Yankees win! THEEEEE YANKEES WIN!!

The astute US sports fan who reads this blog would have immediately picked up the baseball reference in the title. It is, after all, the phrase that NY Yankees commentator Michael Kay bellows after each Yankee win. You would then ask, “why is a Mets fan giving a Yankees shout out in the title?” I’m not. Instead, it’s a reference to a super cool event going on this entire month in Melbourne – the 25^th annual Melbourne comedy festival. (http://www.comedyfestival.com.au)

For most of April scores of comedians from all over the world (although mainly from the UK, US, Canada, and Australia) have converged on Melbourne to put on dozens of shows every night of all sorts of comedy. I love it. It could quite easily be my favorite experience in all of Australia, even going back to last year. I have to utterly commend the city of Melbourne for its organization of the festival. The streets have just the right amount of banners and posters without feeling too bombarded with paper clutter; most restaurants have some sort of information or giveaways on the festival; there are free public comedy shows in the main town square every day (good, lengthy ones too…not a quick 5 minute stand up); the venues are all sufficiently staffed to get the lines moving and people ushered in and out; and a very impressive number of bars, restaurants, and clubs are participating by hosting shows. This is no small festival folks…it’s a pretty big and elaborate one.

Another reason why I’ve been obsessed with this comedy fest is because it is actually my first foray into standup comedy. I briefly dabbled as a standup comedian in the very early 1990s. I did a killer Robin Leach impersonation at the Mendoza family Christmas in 1991 which won me a few bucks from my grandfather. But other than that, I have no stand up comedic experience…not even going to a show. Yup, before March 31 I had never been to a stand up show. I remember in my high school years a popular pre-21 hangout spot were the comedy bars up in the Rutgers area and down by the Jersey shore (the real Jersey shore, not the trash TV show). But I never made my way into that scene. Likewise for some of the comedy clubs in DC during my years there.

The shows I have been to have pleasantly varied in all shapes, sizes, and colors. I’ve seen the conventional stand-up; the group improv ala “Whose Line is it Anyway?”; the theatric comedic dance; the silent comedy; the American comedy; the Aussies comedy; the British comedy; the gay comedy; the gay Aussie comedy; the British bashing American and Aussie comedy…you name it and I have been obsessing with it over the past month. A great perk of my central location right smack in the middle of downtown Melbourne is that most of the shows are within a two block walk from my apartment. I love it. I try to catch a show at least 3 time a week. Like anything in Australia, the shows are not cheap, but all have been well worth it.

Live comedy is a much different element than watching it on TV. People go to a comedy show with a certain anticipation and expectation that I don’t think applies to drama or horror. There is a physical product that people expect when going to a comedy show – laughter. You don’t necessarily go to a Broadway play or a horror flick thinking to yourself “you know, I really expect this performance to make me scream out loud in fear or gasp out loud in amazement of the actor’s rendition of Hamlet.” If you do, then you’re weird. But we all do go to comedy shows with the expectation of the guy/girl getting us to laugh our ass off. So there is a tremendous pressure that is placed on the comedian and, in a way, almost a tension between the performer and the audience. The audience waits in anticipation of a truly funny joke worthy of laughter, while the comedian gauges the energy of the audience and the sincerity in the laughter that erupts. It’s a constant back and forth interplay between the audience and comedian.

Three interesting shows that I went to were rotating stand-ups of American, British, and Australian comedians. For example, one show I went to had four American comedians who each did 15 minute performances. The next night there were 4 Brits each doing 15 minute skits. The next night the Aussies were up. It was a great opportunity for me to compare the different styles and elements of comedy from different countries. Hands down, beyond the shadow of any doubt, the Americans have the best style of comedy by a margin as wide as a football field. Call it home country bias, call it familiarity with my own ilk. But I was light years more impressed with the Americans than the Brits and Aussies. It wasn’t even a matter of me not understanding or relating to the Aussie or British jokes. Rather, it was more about style of delivery and confidence. Both the Aussies and the Brits were overly reliant on audience participation (i.e. picking on people in the first three rows) in order to generate content. They had to use the audience as a crutch and almost be bailed out by someone from the front row being bald or working at a roller skating rink to give them an easy avenue for making a joke. That’s their original content? I wanted more creativity, more originality, more substance rather than just a sarcastic exchange with where someone is coming from. That is what the Americans brought. The told stories, they made humor out of normal every day anecdotes, they engaged the audience – yes – but in a way to set up the joke rather than the end-all joke. And most especially they delivered their jokes with a degree of confidence that convinced you that what they were saying was funny. I was utterly disappointed with the British in particular. Mr. Bean, Sasha Baron Cohen…that’s some funny $h!t coming out of the British Isles. The bobos who I saw doing stand up here were not. So the Yankees win on the international comedy front.

Three guys in particular to check out if they are ever performing in an area by you:

Hannibal Buress: http://hannibalhannibal.tumblr.com/

Moshe Kasher: http://www.moshekasher.com/

Tom Segura: http://tomsegura.com/

Naki vs. Nature (and Victoria’s toll system)

As the old saying goes, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.” Despite the risk of shaming myself by getting lost again in the woods, and regardless of the inherent fears that a recent viewing of “127 Hours” engendered, I tested the fates a few weekends ago and went for another hike in the woods. No dramatic stories this time around (sorry to disappoint), nothing adventurous to report. Despite living smack downtown in the middle of an exciting and cosmopolitan city, I’ve felt the very frequent need to get out of town on the weekends and explore as much of the proximate countryside as I can. Australia being enormous of course and having no shortage of outdoor opportunities, the mere distances alone force you to pick and choose your battles for weekend day trips. My treks have taken me along the Great Ocean Road and the Dandenong ranges about an hour outside of Melbourne.

