Tudo Certinho: 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.