Each year during the comedy festival some bone-head will pen an article on whether women are funnier than men, or why they are more men than women doing shows in the comedy festival or they’ll use gender as a stick to beat someone with in a bad review.

If you have half a brain and some appreciation of comedy the following blog is preaching to the choir, you know there are plenty of excellent female comics out there. Its not a case of ‘are women funny?’ of course they are. There have been funny women as long as there has been comedy. So why does the argument keep coming up? Is live comedy really a macho, male dominated sausage fest of cock jokes? (Don’t answer that) Or is it that lazy journalists and bloggers are needlessly stirring up an issue that doesn’t exist because they think it will shift more units? (Don’t answer that either)

Arguing that the business of live comedy is inherently sexist and bias toward men is an unwinnable argument from both sides because it is based on the attitudes of individuals that make up an audience. It could be sexism that means certain female stand ups aren’t more popular or it could be a simple lack of ability and talent, and that is something that is a reality for all comics. It’s a different scenario altogether in film and TV where producers and networks make decisions about who they prefer, so for the sake of this blog I’m limiting my focus to live comedy.

Live comedy can be rough, in fact it can feel almost gladiatorial at certain gigs the liquored up crowd braying at you and hoping in equal measures for your success or failure. It can be a terrifying job and it doesn’t appeal to everyone, it takes a certain personality type who can cope with the potential for failure every time they pick up a microphone. There are more male comedians than female, but does that mean that men are funnier because they have numbers on their side? Certainly not, if anything it means female comedians are funnier per-captia than their counterparts.  I’ve been to gigs where men heckle the female comics more than the male comics, sexual heckles and abuse is common in the workplace for female stand ups. I’ve also been to gigs where the audience has been ambivalent, rowdy or instantly hateful toward a comedian, its a shitty part of the job but everyone who has been doing comedy a while understands that there is potential for a gig to turn. However these are environmental factors that don’t contribute to the ability of female comics they just aid the attrition rate for all comics.

Whenever some journalist pens an article about women in comedy whether in the positive or the negative they feed an issue that doesn’t exist. However when a reviewer criticizes a comedian based on their gender, (usually female) this is a real problem. For example the awful review of Jen Brister’s show at the 2011 MICF, which had the line sic “very few women can pull off funny funny” This review was subsequently edited on the Herald Sun’s website to exclude this line so if you search for it you’ll get the PC version. During comedy festivals all and sundry put on their critics hat and head off to pen reviews. Most of the time these are tier 3 bloggers and website hacks. However at many of the larger comedy festivals tier 1 Newspapers put out the call for anyone to review shows irrespective of whether they are a real estate listings editor or a fishing journalist. This kind of grasping desperate unprofessionalism not only hurts comedy it hurts the role of critics and feeds the prejudice monster. Editors, journalists and bloggers should all take care when writing their opinions because their prejudice has a long reach. When its been written and published it cannot be unwritten, no matter how fast your PR engine kicks into gear.

We do not need to ask the question, ‘Are Women Funny/Funnier?’ ever again because they are.  I don’t need to list all the brilliant female comedians ever to make my point because I’m certain that you can think of a whole bunch on your own. Women are funny and always have been end of discussion.

Profanity is an important tool for the comedian, in fact its vital. As wordsmiths we need unreserved access to the endless Profanosaurus that is the English language. When people are offended at comedy shows by bad language they complain and in an era where all opinions are valid and your comment will be taken seriously no one wants to be a baddie and most of the time comics must apologize. To me this seems ridiculous; being offended by a comedian’s language is like going to a boxing match and complaining about the level of violence displayed. Profanity has been a part of comedy since one monkey laughed at another monkey for smelling his own stink finger. If you’ve never watched George Carlin’s famous ‘7 things you cant say on Television’ sketch read this article then watch it on YouTube.

