Comedy Laundry

My Beautiful Laundrette is on Brunswick Street in Fitzroy, contains a number of washing machines in varying sizes and dryers of varying noisiness. It is a pleasant, if bare environment, and always seems to be kept at optimal room-temperature by fans – I haven't counted how many – positioned in above eye level and hanging from the walls or ceiling. I go there every couple weeks to do my laundry (duh, fuckhead) and... wait... hold up... ok, what the fuck was that?

In the past months I've become increasingly frustrated by what I have started to understand is the biggest problem with my comedy. As much as I pet and cajole myself after every gig, and as much as I mentally prepare myself beforehand, I can't seem to reliably win the audience over. Every now and then I'll have a great gig, but that's nothing to celebrate – everyone gets lucky every now and then. For the majority of my mediocre spots I seem to have the audience steadily suspended somewhere between vague enjoyment and frightened annoyance and as great as this may sound, it really is not gold comedy territory. So I've been thinking about why this is and what I can do about it, and I think I've hit upon a small something... hopefully? Maybe? We'll see I guess.

Firstly, I mentioned that I've had good gigs, but I mentioned it dismissively, and with good reason – it seems to me that most, if not all, of the really good gigs I've had have been mostly down to luck, and I say that not because I'm trying to get down on myself, but because it's true. The approach that I've been taking with comedy has been very much along the lines of “write material; decide whether it's funny enough to do on stage; do new material on stage; decide whether I should keep it; compose predetermined sets from bits of new material that worked mixed with old material”. I guess there's no problem with that approach, in theory – ah those beautiful words – in theory it should be fine. In theory I can continue to push through a wall of silence after my opener falls flat, or receives a lukewarm response. In theory I should just keep going and try the next joke. Maybe they'll like this one better? Maybe that was just a false start? NO! That's a stupid fucking theory; comedy isn't about theories, and comedy isn't about robots getting on stage telling joke after joke after joke and crossing their fingers in the hope that a few of them stick... fuck... FUCK... COME ON...

I had noticed that my gigs had been falling in quality – maybe a better way of putting it would be that they have been lacking in consistency or predictability – and I tried a few things. You'll notice up top there at the start of this piece that I reached out for anger and attacked you, my gentle readers, when I realised that I had gone three sentences into my intro without cracking one joke – I got nervous and lashed out... it was a cheap shot borne of fear, and I need to dead those cheap shots. Put them away, and start really reading the audience. Connecting with them. I need to tell them – let them know? – that it's ok, that I'm in control. Maybe first it would be nice to actually be in control, but hopefully one will beget the other I guess... ugh, thinking about comedy is hard. Comedy is hard. Look guys, all I'm trying to say, and all I will say for the moment, is I've realised that in order to regain control over the quality of my gigs, I'm going to have to go out on a limb and break the fourth wall. Break it, smash it, shit on it, and eat it for breakfast. The audience need to feel like they have some control over what is happening so that when the comedian jumps out and surprises them from behind his cleverly placed misdirections and traps and cleverly constructed sentences, they aren't so surprised that they turn on him. They need to trust me. Trust me audience... please?... Ok., working on it.

By the way the laundrette really is quite nice. Four dollars for a wash cycle, one dollar for fifteen minutes of drying, and everything I said about the room-temperature was true. My Beautiful Laundrette Brunswick St, Fitzroy – I recommend it.

Peace, Taco.

Asian Man

Today I was having a little kick around on my skateboard. (just as an aside, I feel so utterly worthless and lame saying, or even typing the word 'skateboard', but I don't know how else to describe the object in question. 'Board' implies a level of familiarity that neither I nor my readers have with the thing, and with that out, that leaves no other option... I've taken to writing 'bateskoard' instead, because I figure if I'm going to be a try-hard loser, I might at least spoonerise) Shit ok, that was a long aside, let's start again... Today I was having a little kick around on my bateskoard in the parking lot of a bunch of council flats where I've taken to practising. It's quiet, usually pretty empty of cars, and there's no one around to watch me eat shit as I regularly do when I try to pull off a kickflip. (yet to land one) Anyway, so my bag was half-hidden behind one of the parked cars while I skated back and forth, ollieing over the crack in the smooth cement and then turning around to go again. It was warm but not hot. I was wearing the same t-shirt I am now – grey with a picture of a withered tree drawn on the front and 'RaymunDo 1108' signed at the bottom. Vintage.

I decided to take a sideways run-up and try an ollie up the kerb and onto the footpath that borders the carpark – the kerb isn't very high, but at this point I was still yet to land anything other than a regular flat ollie, so I wasn't sure how it was going to go. Anyway, cue the inspirational music maestro, because I did it – kicked up, jump, landed on the higher part of the kerb and kept rolling, maintaining my balance. Let the trumpets play!

