This Post is Just for Me (or, I Took a Metaphorical Punch Last Night and Felt Like Punching Back)

I had the worst set of my life last night at a venue that's notorious for being rough. It's on every night of the festival, and I've only missed it twice, but last night it shook me harder than I've been shaken in a long time.
But let's be honest: I have nothing to complain about whatsoever. I'm half-way across the world and I barely even remember that most days. What a bizarre fucking realization that is for me every time I remember it. It's raining off and on here today, and people hate rain, but I don't. I love rain. Before it rained I was invited to go the beach, which I passively declined by not meeting up with people in the hostel lobby, instead opting to read free books from Hennepin County's online library system. This is really great. It looks like it's raining again, and goddamnit if I'm not utterly beaming. Fuck you Exford Hotel; you can't break me. I'll be back again tonight so buckle up motherfuckers.

(Don't read too much into this post. It was written for cathartic purposes. I felt like posting it because, realistically, I'm an egomaniac)

Coffee and More Melbourne Insights

April 7th, 2013
I have another continuation of my last comedy post in the works, but I'm not in the mood to write about at the moment. This post will probably be just another life post.

Melbourne touts itself as coffee town, and any time a town toots their own horn that much I get pretty skeptical. I've been of that mindset here for a while, but I just had a pretty damn good latte from a 24hr coffee and donut place called "Walker's" off Flinders Street. Flinders is one of the large streets in downtown Melbourne, and the farthest south before you hit the Yarra River (the city doesn't end past the river though. Just south is actually the tallest building in the Southern Hemisphere). They do a peculiar thing in this town that I haven't encountered before, which is that they main artery roads downtown, and between they have small one-ways named after the main roads with "Lt" in front of them (for example, they have Bourke Street and Lt Bourke Street). The Lt is an abbreviation for "Little", but if you know me at all you should know that I take quite a bit of delight in loudly, and in false confusion, calling them "Lieutenant" Streets ("Yeah, we're just crossing Lieutenant Collins Street!").

Anyway, back to the coffee. I also got a Simpsons'eque pink-frosted donut. The frosting was definitely flavored pink as well (I don't know what the pink was; I thought raspberry, but I'm not 100%, could have been strawberry too. Look, just let it be pink flavored). I've been mostly getting 7 Eleven lattes. They're $1, which is exactly in my price range. Before I started drinking them, I just assumed they were like shitty gas-station lattes back home (which I love). To my surprise, they're actually fairly sophisticated machines that make sophisticated coffees and I'm beginning to think this place actually does take their coffee seriously.

I frequently call people back home on account of the ludicrously cheap price it costs to call. But I've been finding it's a really weird experience. I'm generally not one to prattle on about what I'm doing, and I feel odd doing it. When I find myself asking how things are going back home, all I hear is that the world just keeps on spinning. I don't know what I'm expecting from people. Maybe it's not fair to do that. I've noticed in the past that when I get back together with friends I haven't seen in a while it takes a bit of time to get past the what's new in your life phase, and before things return to a normal conversational pace, there's an awkward stage. I mean, how interesting is the minutia of my day really? Is it worth explaining the entire background information of my Australian experience just to get to where I can talk about eating at Pie Face?

As usual, I have a lot to say, but I don't feel up to task of writing it all down and editing it. I've found that if I don't immediately start editing my work I generally don't post it and while the thoughts often find their ways into future posts, their form changes and I end up losing some of the original feeling. It also exhausts me. There's so much to write about. I'm not sure if my purpose for writing has changed either. Originally I thought this was just going to be mostly my musings about the differences between my life back home and my life here. I have some intensely personal things to say that may or may not end up in here. It feels cowardly not to include them, but it's also difficult to put them out publicly. I've decided that these writings will end up in what will essentially a one man show (you know, because I don't have delusions of grandeur...) maybe for the Melbourne Fringe, but likely for next year's festival. And perhaps Minneapolis' Fringe. The festival has me thinking a lot. Ugh, this last paragraph was supposed to be a soft closing paragraph for this post, but I'm leaving many more open questions than closed.

I love donuts! (that's a better close, right?)

P.S. I'm writing in my favorite spot to write in all of Melbourne, and I felt like attaching a picture of my view. Also a picture of Pie Face; it's a fast food restaurant that sells meat pies. Additionally, my post about everything that's been happening in the Festival is coming. It will be a very expansive post and you'll get more context for what's happening and where my thoughts here are coming from.