The Great Ocean Road, as the name suggests, is a magnificent stretch of coastline across southern Victoria that runs parallel with the Southern Ocean. The road begins about an hour and half outside of Melbourne and ends about four hours later, with most people choosing to stop at the natural wonder sight of The Twelve Apostles just outside the town of Port Campbell.

To be God honestly truthfully, and not taking anything away from the Great Ocean Road, I was more pound for pound impressed with the Pacific Coast Highway from Los Angeles to San Francisco. The layout of the PCH cuts into the mountains and out along the coast with more sporadic twists and turns. You are in the mountains one minute and greeted with a new spectacular view the next. The GOR was one continuous stretch of a stellar view. I like it…a lot. But the variety of the landscape of the PCH I think gives it a greater appeal. The cool things about the GOR are: 1) staring straight at you just a stone’s throw away is ANTARCTICA. Indeed, the waters of the Southern Ocean are pretty icy year round and according to the locals is a play pen for Great White Sharks. 2) Randomly stopping along the road and catching koalas just chilling out in the wild. Yep, they’re as fat and lazy as they people say they are.

Capping off the GOR is the famous 12 Apostles site – large island rock formations that got chiseled off the mainland from thousands of years of erosion. Some have gotten so chiseled away that in fact there are no longer 12 of them, I think the official count now only has them down to nine. Regardless, it’s the most famous stopping point along the Great Ocean Road that most people officially deem the end of the trip, even though the coastal highway continues on for several more hours. Most recently, I got a weekend dose out of the city in the Dandenong ranges just outside of Melbourne. The local travel books describe it as “lush rainforests” but I sort of scoff at that description considering that where we are is closer to Antarctica than to the tropics. So consider my ability to not get lost in the woods this time as a victory for me. For anyone keeping score at home that is Nature: 1, Naki 1. With plenty of outdoor stuff to do in Victoria, the state has earned the nickname the “Garden State.” Yes, there is plenty of greenery, but clearly whoever thought of that nickname has never been to New Jersey – the real Garden State. With all the weekend travel I have truly mastered the art of driving on the left/wrong side of the wrong. I learned and somewhat mastered stick shift while bouncing around the Netherlands late last year; and left side of the road driving does not phase me anymore. But putting the two together – stick shift and left side of the road driving – is still unventured territory for me. The situation has never arise to force myself to do both since, much to my surprise, Australian cars are almost 95% automatic like in the US.

Melbourne does have an odd little quirk to its driving rules – two of them actually. In the 50 square block radius of Melbourne’s central business district there is a rule called the “hook-turn.” Keep in mind two things: first, Australians drive on the left/wrong side of the road, remember? Second, outside of Europe, Melbourne has the largest network of trams in the world (tram cars as in public transportation…not trans as in transvestites). True story, look it up. OK, so those two things are necessary in order to understand the hook turn. In the US and the normal driving world, “left yields to right” so when making a left turn at an intersection you wait for thru traffic to pass and then make the left turn, often just as the light is turning red. Flip it around obviously in Australia – “right yield to left” so you wait for thru traffic to pass and then make the right turn often when the light turns red. The “hook turn” in the central business district of Melbourne is, when making a right turn at an intersection, rather than going to the center of the street and creeping your way to the right as you wait for thru traffic to pass, you have to go as far to the left lane as possible (almost to the pedestrian lane)….and then once the light turns red you turn right. So it’s basically going to the far left lane in order to turn right. In the US the equivalent would be going to the far right lane in order to make a left turn. The point is to not block the traffic behind you and to let the tram cars pass. So once the light turns green, you go to the far left lane and are only allowed to turn right once your light goes red. It’s an odd little rule but it seems to work well to unblock traffic. And what makes it unique is that in all of Australia this rule only applies in the central business district of Melbourne.

A second, this time aggravating, thing about driving in Victoria is the toll system. There are three toll roads in the entire state of Victoria and unless you are an everyday driver with a toll account, payment is done through a glorified but punitive honesty policy. Instead of toll booths on the highway, when you get to a toll point a camera takes a photo of your license plate and you have two days to pay the toll either online or on the phone or else you get a $45 fine deducted from your card. In a previous blog entry I wrote about the honesty policy when riding the trams in Germany. You get on and are entrusted with paying the ticket with no authority to regulate. I feel that Australia’s toll system is a bastardized version of the honesty policy. “You get a two day free pass, then we hit you up for $45 if you don’t pay up.” I find it to be a huge inconvenience as an infrequent driver to have to sit and wait on the phone to pay my toll. But that is certainly where the state makes its money on tolls – from the absent minded tourist or driver from a different Australian state who is not accustomed to the state’s local toll system. A similar set up exists in Singapore for metro cards. You know that you put a deposit down on your Singapore metro card and get the money back when you exit the station? For the millions of tourists visiting Singapore each year who don’t know that, well, it’s pay day for the state. Very clever of you, Victorian Government. I’m on to you, you’re getting my phone time….but not my extra money…..