Less Intellectual Comedy

May 4, 2010
9:00 pm	to	11:00 pm
May 11, 2010
9:00 pm	to	11:00 pm
May 18, 2010
9:00 pm	to	11:00 pm
June 15, 2010
12:00 am	to	11:00 pm

So, I’ve gone back into therapy again… Only, my therapy isn’t like your’s, or other people’s, therapy. My therapy is getting laughed at.

You see, my parents have fucked me up pretty badly over the course of the years, particularly my childhood. So I spent years, years, in therapy as a kid. It started with plain old councelling, escalated to a child psychologist (he was pretty entertaining with the hand puppets and what not. Also situated next door to Ripponlea Gardens, so I could get scones after a session!) and finally moving into full blown psychiatry, where most gawths end up, being prescribed a whole galaxy of uppers, downers, blockers, suppresants and anti-psychotics. I had sessions on mats, on chairs, even a few on the stereotypical Freudian chaise lounge with a doctor in tweed writing notes behind my head. The funny thing about this particular arrangement is that Freud set it up so his patients couldn’t see the looks of horror and disgust on his face.

We eventually settled on Protheidan, I recall.

Either way, my last shrink was actually the most helpful, in an amazingly round about way. Let’s call him Ziggy… because that was his name. Kind of.

What Ziggy did for me was to laugh at me… which is possibly the most profound breach of professionalism one can make as a shrink. I was an angry teen. I was hurting. I was venting. And he was laughing at me! This made me angrier, and rantier, and he laughed harder. And it got to the point where I just stood up and shouted “Why are you laughing at me?” to which he simply replied “Have you ever thought that maybe if I’m laughing, and I’ve been trained not to, that it’s because you’re actually being funny?” We reached the conclusion that perhaps we should try laughter as the best medicine, and I proceeded to do standup for a few months.

Oddly enough, it worked at the time. I got off meds, I wasn’t as angry, I was still sleeping maybe one night in three… Two out of three ain’t bad, and butterscotch schnapps solves sleeping disorders anyway.

And so here I am now a decade on and angry again, performing unscripted comedy routines (well, except the stuff about the tentacle, but that’s a whole other story) about my life. Here’s a taste:

And if you want to see me, come along to Syn Bar, L1, 163 Russel.st, Melbourne.

It’s open to all.

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