existed at some random cafe. No gigs on Sunday.

Monday I went to the clinical trial place and took a blood test (I fucking HATE needles), which I would subsequently fail after testing positive for opioids (apparently Codral contains codeine). Then I went to the Penny Black and had what I will hereafter rank as my worst gig ever in which I pointed out a chick who wasn't facing the stage at the start of my act, and spent five minutes dying, only to find out afterwards that everyone else in the room knew that she was blind except me. Cool.

Last night (Tuesday) we had our worst turnout at the Rochester in a few months, and also had a band playing upstairs which, while not ultimately detracting from the night, gave me a great deal of stress beforehand. My parents were in the audience and saw me bomb for the second half of my set after I tried telling the blind girl story with little preparation. After the show the girl I had made a few increasingly overt failed advances on in the weeks previous professed her equally overt desire for one of the other comics' semen, and also, the weather was shit.

That's the bad things, I guess. The list got a little petty towards the end, but in for a penny, in for a pound, as the saying goes. I could list all the good things that happened, and there were a few, but I won't, that much is clear from this juncture. Now I just need to figure out why.

The thing that stressed me out the most was the poor turnout at the room – why was last week slightly below average (our hypothesis was the rain), and this week even lower? Uni holidays not being on? Maybe? We flyered just as much as we ever have, and the lineups are only getting better with a few quality acts dropping in regularly asking for spots. I'm hoping that once summer really kicks in, the room will kick off... but last night was not what we needed the week before what we have been saying is going to be our best week yet. November 5^th, I only discovered last week, is Melbourne Cup Day... fuck I hope people still come out. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

Fuck.

Still stressing. Yep. I'm not going to start making lists, I promise.

I have organized, in my mind, a better way of telling the blind girl story, which I intend to try tonight at Station 59 granted I can get a spot. Schuster gave me a few helpful tips about storytelling on stage after his KILLER MC spot last night: “everything I say has to have one of three purposes; it either endears me to the audience, advances the story, or is funny – and funny is the most important one.”

I'm really fucking shaken after the last few days. I think I'm going to have a lie down now, actually. God damn it, I thought I was past this for a while.

Taking it easy, not thinking too much. Looking over the edge somewhat.

Peace, Taco.

Dandenong

 Once again we reach Saturday and find me running on very little sleep after three days' activities. Last night I went down to Dandenong to do some standup at an open mic night in a local pool hall... what a strange experience.

I'd never been to Dandenong before last night, and my only experience or knowledge of it at all was a joke told regularly by Doug Gordon, a comic from around the place, which goes; “Did you know there are over 300 languages spoken in Dandenong? That's crazy, how many ways do you need to say, 'gimme your wallet!' ”. Make of that joke what you will, it is liable to plant a certain picture in the blank mind of any wary traveller. Then just before I left to jump on the train I stopped by Baker St to grab some stuff I left there on Tuesday and say hi to Brodie and Jimmy, and after I said I was going to Dandenong Brodie (ex-dealer with more than ample experience dealing with sketchy people and shady situations) told me to be careful, and not to walk around at night. Fuck.

So I jumped on the train notably tense and began rehearsing a script in my mind for what I was now sure was the inevitable run-in I was going to have with a gang of angry youths as soon as I stepped off the train. “If you can make 'em laugh then you'll be right” - I remembered the words Plummy told me one day a long time ago as he recounted his story of being backed against a wall by three guys in Adelaide and getting out of it by calling one of them a fluffy teddy bear. I don't fancy my chances tickling someone's tum-tum while they stare into my face with the “I-want-to-pulverise-something” eyes on.

I tried to spy my foes on the train, but saw no one other than a few cute girls and some sad, repressed business-types I couldn't help myself from gleefully judging internally. No threats, but my head was on a tense swivel. As we pulled in to Dandenong station at the end of the line and a twenty-five minute ride, I saw the blue and white checkered pattern of the police force on the side of one of the buildings and let out an audible sigh. But I still had the walk to the pool hall. Phone out, and I started adding up the value of all the clothes I was wearing just in case they muggers were organized tax-wise and were offering invoices. I remembered advice from Bolivia; don't walk over bridges because then you can be trapped by two people... but I also remembered my blind confidence from Bolivia, and so when faced with a foot-bridge, I crossed that shit like a motherfucker. WOOOO!!!! WHATTT?!! PROJECT CONFIDENCE! HEAD UP! BREATHE STEADILY! LOOK AT HOW IN CONTROL I AM EVERYONE!!