In this article I’m writing about that most powerful of profanities, the nastiest of the nasty a word so BAD I cannot even write it here on the page with wing dings in the middle. The C word! Comedians who have used it at the 2012 Melbourne Comedy Festival have been called ‘cheap’ ‘talentless’ and ‘responsible for the DECLINE of society!’ which is of course all true. In our defence I’d like to quote the excellent comedian Steve Hughes ‘if you are offended, good be offended, you’re an adult grow up’. Being offended is your right so write a letter or comment below under an anonymous pseudonym, tell someone, express your feelings, get it off your chest, but don’t expect that your outrage will stop comedians swearing. To assume that your puritanical outrage trumps a comedian’s right to swear would be a terrible hypocrisy. You are both on different sides of the same right to free speech and freedom of expression, our right to swear and your right to write a letter and complain. If you really dislike a comedians language, leave the show, but if you intend on staying and getting your moneys worth shut up and deal with it because chances are you’re an adult and you’ve heard the C word before. Parents bringing children to comedy shows need to ask the front of house staff if the show is appropriate and think about why your bringing an infant to a comedy show at 9.45pm in the FIRST PLACE.

I love the C word, it has a rich and interesting history and its one of the best words available. It’s origins can be traced back to the Romans but it was most famously used on English streets where prostitutes worked in the middles ages and since then it has risen to the top of the profanity tree. Its a potent word and I cheered when Germaine Greer discussed it at length on the BBC TV show, “Balderdash & Piffle”, to quote Germaine “it is a precious word as it is one of the few remaining words in the English Language with a genuine power to shock”.  I absolutely agree with Germaine on this, it is a precious word and a word not for the young. Its a profanity that should be earned and used sparingly like Saffron or Fenugreek because if it is used regularly then it will lose all its potency and we will lose one of the most precious words in the English language.

In many cultures young men are taken at a certain age to a place and initiated into manhood by the elder men or spiritual men of their religion, tribe or community. Then after the rite of passage you are a man. In some aboriginal tribes this might involve performing or scarification. Young men in Sudan are circumcised while a tribe in the Amazon have a ritual where young men are told to put their hands into large mittens filled with bullet ants and hold them there for a period of time without making a sound. In Japan young men hold a large exploding rocket between their legs to show their bravery. Young Jewish men have a bar mitzvah, young Catholics confess, young Buddhist’s in Thailand spend time as an apprentice monk at a Waht (temple) and young Muslims have the hajj to Mecca. There’s hazing, fagging, beatings, tea bagging, bunging, shutlering, blunt running and pomerainiang in High Schools around the world. You can have your first smoke, first drink, lose your virginity, drive a car, shoot an animal or accidentally make a tiny person, but does any of it really make you man?

I’m 32 and technically I’m a man, but I don’t know when it happened because there was no ritual or event to mark the change. Getting hair on my balls certainly was not a predictor as that happened when I was 3 due to an abnormality in my genetics. Manhood doesn’t happen immediately it’s a gradual process that for me, began at age 16 creeping along like hereditary baldness. My catalyst was my Mothers breakup from my dad, my rite of passage was not violent, spiritual or painful it was culinary. One night I decided I was going to cook dinner for Mum when she got home from work. So the first step I took to manhood was to make my Mum a honey roast chicken that was wallowing in a puddle of honey, twas a sickly bird. So ironically I took on the traditional role of a woman to become a man.

Now at age 32 I’m at a crossroads where I’m looking back at my youth and forward to becoming a Father, and sideways at all the young men out there and a lot of the men my age who don’t want to grow up. There is an infestation of Manchildren at the moment. Phrases like, “I just don’t want to settle down right now” delivered from a convertible VW or the repulsive sight of a 37 year old hipster on a razor scooter are fairly commonplace. Stay young they say, party on, hold onto your youth because adulthood is a blink on the way to retirement and an unhappy death alone in a fibreboard house somewhere in the suburbs.

The only advice that is readily available is found amongst the pages of Lads mags like Nuts and Zoo or Posh metro mags like GQ, which basically act as a catalogue for things you can’t afford (GQ) or things you can’t physically do (Zoo) For example a 4 page spread in GQ written by the right wing hate sack and racist Jeremy Clarkson on which Maserati is better is almost as useless as the author himself. And it’s a proven fact that articles like this enrage men and inadvertently lead to spikes in Public Transport violence. Or take a puff piece in Zoo on manipulating your girlfriend in to having anal sex amongst stories on ‘Running with the Bulls’ or ‘fucking Philippino lady boys by mistake’ actually make men 4 times more likely to be diagnosed with a type of sub standard IQ and violent tendencies toward effeminate Asian men. So how do men today sort the shit advice from the good?

