Demografuck
iPods! Google Earth! 14-year-olds talk funny!
Married couples have boring sex lives!
A Current Affair and Today Tonight feature overly-simplistic, scare-mongering stories!
Petrol and bananas got really expensive!
Sexy back!
For those of you who couldn’t guess by the last range of subtle clues, I went and saw Peter Hellier last night at the Thebby. I may have been the wrong demographic, a bit too pissy, not switched on enough, a cynical prick, any of the above things but he wasn’t funny. People were laughing. The place was packed. But there were no gut-busters, no pants-wetters, nothing I could report to anyone else later to make them jealous. Triton fell asleep. He just didn’t have the delivery, the artistry, the clever writing that I would expect from a nationally touring comedian. If there was someone who didn’t speak English in the audience, they would still have known when the punchlines were because the lead up to the jokes were said in one voice AND THEN THE PUNCHLINE WAS SHOUTED VERY FORCEFULLY AS THOUGH HE WAS ANGRY BUT NOT REALLY THAT ANGRY JUST IMPOTENTLY PISSED OFF! He made a joke about how guys don’t feel comfortable around women’s sanitary products. You know: tampons’n’stu ff. And all accompanied by that boorish, knowing laughter that people do when they hear a joke about the opposite sex being inadequate.
Fair enough – he filled the Thebarton Theatre. He put together over an hour’s worth of original material, it was the first show of a national tour and people laughed the whole way through. More than most of us could do. But it just made me hungry for some decent comedy. He had a lot of good set ups and each time he’d start a new joke, I woke up a bit more and waited in anticipation for the next exciting twist UNTIL HE SHOUTED THE MOST OBIVOUS PUNCHLINE DOWN THE MICROPHONE RELYING ON THE AUDIENCE’S LOVE OF HIS PERSONALITY TO CARRY HIM THROUGH to the next set up which he would skip straight on to, rather than attempting to make any multiple jokes of riffs. This is the age of The Simpsons, which is currently being superseded by Family Guy, both of which were hardly even thought of when Bill Hicks began making gags about MC Hammer sucking on Satan’s cock in exchange for 15 minutes of fame. ‘Men and women are somewhat different’ jokes and skilful demographic research doesn’t really cut it as far as comedy goes.
What the hell is wrong with me? I am the demographic that Hellier is aiming at. I understood every little reference in the show, from the one about the two current affairs giants rushing to save that kid who was going to be eaten by cannibals (“I feel like Wa-Wa Tonight!” – get it? Chicken Tonight! You know, the sauce you buy with that ad that everyone made fun of around a decade ago) right down to the tedious flirtation with the possible political incorrectness of Fags (the little white cigarette lollies that were later changed to Fads and had their filter colour removed so as not to appear so much like cigarettes). I’ve had saucier flirtations from an empty jar of Chicken Tonight (see? Riffing? Say the same thing but different and it’s funny! Try it at home!). I watch TV. I read the news. I got every reference, but I was out of the loop. I wasn’t laughing.
In other news: looking for a house still sucks arse donkeys all up in your mumma’s face.
And Moifey finally has a web presence! Even after I told him not to and that it was just a really convoluted way of meeting chicks via a lot of time-wasting, he still went ahead and did it. Power Colour and all. Go Moifey! Actually, if you go through his photo album slider, you can see a photo of me shaking my broken-arsed booty alone on the dance floor. I have The Moves.
Also, speaking of iPods:
"In my defense, you honour, I would like to state that I was wearing those iPod headphones at the time and they are not designed to sit in the ear, but rather to hook onto the edge of it, causing them to fall out frequently."