Tightarse Tuesday and more Comedy Festival

Tuesday is always a good night during Comedy Festival and last Tuesday was no different. We had tickets for Tom Ballard and Tripod.

Tom Ballard was a surprise. Given the breakfast show on Triple J lacks... in general... we did not expect a lot. Pleasantly surprise to find that Tom is indeed very funny, very quick and did a very solid hour of stand-up with a pretty average audience. The opening to the show has got to be one of the highlights of the festival so far - I wont give it away in case you go to see him (you should) but it possibly involves dancing girls, leotards and some amazing choreographed dance/fight moves. What an opening! Tom shares the story of the worse thing he's ever done, with some great material in between. I would have liked to have seen a bit more audience interaction - such a double standard from me! While I hate being involved, Tom was very quick and very funny when he chatted to the audience. He had a mate sitting in the front row ("I pay him to come") who laughed like nothing I've ever seen (heard?) before. It was hilarious.

My only warning is to be careful who you take to this show. It's not one for the parents, and after seeing it with my brother, I'd suggest that siblings should probably be on that list as well.

After this we headed off to see Tripod, who we've seen many, many times before, as well as owning a few CDs and DVDs. Tripod tell the Tale of Tosswinkle the Pirate is still one of my favorite comedy shows. It's brilliant. It's been a few years since we've seen them and the last show we saw them do at Trades Hall (maybe 2-3 years ago) fell a bit flat. But a combination of a great set at the Gala (they did a song about air guitars that was genius) as well as the promise of this show being about Dungeons and Dragons (don't understand it at all, but I do love a bit of geek) tempted us back to see them this year.



And I am glad I did. Great use of an old school overhead projector led to one of the funniest shows I'd seen in a while. I still don't think it's their best material, but gosh it was funny. They had a fourth member on stage for this year's show - a young lady called Elena Stone who played the role of the Dragon (Tripod were playing Dungeons and Dragons remember?). She was AMAZING. So talented. But unfortunately, not very funny. Guys, you should have written more funny lines for her.

But the show was so great, audience participation was great and at one point I thought my brother was going to wet his pants. He said it was the best Tripod show he's ever seen. I would say second best, although the use of the projector, sheet and cutouts was genius. Great work boys.

It's a true indicator of how much I love Comedy Festival - Wednesday morning, I woke myself up because I was laughing in my sleep. LAUGHING IN MY SLEEP!!! People who know me can confirm I am in no way a morning person. In fact, what is a more common occurrence, is when I yell at someone in my dreams and wake myself up. This has to be a first for me.



Unfortunately, the laughing did not continue when I saw Colin Lane that night. It should be noted that I am a huge Lano and Woodley fan and that they were/still are my favorite comedians. But if I thought Frank's show fell a bit flat, that's nothing to Colin's show. The most disappointing part of all is that I saw his show "I'm not sure about the Music" last year at the Butterfly Club and it was great. I was so excited to see it again. I am not sure what went wrong - I know he did songs last year that he didn't include in his 2010 show, but the show I saw on Wednesday night seem to lack any real meaning or storyline, and yet it wasn't a stand-up show. It required a bit of structure, because for most of it, I was just a bit confused about what he was getting at.

There's no question that he can sing. Really well. But he ended up doing songs that were too long and not funny and I couldn't work out where they fit into his show. He did a bit of audience participation which was great - it showed that he's really clever and quick and can be funny all on his own. But it's the scripted material that fell flat. Some old jokes and material I'd seen before, but that's to be expected. To be fair, the audience were pretty terrible. He was playing at the Hi Fi Bar, which was too big and looked really empty. Tough crowd. But not a show I would recommended. I think the transition from 90 minute comedy show at a small venue, to a large, commercially advertised 60 minute show just did not work. For me, anyway.

