One Angry Spaniard

Have been off the blog for a couple of days and just as well.
The weekend brought two miserable gigs, the kind that make you feel like you are taking three steps back. The show and the audience were great. A nice, easy time was had by all. but it was the details of the venue that make me feel like I'm working in a place where the standards aren't really are priority as long the drinks are selling at the bar.
Here is a good tip for comedians everywhere, if the waiters or waitresses feel they can talk at the top of their voices during the show you can safely bet that the venue is not particularly concerned with quality control on stage.
Dave Letterman once said to Jay Leno about comedy venue owners, "These are the guys that used run the trampolines at the Mall". And he was right sometimes you do gigs, specially at pubs where tonight is stand-up comedy tomorrow is dwarf throwing and the next day mud wrestling and neither the crowd or the staging is going to change.
I play a CD during my act and I don't know how manytime you get to gig and the manager will look at you asking "Oh, so you actually need someone there turning on the CD during your act?" Yes, because the Cash Converters microphone and the two patio lights you have supplied are going to add such production values I thought I might Finish with highlights from Miss Saigon complete with helicopter.
In a foul mood lately, everybody is really annoying me, one of those periods when nothing is comming up to scratch. Not work, not the kids, not the girlfriend. Every time I hit one of these periods I look around and start blaming everything and everybody around me. If the kids were behaving better, if I was doing another job, if I was working with other people. Of course when it comes down it is me that I'm not happy with. I'm making good money at the moment, not great money but a nice living but falling into the conundrum of the safe job as opposed to trying out new ideas, new projects. Realizing that I'm still not particularly good at enthusing people to work on projects or maybe I just simply don't do enough and work hard enough. Maybe once you have fallen into a groove, as safe groove the comfort is too cosy to leave and start taking chances again. I'm reading Mark Burnett's book Jump In. He created the show Survivor after fighting in the Falklands war as a Red Beret, and I wonder how many motivational books you have to read before something rubs off. Before all those mantras that we have heard hundreds of times finally start taking effect and you move forward. I'm sure I'm not the only motivational literature junkie, every bookshop has a huge section of these books that promise everything from riches to infuence, charisma to karma. But it seems to me that little touch of osmosis where the idea becomes action, that is the spark that I can't seem to find on the bookshelves.
More of this tomorrow.

Paella recipe

And just for the hell of it.
Although there are hundreds of recipes for paella this is the way I cook it to my taste, you may make it a chicken paella or a seafood paella or both. Or you may replace them with green beans, broad beans and vegetable stock for a vegetarian dish. Which ever way cook it to your taste. You'd never cook a whole paella just for one so it's a great dish for Sunday lunch with friends and family. All the best.
Serves 8
Paella Recipe
1/2 a chicken cut in pieces
1 clove of garlic finely chopped
olive oil
1 onion diced
1 red pepper diced
1green pepper diced
2 tomatoes(ripe) diced
3 cups medium grain rice
saffron colouring
1/2 litre chicken stock
1/2 litre white wine
150 grams calamri rings
200 grams pipis or clams
250 grams black muscles( boil to open first)
150 grams baby octopus
8 banana, tiger or king prawns
8 prawns peeled
2 lemons
salt
Brown the chicken with the garlic in a large flat frying pan or paella dish, not a wok, and move to one side. Stir in onion, green and red pepper and tomato in chicken juices to fry the base. Add in the rice dry and stir all ingredients well with the rice. Add saffron powder (artificial colouring is fine but beware of allergies, you might like to find a non-chemical saffron colouring). Flood the pan with chicken stock and wine. Add salt. Stir well and add calamari rings, baby octopus, pipis and peeled prawns. Mix in well and after this do not stir. Simmer at low heat for ten minutes. Place precooked muscles around the edge of pan and fan whole prawns on top in a star pattern. Simmer for another ten minutes or until most of the stock has been absorbed by the rice.
Turn heat off, cover and let it rest for a few minutes before serving.
Enjoy.

Another day another gig.

Just finished working and felt bad not putting something in today. The show was fun, the audience laughed in all the right places and managed to improvised a few new gags. Last year I did stand-up in New York and Montreal. I did one try-out night in a club in New York. One thing you notice since the anti-smoking laws have come in is that some of these old clubs without the cigarette smoke... Really stink. They stink of damp, kitchen smells, hell, sometimes you could smell the rubbish in the alley.
Anyway, the thing about New York is that they have these severe time constraints. Five minutes and you're off. I usually do two hours on stage. So you can imagine the talk about missing the red light by this nineteen year old manager. According to her I might never work in New York again. I think in the end I probably ended up doing about twelve minutes and got a good response for my first gig outside of Australia but , Man! The lecture I got. Also I'll never get back the half hour of sitting there to a semi-celebrity doing the worst material I have ever heard. One thing about American audiences they are polite. The same guy in Oz would've had a chair thrown at him. Hell we even boo comedians on national television.
Anyway it turns out that in the States the try-out nights work like this. If you bring in three paying friends, who buy two drinks, you get five minutes on stage. In some clubs if you bring ten friends you get eight minutes. So the place gets filled with the paying friends of the comics and nobody gets paid for the night.

