The Great Indoors

So we're all sick. Not MAJORLY sick, just irrating-head-coldy sick. Except for Tim. He's like the Energiser Bunny whose batteries never run out. Or something.

Anyhoo, point is, this, combined with what us Aussies qualify as 'freaking freezing!' weather - yes, the snow has started!!! - we're spending a lot of time inside. And it's already starting to drive the Cay-man batty, which - me being his domino and all - is sending ME batty. As soon as the pond fully freezes over, we can do the ice-skating thing, as soon as the snow's thick enough we can do the tobogganing thing, as soon as we've gotten our butts together and finally collected all the bits of ski equipment we need we can hit the slopes...but until then? We're kinda in no-man's land. Which apparently, is located indoors.

WHAT TO DO?!

In brighter news, I had a gig last night at the Comedy Cave in Calgary, a cute little club situated at the bottom of the Travelodge. I decided to go anyway, headcold and all, as cancelling on your first gig at a new place is not a good look. The second I got there I realised there are some major differences between Australian and Canadian comedy. I'd already been instructed to keep it free of expletives, vulgarity and my keyboard....then I arrived to be told "I don't know how you guys do it in Australia but here, our support acts and our feature acts (i.e. headliners) don't do crowd work."

I looked at him for a moment, checking if he was pulling my leg. "For real?" (I swear, I didn't sound like a rapper as I said that).

He nodded.

"Oh," I said. "Okay. Why is that?"

"That's just the way things are."

"Okay. That's cool. I'll just have to re-think my set."

Cos here's the thing. I LOVE chatting to the audience. Heck, one of my favourite things is taking suggestions from them and making up songs, even getting them up onstage with me. But apparently I'll have to rethink my methodology, at least on the stand-up circuit.

Anyhoo, I worked it out at the last minute - this is where an improv background certainly comes in handy! - and was happy enough with how it went. I also got to meet a couple of other comics including the very impressive headliner Bengt Washburn, whose ability to find a level of connection with a very small and tough crowd was really inspiring.

I'm going to be doing something at Yuk-Yuk's in the next couple of weeks, plus tomorrow I'm finally gonna start training with Loose Moose. I cannot WAIT!

But until then, pass the Tylenol.