An example of  ‘Zoo’ promoting incest and paedo teachers. Here we see them super imposing these mannequins heads on the body of young Philippino men with Bear Grylls peeing onto his own face in the background. This magazine in particular was proven to remove almost 48 IQ points from men who read it.

In the following blogs I’ll be investigating modern Man ‘issues’ so if you have any answers, links or comments on Man business please post them below (that goes for you too ladies).

Next year is a big year of touring for me plus the premiere of my new show Troubadour at the Melbourne Comedy Festival. Troubadour is an autobiographical show that asks the pivotal question, ‘is my life interesting enough to be an autobiography?’ I’ll be performing it in the beautiful Deluxe tent in City Square next to the Town Hall at 7pm Tues to Sat and earlier on Sunday.

For Adelaidians I’ll be bringing  ‘Comic Strip’ back to the Garden of Unearthly Delights for more late night bawdiness, showcasing the best Burlesquers from around the world and my favourite comedians from around the Fringe. I’ll be dropping into the Brisbane Comedy Festival with ‘Matador’ and taking my 2010 show ‘Secret Door’ to the first inaugural Perth Comedy Festival before taking myself to the UK for 5 month’s of hard graft.

You can find all the information on the Gigs page of the site.

Next year I’ll be making my first foray into TV writing after I won the Open Channel funded Short and Sharp pitching competition for my educational comedy doco ‘On Becoming a Man’ I’m looking forward to working with the excellent Steve Luby from Ruby Entertainment on making the pitch a reality.

In the meantime take care be well and I’ll see you in the new year, and with Christmas coming up I’d like you all to think of those less fortunate than you.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQ19A2GFaBM

xx Asher

Alan Davies (left) Nazeem Hussain (2nd left) Myself, Mat Keneally (right)

My show for next years Comedy Festival is coming along very nicely and shall be called ‘TROUBADOUR’ the fifth solo show in a series of shows with ‘door or dor’ somewhere in the title, Cellar Door, Open Door, Secret Door, Matador & Troubadour. These previous 5 shows are totally unrelated and the titling tool is just a gimmick that has made titling the first 5 shows quite easy but will prove to become more difficult as time rolls on, Salvador, Adore?

Troubadour is an autobiographical show that asks the question, ‘Is my life interesting enough to talk about for a whole hour?’ I’ve decided to put the ‘issues’ on the back burner this year and delve into my own past. To answer this question we will be using Edward De Bono’s ‘6 Thinking Hats Method’ An antiquated yet brilliant way of breaking up problem solving into different thinking systems. My only fear is this could end up being a bit of a sadistic self assassinating hate trap that could in the audience voting that my life is not interesting enough to talk about for an hour. Suffice to say there will be jazz, hats, wild gesturing and me, which is a pretty good hour already I think.

In the meantime I’ll be continuing with the Oyster Club, taking Comic Strip to the Adelaide Fringe and going to Christchurch in January to perform at the World Buskers Festival. I feel simultaneously proud and frightened to be going to Christchurch as it’s still fairly devastated and is being plagued by regular aftershocks. Last year I was there performing 2 weeks before the major quake  at the same festival.. On my second night there I was awoken at 4.30 in the morning by what I thought was some really powerful fucking in the room next to mine, only to realize that it was a mini quake. I sat in bed in the dark confused and unsure about what to do. I was on the 4^th floor of the YMCA and I didn’t know whether to get under the bed or jump out the fucking window. The next morning all the other artists were very cavalier about the quake, which I found bizarre it seemed that a 4.9 magnitude aftershock was something they had all experienced regularly.

Hopefully this year having a bunch of comedians, carnies and performers from around the world will lift some spirits.