I went back for another shot, just to prove to myself that it wasn't a fluke the first time – “I am the greatest bateskoarder the world has ever seen”, I thought to myself in a moment of self-indulgent weakness. Up again, landed again. This time though, I had an audience; a decrepit, old Asian man with a walking frame had stopped next to the part of the kerb I was jumping up and had decided to watch me. ME! He saw what I was doing, and saw that it was good! So I went back again, and again, and again, I landed four of those jump-up-the-kerb-trickydoos in a row. It felt good. Something about the whole situation felt kind of off though. While I knew that I liked the appreciation of this near-invalid who, let's be fair, was probably just happy to be watching anything other than rent collection happen in his tired little corner of the world, it felt awkward to be examined so intently. He just stood there and watched, smiling at me and nodding each time I completed my little trick. I felt inadequate – I knew that there was nothing else I could offer him, I had no other tricks up my sleeve; no more songs in my repertoire. Every time I paced back to jump up the kerb another time I felt like I owed him something more for his continued interest, but there was nothing else to give.

Eventually, after like, I dunno, let's say three minutes? After about three minutes I jumped back on my board, went over to the other side of the parking lot and grabbed my bag from behind the car where I'd put it before. I had a few sips of water, then walked over the metal grate at the entrance to the car park and started skating away down the street. I waved goodbye to the frail old man who had been my number one fan for the afternoon and turned down another side street, then another, finally making my way to Aldi to buy some milk, razors, cheese, onions, lettuce. The story trails off here, and there's no moral... probably because for a moral to be found, there has to be some sort of challenge to be overcome. This afternoon was nice, and that man was even nicer. I hope he comes out again one time, but maybe not for a few weeks so I can hopefully have something new to show him next time. I'll start working on my handstand I guess.

Peace, Taco.

Spring Rocks and Julie is Fat

Every year for the past three or four (I really struggle to remember anything clearly from before I reached drinking age and I'm sure that somewhere in there there's a pro-alcohol argument waiting to be fleshed out) it seems that the first half of the year contains the vast majority of shitty happenings and a whole bunch of fretted damage control, while the second half – from about midwinter onwards – just fucking rocks. Down here in the southern hemisphere we've got spring and summer to kick us into the Christmas and New Year season and while the sky rises in the sky, so too do spirits seem to soar, but the utter brilliance of the tail ends of the last few years has led me to believe that something else – some more hidden, more other force – is at play here.

I have yet to directly ask any of my Northern-Hemisphere facebook-friends about their feelings on the second half of the year, so I don't know whether this vibe that I keep getting around August every year is universal, or if it is confined only to the bottom half of our globe, but I'm sure it's not just an Australia thing because I was in Bolivia last October to February, and those fuckers were joyous. And I'm not just describing a lift in spirits here either... I mean sure, once the first few real days of spring come through – those days when the sky is clear and shirts are optional – people start to get optimistic. I could bury myself in a pile of useless copper if I had a penny for every time a tenuous September conversation fell on the crutch of “I can't wait for summer”, but the change in attitude is only part of why I love August to February, there is another, more mysterious piece to this puzzle.

I reckon about seventy-percent of my sexual encounters have happened in the happy months of Spring and Summer – and I'm not talking about that tired 'okay, if you really want to' shit either, we're talking mad, rowdy, crack-the-bedpost-and-set-off-the-fire-alarm fucking. Springtime fucking – way more common in the spring. Add to that the fact that almost every relationship I've ever had have started between August and February, and they all tend to end around March. Huge moves have been made in my life in this part of the year – my trip to Bolivia, my first pair of good shoes, the time I lost my virginity, finishing school, starting stand-up comedy. While the other half of the year – springtime's ugly, overweight half-sister; let's call her Julie – has played host to job firings, two arrests, almost every one of my breakups, squatting in a crack-den in Clearview; Adelaide, depressed friends, and countless instances of arson and petty vandalism which only went unpunished by the sheerest of sheer luckiness. Julie, Julie, Julie... but why, people? Why does it always seem to be like this?

As I put to you before, I don't buy into the simple explanation that the sun shines brighter on the face of man, making him happy and cheerful and glad... not a fucking chance. Many of the brilliant things that have happened to me in the springtime have been completely separate from any human interference, and a whole slew of the bad shit that goes down on Julie's watch is down to my own stupid choices... what, is some behavioural scientist going to come up here and try to tell me that clouds make people angry? Rain drives youths to cover cars in petrol and turn them into towering infernos in the deep of the night? Piteous posturing! Why bother with nonsense hypotheticals, when a simpler, rational explanation sits right in front of our noses?

Birds.