We headed off to Justin Hamilton after this. I'd never seen him before and he was a real surprise - he did a great 60 minute set of really solid stand up, with a few really magic moments. His show is called "Idiot Man Child" which I found hilarious to begin with (I'm a bit strange ok?) and he talked generally about his life and adventures. The usual kind of thing. But he did talk pretty openly about his stint on a 'commercial radio station' and the experience of working with a 'quietly racist' colleague... I really want to know who that is and what station it was! But a great show and by the end of it, yes, I did have a bit of a crush on him! His story about social justice on a tram was one of the funniest things I've ever heard and really resonated with me - it made me so happy! I love that silver fox!

So now I am on holidays and having a break from the festival for a week or so. We have tickets for the last week, so will post some more thoughts after that. I wouldn't call these reviews. They would probably be the most shit reviews in the world.

"I'm not being racist, but can you tell me when the next tram to St Kilda leaves?"

2010 Comedy Festival Gala

My brother and I generally go to the Gala every year. It supports Oxfam, my favorite charity and I love Comedy Festival, so it's a win-win situation. This year's event was at the Palais in St Kilda (handy) and it was much of a muchness. Loads of comics doing 5 minute spots. Highlights included Andrew O'Neill, Arj Barker, Sam Simmons and Tripod. I love Tripod.

Kitty Flannigan hosted and she was pretty funny. I like her too.

Unfortunately the venue was a massive let down. It was about 35 degrees inside the theatre, so it was unbearably hot. In the TV broadcast the following week you can see the audience fanning themselves during the show - not a good look. The sound quality was also very poor - when guys like Tim Vine came out, you could hardly understand what they were saying, as it was so fuzzy and difficult to understand. A disappointing night. But left us very excited for the rest of the festival!

Comedy Festival reviews - Preview Weekend

I love Comedy Festival.

It's my favorite time of year - standing around in the rain and almost cold weather, seeing 2 or 3 shows a night, especially on Tightarse Tuesday when you try and cram in as many shows as you can. Every year I say the same thing - I'm not seeing too many shows this year, I'm not spending hundreds of dollars, I'm only going to see a few shows, I wont go crazy and see all the big names. And yet every year it's the same... I see my 'list' of shows during the cheap preview sessions, then the reviews start to come out, and the conversations start... and before I know it, I've seen 20+ shows again this year!

Not this year though. This year I am sticking to my budget and only seeing a maximum of ten shows. Preview weekend has just finished and I've seen 5 shows already, with another 4 in the pipeline, so I've not given myself much room to move... hmmm.

2010 started well for me - I got a $150 gift voucher for the Festival from my brother and sister for Christmas, so I was pretty excited as the shows started to go on sale. Too late we learnt that the gift vouchers, in fact the entire festival ticketing system, is a pain in the bum. Gift vouchers can only be redeemed in person, so for the first time since I was in high school (ten years ago people!) I had to actually go into a shop and purchase tickets. That is a pain in the bum.

Upon arriving with my carefully constructed list of shows and dates, I was informed that my gift vouchers could only be used for ticketmaster shows, which immediately cut out over half the shows I wanted to see. Pain in the bum.

No matter, I thought. I found some new shows that we sitting on the 'maybe' list, that had rapidly made it onto the 'let's see this show' list and purchased a bunch of my original shows online later that day. So onto opening weekend!

Friday night we had some free tickets to see Wil Anderson. I've not seen one of his shows in years. I thought I didn't like him that much. How wrong I was - he was great! His show was very political; he talked about racism, gender, fat kids and stupid people (my favorite topic). His motto for the show was "Let them go" and supported it by ranting and raving for much of the show about the need for society to stop pandering to the lowest common denominator - stop making laws that protect the stupid and start weeding out them out by means of natural selection. Hilarious. My favorite part was when he said "It's so lazy and stupid to hate people based on race or whatever. There's so many reasons to hate people, most people are stupid, so you should get to know them, and then hate them". Pretty much sums up my life. Anyway, it was funnier when Wil said it. The best part of the show was that he spent the whole time making fun of the redneck bogan population in Australia, which was most of the audience, and instead of being insulted they just laughed along. Idiots. It was hilarious. He's on for the whole festival, at the Comedy Theatre. Wilfl Misconduct - go see it.

