VIDEO - #ThatsFunny at the All Star Theatre, Brackenfell, November 2014

HashtagThatsFunny - Comedy Photos from Saturday's Show

Post by HashtagThatsFunny.

Why I'm a Full-time Comedian...in my spare time.

You get off stage, having pummeled the crowd with joke after joke that kills, that murders, that slays. Backstage, you wipe your brow as the other acts pat your back and praise you for that quick turn when the heckler almost threw you off-course from the journey of self-exploration you were taking the audience through.

This is your job, this is what you live for.

And that's the vision I see most comedians that have pursued our line of work full-time experience many evenings as a full-time comedian.

Back at the farm, while the young comics emerging into the crowd open-mic circuit trying their luck to impress not just the crowd but the promoter in the hope they get a chance to return, some hardened comedians stand aside and watch as people below them begin to flower, while others above them live the life they dream, and I'm one of those.

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Did my parents teach me anything?

I'm pretty ok with money a lot of the times. When you're living by the seat of your pants every day your blood begins to boil at the sight of the petrol price rising up like cake flour, you tend to forget you have limited funds, and you venture off from the petrol station sulking that your idea of buying an iPad mini seems further and further away.

And then I thought, why didn't my parents teach me how to be good with cash? I mean, they did, to constantly save for a rainy day. In London, that's a silly notion to forget considering its island status, but the notion for never over-spending was drilled into me.

Forget that, I want to know how to invest.
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Remember Me?

I don't blog. I don't. A lot.

I do not so in the vain attempt that I look at my blog, stare at the screen for a few minutes, then realise I'm 4 hours into my work day and I haven't done a thing.

Today, I'm well aware I'm not done with my work, but I visited my blog and 15 people joined in to read.

Well, bully for me. Thank you.


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Armchair Sundays Comedy Show - Comedians' Photos

Post by Armchair Sundays.

9 things I do when I live alone

Just discovered Lili Radloff's "9 things you learn when you live alone", a wonderful list of little things you do when you're alone in your abode. I like it, it's a wonderful piece featuring things she does which we relate to, etcetera, blah blah blah.

But my 9 things are a little different:

1. You tend to walk in after a long day at work, sit down in front of your desk, and realise...you have no internet. So you eat yoghurt and stare at the wall.
2. You switch off the geyser during the day because there's no one there...and forget to switch it on in the morning after being awake for an hour watching your favourite TV show you enjoy to forget why you're even there.
3. Your meals, that you make while naked, are increasingly simple and quick to make.
4. You forget to sleep on your own bed, with the couch increasingly convenient in front of the TV.
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What does my Dad dream?

As I hear the dragon-esque screams from the aeroplane flying above the home of my two terribly incongruent but tremendously loving parents, lying on my mom's bed as she's recovering in hospital from nose surgery and my father in the next room tucked away in his own slumber, I feel a moment of sheer terror as I begin to imagine these dark and twisted thoughts that would be running through his mind as he lays there…a man haunted by death.
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Please Like Me - Comedians should date more.

Comedy is like dating.

At first, it's awkward, then a little familiar, but if you don't keep a close eye on it, it can tell you to move out and warn you never to try and contact it via its mother.

And like the incongruent facade of everyday courting, comedy is very match a game of cat-mouse-promoter. Can you impress a crowd of people immediately, can you keep the crowd interested, can you give them your number and they'll call you back three days later asking when the next gig  is? 

Uggh. Bluggh.

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Post Holiday Blues - What I'm thinking when I'm at home eating chicken

When your birthday’s in the middle of the year, like mine, you tend to see every milestone as a bout of renewal. 6 months down the line from the anniversary of your birth, you share in the same period of coming together with family and friends that everyone mills around on, like flies on a cake.

A rather LARGE cake.

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What have I been up to?

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Sailing means you have to ride the waves...

...and, for some incomprehensible reason that fails me even to this day, we as human metamorphosise our expectations of achieving emotional bliss by creating the same duality, envisioning our meager and short little existences as ships sailing into the horizon, sometimes calm and sometimes stormy.

But from what I've read, most ships had scurvy...and seamen.

And this blog suffers from the stormy times. I tend to write positively when things are going my way, but in reality it's more when I think clearer about...stuff.
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Savvy Granny - How my mom knows more than I do

While I was away in London, my mother grew up.

 She’s a 71 year-old Margaret Thatcher matriarch of the Portuguese community within Cape Town’s Northern Suburbs, with fellow residents from as far afield as Paarl travelling down to get their age-old sequin dresses hemmed and stitched by her soft and wrinkled yet experienced hands. She doesn’t quite skateboard down steep hills or listen to thrash metal locked away in her bedroom but, like a teenager squabbling to her parents for the next Nokia, she seeks out new experiences with youthful aplomb.
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Love Star Trek much?

There are few subjects I can usually relate to people about. Sports are as functional to me as sex, I just don't know the people performing in both. Even an ex-girlfriend successfully stood me up when I tried to open up the fuel-tank for a van I hired to move home.

But Star Trek...hold onto your ridges, Mister Worf.

A comedian I joyously got to meet last night was held accountable for his days playing on the PC videogame Star Trek Online, and I saw how he backed up like he was apologising for indulging in the practise, that it diminished his deserving cool factor.

I say to thee, new friend...never be ashamed.

All of us on this planet fly through this life so quickly, so fleetingly, and I bet you ten bucks that the majority don't really place enough passion into something they love. Yes, there's music, movies, other people, politics, endangerments to things they care about like the environment, social inequalities...

And for a select few, creative fiction of unimportance to the grand scheme of things that bring joy to the few that know nothing else.

But for me, I look towards the future of the human race, and Star Trek has always been the definitive representation of how we as a species can evolve into something more, devoid of aspects that divide us like territory, currency, violence and prejudice. As a television series though, it was the ultimate situational experiment set in the vacuum of space, placing the human condition in all its forms in a futuristic setting that explored facets we tend to overlook in ourselves in this modern agenda.

Furthermore...who wouldn't want to captain a starship, with warp drive and phasers?

And, finally empowered with social commentary that places me into a pigeon-hole that I am fully capable of decorating with fictional innuendo and passion in my voice remarked, "There's nothing quite like seeing your ship that you've set up YOURSELF floating with fantastic speed through the stars. And I'm proud to proclaim myself commander of the best starship a young, stupid Trekkie can ever have, the USS Fantastic."

At least one comedian laughed. :)

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