Waitangi Day

How did I spend Waitangi Day, New Zealand's national day, in the middle of the middle east?

By going to an ultra fancy bar in an ultra fancy hotel and having my photo taken with a life size black stone jaguar with diamonds for eyes.

Complex

Finally the planets aligned long enough for myself and the post office to find common ground, a moment in time when I had the day off and the post office wasn't inexplicably closed.

As I previously mentioned, the post works differently here. Rather than many post offices conveniently dotted about the place, there is just one MASSIVE post office.

This image doesn't really do justice to the size of the place, a 5 storey multi-layered leviathan rising up out of the desert on the shore of the Arabian Gulf.

It is simply enormous. Finding the front door is a task in itself. Inside is a maze of private post boxes, each the same size, each totally identical. Should you find your way through the maze to the centre of the superstructure you can then target the power regulator on the north tower.


The centre is like being in the biggest bank the 80s could dream up, complete with appropriately dated decor and crawling LED signs.

There is nowhere to buy packaging. When I asked the solitary service desk attendant about it, she simply handed me an envelope and went back about her business. When I enquired about stamps I was shooed in the direction of the long line of emotionless tellers dressed forlornly in their tradition black abaya.

Upon reaching the front of the queue, I again asked about postage, my letter was snatched from my hand and weighed. "$4" was all that was said, I paid and the letter was handed back to me. I enquired as to where I might post the letter and was again deflected by the wave of a dismissive hand in a general direction.

For the next 30 minutes I scoured the internal landscape for any signs of where I could stick my letter. Lost in the maze of private boxes, my suspicious behaviour was picked up by security. A man in a full brown leather uniform took me aside and upon realizing my predicament pointed me in the direction of the only slot in the building, much to his own amusement.

Indeed in a further showing of this supposed centralized efficiency, all mail has been narrowed down to an unassuming single simple slot. The thought of whatever lies beneath would make a great premise for a horror movie.

Coming this summer "The Slot"

Gloss

Being in the middle east editing television is not all that different from being in New Zealand editing television, something I enjoy about as much as cutting my legs off.

So why am I editing television? Because I am a prostitute.

I am a prostitute, prostituting myself for money doing something I'd rather not, something I like and would do in the evenings for fun, but not relentlessly all day everyday because it loses its gloss.

It leaves you feeling used and sore. Physically raw and emotionally ashamed. That's television editing.

Some people love it, they were made to do it, ordained by God himself with infinite patience and skin as thick as an elephants hide.

I am not that person. I am reactive, impulsive, creative, energetic and like to think outside the box. And I don't even like puns. I'm also hyper-analytical with an eye for details which is what got me into this position in the first place.

When I started editing it was the joy of creating the final product, of having control over those finer details which got me enthused. When people were telling me that there wasn't a career in my sense of humour, I fell back on editing as my way to make a crust.

Looking back to my very first editing gig I was asked "can you edit?" No, I thought, but "Yes" I said, anything for money.

I can't say it was a mistake, but it was a misguided decision. I realize now that it's the creative part of the puzzle where I thrive, working with good ideas.. and while editing allows me to do that occasionally, it doesn't allow me to do that often enough to keep me happy.

Making people laugh makes me happy and over the years it has been by any means necessary. 5 years ago I was enjoying stand up very much, getting good reviews and developing a healthy little following. My skills had evolved from my earlier poo based material and the art of delivery was beginning to find its mark like an archer holding the arrow around the right way for the first time.

Then something changed, I became utterly disillusioned with my material. It's not uncommon for any comic, but I've always struggled to tell a joke more than 3 or 4 times. I'll laugh the first time, snigger the second, glare judgementally at the paper it's written on and want to kill myself by the fourth nunciation.

This process can sometimes take place over the course of several seconds while my confidence is being shanked prison-style in the corner. As such my performances over the last few years have suffered as my confidence lay on the floor resembling an occasionally twitching block of bleeding swiss cheese.

I fell out of love with stand up comedy because I could see around every corner, I despised myself for delivering what I thought were easy jokes or allowing my wit to delve the depths of degradation for want of a simple smatter of laughter.

But comedy is what I want to do and I know in order to work in television comedy, I must raise my own profile within the comedy world. So back I came, slithering out of the shadows, attempting as best I could to retake the stage and fight a very public battle with my own shortcomings and come to terms with who I was, who I am and who I want to be.

Outside of stand up, The Brown Show gave me the opportunity to perform on my own terms. As strange as it sounds I found it much easier to perform for an hour in that medium than I ever do performing stand up for 6 minutes. Not so good if you're a stand up, really good if you're a prostitute.

I don't like to make fun of people and my sense of humour is often misconstrued as such. It is situational comedy which gives me my kicks and the jokes I make are often not for the person I'm talking to or the audience in front of me. The jokes aren't written on a wall in big bold letters, but hidden in segues and subtle inflection. If I make a crass joke, it's to set up a reaction to work with, to break down social norms and allow me to get to the truth where the real humour is hidden.

It's when I get this process around the wrong way and deliver the crass joke as the finisher that I know I've got it wrong. This is when I am embarrassed, this is when I die a little inside.

This is the battle I have been fighting on stage in public, my confidence so low that quips of the lowest common denominator are made.. and then I have nowhere to hide. On stage in front of everyone I have to take my medicine, whether that be with a groan of indifference or laughter for material I don't feel is funny.