On Saturday we had some more free tickets and went off to an afternoon dress rehearsal for "Good Evening" with Shaun Micallef and Stephen Curry. The was easily one of the best festival shows I've ever seen. Very clever and very funny. At one point I was that person in the theatre laughing and snorting uncontrollably (this was while Stephen was signing an Elizabethan song with a ridiculous hat on), which led to the group I was laughing along with me. Then I heard the people behind me saying "Look at that girl, she's killing herself laughing" at which point that group of people started laughing at me and soon enough the whole area of the theatre was laughing along with me. It was great.



Not that I mind swearing in shows, but it was nice to see some comedy without swearing and something that was a bit old-fashioned and silly. I suppose our generation missed all of that - the show is based on the sketches of Dudley Moore. Some people laughed at stuff before the sketch had even started, so I suppose they must have been well known by some. Good Evening is running for a limited time and is on at the Comedy Theatre. Highly reccomended.

Sunday night I saw three shows - David O'Doherty, Frank Woodley and Sam Simmons. I'd seen all these guys before, and they are some of my favorites, so my brother and I decided to get them in early during the preview sessions.

David O'Doherty was on at the Forum - late start, which is never fun when you have multiple shows lined up in one night. He has the longest introduction ever - but funny. He opened his show with his 'lower your expectations' song, which is very funny, but we've seen him do that before. I am never happy when my regular artists repeat material, hence why I'll never go see Tom Gleeson again. After many years of loyal festival followings, last year he repeated materials from 4 or 5 years ago. We were not impressed.

Anyway, David also does the same song at the end of every show, but he updates it with his most recent beefs of the year. This year it was iPhones and women. And he's written a book on Pandas which is pretty funny... My favorite fact was this: Pandas who are struck by lightning find that their black fur turns white, and their white fur turns black. These pandas are called 'negative pandas' and are extremely rare. And this one: All pandas are born female. They will only turn male if they get a fright within their first 48 hours of life. It is for this reason that zoos with a high female bear population often employ a panda spooker to surprise newborn girls into manhood.

Pandas are funny.



So David's show ran over which meant we were late for Frank Woodley. Luckily we've seen him many times before, so we knew the sneaky joke he got in at the start at our expense. He tells audiences that if someone walks in late, he'll ask them if he should tell a certain joke again and that the crowd should go crazy. It's pretty funny. So when we arrived late, he said hi to us in front of everyone and then asked the crowd if he should tell the 'badger' joke again, to which the crowd went wild! haha it was pretty good :)

But his show seemed to lack the magic he always achieved with Colin... at some points it was a bit awkward, although with quite a few empty seats, it's hard to be the only person laughing when no one else is. I suppose the preview shows are always hard. Frank also repeated a bit of material, but only a little bit and I suppose that for Paul and I, as two of the biggest Lano and Woodley fans ever, were bound to hear some repeated stuff. I love his little song "I might contradict myself, but at least I don't contradict myself". I was singing it all night!

And I also loved the bit where he did a skit dressed up in a suit and glasses with a mobile phone. Did he look exactly like David Tennant or what?! Weird. It was a pretty hilarious skit! Watch out for it.

After Frank, we wandered down to Bosco Tent, one of my favorite venues, to see Sam Simmons. We saw him here last year as well and he is now one of my favorite artists. His stuff is so strange - and hilarious. At one point last night I was in fits as he presented Diane, the angry cabbage to us. Weird.

I also love Bosco Tent cause it provides some of the funniest moments of shows - like when Sam got right to the end of his show and was wrapping up with his heartfelt message and there is a tram outside ringing its bell non stop. Cue Sam; "Shut the fuck up you stupid tram! Cant you see this is the poignant bit of the show??!". And then again 10 seconds later; "Seriously tram, what the fuck are you doing? Shut the fuck up!". BAWHAHAHA


A note: I am very behind with my posts. I still have my Soundwave review to post, as well as about 6 comedy shows I've seen since the ones above. But I am sure you will all forgive me, as I've had about 4 hours sleep a night this week. More posts will come up over the Easter break