Tonight I headed down to the ABC tv studios in Elsternwick to watch the taping of this week's episode of
Vulture. I met up with Will, his mother and sister, as well as Helen's parents. The topics this week were the convict miniseries "Mary Bryant," the Australian architect awards, "raunch culture," and the death of copyright. The panel had good discussions on all the topics, and even though it was a bit more academic this week it was still interesting.
After the taping, Helen, Will, and I met up with host
Richard Fidler, and audience warm-up comedian
Justin Kennedy at
Grossi Florentino on Bourke Street. We had a delicious dinner, a couple bottles of Shiraz, and entertaining conversation. It was a good night.
Happy Halloween to all my US friends. I can't say that I really missed dealing with 20 hyper second graders loaded up with energy and sugar this year. I hope the Wilson School Harvest Festival was a success and that you made lots of money for your classrooms.
Tonight was the first night of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival. Michelle and I headed to the Melbourne Town Hall to catch some of the local talent this evening. The first comic was Tom Gleeson in his stand-up show "Non Stop Tom." He did bits about different things in his life, and used some of the audience members to help with the transitions between stories. My favorite part was at the end when he played the James Blunt song "You're Beautiful" but was pretending he and his girlfriend were on the train looking and commenting back to James after he sang each line. It was very funny as Tom got more pissed off at James for staring at his girlfriend and being a perv. I'll never listen to that song in the same way again.
The other comedian we saw was Justin Kennedy in his one-man show "Beelzebuzz." In the show Justin plays multiple characters who are stuck on a party boat that descends into chaos. The show was inspired by "Lord of the Flies" (yes, there was a character named Piggy who ends up dying) and contained flashback scenes for each character like those done on the tv show "Lost." Justin is very talented and each character had their own voice, mannerisms, and personality. It was amazing to watch Justin transition from one character to the next. There were a few technical glitches with music cues (it was the first night), but the show really hit its stride towards the end. It's probably one of the most unique shows in the whole festival. I really enjoyed it.
