Hello!
I am so terrible with the regularity of these newsletters. Every morning I wake up and tell myself I’m gonna send one out, then every night I’m drifting off to sleep having a mild anxiety attack because I haven’t typed a single word.
I'm in Melbourne for the Comedy Festival! How exciting. There’s a weird vibe in the city at the moment. The F1 Grand Prix is on this weekend so the streets are full of divorced Dads walking around looking to have a little life win.
I just finished doing shows at Adelaide Fringe Festival a few weeks ago. If you’ve never been to Adelaide Fringe it’s a month-long meet up for unemployed people that write ‘work in the arts’ on their tax forms, and for Tommy Little to perform to every single person in South Australia.
I always get obsessed with the street performers at Fringe Festivals. They have the least stable profession of all time. It must be so stressful!
I always wonder how they perform if they’re feeling sick or not vibing it? In stand up comedy if you don’t feel like performing you can go on autopilot and just monologue your jokes without caring - but being a street performer? That’s impossible!
Imagine waking up and not feeling in the mood for work, then having to get on a unicycle and do 15 minutes of sword swallowing, then beg people to put $2-$3 in your hat at the end?
Once at Edinburgh Fringe I was walking past a street performer dressed as a pirate. He was doing some kind of show, the full pirate thing; eye patch, pirate accent, sword, hook instead of a hand etc. His car was parked next to him. Halfway through his performance, he looked over and saw his car had gotten a parking fine and he just broke out of character and yelled:
“OH FOR FUCK SAKE!!!!!!!”
It might be one of my favourite all time moments.
Just the character disappearing and the real life showing up.
He might have been dressed as a pirate, talking as a pirate, pretending to everyone that he’s a pirate, but in that moment he was just a guy with stuff going on.
It all came out. Just a man, stripped away at that moment. He tells himself he’s off to sail the seven seas and look for treasure, but the reality is if he parks in a loading zone he can’t afford to pay rent that week.
MUSK STICKS
Elon Musk is now the richest man ever. No one has ever had more money. Ever. Isn’t that crazy? He’s worth $395 Billion (AUD).
$395 Billion is a lot of money, but how do they know that he’s the richest of all time? Have they surveyed everyone throughout history? They haven’t checked with me, that’s for sure.
Surely there was a king or emperor 2000 years ago that owned more stuff comparatively to the amount of cash Elon has now? Kings used to own everything - including people! Elon just owns an electric car company - surely actual people are worth more than electric cars?!
I think there was one person that kept their wealth a secret. Like they were actually the richest person of all time, way richer than Elon, but only did cash jobs and stored it all under their pillow. Then when they died, the family decided renovate the house and found $400 Billion in cash stuck in the walls and foundations of the family home.
Super rich people living modest lifestyles annoys me.
I’ve never understood it! They’ve been given the golden ticket to a life some of us can only dream about, and they’re still driving a Mazda 121! Isn’t the whole point of being rich getting to show off about being rich?
I remember reading about Dick Smith, the Australian millionaire-founder of those electrical stores. He was worth $100 million and everyday he would pack a lunch from home and catch the bus to work.
Yuck.
What’s the actual point of doing anything if you’re going to have that attitude! Seriously, why ever have a job? You’re on private jet money, Dick. You’re topping up your Opal and Myki cards like a uni student lying about their course load to get more Austudy from Centrelink.
I have the opposite problem of living a modest lifestyle. I live and think beyond my means. I regularly look at property prices in affluent suburbs and think “hmm, that’s actually quite reasonable…” even though the closest thing to property I’ll be able to afford is a caravan but not the car to tow it.
ANYWAY I AM AT THE COMEDY FESTIVAL.
That’s the whole newsletter! A very short one from me. To be honest I’m pretty amazed I found the time to squeeze this in between being hungover, doing my show, gossiping with other comedians and planning the next stage of the upcoming war (improv comedians vs stand up comedians).
My show is on every night at 9.10pm (8.10pm on Sundays) in the Melbourne Town Hall till the 24th of April. Click this link if you want to come. PLUS for cheaper tickets you can use the codeword NEWSLETTER to get $10 off.
My show is called Yoho Diabolo and I’m not sure what relevance that has to anything but it’s been super fun to do so far. I’ve performed it in Adelaide and Canberra and I can promise you I won’t be dressed as a pirate.
ALSO these are some other shows you should see that I fully endorse.
Plus the other 500 in the festival guide. There’s loads of good stuff!
Muchas gracias xx