I got to the pool hall in one piece, they didn't have EFTPOS, I had to walk another ten minutes back to IGA to get cash out (back over the bridge, and back over it a third time on the return!), and when I got back the salt-of-the-earth types that I'm sure would be offended by such a condescending label were setting up instruments for their various open mic bands. I went up third to maybe twenty strangers whose attitude towards me ranged from indifference to mild uncaring opposition, and I ate shit for seven minutes and forty-eight seconds, throwing out my punchiest material to two or three one-note chuckles at each painfully delivered punchline. “These people are so different to me, this place is so different to mine, how can I possibly hope to connect with this audience, or with any of them individually?”

After the show most people who had shaken my hand before conspicuously avoided eye-contact, and the couple behind the bar advised me as to the differences between my sheltered inner-city home and their gritty suburban locale. “They'll laugh at anything over in Richmond, mate! 'Sept they'd prob'ly do it like this [mimes snobby cigarette-holding hipster laugh].”
“Yeah, look dude, you're probably right.” is what I wanted to say, but my response probably came out a bit more mumbled and unclear as I just wanted to get out and home so that I could get to planning my next trip out there. For a comedian, each different crowd is a new puzzle to be solved, and there is a solution to every puzzle, make no mistake. What started out in my mind as a frivolous and ill-advised danger-mission to one of the 'worst' suburbs in Melbourne quickly turned into the beginning of an exercise in empathy. My ego won't let me to give up the idea of walking on to the stage on Friday Open Mic Night at The Green Table Pool Hall/Social Club in Dandenong and capturing the hearts and minds of those twenty odd people, so different to me, but surely not that different where it counts.

I'll figure you out Dandenong, see you in November.

Peace, Taco.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

A Great Gig

Waking up today took around three hours, it was one of those mornings when you drift in and out of sleep and lazy consciousness, waiting for the hour when, finally, you must rise. I had a long shower and am now sitting back at my computer, thinking about the business of the day: Rochester flyers, flyering, calls to make, maybe book a few more comics for spots and go for a walk to do some shopping... but first: chips.

I guess I'll talk about my set last night, considering I seem to be running out of steam on this post already, and we're only one-hundred words or so in. I got up at Situation Comedy and did one of the three 'headline' spots (I don't know if that's the right term? They are all around ten minutes, one after the other). I felt like I did pretty well, definitely during the first half of my set more so than the second half – towards the end I definitely let the energy of the room dip a couple times while I was rattling off a few tried and tested bits and I think that showed in the lower reaction to those bits. I felt myself go onto autopilot at one point before a string of three phrases that always get a laugh, and I never really recovered from my laziness there.

What did go well though were two things: first was my little chunk (maybe 3 minutes) about Politics vs Governance – the difference being that Governance is the actual substantive thing that defines how our society works and is structured, whereas Politics is the shitty soap opera or D Grade celebrities that parade around our tabloids pretending to have relevance in our lives. I parleyed that bit into a bit about the news being shit that I tried a couple weeks ago, and it seemed to work well after I got warmed up, sloppily introduced the concept, and then fumbled through the new words – definitely will do again.

Also what I was the most happy with last night were my improvisations. I turned to the couch to the right of stage and building on an observation I'd made to myself before coming on, I riffed on their similarity to the cast of 'Friends' in the coffee shop. Later on I, apropos of nothing, threw my sock at one of the girls on the couches. I was happiest with my general attitude towards them; I was giving them the most attention, as their position five out of the seven present legitimate audience members warranted, while still maintaining a position of power and authority over them, and making fun of their perceived importance. Even if they weren't claiming such importance, I felt like everyone else had been basically playing to them, and while I thought that might be somewhat necessary, I didn't want to grovel to them like I felt some of the other acts had been.

I probably got cocky around the seven minute thirty mark, when I looked at my phone and saw how much time I had left and the pronounced, “I'm having the best time.” But the fact that I was able to get to a point where I was completely inside the moment and doing what came into my head, even if it was only for a second, is something I don't think I've experienced before on stage, and so for that alone, I think last night was one of my best gigs yet. Another Spleen in two weeks, and I'm MCing the Comic's Lounge next week – basically an audition – time to polish up.

Peace, Taco.

Unintentional Passive-Aggression in Hecklers

Last night's gig was at Club Voltaire and involved me MCing a music night for four different musicians, each doing around forty-five minute sets to a small assortment of their common friends etc. The crowd seemed warm initially, and very responsive to my material – although to be fair this was only in response to my opening chunk – but each time I took the stage they were less enjoyable to play in front of, with the night finally turning into a hugely frustrating and infuriating experience.