Rainy day

Rainy day in Melbourne, a slow plodding day, it's been a week of reading and writing. Halfway through my second novel this week. Next week will have the buzz of the boys around the house but for now the quiet indoor life is fine. performing tomorrow and back to battle stations. I love my job, the simplicity of the challenge, standing in front of a group of people and making them laugh, the immediacy of its result, its success, its failure. The chance to comment while entertaining. The camaraderie, lately I've been rejoicing in working with people that I've know for a long time, that have known me for a long time. That will still be there after a bad night, not that we've had one of those for a long time. Planning for next year, looking forward to holidays soon, a few good shows left before the end of the year and the sun. Am I getting old? I was in Brisbane recently and relished the warm weather I could feel my bones thawing out after the Melbourne winter.
Footy fever is gripping Melbourne, Perth and Sydney fans can be spotted in the street. Still feels like a foreign language to me football. It's like a distant culture, I know it, I respect it but, essentially, I'm of it. Like a carnival in an exotic country I enjoy the colour and movement.
More tomorrow... The rain smells fresh...

Australian Rules football

Is there any other ball game in the world where you can go to court and oppose a referee's decision. The big news here has been Sydney Swans player Barry Hall getting suspended for two matches for punching. The fact that in those two weeks his team has made it to the grandfinal has compounded the situation and so the Swans appealed to the tribunal. To do this they procured the services of the high court solicitor who got the bouncer that punched Geoff Hookes acquitted. It amazes me that world soccer which deals with players worth millions of dollars and play a game worth billions in TV rights and sponsorship can get by with one referee and two linesmen armed with a yellow and red card.
When a soccer referee looks at Beckham and gives him the red card he just goes" See it? There it is. Start walking. I don't care how much you earn". Yet in Aussie rules tripping another player over by the time you get over the video evidence, the tribunal and the whole footy CSI case it's turned into "The people versus the full-forward".
I like the simplicity of soccer rules, no electronic monitoring, what the referee says goes. A human game relying on human perception, in some South American countries they have been known to shoot the referee but, hey, what system is perfect.
Of course the problem with Aussie rules is that we are talking about a game where that players don't wear protective gear, as in Gridiron, but as soon as the players walk on to the field they start shirtfronting and slapping each other around even before the ball is in play,"Biff, biff, there's a couple of slaps to warm up the back of your head for what's to come".
If only there was the same approach to golf I might even watch it, Tiger Woods walking on the green and shirtfronting Jack Nicholaus, a couple of slaps and a "I'm going to kick your ass" can't be bad for the game.

just in case

Melbourne is a vibrant, modern, cosmopolitan city located in the state of Victoria on the south coast of Australia. It offers a unique blend of art, culture, great outdoors and a variety of sport and tourism activities. It is known for its international character, demonstrated through a number of international events and festivals held yearly.

Just had a look a round at the other blogs. This is the place I'm talking about though it looks more glamorous here than I have ever seen it.
Just saw a fantastic documentary on TV about a young English guy who got the United Nations to pass a resolution to celebrate a World Peace Day on September the 21st. It's called Peace One Day. It's been a day of inspirational people. The United Nations agreed to celebrated but how you get all the wars around the world to declare a ceasefire for one day is anybody's guess. Anyway Happy Peace One Day day. Cheers

My first

Here I am, feeling decidedly average today after having spent my weekend reading a book from cover to cover called In My Skin, a memoir, by Kate Holden. A journey through drug addiction and prostitution that that holds no punches or details. My interest was more than literary as I was part of Kate's extended family while she was going through her journey, in a sense standing on the one side of the fence listening to the fallout of this reckless young woman who was causing her middle class Melbourne family so much pain, to now discover a beautifully written book that describes her whole dire adventure. The first thing I did when I saw the book at Reading's was check to see the dedication, it was to her parents and sister, I can't tell you how happy I was to see that, there is a huge sense of justice in this whole story. A sense that people can trek through the most harrowing of times and come out the other end. The other thing that impresses is when someone can meander through a world so unlike their own and still be able to pen their thoughts in succinct, beautiful prose.
Years ago I remember an author who had walked out on her husband and landed on our doorstep with her two small children. She walked down the hallway full of apologies and bags of nappies. When she arrived at the kitchen table and she unloaded the sackful of baby paraphernalia that you carry everywhere when you have a small child, out of the blankets and the baby bottles she slammed a three hundred page manuscript for a novel on the table and declared "At least I got that out of the way" Being the most procrastinating writer on earth I just stared at the ream of typed pages on the table while the din of the situation continued around me. How can you write a novel about being seriously while being seriously ill with two small children?
I guess this just goes to show the kind of extraordinary strength that can be found in the average people of our little suburban existence. I alway wonder how this kind of strength and courage compares with the kind of courage that is depicted in films and TV, that gung-ho, Kill Bill style of courage. Because the style of courage I'm talking about, the resilience, and the will power is not particularly cinematographic or even visually interesting. Which is more fascinating when someone can turn in into a captivating work of art.
That's my first blog; I'll now look out of my window again...