Comedy in Melbourne: Arrival

April 3rd, 2013
This post is a long time coming. The only reason I've been putting it off is because there's a lot to tell. It's actually been the highlight of my experience down here. For this post, I'll start from relatively the beginning.

When I landed about 6 weeks ago, my goal was to immediately find the first club I could find and see a show. I ended up going to Last Laugh Comedy Club in Melbourne's CBD (downtown). It was a good show, and definitely a learning experience. My intention had been to talk to the MC and find out how the comedy scene in Melbourne. What I found was that the structure of shows in Australia is a different than Minneapolis. The hierarchy of the show is different, and the MC was way above my level. I talked to him anyway, but found that his knowledge of the open mics was less helpful. I ended up checking out the shows he recommended, but it was clear that the shows were a bit out of my league as someone starting over. Had I just been visiting, I probably could have BS'd my way on, but knowing that I'm in it for the long haul I decided not to push my luck.

I ended up finding an open mic/showcase run a block from my hostel (I don't remember how I found it. It very well could have been through the venues I went to, but it also could have been from the hostel itself. I just don't remember). Comedy-oke it's called. I was actually quite thrilled to find it for multiple reasons; for one, it was a venue I could definitely get on, but secondly and more importantly, I fucking love karaoke. Since shows here are all booked in advance, it took a week before I got on the stage. At this point I had only done about 3 sets in the past month, jesus christ did I have the itch. When I finally took the stage, a very weird experience. The gig is called Comedy-oke, and it's at a bar in adjacent to a hostel (Melbourne International Backpackers, or MIB for short), meaning it's full of international backpackers who often don't speak English natively. Additionally, I packed the place with the menagerie of people I had met at my hostel. As such, while it was definitely good to get on stage, it still hurts when your good jokes back home die in front of your eyes. It's also a lesson that I can't seem to make myself learn. For example, no matter how much I try, I can't make my Man-kiss joke work at all. I do feel like I'm evolving as a comic, and there are a lot of opportunities here that are not back home.

This is an adequate back-story for my continued comedic exploits in Australia, and another post will follow this one relatively soon (I say relatively because relative to the last time I posted, it will actually happen within the next few days).

P.S. I STILL MISS TACO BELL AND PANDORA IS STILL TAUNTING ME WITH DORITO'S LOCOS COOL RANCH TACOS! WHY KEVIN LOVE, WHY?! WHAT DID I DO TO DESERVE THIS?!

My Life is Actually Less Sad Than This Post

March 28th, 2013

Look, it's been a really long time since I last posted and I'm sorry for that (I'm not). I'm probably going to combine a few posts I've got half written, so this may be a long one. Or it may not; I may split them up after writing.

I've been in Australia for over a month now. I'm still living in Discovery Hostel. I don't recall exactly what I've said about Discovery in the past, but I'm not thrilled with this place. That's not fair. I'm not thrilled with how my life here has progressed. It's not Discovery, it's that I'm still jobless and unwilling to get an apartment without a job that can sustain it. I figured that by now I would have had a job, or at least something to do during the day. One thing I've learned about myself in the past is that the less I'm doing, the less likely I am to do more. If I have endless free time, it remains just that, free time. I've gone through cycles like this one in my life a few times before and I know that I have to be proactive about making myself occupied. Sure, being free to do whatever I want is quite enjoyable, and it's allowed me to be very carefree, but it comes at a cost. I'm not sure if I've ever actually been depressed before, but I can tell you the times in my life when I had nothing to get up for weren't pleasant.

What's really stunning to me is that I've been in Australia for more than a month, and I'd spent two weeks on the west coast in the US before I came, putting me at a grand total of more than 6 weeks away from home. I've never been away for so long. The longest I've ever been out of Minnesota is probably less than two weeks, and even then it was a child and I knew I was going to be coming home shortly (side note: I don't know when I was away for 2 weeks as a child, but I know we had family vacations at least that long so don't ask me where I went...). All of this is to say that I'm not homesick at all. Sure there are a few specific things that I miss, most notably Taco Bell (sorry family), but as a whole, I feel very comfortable being away. Obviously, technology helps with that. I can call anybody in the states for dirt cheap if not free and the time delay isn't horrendous. Additionally, this place really isn't all that different from home. It's a bit bigger of a city, and sure I'm surrounded by people who speak funny, but I can understand them, and it's still a modern city. In fact, when I went to Adelaide a few weekends ago I was struck by how remarkable similar to home that city was. Just the parks and the nature. Adelaide is smaller than Melbourne, and I didn't notice it at first, but I did after spending the full weekend there. On a map, the streets are about as numerable, but the blocks are smaller. And while it was quite busy in certain places, I know that I went during the Adelaide Fringe Festival and realistically the city is has a lot less to do than Melbourne.