Work wise it’s been great I had an excellent week in Adelaide with the crew from Adelaide Comedy doing the rounds down there at Rhino and the like. I always enjoy going to Adelaide outside of fringe time, its a lot more relaxed and easygoing. The weird gets turned up a little too high during fringe and the booze flows a little too freely, that said I’ll be back in Adelaide next year doing the Fringe in the Garden with my Burlesque Stand up show, ‘Comic Strip’

Last Tuesday night I revived my labour of love, The Oyster Club as a way of helping some of my excellent comedy colleagues to write new material for the upcoming Melbourne Comedy Festival. Dave Thornton, Anne Edmonds, Dave Callan, Randy and Mat Keneally graced us. I’m going to be running The Oyster Club for about 5 weeks, and this Tuesday its Harley Breen, Lawrence Mooney, Kate McLennan, Mat Keneally and Nazeem Hussain from ‘Fear of a Brown Planet’. Ticket details are in the link and  heres a little video of last weeks guests.

I also had the rare pleasure to commentate a wrestling night at Red Bennies a week or 2 prior with Iman Hadchitti. It was without par one of the most enjoyable gigs I’ve ever done. An unending stream of ludicrous similes seemed to appear one after another from my mouth like a pez dispenser. I believe I may have found my 2^nd calling, cheese ball wrestling commentator.

So the other thing.

In 2010 my car was stolen at approximately 12.30am from Jamison st Fitzroy with a boot full of very expensive sound gear. It then turned up 4 weeks later dumped, fucked and trashed on the other side of Edinburgh Gardens. The Police called me to tell me they had found the car and when I found it I wish they hadn’t. It was trashed inside, covered in crude childish ‘tags’ and covered with a fine film of ‘meth’ residue. The car became known as the crack wagon from then on. I drove the ‘crack wagon’ for a while then traded it to a wrecker for $100.

One week ago I received a call from the Police informing me they had caught the culprits and furthermore would I like to come to a conference with one of the young men responsible for stealing my car, and 18 other cars. I thought about it and instantly said no, then my selfish curiosity got the better of me when I thought I might be able to ask the young hood where my sound equipment went. Plus I like a bit of middle class lecturing in a safe environment. So I made my way to the Jesuit services in Brunswick and waited for the young man ‘——–‘ and his Father. I was joined by a police man in his late 20’s, a jowly lawyer who had seen me do a gig somewhere, a young woman who had her car stolen also and a few stooges from the youth justice system. We sat in a circle in a non descript office room and ‘——-‘ told us what happened and why. Turns out he stole my car second, although he didn’t steal my car, his accomplices did and they did it with a pair of scissors! So if you own a Camry pre 95 get a bolt lock for your wheel. We talked awkwardly but not angrily for an hour or two. Going round the circle taking it in turns to explain the repercussions of the young mans actions and I was given the chance to say something to him. I thought him quite brave to volunteer for the conference; he took a pretty solid tongue lashing from everyone there.

It was strange, the theft seemed so distant that I didn’t feel angry at all; all I felt was empathy for the young man. He was 16 and he had stolen 18 cars with his mates and been involved in one high-speed pursuit with the cops. He was looking down the barrel of proper time in Juvvey. I left the meeting feeling punch drunk and tired from the intensity of the round robin discussion we had had, ‘——-‘ had cried openly at one stage and seemed truly remorseful for his actions.

All I could hope was that this was a turning point in his life.  I had been in his position once in my youth and the only real advice that I felt I could give him was an ironic contradiction of the old Jesuit adage ‘give me the child for his first 7 years and I’ll show you the man’, when asked if I had anything to say before we ended I said to him ‘who you are as a child does not define who you are as a man’

This morning I had the great pleasure of interviewing Jon Ronson, author of ‘Men Who Stare at Goats’ and most recently ‘The Psychopath Test’ We spoke on Jon Faines conversation hour about the nature of psychopathy, psychopaths and the treatments of them. There is a 20-point psychopahty test that Bob Hare created as a way to indentify potential psychopaths and as the interview continued I found myself ticking points off my own checklist. Luckily my amygdale was functioning well and making me to feel so anxious about the possibility of having  psychopathic tendancies that I knew that I couldn’t be one. If I was indeed a psychopath I wouldn’t of been worried I was a psychopath, that’s one of the fundamentals, no fear, concern or empathy i.e.- no functioning amygdale. It was worrying to know that 1% of the population are most likely to be psychopaths and that 4% of CEO’s are likely to be psychopaths. More alarming is that its nature not nurture that causes most people to develop into psychopaths and it’s almost impossible to cure with 60% of dangerous psychopathic criminals re-offending. All in all, an enlightening but scary morning of morbid psychopathic fascination with one of my new favorite authors and gonzo journo’s Jon Ronson.

