Arj Barker's Safe Space

Comedian Arj Barker is developing his new show and testing out material in front of a live audience each Monday in the basement of the European Bier Cafe. Belinda and I attended this evening's "Safe Space" performance and it was a packed and intimate show. Arj covered a wide range of topics, including differences between America and Australia (which set up a funny call back later in the show) married life, climate change, space and aliens, and his love of true crime. Demonstrating his years in stand up, he hilariously shot down a couple of chatty audience members and dealt well with a broken glass incident midway through the show.

As we were walking out I had to stop and introduce myself to Arj as a fellow Marinite, and we had a brief chat about Marin and Melbourne. While Arj said to the crowd that the material is not likely to change much from week to week,  I think it would be interesting to attend again towards the end of the run to see how the show has developed.

MICF- Arj Barker

I crossed the Yarra River for tonight's Melbourne International Comedy Festival show at the Palais Theatre featuring fellow Marinite Arj Barker in Organic. We were treated to a surprise opening stand-up set by Australian comedian Joel Ozborn, who told jokes about playing for the 'troops,' tattoos, and the misappropriation of the Southern Cross by bogans.

Arj is in his 10th year at MICF with yet another brand new show. Since he spends so much time here a lot of the material related to Australia, including our ever evolving roster of PMs, Brisvegas, and the extensive list of Australian phrases with the word 'shit' in them. Ever the man child, Arj is now living with his girlfriend, which he joked has completed him by bringing out an angry side he didn't know existed. Part of this might be due to his girlfriend making them eat organic and gluten free. The show had some big laughs throughout, especially the bits around Uber and spoilers. Arj tied it all together at the end with the song "Organic," which was my favorite part of the show as it was a throw back to classic Arj.

MICF: Wil Anderson, Arj Barker and Joel Creasey

It's Melbourne International Comedy Festival time once again and there are over 500 acts performing this year from 25 March - 19 April. I have gone through the program and shortlisted a bunch of shows (we'll see how many I end up getting to). My first MICF show was last Monday with Onagh for Wil Anderson's Political Wil at the Comedy Theatre, which is only running for three shows in total on Monday nights. Wil is doing two shows this year, but this one is focused on Australian politics and other things that wouldn't fit into his regular show. He covered a wide variety of topics, including Tony Abbott eating a raw onion, the Australian knighthood of Prince Philip, refugees, violence against women and his hatred of columnist Andrew Bolt, amongst other things. It was a funny and insightful 70 plus minutes and I actually enjoyed the darker moments of the show as it reminded me of the stand-up comedy I grew up watching. As Wil stated about 45 minutes in that he was where he thought he'd be at the 15 minute mark, it will be interesting to see how much the show changes each week.

Tonight Belinda and I started our Easter evening at the Melbourne Town Hall for Arj Barker's Get In My Head. This is the first MICF show of his I have caught, even though he is a regular visitor to Australia. I'll always have a soft spot for Arj as he also grew up in Marin. The show had an overarching theme of getting older and looking back at simpler times, such as when children had manners and people didn't have control over photos because they were taken on film. Portions of the material were blokey (his anti-aging "poo facials," freezing sperm at home and erections) but overall it was an entertaining hour, with the best bits of the night being about airplane boarding systems, what Bob Marley would be like today if he smoked as much weed as in the past, and surprisingly ISIS.

Next we headed down to ACMI to see Joel Creasey's show The Hurricane. Joel recently did a stint on the Australian version of I'm A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here in the South African jungle, so he was full of amusing anecdotes from that as well as other events in his life. His tales from the jungle were hilarious, especially about Maureen McCormick (aka Marsha Brady) and some of the other "celebrities" that were there. He also snarked about being invited back to the apartment of a closeted male star of the tv soap Neighbours for a sex party, and a particularly nasty run in at an interview with a two time Oscar winner. Joel is a fantastic storyteller and not afraid to share the inside dirt from his encounters, which resulted in a funny and fast-paced hour of comedy that ended with an amusing costume change.

Flight of the Conchords- 2012 Australian Tour

Poster by Jason Munn

Mary and I were fortunate enough to attend the Flight of the Conchord's sold out show at The Plenary in the Melbourne Convention Exhibition Centre tonight.  Although our tickets were off to the side and a bit further back than I would have liked, thankfully the venue had screens on either side of the stage so we were able to see what was happening throughout the evening. 

The opening act was stand-up comedian and fellow Marinite Arj Barker, who also played Bret and Jemaine's friend Dave in the FOTC tv series.  Arj is a frequent visitor to Melbourne, and it was good to finally get to see him live as I unfortunately haven't made it to any of his comedy festival shows.  I enjoyed his set, including his funny observations about building design in Melbourne.

Bret and Jemaine snuck out onto the stage in the darkness after Arj finished and launched into "Too Many Dicks (On the Dance Floor)" complete with decorated cardboard boxes on their heads.  They then swung the boxes around to the silver painted side to play one of my favorite songs of theirs "Robots."  The band for this tour consisted of Bret, Jemaine and Nigel Collins on cello and drums (the only "member of the NZSO" they brought over to Australia with them).  The show ran for two hours and was full of songs from the tv show as well as some new ones.  Highlights included "Inner City Pressure," "Hiphopopotamus vs. Rhymenoceros," "Bowie," "The Most Beautiful Girl (In the Room)," "Hurt Feelings" and "Business Time."  In between songs they told stories about their "wild" rock life on the road, which all tied together nicely in the lyrics of one of the encore songs "Back on the Road."  We were also treated to some skin tight glam era outfits for "Demon Woman," which had the boys displaying a lot of chest hair as well as some wire filled scarves and capes to make it look like they were in front of a wind machine.  Overall it was very entertaining and funny night and hopefully one of these days there will be a season three of the Flight of the Conchords tv show.