Melbourne has a lot going on all the time though. Makes me really wish I had an apartment and wasn't at the whim of a hotel. Luckily it's less busy than it was during the Grand Prix, but having to renew weekly and dealing with the influx of new people each week is exhausting. And I will relish having a room to myself. I have a lead on a room in a house that's significantly less than here, and evidently not too far out in the boonies.

Ugh, no matter how I put it, this whole piece feels so fucking inconsequential. "This is my life" "This is what's happening" "I can't get my life together to leave this shitty place that gives me a place to stay and makes life easy"
What a crock of shit.

Yes, this place is different than home. I'm enjoy myself immensely when I'm not going in complete shambles about my finances or feeling like a giant turd for not finding a job. I spend my days watching tv on my computer and looking at Cracked articles. This isn't a different situation than from home. All I've done is change the setting of my misery from a cold home where I can easily find a job and a warm, but turning colder, place that I sit around doing the exact same shit I would back home but jobless. This isn't some ideal paradise I've found myself in. I can barely even find ways to destroy my taste-buds in this crazy place. The grocery stores don't sell "hot" salsa; only mild and medium, which are even milder settings than they are back home. The only reason they don't have a hot here is so that people can feel like there's another level out there and feel secure in their mediocrity.

At the center of my disheartment (no matter how I try to make a form of "disheart-" work, spell check says I'm wrong, so disheartment (no spell check I don't mean "dish heart") stays even if it's not a word. Deal with it) is the dilemma I find myself in every day: I have enough money to survive for 2 months if I do nothing but stay in the city and live as cheaply as I can until I find a job, but as a result I don't do any of the things that brought me here in the first place. I STILL HAVE YET TO SEE A FUCKING KANGAROO! I've used up more than a full month of my year here and what do I have to show for it? Fucking nothing. I've made friends with a bunch of foreigners who have come and gone. Fucking great. I don't have the energy to keep doing that. I'm sick of temporary friends.

Ok, that was very sad that last paragraph. I have been doing things here, especially regarding comedy. I guess that'll be in the next post. I'm just frustrated because I went downstairs to the bar for "Date Night" with free wine and cheese and I don't know anybody and I can't bring myself to try. Also they dole out the wine and cheese in "tastes" and I'm still hungry and not drunk. I bought bottle of brandy because I was feeling too poor about going to bars and not buying alcohol. But they don't let you drink in the rooms and I have no good way to pour the brandy into my flask.

Holy fuck this post has gotten long. I really need to shorten it. But I will probably just post it.

D'oh!

Cars and Lechery

This post was principally written on 3/15/13, but I've been slowly editing it...
I just arrived in Adelaide. I decided mid-week I was going, and the decision was mainly due to every place in Melbourne being completely full. I say mainly because there are other reasons, such as a friend playing in a show and a desire to see more of Australia so that in the event that I run out of money and have to go home prematurely I've been outside of just Melbourne. The reason Melbourne is completely full is because of the Formula 1 Racing being in town. Apparently, it's one of the biggest weekends for the hostels/hotels. As an opponent of racing "sports" as a general rule, believe me when I say I was none to pleased to find out this information. The direct quote I consistently used was "it's just cars driving! Who gives a shit?! If you want to see cars driving you can go to the highway any time you want!" I'm not gonna retract that statement, but I will say that I did go to the free day for F1 and I did enjoy the shit out of it.  It was a lot more than just cars and the watching of their driving therein (does that make sense? Pretend it did). While we did watch them for a while, there was also a stationary car that you could race a friend which I won, free samples of shampoo (I'm poor, that gets me excited. Oh and I got both man and woman shampoos; don't judge, still poor), and an inflated jump bag that was 10 meters off the ground. I was particularly cavalier about the height from the ground, but it was an entirely different story when I got to the top. In my head I knew it was perfectly safe, but goddamn if my body did not want to jump. It took everything I had to jump and it was exhilarating, but apparently I let out a yelp as I leapt. Not like a braveheart yell or a manly scream. Nope. Just a scared, involuntary yelp. After I'd jumped I had that giddy feeling again, kinda like the one I had at the beach in LA. I'm not saying that I wouldn't have jumped if the same situation had been back home, but it was here and it was exactly the kind of situation that I came here to do. I watched a video for bungie-jumping the other day, and I think I'm gonna try it. Knowing that feeling of pushing myself do something my body absolutely refuses to do was pretty unique for me. I want it again. Before coming here, I wanted to sky-dive. I might still, but I also may leave it for a different time. Sky-diving is everywhere; I can do that back home if push comes to shove. Lastly, I keep seeing the city from different angles. The view from that area of town particularly great. Melbourne has an absolutely stunning skyline.