During the second break in which I did about twelve minutes of material, the crowd were fairly rowdy and I failed to calm them down, but I'm not sure whether this was a failure on my part or not. I could hardly tell them to shut up because as far as it had gotten, they had been fine during the musical acts, and I was the only comic of the evening. Their interjections were not mean-spirited at all, and they seemed to be listening to most of what I had to say – and indeed all of the musicians. When at one point I asked them a mostly-rhetorical question with the aim of going into some more material but instead they all piped up into general discussion of the matter, I only blamed myself for letting loose the reins. “I did ask them a question,” I chided to myself, “this is what I should expect, really.” After about a minute of unruliness I managed to regain their attention with a stern tone and a leading story, but I could feel myself getting aggressive, and I wanted to tone that back in my next set, “so as not to risk losing them”, I thought.

After that though, in the third and fourth sets I did between acts, they got worse, and I think they must have taken my passivity in the first instance as an unconscious cue that their interjections were okay. They weren't okay, they were basically heckling me, although in a kind-spirited way, without realizing they were in any way ruining my set, but still, they were heckling nonetheless. The worst part was when I introduced a bit with the line, “do you want to know the saddest thing that's ever happened to me? // When I was nineteen, I ate garlic paste on toast.”

This is CLEARLY (or so I thought) an obvious piece of hyperbole aimed at getting the audience's attention before I launch into the explanation of why that was the saddest point in my life – therein lie the jokes. Before I could get to the justifications though, one woman from the crowd yelled, “oh you have lived a sheltered life!” Now, how the fuck am I supposed to take that? That, a clear attack on my authority as the MC, but levelled in such a passive way as to seem like a joke. As far as I can tell, there's no way I can take that while still remaining on happy terms with it's owner, but unfortunately, that's what I tried to do. I tried to laugh it off and smiled as the audience laughed over the top of this woman's continued passive-aggressive jeers of, “ooooh okay, let's hear about your story then!” As if it was her who was allowing me to perform for her on the stage. The worst part was, in that moment, that was the case, because I fucked up, and let it happen.

So what would I do differently next time? Next time, when faced with laughing, passive-aggressive hecklers ignorant of their own negative input into the show. I've been thinking about it a lot (obviously) and I'm not completely sure yet, but I think after listening to Patrice O'Neal's new album 'Unreleased' I think the key is to maintain the assumption that everything that is happening is happening on my terms. I needed to teach her that what she was doing was not helping the show, and was in fact hindering it and making it worse. I did go some small way towards that after she tore me down by asking her, “okay, what's the worst thing that's ever happened to you?” But she came back with, “no you're telling the story!” At which point I should have said, “that's right, so let me tell it, but before I do, let me tell you why what you just said was ignorant.” I could have tried to teach her something about the mechanics of comedy – I'm sure she already knew intellectually what these are: that the leading phrase of that particular bit is deliberately ridiculous or shocking to get the audience's attention preceding a justification/explanation of it, with jokes. The fact that she interrupted though – even if she did have her own jokes and must have thought that she was making the show better because of the subsequent laughter – means that she didn't instinctively understand what was going on. She needed to learn, and I wasn't quick enough to teach her.

God damn it. Just talking about it is frustrating me again. That's the only way to learn though, I guess, and a gig like last night's should prove a valuable learning experience in identifying a heckler immediately. Never again will I give a heckler the benefit of the doubt and, subsequently, my good temper. I don't want to lash out viciously at a heckler either, but that woman last night spitting her unintentional passive-aggression needed to be dealt with better. I fucked up.

When she said goodbye after the show she was lovely, and I probably need to reinforce that fact – that she was a lovely person for coming to see a show at all – but I was feeling way too dark to engage her in any sort of farewell. I tried to explain to her friend briefly what had happened, but it was too soon after, so my words came out jumbled and pointless. They seemed to enjoy the show though, which is the main thing too, but to be honest, I would have rather them not enjoy the show, had I been able to find a way to maintain my dignity as a performer by holding the stage and not giving in to the will of the crowd. Always learning. Always watching.

Peace, Taco.

Thoughts on a Polite but Cold Audience

Last night at Crab Lab I hit another road-block. 'Stumbling-block'? Maybe a better phrase? I'm not very happy with either of those... regardless; I have a problem.

A few weeks ago I resolved to stop writing material until the Fringe, so that I could work on the ten to fifteen minutes of stuff I have that I'm fairly confident will do well in the nine shows I'll be doing for the fringe. Last night though, while playing to an admittedly cold room, most of my set fell flat, and I realized that I need to figure out a way to inject new energy into it so that when I perform the material for the tenth, twentieth, and possibly hundredth time, it doesn't go stale.
I don't even really have a single set that I pull out, although the material that I have is SLOWLY crystalizing together where I can find logical connections between separate bits. I'm doing another spot tonight though, at Agent 284, the new Commedia Dell'Parte room in Collingwood, and I'm planning on doing either exactly the same set, or if it starts going poorly like last night, then I think I have something up my sleeve... I really felt unprepared for the situation I landed in last night though. Everyone in the second bracket was getting lukewarm responses. Nothing brutal, and not really terrible silence either, just a few titters and the unbearable silence of people listening, waiting to give their approval. Eugh.

