Monthly Archives: April 2010

Say it with me: “I am a magnet for success!”

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“That was a negative, and right now I need two positives: one to cancel out the negative, and another one, you know, just so I can have a positive.” — Alan Partridge

The billboard for Akmal Saleh’s show at this year’s Melbourne International Comedy Festival quotes a review from, as I recall, the Adelaide Advertiser, claiming that “at times the audience could have been forgiven for crying with laughter in their seats”. I feel these words could have just as easily applied to my performance at the national Raw Comedy final last night, albeit deliberately misinterpreted along the way; that is to say, the audience could have been forgiven with crying with laughter at every one of my unique observations and solid gold punchlines, but they just didn’t. Instead, my set was fueled largely by the sound of 1500 people furrowing their brows and scratching their heads. But they can be, and have been, forgiven for that.

Perhaps the majority of the crowd didn’t want to think too hard about what I was saying, especially as I was the last of the evening’s 13 acts (not even counting Cal Wilson’s pieces as the show’s host), but it’s just as likely that I didn’t leave enough space for them to think. I can’t blame an exhausted festival crowd for not responding warmly to what may have been, upon reflection, the comedy equivalent of a Mars Volta song.

Small mercies: Rove McManus, one of the judges, told me afterwards to keep doing whatever the hell it is I’m doing, or words to that effect. And somebody writing for Chortle (presumably Steve Bennett, also on the judging panel) described me as “probably the most intriguing act on the bill”. Granted, “intriguing” doesn’t pay the bills — indeed, if anything, “intriguing” just makes people very curious as to why you’re not paying the bills — but it’s encouraging nonetheless. I’ve already decided it would be quite funny to include “give him a couple of years, he could be something distinctive and special” on a festival poster two years from now, and funnier still to include it on a festival poster one year from now.

And if “intriguing” is what made you look me up: hello! I’m 25, I’ve been gigging regularly around Hobart for about a year, I’ve written and performed close to an hour in total of what I would still consider halfway decent material, I am indeed in a band called the Native Cats, I tend to stutter when I’m not on stage, and I didn’t think I was being all that perverse and wilfully obscure with my choices of comedy subject matter, but apparently I am. To quote Luke Heggie, the chap who actually won the final: have that!

Impression of J. Biden

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I published this elsewhere in October 2008, my one and only foray into TV reviewing. The series in question never did return, sadly; one presumes, for its star, life just got in the way. My opening point about how vital it is for comedy to be built upon at least some small foundation of truth still stands, however, and I’ve yet to see anyone unwittingly illustrate it better than John McCain at the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Dinner. (For the curious, both McCain and Obama’s routines are neatly laid out in order here; oh, that old time, those old days!)

So we’ve seen Barack Obama and John McCain gently poke fun at themselves and each other at the Al Smith dinner, and Sarah Palin get within breathing distance of the joke that has been made of her persona, campaign and entire life on Saturday Night Live and embrace it about as awkwardly as one can. For what it’s worth, I haven’t dared watch the Palin appearance, but McCain had the delivery and timing to do his material justice, I thought. Where he finally lost me was with the ACORN material, mind; I couldn’t tell you whether it’s a widely-accepted rule in comedy or just a pet peeve of mine, but his ACORN bit, to me, was the direct equivalent of any other stand-up comedian with two or three minutes’ worth of material that begins with an urban legend presented unironically as fact, and hinges entirely on that wilful ignorance. In the minutes preceding, there were elements of comic exaggeration, absurdity — yeah, I know you haven’t replaced your entire campaign staff with Joe the Plumber, but heck, John, I’ll go there if you’ll take me — but there was never a Seaman Staines or a Master Bates on Pugwash, “Puff the Magic Dragon” was never about smoking pot, and ACORN aren’t out to commit mass voter fraud in Obama’s favour. I don’t believe it, you don’t believe it, and if the joke isn’t the fact that you’re acting like you believe it, then that’s the end of that; you can’t even impress me as a comedian. On the other hand, Obama’s material actually benefited a great deal from not having been written by the man himself; he drew out the lamest punchlines and, as Letterman does in some of his best moments, clearly revelled in the limp ones: “My middle name is actually Steve. Barack… Steve… Obama.”