I had a bizarre experience at the hostel these past few days. I'm not particularly keen on sharing it, but as long as I'm pushing my boundaries here, I figure I should just tell the tale. I was put into a 14 bed room that was unbearably warm at night, and oh just for kicks, 12 of those beds were filled with beautiful women who stripped down to their underwear at night. How great, right? Yeah, no. Not the best by a longshot. First of all, my period synced with theirs in 2 days (seriously, I've had that one locked and loaded for the better part of a week...), but more importantly, nothing makes you feel like a gross old man than 12 women no older than 22. Oh, and check it out, none of them speak English natively, so I can't even settle for a charming weirdo. Nope, I just get to be a weirdo, a weirdo who is staring at girls in their underwear in bed (no sheets either, of course, because remember it's like 100 degrees) BECAUSE THERE'S LITERALLY NOWHERE ELSE TO LOOK. And let's not forget that they are in groups that speak the same language, Swedish and French I think, so I'm pretty sure all they were doing the whole time was recognizing how big a creep I am and judging me openly. I'm not saying I want a situation where it's just me and only dudes, but christ, help me out, would ya?! Here's the worst part: I'm not even the creepiest dude in the hostel! There were old creepy old dudes in my last room that were way worse than me, so by comparison I looked like a normal dude trying to mind my own business. Which is precisely what I was doing. But since Jimmy, the crooning sexagenarian Colombian Scientologist, isn't directly nearby, I'm the oldest person in the room. (Jimmy, btw, also recommended that I take supplements to give life that little extra zip!) Fucking christ I probably am just that creepy. Fuck. Don't judge me.

There's more going on, but that'll be in another post.

*Editor's note: I realize I've used the word "creepy" a lot in this post. Turns out the thesaurus isn't that great when talking about creeps.

Living and Alcohol

3/10/13 2pm local time.

I've been in this country for over two weeks now, and I'm still jobless and homeless. That's not to say I don't have a place to stay, but a hostel is not a home. I'm actually back in Hotel Discovery tonight. It's the hostel I've been staying at for the past 2 weeks here, but they were complete full last night. In fact, every hostel in town was full. There was a big music festival in town. While I chose Melbourne because it's a worldly city with lost going on, it's getting pretty fucking annoying that there's something that brings in tons of people each weekend, and the hostels get overbooked. Next week is Formula 1 racing, and it's raising the prices of the hostels in town, so I may do some traveling instead of being here. Anyways, bringing it back to my predicament last night, I had to stay at a hotel in South Yarra, a nearby suburb just south of the Yarra River. It was actually a really nice hotel that if I were on a regular vacation I would stay at. I stayed with a friend I met at Discovery, and it was still $60 each, but seeing as how a hotel alone would have cost me $100 it was the right choice. I have to say it was nice to get away from the hostel life, if only for a night. The hotel had a mini fridge in the room, in room bathroom, and there was rooftop pool which had a great view of the city. I finally got to drink the bottle of beer I bought on my first day in Australia. The hostel doesn't allow outside alcohol, and I'd been itching to drink it. The beer was a pale ale, and god was it good. I never thought I'd say this, but I actually really miss IPAs since getting here. Drinking beer with a strong hop flavor is not a common occurrence here, and it reminds me of home. I want to point out that it's not that aren't available here, they are, but they're a lot less common in bars and not particularly common in stores. Craft beers are also significantly more expensive here. Well, not just craft beers, all alcohol. It's actually pretty ridiculous. Back home, you can get a 375mL of Bacardi for about $9, but here you're looking at $24 for that exact same bottle (well, not exactly the same. It's Cuban, not Puerto Rican. Embargo'd!) What most people do at the bar is buy pitchers (they call them jugs) of Carlton or VB (Victoria Bitters, I think). They're like your typical lager; think Bud or Miller. I can't tell if they're good or not. I'm quite fond of them, but there's a distinct possibility that it's because beer is served cold and this country has been very hot lately. You can get a pitcher for usually about $15, but I've seen them for as low as $10. A pint usually runs about $7 or $8, but they sell half pints for less, usually like $5. I got a shot of tequila (José Cuervo) at a nearby bar the other day for $8.50, and btw, shots are only 30mL here instead of about 50mL back home. The thing about alcohol here is though that bars aren't exceptionally more expensive than liquor stores. If you want to buy a 24 pack of beer, you're looking at about $50. Everywhere sells beer by the individual bottle, which cheap beers typically run about $3 for about 12oz (sizes range here a bit more with the metric system. Some are 375mL, some are 330mL). A common thing people do in the hostel is buy a box of Goon, which is, you guessed it, cheap boxed wine, and drink in the park. It runs about $10 for 4 liters, and supposed to be completely terrible. I personally have stuck to beer for my park drinking though.

