Comfest 2002

[Kara]

.................................................. .................................
I laughed so much, I nearly cried
By Danny Katz
April 4 2002

If you go to the Melbourne International Comedy Festival this year, then you're sure to have a good time because there's so much great stuff to see; there's Lano and Woodley, and there's The Cheese Brothers, and there's Puppetry of the Penis, which is a show where two guys stretch and twist their genitals into a whole bunch of amusing shapes - and after the show they sit by themselves in the festival bar because no one wants to come over and shake their hands.

Yeah, going to see a show at the Comedy Festival can be fantastically funny, but the thing about live comedy is, you're only having fun while the show is happening; as soon as the show is finished, a very unique phenomenon occurs where the audience goes from a laughter high to a non-laughing low, and a person can come out of a theatre feeling morose and exhausted and even slightly nauseous - particularly if they just saw Puppetry of the Penis and the show finished with a little trick called The Hamburger.

So I'd like to take this opportunity to help Comedy Festival audiences deal with this severe emotional dive, by guiding them through The Five Stages of Post-Comedy Show Grief.

1. DENIAL

After a show is finished, audience members will DENY that it's actually over: they'll stand in the foyer and attempt to re-perform all the jokes. Someone will say ``I loved that funny thing he said about the piano falling out of the helicopter and it lands on the old hunchback guy, HEE HEE HEE'', and someone else will say ``Yeah, and what about that great bit about travelling in a spaceship and getting strip-searched by an alien Belgian policeman, HAW HAW HAW'', and then someone else will say ``Yeah, and after that he did that brilliant joke about Mike Munro and the chicken and how they went ten-pin bowling together, HO HO HO'', and then everyone will stop laughing and stare at each other for a while because they realise the jokes aren't that funny when they're being retold by a 42-year-old systems analyst named Kevin, who still lives with his mother.

2. ANGER

Audience members will now start feeling angry because they're all laughed-out, they're drained of chuckles, and they may direct this anger toward the comedian: they may say things such as ``Yeah, he was all right, but he's no Rodney Rude''. Or, they'll say ``You know, I find that whole stand-up thing so '90s - these days a good comedy show should have at least one tragic revelation about childhood sexual abuse''. And if the comedian came from overseas, someone will say ``Actually, I reckon most of those jokes only worked because of the accent''. At this stage, one of the audience members will attempt the Mike Munro chicken joke again and everyone will say ``WE ALREADY HEARD IT KEVIN, SO JUST BLOODY SHUT UP''.

3. DEPRESSION

Audience members will now wander the city streets feeling lost and confused: they may become melancholy and start talking about the terror in the Middle East, or the political problems in Zimbabwe, or Whoopi Goldberg's hosting of the Oscars. This will be followed by a long silence where nobody knows what to say or do; this is also known as the Let's Go To Hungry Jacks period.

4. BARGAINING

After Whoppers and Onion Rings, audience members will feel reinvigorated and may find themselves at the festival club where they'll get extremely drunk and corner a comedian at the bar: they'll make offers such as ``Oi, I've got a good joke for you, you can have this joke, it goes like this: what do cows eat for breakfast? MOOOOO-uesli. Get it? Muesli. HAW HAW, you can have that joke, it's yours if you want'', and the comedian will say ``Yeah . . . thanks . . . I might open with it''.

5. ACCEPTANCE

It's the end of the night and finally our audience members have overcome their Post-Comedy Show Grief and found a way to get on with their lives. They head off home, maybe deciding to come back again tomorrow night and see John Hegley from Britain, or Brian Nankervis doing travel stories, or Carl Barron, a comedian from Sydney with a head that looks like a sun-dried tomato.

Yes, audience members are prepared to go through this whole experience again and again, because comedy is like a drug, except without the palpitations and the dizziness and the psychological trauma - unless you go to Puppetry of the Penis and they do a little trick called The Loch Ness Monster.

[Mythor]

....

[Kara]

sorry mythor....wasn't thinking.

[sooty]

hehehehe i thought it was funny Kara. and very verytrue!!!

[julz]

haha... that's true, i've definitely got the denial

argh, suffering from withdrawal symptoms! need medication to combat addiction, or money to support it.

[sugarplum fairy 85]

Hee hee. Oh that is sooo true

[cyborgsnail]

I'm past denial. I'm on to anger, anger that my parents won't let me ee anyone else and anger that I'm soooo broke.

[DAASuperstar]

I haven't seen comedy for a while..come to think of t the better word is 'yet' but it was still a great article *larfs*

[Nick]

I WANNA GO BACK!!!! *does a well known Robby hissy fit, and laughs at the memory*

Anybody else can not wait till next year (i dunt care i am going!!)

[Prosehits]

[quote:post_uid0]Anybody else can not wait till next year [/quote:post_uid0]

No..I cannot wait! I had so much fun this year! I may have only gone to 7 shows, but they were all fantastic, and seeing as I got into 3 of em were for free...who can complain!