Yes, you do owe me something, actually

Well, today is the 28th anniversary of the hanging of Ronald Ryan: the last man to suffer capital punishment in Australia. I was pretty shocked to find that the law wasn't even amended to abolish the practice until 1975 or so.
In a week where the Victorian government is rushing to pass legislation to ensure sex offenders leaving prison would wear electronic monitoring devices; and in a week where an Australian citizen is still potentially on death row, there is much to discuss with regard to legal, moral and criminological ethics.

But for the moment I'm going to talk about comedy. Since it has been in the forefront of my mind of late anyway, as I attempt comedy writing, I may as well vent. The Comedy Channel are now showing repeats of Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn. How this show is even survived more than one series I don't know. It is a veritable train wreck and, like a true train wreck, entices me to drive by slowly and watchits every gory detail.

The first problem is that all the guests on the show are stand up comedians. Not social commentators or smart, funny raconteurs but comics. Comics who constantly try to sway whatever the discussion is about to an area where they have material from their show, so that they can appear off the cuff and pithy. It's even more embarassing when these suspicions are confirmed when one actually sees one of these comics (note the use of that word instead of 'comedians')doing stand up.

If Nick DiPaulo is not the unfunniest man on television, it's only because he's not on every episode. Why are they still calling the show '4 rounds of smart comedy'? Firstly, it barely rates as comedy except in a GenX postmodern 'so bad it's good' kind of way. And it sure 'ain't' smart. They are as fiercely anti-intellectual a group as I've seen outside a football club.
The comics are so desperate to get out bits from their routines (as advertisments for their shows)that whatever issue they are talking about is never argued properly at all.

In truth, the only reason I watch it is because, as bad as it is, I love to see Greg Giraldo kick arse. For those of you who have heard that song "Underwear Goes Inside the Pants" (which pretty much takes Giraldo's Comedy Central special and puts an electronic beat behind it), the guy talking is Giraldo. He's not on every episode but if he was, Tough Crowd would be almost worth watching. Not only is he smart, informed and very funny, his jokes are never rehashed from his routine and thus more genuine.
My favourite rally was between Giraldo and that bufoon Dennis Leary. Leary was arguing for the war in Iraq, saying that every time the US has had a problem with another nation they've gone to war. Giraldo goes 'Yeah, just like that big Russian war we had'. (Ok, Baudrillard would say that the Cold War was World War 3, but you get the point).

I also today was reading the Hack Comedy FAQ, which is very interesting, especially for people like myself who is sick and tired of hearing the same crap over and over.
Let's just hope that there are some good acts at the Melbourne Comedy Festival to restore my faith in original comedy.


http://www.dmregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050117/ENT05/501170308/1046/archive
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/comedy-faq/hack/