The headliner Laura Davis took an interesting tact that, as soon as she did it, I wished I'd thought of – she was nice to them: “do you guys realize you're a very quiet audience tonight? It's okay, I just wondered whether you knew.” I don't think they did... or maybe they did? I was never going to think of that though... my first and only real idea was to get angry at them, which thankfully I steered away from, although I did try a bit of condescension which got about the amount of slight acknowledgement it deserved. The whole time before I went on though I was thinking about the gig down at The Basin a few weeks ago where I managed to win over a poor crowd who were talking through acts by asking them rather aggressively, “are you guys enjoying being a shit crowd?” I knew that wasn't going to work last night, so I went on, did my stuff, tried a few things, and got off mildly disappointed.

This morning I thought of one thing that I possibly could have done – as is always the way; ready with a comeback once the moment has passed. I don't know whether this would have worked, but I thought that I could have said that clearly each of the individuals in the audience was a lovely person: they were all sitting politely, barely any whispering or chatter, waiting, laughing quietly at times. They were all great as

The headliner Laura Davis took an interesting tact that, as soon as she did it, I wished I'd thought of – she was nice to them: “do you guys realize you're a very quiet audience tonight? It's okay, I just wondered whether you knew.” I don't think they did... or maybe they did? I was never going to think of that though... my first and only real idea was to get angry at them, which thankfully I steered away from, although I did try a bit of condescension which got about the amount of slight acknowledgement it deserved. The whole time before I went on though I was thinking about the gig down at The Basin a few weeks ago where I managed to win over a poor crowd who were talking through acts by asking them rather aggressively, “are you guys enjoying being a shit crowd?” I knew that wasn't going to work last night, so I went on, did my stuff, tried a few things, and got off mildly disappointed.
This morning I thought of one thing that I possibly could have done – as is always the way; ready with a comeback once the moment has passed. I don't know whether this would have worked, but I thought that I could have said that clearly each of the individuals in the audience was a lovely person: they were all sitting politely, barely any whispering or chatter, waiting, laughing quietly at times. They were all great as individuals, but just as a whole, as a crowd, they sucked. That doesn't have to reflect on them as individuals, but when they all got together, they were killing comedians. It's like the holocaust, all of those Nazi soldiers were fine people, but when they got together...

Yeah look, I'm not saying it would've worked, and had I thought of it at the time, maybe I would have had the balls to try it, maybe not. I'll never know will I? I'm just hoping tonight's gig goes better, is all... although it would be interesting if I were put in a similar position tonight... I don't know, maybe I'd just try a bit of different material at the end to wrap it up, or maybe I'd try and open with a bit more energy? Ugh, fuck. No idea, really.

Peace, Taco.

Last Night's Antics

The first good thing that happened today was I woke up. That sounds a bit morbid doesn't it? Well dead the arrogance guys, every day you don't wake up to fire bearing down on your pathetic human face and bugs crawling beneath your skin, you should be thankful... today was one of those days for me, and I chalked it up to good luck.

Also though, I woke up at 10:30am with very little hangover to speak of after a reasonable effort drinks-wise at the Rochester last night, so that's another boon. Finally though, I woke up to the reality that my family and close friends do NOT, in fact, hate me, and want to destroy my comedy career. What more can a guy ask for! Okay, explaining: I had a dream just before I woke up wherein I was on some sort of comedy tour, and my family and a few close friends were there – I seem to remember there were exactly fifteen people, for some reason. They were all standing in a line along the bar, and I was in the middle of a sparsely populated room, trying my best to entertain apathetic losers, and in doing so, going way over my allotted time. I got halfway through my 'Friend's Girlfriend is a 9.5 out of 10' routine, and then my mum called me out for going over time. Infuriated, I threw my bag on the floor and stormed out of the bar and into the bar toilets, where I found an almost full bottle of vodka, and, feeling slightly dejected and stroppy, partook upon it's liquid delights.

I don't know why I stated getting all wordy and verbose at the end of that description there... maybe the ethereal nature of the dream necessitated a flowery description, or maybe I'm just a cunt. We'll never know for sure, will we?

No.