Here’s the podcast link- http://www.abc.net.au/local/audio/2011/10/04/3332072.htm

In closing my new stand up night will be starting on the 18^th of October and running every Tuesday for Five Weeks.

So, ah hum, ‘Ladies and Gentlemen’

Red Bennies in association with Asher Treleaven is proud to present a new comedy night each Tuesday in October and November, The New Oyster Club. With the Melbourne Comedy Festival a mere 6 months away material needs to written, jokes need to be tested and shows need to be sharpened. All over Melbourne comedians are furiously scribbling away in the darkness trying to craft next years hit show. If only there was an amazing venue with great crowds where they could test their freshest new gags?

Voila, welcome to The New Oyster Club. A new stand up comedy night for Melbourne’s comedians to test new material. So if you love Melbourne comedy, your going to love seeing comics such as Dave Callan, Felicity Ward, Dave Thornton, Nazeem Hussain, Aahmer Rahman, Mathew Keneally, Asher Treleaven, Celia Pacquola, Justin Hamilton & Hannah Gadsby try out new material for their upcoming Melbourne Comedy Festival shows. The New Oyster Club runs Tuesdays in October and November from 7.30, please check the Red Bennies website for weekly line-ups and special deals.

www.redbennies.com.au

Trialing new material can be simultaneously exciting and devastating, one night it can all go brilliantly then the next night you fucking bomb and in the end you still don’t know whether your onto a winner or not. People say that public speaking is one of their number one fears if this is true then most people would prefer death to testing new material.  It’s like sticking your hand in that weird tree stump in ‘Flash Gordon’ you could be stung by the creepy green sting monster or you could triumph and become a man. Either way its a simile that doesn’t get used often because of its obviously sexist connotations and total lack of relativity to anything other than the film Flash Gordon.

When it comes to new stuff I usually go to a gig with a plan, the plan is that in the midst of material I know is funny I’ll slip in new stuff with the hope that its going to rock but with the back up system of having some extra material afterwards as a safety net. However what usually happens is I get excited about the new stuff and launch into it at the start without thinking it through. Then I end up halfway through my spot with no way out of the failing shit maelstrom I’ve sprung on myself like some kind of masochistic hate trap.  Usually when I do something stupid like this I scramble for something related in a 6 degrees kind of a way, fail then find myself uttering that shitty generic perfunctory line, ‘I’ll leave you with this’. Which is kind of like a comic saying, ‘nearly there’. Its also a very handy line for linking two ideas that have nothing in common when your too fucking lazy to come up with a sentence that could join two different ideas together in a cohesive seamless mélange.

So that said, I’ll leave you on this I have some exciting news! I’m going to be starting a new material night in Melbourne this summer with some of my favorite comics from around Melbourne at one of my favorite clubs, Red Bennies. I’ll also be doing a stack of gigs getting material ready for the next show, which looks like being an absolute cracker. I’ve covered ‘homophobia & sex’ “racism & nationalism’ so I think I’ve fulfilled my quota of difficult subject and am now free to roam a little back into the weird and stupid. But don’t fret thee of the good nature and the left leaning persuasion I’ll not stray too far, there always must be socially responsible rhetoric underpinning the cock jokes.

I’ll also be doing a return performance of ‘Matador’, where? I here you ask well the Melbourne Circus Festival of course. Where else would you expect a fairly dense yet humorous discussion of Australian racism to go, Melbourne Uni? I’ll be doing ‘Matador’ as part of the 1^st inaugural Melbourne Circus Festival hosted by my old bastard master NICA on the 1^st of October at 11pm. So if you missed my show in Melbourne you can catch it before I relegate it to the back catalogue of  ‘door’ based shows. More info can be found on the gigs page.

I did my best to stay away from good/bad press and keep the green monster at bay. Its hard to stay away from the press, especially when some of your more dickheadish colleagues say things in passing like, ‘shame about that review bro, it read like a 4 star though, chin up’ (actually said to me sheesh) It was great to see so many new friends at the fringe this year, Deanne Smith, Fear of a Brown Planet and Dave Callan all looked to be having great years.