Birds are great, and birds are plentiful in spring. As my housemate just said then when I asked him what he liked about birds, “they look so majestic when they fly.”... Uuuh... fuck, yeah ok guys, look, I'll come clean with you, I really can't think of anything else to write here. I was going to go on a bit of a tirade here about how birds have magical powers, or something, and how it is clear that while the springtime possesses it's own inherent charm that makes people happy and renews vitality in our hearts and souls, the birds are what really make this time of year special. I was going to be clever, verbose, and very very satirical. Ironic. Facetious. It would have been funny... but I can't, I can't think of anything, this piece just fell flat on its face. You are now witnessing, live and uncut, what happens when I try to write something special and it gets knotted up in its own specialness... speciality? Specially.. spe... fuck this, it's sunny and I'm going to play outside.

Frustrated, yes. Beaten, not yet.
I still love the springtime.

Peace, Taco.

Socks: History's Greatest Monster

(NOTE: This post was originally written for The Aristocrat comedy blog and can be found here)

Socks; what a racket to get into. Those little, cotton foot-pouches that stand between your skin and the abrasive inside of a shoe. You can wear them high – even up to your knee with rainbow coloured hipster-stripes. You can wear them low – those little ballet affairs that barely cover the heel. You can wear them just above your ankle, over the calf, hell wear them on your fucking ears right? YEAH! Socks people, what a wonder of modern comfort. What a mainstay of Western sophistication. Indispensable and Priceless; socks are the only thing that separate us from the beasts. Without socks, where would we be right? WRONG.

You are being oppressed.

No one invented the sock – at least no one that I can find on Wikipedia – which is annoying, because the lack of a definite target for the lynching that is sure to ensue after this vitriolic piece of hate-speech reaches the masses is, at best, worrying. I know for a fact my readership consists mainly of crowbar-wielding, high-blood-pressure knife enthusiasts, and I like to give you all what you want. Scapegoats, we hunt them by the dozen. But NO! No traceable lineage for the inventor of this idol of capitalist oppression exists for us to direct our rage towards, but come with me, my people, and we will find our villain.

Socks are shit. I buy about fifty of the fucking things a year. (ok, probably fifty individual socks, so maybe twenty-five pairs... and to be fair even that is an exaggeration, but fuck off who's counting?) No sooner do I get them home from whichever store was in my line of sight when I realized that my shoes were carving flesh-holes out of the bottoms of my feet, than they start to fall apart. Socks aren't built to last guys, they're not long term investments... and yet they cost SO MUCH FUCKING MONEY. Why do you think homeless people spend all their time sitting down, mournfully propped up against shop-fronts on busy metropolitan streets? Is it because they are so weak from lack of energy, and the depression at their sorry situation pervades their souls so completely that they cannot bring themselves to fight against gravity for another second? NO! WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN?... the homeless are no stupid few, they are some resourceful fuckers. They refuse to walk, to stand, or even use their feet, because they KNOW that as soon as you put pressure on your three-dollar cotton bonds, they'll wear through and you'll be back in the line at target, forking out another five dollars for a piece of material barely worth half as many cents.

I bought some new socks the other day. “Why did you buy socks Taco? What's the deal with that? You sit here and rail against the capitalist oppression of superfluous pedalian apparel (pedalian, it's an adjective, it means foot. LOOK IT UP!) but you can't even give us a solution? WHAT KIND OF REVOLUTIONARY ARE YOU?” I didn't know when I bought them; the lightning bolt was yet to strike me, but strike it did, and from the ground up too – like a huge mass of electrons being discharged from the surface of the earth and dispersing into the atmosphere. (oooooooh clever) I have it people, it was all so simple.

Why wear socks, which always, always, ALWAYS fucking break or smell or get lost and then you only have one left and your housemate goes “hey dude why are there all these odd socks under the couch in the living room” and you say, “THAT'S NOT EVEN MY SOCK DUDE WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?”... Why let that happen? When there is a perfectly accessible and reasonable substitute sitting just under our noses. I'll say it once, and only once, and you can all try it for yourselves. Baby Powder.

Just let that sink in for a second. Allow yourselves to be swept up and carried off on the wave of understanding. The tide of knowledge. The inevitable winds of change... they blow, my friends, and the blow for us. Why should we pay fucking eighty dollars a year for socks that will inevitably frustrate and infuriate us when they are lost, will become thin and pathetic after two washes, and will smell like SHIT, when you can just sprinkle a little baby powder inside your shoes before you chuck them on every day? I'm not saying it's perfect, but I'm going to give it a shot. An honest shot. No revolution was won in a day, comrades... I'm willing to take the plunge.

If any of you are still loyal to your precious foot-gloves, then by all means, keep beating your heads against the steel girder of planned-obsolescence and pay, pay, pay to the overpriced overlords that control our society's sock supply. But if you, like me, and so many others before us, wish to affect REAL, TANGIBLE, PALPABLE CHANGE IN THE WORLD IN WHICH WE LIVE... then throw away your socks today. Go out and buy some Johnson and Johnson baby powder, and begin your life anew. And to make up for the sock's other use, guys... stop being a lonely weirdo and do it into an empty bag of chips like the rest of us.

Peace, Taco.