That’s not the point, though, far from it. Nobody would have accepted that Joe the Plumber material from anyone else, and the same goes for just about anything either of those two big men said that night. They were there to be adored and celebrated for being powerful, influential people with a hell of a lot still at stake, dipping even so much as a big toe into the pool of comedy. By all reports, the bulk of Palin’s SNL appearance was spent sitting and “raising the roof” while someone else (not even Tina Fey) did a rap about her. And yet they’re all being congratulated soundly by their supporters, reluctantly by their opponents, and in clinical, joke-destroying detail by the media, all for a pinch of carefully regulated levity and self-parody.

And in all this, barely a fucking word about Joe Biden.

A word of clarification, for the newcomers: Joe Biden is a Delaware senator and Democratic nominee for the United States vice-presidency. Joe Biden is the witty, uncompromising, criminally underrecognised, at times distressingly dark, Curb-meets-Nixon HBO comedy series with the aforementioned senator as its producer and star. It’s just wrapped up its first 13-episode season, with a second already scheduled for mid-2009. I’ve been getting by on whatever sporadic, patchy torrents I can find, presently the only option for those of us outside the US; there’s talk that SBS has picked it up for broadcast in Australia, but one suspects they’re waiting on the election result before making a final decision one way or the other.

I still vividly remember coming across the trailer on YouTube. It began, white text on black, velvet-voiced announcer: “Who is the real Joe Biden?” What followed seemed at first to be the work of a particularly skilled and inspired video manipulator, someone with the necessary time and resources to redub him whispering demented Anthony Robbins mantras to himself before a campaign speech, and even find someone who looked enough like him in dim light to sit shirtless in the living room with the lights out, eating raisins by the handful and trolling freerepublic.com. But as the quality shifted from “impressive” to “eerily professional”, it dawned on me that this really was Joe Biden arguing with a Burger King manager, wearing a ridiculous wig and moustache while urgently pushing through the crowds at a McCain/Palin rally, sobbing uncontrollably in a jacuzzi next to Peter Bogdanovich.

Amazingly, the series itself did not disappoint in the slightest. Biden doesn’t pull any punches, and what’s more, they’re all aimed back at himself; all his neuroses and petty insecurities are laid bare, with an apparent total lack of consideration for the real-world aftermath. He’s a uniquely talented comic actor, and you only have to watch closely for a second to see that he’s clearly playing a character, but try to find the point where the character ends and the real live man begins, and you’re on your own. Of all the people who have shaken Biden’s hand and exchanged a few words with him during the obligatory diner and factory visits, none have yet reported him making awkward astrological innuendo (as his TV persona did with a nonplussed forty-something waitress in episode 2), but many have picked up on his apparent difficulty maintaining eye contact. Biden himself even caused ripples of disquiet among concerned supporters when he admitted during a recent AV Club interview that while he isn’t yet certain what direction the show will take in its second season, he feels that “a lot of the ideas set up in the first season could only truly reach fruition if we lose this election”.

If you’re wondering what Barack Obama makes of all this, don’t expect any answers any time soon. Many have taken his brief, uncredited appearance in episode 1 as a tacit endorsement of the show (Biden watches from a distance as Obama and Governor Tim Kaine, who had also been on Obama’s vice-presidential shortlist, engage in animated conversation at a campaign fundraiser; he spends the rest of the episode sick with worry, unable to sleep for the thought that Kaine would have been a better selection and that he himself could single-handedly lose the election for Obama). However, he has proved uncharacteristically evasive when questioned about his running mate’s “other life”, and the closest he has ever come to a definitive statement on the subject was claiming that his wife Michelle had dutifully recorded every episode on their TiVo and that he would make his way through them “after this is all over”.

Last week’s season final, perhaps the best episode of the lot, introduced Peter Bogdanovich as “Morty”, Biden’s best friend from high school, now a literature professor at Princeton. The two bond instantly, and Biden soon finds himself desperately jealous of Morty’s free-spirited life of drug-fuelled academia. The episode ends with Biden, during a weekend away at Morty’s California beach house, squeezing through the bathroom window late at night and making a run for the trees, wearing only his pyjamas. What is he running from, and why? Is he evading his own Secret Service agents, or Morty himself? All he has with him is a harmonica he stole from Morty’s mantlepiece. Compelling viewing, and it’s going to take more than Obama making Superman jokes at a televised dinner party to make the wait for season 2 any easier to bear.