My favourite moment of Matador this year was on the last Saturday night of the fringe. The audience ole’d so loudly I had to ask them to simmer down a bit, as we were all getting Spanish industrial ear damage. The best moment of the fringe was the final Comic Strip show in the beautiful Dans Palais. We had some of my favorite acts on, Zoe Lyons, Mark Winmell, Lada Redstar and Dave Callan. The place was packed the vibe was drunk, jubilant and electric and when Dave Callan closed with single ladies the place went bat shit crazy.

I also performed a cameo in Puppetry of the Penis 3D, which you may view here.

We had a few prickly moments though; my worst moment in Matador was on the last Friday of the fringe where I had invited a big agent to see what was unfortunately my worst show of the fringe, suffice to say that ship sailed. The constant rain made for slim pickings on the street and the constant bickering within the street community made for a fairly awful vibe at the draw each morning, rain and assholes on unicycles don’t go well together. We had our fair share of weird liberal conservatism at Comic Strip. However when one of our comic guests tweeted derogatory things before his spot on one of the best nights of the run it became a bit of twitter spat that resulted in him profusely apologising for being such a dick. He was such a dick, dick.

At the start of the month of August I was interested in the possibility that my Edinburgh Fringe compulsion was killing me slowly.

So here are the stats for my 6^th Fringe Festival, which takes me to 6 months spent in Edinburgh.

Performances

• 38 hours of stand up comedy
• 19 hours of street shows

Physical Stats

• Weight- 93kg up from 89kg
• Height- 180cm down from 186cm
• Blood Pressure- good no change
• BFI- Haggisy down from healthy

All the shows I am participating in are doing very well, Matador is flying along and Comic Strip is fantastic….but for one little thing. The show seems to be attracting conservative tut-tutters who keep using the word ‘exploitation’ in regard to our show. In the first week the Scotsman and the Sun both published stories asking the question, ‘Why are there so many X rated shows in the fringe?’ The simple answer is there are no X rated shows you red top sensationalist idiots, our show is not an even an over 18’s let alone X rated. There are links to the stories below. Within the stories they seemed to be trying to make some kind of point about burlesque being dirty, exploitative and anti feminist. There was however no mention of any of the shows in the fringe that feature male nudity as it seems that women are the only ones who are being exploited and are incapable of making decisions about their own bodies and what they choose to do with them.

This conservatism was then echoed by a comic we had on our night who drunkenly tweeted a few slightly derogatory things about the show while waiting to go on. When he did go on he killed it, seemed to have a great night, shook my hand and ambled off into the night. I didn’t read the tweets; the supporting tweets or retweets until later that night. The Internet chatter seemed to condemn Burlesque as exploitative with people tweeting ‘I agree they should stop it!’ etc etc.  I was so surprised by my fellow colleagues being so frumpish. I’m not a woman so I cant really be a feminist but I thought one of the corner stones of the Women’s movement was the right to choose what to do with your mind and body. I am however only a simple man but simple as I am I still believe that dictating to others what they can and cant do is Parental complex liberal conservatism. If I want to cheer for a semi naked woman with wonderful boobs and a bedazzled C-string with 300 other people of mixed age and gender then I fucking will.

There’s a wonderful irony in the criticism we’ve received. When Gypsy Wood and I came up with the idea for Comic Strip it was based on the New York strip clubs where comedians would go to evade puritanical anti profanity laws enforced by the police and the public in the 50’s. Now over 60 years later it’s not the lawmakers condemning the acts it’s the performers themselves tut tutting at us from the toilet wall that is the Internet.  To anyone who believes that burlesque performers are being exploited you should wake up, take your conservatism and stick it where it belongs. In a nuns habit in the 1950’s.

http://www.edinburgh-festivals.com/viewpreview.aspx?id=2470

http://www.thescottishsun.co.uk/scotsol/homepage/scotlandfeatures/3725080/X-rated-shows-at-Edinburgh-Festival.html

http://www.edinburgh-festivals.com/viewnews.aspx?id=2437