Also something great about this morning is that I get to listen back to the thirty or so minutes of me MCing the Rochester last night. We once again had our best night ever, that makes three weeks in a row now of breaking records, hopefully things keep going like this. I'm pretty sure the posters on the ground are proving a great success and I can see people looking at them every time they walk past so FUCK YEAH! I'm still unsure about my 'Nursing Homes into Casinos – Racism' routine, it didn't completely hit last night, although I did still get to say everything I wanted to say and it finished on a big laugh as well... it doesn't have the pacing of a great routine, but it does have a few big laughs in there, and for something that actually has a point to make (more or less... ha) it should be okay for a few months... I might pull it out for the fringe show, we'll see.

Finally, last night I, true to form, was shot down for an drunken offer for last-minute sexy sexy times by a ladygirl. Nothing new there, but considering how fucking great the night preceding my ultimate failure at the hands of woman-kind was, I think I can handle it. You win some, you lose some folks, and as the great Ned Kelly once said, “at least I can still jack it to internet porn when I get home.”

Peace, Taco.

Richard Herring and My Ten Minutes for Fringe

Last night I downloaded Richard Herring's discography and started watching 'Menage a Un', but I noticed that it was mostly stuff I'd seen before, and also that it really wasn't what I expected from the best friend and comedy partner of Stewart Lee. I went out and did a gig, and then came back home and got into bed ready for sleep, and decided to go for 'The Headmaster's Son' instead. I was not disappointed.

I've only watched half of it as I write this, having just stopped at the interval, but I already know it's going to be a great show when it wraps up after around an hour and forty minutes. One thing that struck me almost right away was how GOD DAMN FAST Richard Herring's delivery is – he is like a fucking steam roller, he doesn't stop, modulating his voice and shouting, going down, cutting himself off, interrupting his own trains of thought. I can only guess at what is written and what is improvised (it look very much like more of the former and only some of the latter). He also uses barely any 'filler' words and 'um's and 'aaaah's – something I've noticed I use quite a lot and have been debating with myself about whether or not needs to change.

At my own gig last night I finally broke through the fifteen minute mark – I did 16:30 in front of about twelve artist-types at Club Voltaire, a space that has become somewhat of a territorial training ground for me in the last six months. For my show with Rob during MICF ('Two for the Price of Free') I did fifteen each night for ten shows, but looking back – and even at the time, really, I felt this – I almost cheated because I had an eight minute story that would kick off about halfway through my set and close the whole show out. I really only needed to remember six or seven minutes of material and then once I saw the 7:30 flash from Lucy in the crowd, I knew the rest of the show would fall in like clockwork. Doing fifteen minutes of just observations and jokes has been something that has eluded me since the end of the festival; every time I get up (mostly at Voltaire, but also a couple of other times around the place: Situation, Brunny) with the intention or opportunity of doing fifteen, I get to around ten or eleven minutes and then bail on the rest of my material. I generally tend to think that the stuff I've got planned to fill out the rest of the time – even though it may have been written in the last couple of months and done well even two weeks ago – isn't good enough, so I bail early, rather than have a mediocre patch in my set.

That's a false victory though, because of course there are mediocre patches in my set regardless, and if I could just bring myself to breathe some life into 'old' material that isn't even that old anyway, then I'd be able to crack fifteen minutes easily. I had a chat with Beau the other day about this kind of thing and he said when he first started he was doing THE SAME five every year, noting a facebook post he wrote in 2011 saying, “I think I'm going to write my five for this year”. That idea is so foreign to me, and he acknowledged that it is ridiculous to do the same five for a year as well... but he also warned of going in the other direction and not sticking with material long enough. Having a new five every few weeks.

I think that's what I have been doing, pretty much since festival, and I need to slow down a little I think and work on my stagecraft, so I'm not going to write any material for a few weeks and just try and work on the stuff that I have right now, which is definitely good enough to stick with for a few months. We're about a month and a half out from the Melbourne Fringe too, so this is the perfect time to pick a set of material and start honing it in preparation for my nine shows there. Each show will be ten minutes, maybe I will do the same ten every night... wouldn't that be an achievement: allowing people to think that that's all the material I have. Put aside the ego for a second Tugzy, this could be a good move.

So I'm about to go have a shower before I watch the second half of 'The Headmaster's Son', and I'm really really really REALLY looking forward to seeing how Herring closes out the clear bookend that he opened at the start of the show with his story about burping in front of the whole school and his dad having to make the decision to punish him. He began his hour-and-a-half of sidetracking with the earnest statement that he was “really happy to have had the idea for this show”, and I can see where his excitement is coming from. There's nothing better than a good concept to play with.

Peace, Taco.