February 2005

“but I don’t want to get better
I don’t want to turn cruel
I don’t want to get old before I have to”
Jill Sobule

There was a story in the paper about loneliness and how men are especially hit. And even more so single fathers.

This brings us to Raw Comedy. Every year one of the male contestants does a speil that is not funny in any fashion. It is just spewing bile about how no women look at them and how their life looking after their kids sucks.

No doubt their anguish is genuine enough. However I may never understand why they think an amateur comedy competition is the forum to air this.

Lesson for the day - I guess bitter is hard to control.

Tomorrow I go back to school and the subjects I am doing are all over the shop. Lectures, workshops, tutorials, pracs, school experience big and small.

And I will make friends in this damn course but it is going to take a while with things chopping and changing like this. I write this more for my benefit because I know that for the first couple of weeks I am just going to feel like the last man on earth in this course.

Lesson for the day - taking the broader view generally only works in retrospect.

I am not really used to being busy of late and I have quite gotten into a slow kind of routine with plenty of time for dishes, washing and simple stuff like that.

Today has been relatively quiet but did have an appointment for Finn with his hearing aid people, a trip to the post office, and a trip to parents night at Finn’s childcare centre tonight.

Tuesday holds swimming in the morning then a three hour workshop at Uni in the afternoon. Happily I will be out of that at four and so can collect Foozley at five from childcare.

Wednesday starts and finishes with lectures which are almost certainly on. The first starts at eight in the morning and the last ends at five. I have stiff booked from start to finish but Trevor alone knows how much of it I will have to go to on any given Wednesday.

Thursday Shannon arrives in Melbourne at 11am. First I’ll leave Finn with Danya then once I’ll collected Shannon we’ll be off to join Foozley at the Lunchbox’s and then home again at some stage.

Friday is a spot of childcare for Foozley then off to Geelong for the Play School concert. I believe it is the hottest ticket in Geelong.

Saturday involves driving Shannon to the airport for Mardi Gras and not much else. Perhaps a good chance to take it easy.

Sunday we are off to Nicky’s sister’s house for lunch which will be nice but will also go for hours and hours.

Monday it is my birthday. Foozley has a chiropractor appointment in the morning but other than that I think it will be declared a day of rest.

Lesson for the day - some people are busy every day of their lives. Not this little black duck.

I logged onto the university system to see if I could see the unit guides to work out exactly what my timetable is for the first days this week.

And, finally, my units exist on the system and have documents to look at. More specifically they have last year’s documents to look at. These are perhaps interesting for an historical perspective but not so much use for me right now.

Also I checked my timetable because there was a popup telling me the room had changed for a particular tutorial. It didn’t tell me what the new room was of course. Just that there was one.

What I did discover when I went looking is that two of my classes clash and the only way I can resolve the clash by using the system to to go to Uni for another day every week and hence find childcare for Foozley.

So I have emailed the lecturer in charge to see if some accomodation can be reached. Finger crossed.

Lesson for the day - when things happen repeatedly in some disciplines they call it a pattern.

We have been meaning to move things around in Finn’s room for a while now so that he can play in there without us having to be in the room. Not that he could do any real damage but he is very good at spreading tissues, nappies and nappy cream around the place.

Anyhow what we ended up doing was swapping Finn’s room with the spare bedroom (which we had been meaning to tidy also). All of this took ages but was worth it as both rooms now look really good.

Foozley also got the blowup chair in his room (which he loves) and discovered the buttons on his stereo (which he also loves)

Lesson for the day - rooms need a change every now and then.

Tim is quite right in stating that I am not the world’s best singer-songwriter. Chances are good I am not the best one in my reasonable small suburban street. But I do put on a reasonably good show. Not the sort people pay for of course, but one that people don’t mind sitting through for the price of nothing.

Part of this is waffling on in a relaxed and lighthearted fashion between songs. People seem to like that.

And when it comes to pure stand up I am better than some. I am also worse that others. This is the normal state of things for people generally and is certainly true for me.

My disinterest in doing Raw Comedy again is not about retreating in a state of defeat. It is much more about having done what I set out to do.

Facing an audience takes no courage on my part so doing Raw is no exercise in facing demons. I suppose if it ever was about anything then it was seeing I was funny in a comedy setting or really just in folk music settings. And now that I know I would far rather be a amusing and entertaining folk singer than a bog standard comic.

But thank you all for your encouragement, it is very sweet.

And to answer Tim question, Raw in Geelong is held in a large foyer. Typcially there are about 300 people there and it is pretty full but nothing like crowded.

Lesson for the day - other people’s reasons sometimes need explaining.

Every year I say it will be my last go at Raw Comedy and, of course, this year is no different.

It is not so much that I was unhappy with how I went. It is more than I am not sure that the experience has anything new to teach me.

Lesson for the day - quack quack quack

For those who could be bothered here is the mp3 file of my performance at Raw last night.

The file is 3.4 meg big and a standard mp3.

Lesson for the day - now you don’t have to take my word for how it went.

I completely forgot to thank Kristen who babysat Foozley while we were off at the Raw Heat. She deserved massive thanks for the following reasons.

1. Foozley didn’t miss a beat.
2. She didn’t eat all the tim tams (I would have).
3. She watched Crackerjack (which I recommended)
4. We got home fairly close to midnight.

So three cheers for Kristen.

Lesson for the day - it is nice to know Foozley has good role models.

I went every bit as well as I had reason to in the Raw Comedy heat. Out of the twelve contestants two really made the crowd laugh (on of these got a honourable mention), five did ok (one of these won and another scored an honourable mention also), one was just kind of flat and two were just horrible.

I was in the five that did ok but not among the winners which was entirely appropriate. I was quite nervous at the time but did watch the tape when we got home and looked quite relaxed on stage.

I will probably post the audio in the next day.

Big thanks to Nicky for coming along to encourage me, Rad for videoing and encouragement, and Dad and Lynn for making the trip so see such unremarkable comedy generally.

Lesson for the day - people like to know how the story ends.