Five or six years ago I had the luck of being at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. It's a loud, raucous, drunken comedy festival that has been the proving ground of many great comics.
One of the acts at the Fringe that year was called "Puppetry of the Penis". It did not involve actual puppets... but, well, special parts of anatomy doing "puppety" things. Really. This now infamous act migrated to the Fringe from Australia.
But Australians seemed so mild-mannered and sweet... like Canadians! Ok, ok, their founding mothers and fathers were convicted criminals — Australia was a penal colony. OUR founding mothers and fathers were Puritans. Hence our fear of straight talk about sex etc., and their comfort with it.
I just returned from the Melbourne Comedy Festival. First, Melbourne is an amazing city, sort of a cross between Paris and San Francisco. European, with little cafes and great architecture and public transportation, but laid back, relaxed and English-speaking. I even saw a little tie-dye.
The Comedy Festival is HUGE. 397 acts. More stages than I could count or find. Your preferred show sold out? Here's what's on during the next three hours:
The central point is the Town Hall, and Melbourne was lively all day and all night in the blocks surrounding it.
Looks glamorous, right? Pretty lights, the rush of the crowd...
Standup comedy is one of the most grueling art forms, and comics have all my respect. The glamorous life of a comic can be found here, with the arrow (made from the comic's own handbills) pointing the way:
(yes, Dr.Brown apparently performs in the nude. Those wacky Aussies!)
And once you've found it, the stage, looking a bit like something that might be in a fraternity basement, welcomes you. Now go on! Be really really funny!
I saw a guy who calls his show Birdmania (and himself Birdman) do an entire act around a refrigerator (full size, on stage) wearing a denim jacket. He ended his show with a Cher homage. The Melbourne Age called it a happy, endearing, mess. It was. But it was also amazingly creative and dang brave.
My favorite performer, whose humor I completely related to, was Celia Pacquola. Her show was sold out every night, so we had to wait until our last day of comedy to see her. It was worth it.
Flying Solos combined self-deprecating humor with video footage of Celia's mom (known as MOM), who learned to fly a plane solo (subsequently giving her the courage to start a new life), and video footage of the comic pledging to learn, and then sweating to learn, and finally learning, the 22-second piano solo from the Pointer Sisters' I'm So Excited. She couldn't play the piano or read music before the quest, but hey, it's not a quest if it's easy. All interspersed with truly original jokes, stories, nerdy dancing and great audience rapport. An inspiring, well-written, amazing hour.
Of course I searched the local art scene...From an amazing, and sometimes eerie, show of extremely lifelike creations (down to body hair) by Australian sculptor Ron Mueck:
And from in and around Melbourne... such a great city:
I loved the graffiti...
I love this sentiment... only the "why?' is graffiti...
Melbourne has a laughter club? A cartoonists dream...
And OF COURSE, the Koala...
...the bush...
up in Cairns, gateway to the Great Barrier Reef...
...the sea (and me)...