Whore! I shout inside myself. Sell out! Shill! People might be laughing, but I feel I let comedy down.

Every now and again I tested the water with material which I liked, but which I knew other people either wouldn't get or wouldn't like. Mostly because I can be likeable and I can give the people what the want.. but I'd rather be clever. A stance frowned upon by some comedians who believe your only job is to make the audience laugh. I would argue it's also my job to make the audience think.

I'm not always thought of as clever because I tend to hide the clever bits behind a wall of sickness and depravity kept aside for Satan himself. I doubt then whether anyone has noticed, but I haven't sworn on stage for two years. I've sung a song about bumming puppies while strumming a ukulele, but I haven't touched expletives.

That joke itself is a prime example of what I'm up to and I've thought long and hard about whether to ruin it here on a blog read by Arabians, but not the mother I intended it for. Taken at face value that joke is funny for some people, some puppies get bummed to death after all, but the real joke is somewhat more sinister. The real joke is that I wrote a deliberately catchy song, a song with repetitive lyrics which I drum into the audience and ask to have repeated back to me. The joke is that people take that song home with them, the joke is that it gets stuck in their heads. The joke is that someone somewhere is humming a song about bumming puppies until they die.

When someone barrels me up on the sidewalk to tell me they can't get the song out of their head, that's the pay off.

When someone barrels me up on the sidewalk to tell me they can't get the song out of their head.. that they filmed it.. that they then showed that to people on the street.. that they filmed their reactions.. and noone laughed. That is a ridiculous multi-level pay off.

The joke is a satire on the things people like, packaged the way they like it. The pay off is my deliverance from the suffering caused by mass marketing. And you thought it was about bumming puppies.

I love when people actually want to discuss what I've had to say on stage, whether they liked it or not, it shows I connected with them. Slowly but surely I've been reviving my confidence and discovering where I sit in the grander scheme of comedy. Not delivering jokes, but setting jokes up for people to find themselves.

Today I feel like less of a prostitute and more like a madam. That the punk rock kid inside of me still kicks against the mainstream and that the entertainer inside of me has figured out there are more than four sides to a cell. That I can write a bunch of wank and know that hardly anyone will notice because it's nestled at the bottom of a rather large diatribe which any self respecting reader will just be glad to get to the end of rather than judge me for being an indulgent waffling twatsicle.

Today the reviews of Seven Sharp rolled in and it reminded me I have something to offer.

Today I read this interview with Stewart Lee which reminded me again that I have something to offer.

I'm not sure if I will continue with the Brown Show, it is in the New Zealand Comedy Festival, but it might not survive past that. I will continue to refine what I have to offer and work on cracking the code which unleashes the comedy beast within. I suspect it is some kind of combination lock dressed as a kitten on top of a puppy in a kangaroos pouch. The only way to crack it is to get in there with them and, to quote one of the best ever lines from the Simpsons, "there's a lot more mucous".

And apparently monkeys.

Points to whoever makes this their desktop picture at work today, you get me.

Business

Post #50. I am so hard out. I tiny fraction of the relentless pouring of ideas and opinion that flows forth from me. I am so so sorry. Here's more!

I've slowly been learning about how business is done in the middle east. Business is never black and white, mostly just a large ouroboros grey area, but here in many ways it is more straight forward than at home.

In the western world if someone's not going to pay you for example, you'll often have to play cat and mouse for an extended period of time, dithering around while people just hope the situation goes away. Not here, here it's as simple as "I'm not going to pay that".

The strange part then is that such a decision can be made quite arbitrarily outside the bounds of logic or reason and completely removed from the quality of services rendered. They just don't pay it because they don't want to.

It's an interesting system and one that would no doubt be challenged in a court of law.. if this weren't the middle east. The powers that be play by their own rules, because they can. There's a large western influence and things operate within certain familiar parameters, but when it comes to the crunch, the locals get things their own way.

Where I work is no different and while I have a contract, its contents seem to be generally meaningless.

Today the company decided to stop paying for food and laundry. They didn't tell us, those things just stopped being paid for. Surprise!

I should point out that I am paid reasonably well here, but anyone is likely to grumble when their income is skewed to the tune of $250 a week after signing off on what was contractually agreed.

I'm sure there's a sub-clause which reads "we can do whatever we want", but it's the sort of nuisance value which is easy to fixate on when you're spare time is spent alone in your hotel room staring at an empty bowl and a pile of laundry.

Post

The post works a little differently here than at home. Rather than lots of post shops and letterboxes everywhere, there is just one. One massive post building, a complex of epic proportions.

So rather than popping down to the post box, you have to visit the post complex. As I had the day off, I decided today was the day to make the trip. Quite foolishly. For Friday's are the start of the weekend here and post offices world wide know what to do on the weekend, close.

Still this abject failure had one positive spin off, a long walk along the waterfront on a balmy arabian evening.

There was any number of races and languages walking up and down the water, it's one of the few times here where I've felt like I didn't stand out. 

That lack of interest left me a bit off guard for the large imposing black man smiling widely coming towards me, who gave me a thumbs up and said "Gay?!". I nodded and smiled politely, acknowledging his greeting, but not recognising what was said. As he past me he knowingly said "Gay" in a way which suggested his assessment was never in doubt.

As the penny dropped, I decided not to turn around, just clench and walk faster.