Some friends are leaving today. It's a bit of strange life. They're going to other cities within Australia, so I may meet up with them later, but I'm not looking forward to having to make new friends. The hostel isn't great at fostering connections, which doesn't help. But even just meeting new people all the time gets to be a hassle. Here's how a conversation goes with every new person at the hostel: Where are you from? I'm from the US. Oh, where in the US? Minneapolis, do you know where that is? Ok, do you know where Chicago is? Ok, it's in the north middle part of the country. What did you do back home? What brings you here?
I realize that this won't end even after I leave the hostel, but hopefully less common and more one-sided.

One more side note before I post (I'm losing focus...), I'm starting to get sick of sushi. I didn't think I'd ever say that, but it's one of the cheapest foods here, and it's practically everywhere. They make it goofy too. I know I've talked about it a little bit, with the hand rolls and all (it's still weird, but it's growing me), but they also have weird kinds, like rolls with egg, and cooked chicken and beef. I know they have most of them at home, but I get the impression that they're less common. Here they're everywhere.
And having written all that, I think I'm gonna go get some sushi.

Making Friends and Such

Tuesday Mar/5/13, 2:35am
Ok, so things have gotten better for me since that last sad post. I've been meeting more people here, both at the hostel and at comedy shows. I know I mentioned earlier that there are very few Americans here, but it colors all of my interactions in this country, so I want to talk about it further.

In the hostel, there are a lot of Europeans, mostly Germans and Brits, but make no mistake there are people from all corners of Europe. I took two semesters of German in college, but it hasn't been particularly necessary, since all the Germans here speak pretty decent German. If I were better at it I might be able to hear if they're talking shit or something. Interestingly, I actually have used Spanish recently. A pair of Italians were put in my room who, combined, know about 7 words in English. I used to think that Spanish and Italian were mutually intelligible. Turns out, it's a bit different... I will say that I found out in Italian, calling a girl a pig is calling her a slut. The two guys are very friendly. I mentioned I worked in politics back home and one mentioned that Burlesconi is banging a friend of his.
I befriended a pair of Danes, and have decided I should learn Danish, because like my concern for the Germans, these guys talk shit in Danish since there are only about 5 million people in the world who speak it. A good example of when it would have been helpful was when my Danish friend (Jacob) and I went to a Mongolian restaurant (I have a food post that I'm working on, hold your horses) that was really expensive. If I'd spoken Danish, I could have openly said so, but alas I don't (yet). They're both physics engineers in grad school. I've noticed there are a few groups of friends in the hostel here, and I've kind of fallen in with one. It's weird. I never expected to be in a situation like this. It feels a bit like high-school. I still feel a bit like a loner though, I'm actually quite ok it. I'm booked for a comedy show tomorrow night, so it'll be nice to have a group of friends who are still willing to come out and see me.

I intended to talk about the comedy here, but I'm tired. I still have a lot to say about a lot of topics so I'll write tomorrow during the day, but for now, I want this to be posted.