Where To Next?

The Melbourne International Comedy Festival has kicked off for another year, and I was lucky enough to be able to get tickets to so many amazing comedians that I wanted to see. So I've decided to review all the shows I see, and to include some general comedy festival tips as well (scroll to the end for those!). Today's must-see show belongs to the one and only, Demi Lardner! You know how sometimes you have a dream that, unlike most of your dreams, is exciting and weird, and when you wake up you wish you could go back to sleep and fall back into that dream? Well, that's what Demi Lardner's show is like. It is unpredictable, a bit weird, a bit crazy, and so much fucking fun. You literally have no idea what's going to happen next. Will Demi leave the room? Dance? Request something from the audience? Read a poem? We don't know, but we do know that whatever it is will make us laugh embarrassingly hard. Amongst the madness lies a common understanding, with j

The Melbourne International Comedy Festival has kicked off for another year, and I was lucky enough to be able to get tickets to so many amazing comedians that I wanted to see. So I've decided to review all the shows I see, and to include some general comedy festival tips as well (scroll to the end for those!). And now....*drumroll*.....Joel Creasey! The blonde bombshell himself You must have heard of Joel Creasey. Unless you don't own a TV. Or read the news. Or enjoy comedy at all. In which case, why are you here? Joel, as well as having an amazing stand-up career, has also been gracing our screens for years, both here and overseas. With appearances on everything from Have You Been Paying Attention to I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here!, the self-confessed fame whore is practically everywhere. Which, for us viewers, is nothing but a good thing. Beginning his career in stand up early, at only fifteen, Joel has had years to hone his craft, although it is incom

The Melbourne International Comedy Festival has kicked off for another year, and I was lucky enough to be able to get tickets to so many amazing comedians that I wanted to see. So I've decided to review all the shows I see, and to include some general comedy festival tips as well (scroll to the end for those!). Now, for the loose unit himself, Nick Cody! Nick Cody, possibly laughing at his own joke I saw Nick Cody on Wednesday night. At 9.45pm. That's bedtime. But it was totally worth it. To be fair, I did have Thursday off, but even if I had to work on Thursday, it still would have been worth it. It was that good. My friend and I headed in after the queue of people had already entered, so we thought we would be stuck up the back, but no. No one wanted to sit right in the very front row, so we got convinced to sit there. My friend was terrified, trying to think of an escape plan in case Nick singled her out in his act. Luckily, he did not, instead focusing on the 1

The Melbourne International Comedy Festival has kicked off for another year, and I was lucky enough to be able to get tickets to so many amazing comedians that I wanted to see. So I've decided to review all the shows I see, and to include some general comedy festival tips as well (scroll to the end for those!). Now, for the amazing Anne Edmonds! Anne Edmonds is a fucking gem. She has perfected the caricature of your typical Australian, whether it's in her rendition of a creepy ex-boss, or her impersonation of her irritated mother. She paints such an accurate portrait of suburban Australia, you can feel the atmosphere in the caravan park, picture the creepy family at the next table, and hear her mum's incessant questioning. In this show, Anne has not only brought to life her family, but all of our families, as we find familiarity in their idiosyncrasies. You are bound to find a reflection of your own experience in this show, through the pain of dealing with shop as

The Melbourne International Comedy Festival has kicked off for another year, and I was lucky enough to be able to get tickets to so many amazing comedians that I wanted to see. So I've decided to review all the shows I see, and to include some general comedy festival tips as well (scroll to the end for those!). Today, the one we have all been waiting for, Wil Anderson! If, like me, you are a big fan of Wil, you have been waiting months for this show, for him to finally tell the story of the day he got arrested in Wagga Wagga. He announced awhile ago that he would be using this experience as the basis for this year's show, and has teased it a bit on his podcast, without giving anything away.  Having seen many of Wil's stand up shows over the years, I have always found them to be balanced observations of the world, whether he's discussing the latest ridiculous statement from one of our ignorant politicians, or why we should change the date of Australia Day. He

The Melbourne International Comedy Festival has kicked off for another year, and I was lucky enough to be able to get tickets to so many amazing comedians that I wanted to see. So I've decided to review all the shows I see, and to include some general comedy festival tips as well (scroll to the end for those!). Now, for some improv, with The Big HOO-HAA! I feel like improv can go one of two ways. There's the awkward nightmare, where you feel embarrassed for the people on stage and die a little inside every time someone freezes or can't think of a line. Then there is the high-energy show, where the actors come up with ridiculous lines and situations, and it's just a lot of fun. The Big HOO-HAA! is the latter. I haven't actually seen a live improv show before, so I wasn't quite sure what to expect when entering the tiny, hot room in the bottom of Town Hall. The stage was so small, how would the actors fit on there, let alone put on a show? But put on a sho

The Melbourne International Comedy Festival has kicked off for another year, and I was lucky enough to be able to get tickets to so many amazing comedians that I wanted to see. So I've decided to review all the shows I see, and to include some general comedy festival tips as well (scroll to the end for those!). Today, Celia Pacquola! One of the first things I noticed when entering the Comedy Theatre is that there seemed to be a lot of people there that were old enough to be my grandparents. Mentioning this to my husband, he said he had also noticed this, then, looking concerned for the row of older women who had sat beside us, asked 'Does she swear a lot?'. I realised that they must have seen her on one of her TV shows on the ABC and, not having seen any of Celia's stand-up myself, hoped they weren't in for an unpleasant surprise. So Celia isn't a crude comedian by any means, but perhaps laser hair removal and sex tapes aren't topics that Grandm

The Melbourne International Comedy Festival has kicked off for another year, and I was lucky enough to be able to get tickets to so many amazing comedians that I wanted to see. So I've decided to review all the shows I see, and to include some general comedy festival tips as well (scroll to the end for those). First up, Matt Okine! Matt Okine, comedian, TV star, radio host, etc etc etc Matt Okine is having an amazing year. Professionally I mean, he may be having a shit time personally, who knows. Seriously though, he seems to be killing it at life. You may know Matt as one half of former Triple J breakfast duo Matt and Alex, which graced our airwaves until 2016. You may know him for his music career, his cooking show on the ABC, his stand-up, or his TV show The Other Guy (which he both wrote and starred in). He even hosted this year's Melbourne International Comedy Festival Gala. I know, right? He's one of those annoying people that seems to be good at everything t

I have just been reading recaps of all the episodes of season two, because unlike most of the shows I watch, This Is Us is drip-fed to us weekly, and I can't just binge it all in a few days, and oh my god so much has happened this season! Fans of the show have been tuning in, waiting desperately for the episode that will show us how Jack died. Knowing it's been a long time coming, from the hints that have been gradually revealed to us, it wasn't a shock, but heartbreaking all the same. We have felt the effects of Jack's death, as his family carry it into with them in their lives, but it was interesting to see how they handled it in the moment.  This season we have also been through so many other big moments with the Pearsons, including Randall and Beth's decision to become foster parents, Kevin's downward spiral and breakdown, which for me, was one of the hardest moments to watch. There is a scene where the culmination of all the grief and feelings

What happens after we die? If we're good do we go to heaven, to be reunited with our grandparents and childhood pets? And if we're bad, head down to hell to be tortured in a fiery landscape for all eternity? Or are heaven and hell not generic places, but our own personal versions of those ideas? Hell being a place where Skrillex and Jamiroquai are played loudly on repeat forever, while in heaven chocolate makes you thin, and you are surrounded by golden retriever puppies, or whatever your particular dreams may be. Maybe we just get reincarnated, destined to live forever in a variety of forms, hopefully becoming better each time. Or then again, maybe it's just a big void, and when we die we get buried, then just decompose in the ground. The Good Place assumes that there are two options, the Good Place, and the Bad Place. After a selfish life with no regard for the feelings of others, Eleanor Shellstrop (Kristen Bell) was headed for the Bad Place when, due to an error, w

The weekend, for most working folk, is a mere two days long. Trudging along to their jobs, Monday to Friday, from 9am until 5pm. If you're lucky, because these days it seems as though people are working until 5.30pm as a minimum, unless you're some kind of tradesman that finishes at 3pm, but then they have to get up at 5am and who wants that? What happened to the eight hour work day? That was invented for a reason. Eight hours each for work, sleep, and leisure time. Now, you're lucky if you get three hours of free time after work, what with overtime, and long commutes. Then by the time you do actually collapse in the door after standing all the way home on the train, next to a middle-aged woman with no sense of personal space, whose giant handbag hits you in the stomach every time the train moves, you are too tired to do anything other than order Uber Eats and stare at Netflix until it becomes so late that you force yourself to go to bed, so that you don't almost

I'm not much of a reality show fan, usually only using it as inspiration for sarcastic and witty observational tweets, with some exceptions of course. Queer Eye is definitely one of those exceptions. Having watched the original series all those years ago, I thought I knew what I was in for when I tuned in to the new Netflix revival, after seeing people raving about it on Twitter. A group of trendy gay guys swoop in and change a clueless straight guy's life with a haircut and a new outfit, fun is had, tears are shed. Well I don't know how well I remember the last series, but the new one is so much more than I expected. It has all the fun of your typical makeover/renovation/cooking show, but with a little extra thrown in as well. Of course, all of your usual reality shows have the 'make or break' moment, when the camera pans in to the contestant, on the verge of tears, as they tell the story of how they beat the odds and triumphed over adversity just to be in t

The multi-coloured tracksuits, the big, permed hair, the soundtrack; I, Tonya really brought the 80s to life in this Tonya Harding biopic, and not in a tacky way. While the costumes and music set the scene, taking us to a different era, a different place, it's the story that really draws you in. Regardless of how much of the plot is true to life, and how much is embellished for Hollywood, it is such a great story. The big climax is, of course, the infamous Nancy Kerrigan incident, a moment in time that ensured that people all over the world knew the name Tonya Harding. However, I, Tonya is so much more than that, taking a deep dive into Harding's life, from her controlling mother, to her abusive husband, to her lifelong fight to get people to take her seriously as a figure skater. I want to focus on the film, rather than on the life of Tonya Harding, because I haven't read enough about her yet, but it's hard because I just want to talk about what a strong person she

The Wombats released their new album this week, and I. Am. Obsessed. They have been teasing the new album since November, gradually releasing new songs, starting with Lemon to a Knife Fight. I was actually really disappointed when they released that song, because I thought they were going to release the whole album that day. Great song though, and as I discovered this week, the rest of the album is just as good. It's one of those albums that you can listen to the whole way through, on repeat, all day long. There aren't any songs that I find myself skipping, they are all consistently listenable. It's a short album, with only 37 minutes playing time, but quality over quantity definitely applies. It is what we have come to expect of The Wombats, with the usual witty lyrics, mixed with a great sound, whether it's the softer sounds of I Don't Know Why I Like You But I Do, or the more upbeat Lemon To a Knife Fight. Seeing them in Sydney a couple of years ago wa