I may be a ‘just in’ Generation Xer, but for me the abbreviation LOL has always meant ‘laugh out loud’. I don’t recall using many abbreviations on paper (maybe RSVP or RTS) so I never encountered LOL until I started using the Internet in about 1995. (Yes, 1995 – I’m not writing a column with geek in the title without some qualification.) Like most of that ilk of abbreviations, it predates SMS and instead originated with Internet Relay Chat (IRC), which is the grandmother of MSN Messenger et al.

Imagine my surprise when I learned during a stand-up show that for some older Generation Xers, there was a time when LOL meant ‘lots of love’ – and I’m sure you can imagine what kind of delightful joke arose from the ensuing confusion. The thing is, so did two different comedians – one from the UK and the other a local stalwart. They both wrote the same joke. Not in as many words, of course, and one used it as an aside while the other developed a short routine around it, but still – the same joke. Both were good.

So here comes the sticky question: who ‘owns’ the joke? There’s no question of joke theft – two people have just written the same joke. I preferred one, but perhaps that was just because I’d seen it first – I might have felt a different way if I’d seen them in the reverse order. If we were talking about music, it would be easy to determine who had published or recorded first, but there’s no such easy mark with comedy. Even if there were, how do you decide what’s so close as to constitute a ‘problem’? As part of their grand finale, the Axis of Awesome ably demonstrate that lots of popular music uses the same basic structure, but hardly any of it is specifically similar enough to warrant law suits or copyright claims.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m not suggesting someone has to abandon the joke. There’s no real dispute. Given the two comedians involved – they have very different styles, themes and timeslots, let alone target audiences – I’d be surprised if even twenty other people had heard both versions.  But surely this can’t be the only time this has happened.

Have you had joke deja vu this festival? Let me know – but please, don’t give away any punch lines!

So what’s going on in comedy this year?

First there’s a massive explosion in musical comedy. I say explosion; really the number of shows in the cabaret and music categories have been growing over the last couple of years, but in 2009 we seem to reached some sort of critical mass. It’s an area I’ve been surprised to learn isn’t to a lot of people’s tastes – I find the phrase “I don’t want to see a musical show” almost as shocking as “I don’t like female comedians”, though not for quite the same reasons. Still, I’m all for seeing more musical comedy, as you might imagine from my previous article.

Nostalgia is out in force too. My beloved noticed this more keenly than I; we’re at just the right ages with just enough years between us to straddle the Gen X/Gen Y divide, meaning there are some cultural references that go right over her head. When I say ’some’, I mean ‘loads’ – it seems a bunch of Gen X comedians are coming up to 30 and feel a need to assert their boyishness (mostly it’s the guys doing this) by doing jokes about Voltron, high school and 80s/90s culture. This is not a sub-conscious decision: Lawrence Leung described his television show Choose Your Own Adventure as “nerdcore whimsy”, and it applies equally well to his live show with Andrew McClelland, Time Ninjas. In both, the comedians revisit their school days, as does Sammy J in his show 1999. There are plenty of comedians peppering their stand-up with similar stuff, and while I enjoy it, I have to wonder: how many teens and 20-somethings are out there in the audience wondering what all the fuss is about?

Speaking of whimsy, The Age seems to have gone a bit nuts over this topic, with both an article and a Last Laugh blog post. Both equate whimsy with  ‘nice’ and attempt to make us choose between nice and angry, with Craig Platt of Last Laugh suggesting the latter is superior. Obviously there’s room for both; for every Josie Long, Josh Earl or Maeve Higgins there’s a Brendan Burns, Matt Elsbury or Mike Wilmot. Hell, even Dave Hughes is at least quite annoyed. Comedy doesn’t have to be in your face to have an edge or be ‘laugh out loud’ funny; being gentle is just a stylistic choice. I’m all for railing against the dying of the light, but I do enjoy a good dose of hope and wonder, too. That this sort of thing is seen as childish or second-rate is symptomatic of the attitude that keeps science from attaining its proper place in our lives as a source of endless surprise and delight. So: whimsy is in, but it’s not replacing anything, and it’s not a new phenomenon either.

Another interesting trend this year is comedy about comedy, with a number of shows exploring the industry – and indeed comedy itself. Dave Bloustein’s The Social Contract tells a true story of being sued after a nightmare gig, and in doing so necessarily exposes how the business side of comedy works. Geraldine Quinn’s Hex in the City mixes quite a dose of struggling artist style actor reality into a story of modern witch-hunting. Damian Callinan has created the character of struggling comic Dave Berry for Is This Thing On?, and gets quite meta when he shows up during the story as himself, hosting a comedy competition which Berry has entered. As audience numbers have grown over the last few years, the people coming back for more have become quite literate about the art of stand-up, to the point where it’s almost de rigeur to comment on the structure of a show or break from the narrative (not to mention the fourth wall, where one exists). I’m not generally a fan of this, unless handled naturally in the flow of the piece, but in skilled hands it can be great cheeky fun. The key is that there must be comedy in the act to do comedy-about-comedy about…

Whilst not really a theme, I’d like to close with quality. There seems to be a real surge in good shows this year. I didn’t see any stinkers last year (and I saw nearly 40 shows), but I heard of plenty – cause for alarm as the festival grew larger again in 2009. This year, I’ve only heard of two or three epic fails. It really is hard to make a choice of what to see this year, and I hope you’re having a similar experience. There’s only a week and a bit left, so get out there!

But enough about my experience; I’m just one guy, after all. What trends have you noticed this year? A downturn in reality television jokes? More Facebook humour? Perhaps more comedians in waistcoats? Let me know!

My own personal tastes come straight out of Bill Oddie’s advice: good musical comedy should be good music first, and good comedy second. That said, there are many different styles of musical comedy; far more than the two Comedy Festival categories of ‘cabaret’ and ‘music’ would suggest – and it’s as popular as it’s ever been. History aside, let’s take a squiz at the variety on offer:

• Comedy with music in – this is probably the most common form, and isn’t even always advertised as musical. In a festival-length show, anything that injects a bit of variety into what is otherwise someone talking for an hour is generally welcome (which isn’t to say most comedians get along fine with an hour of just cracking jokes or telling stories). Songs from this category are rarely ones you wish you could buy on iTunes, and serious musos often hate them – not least because comedians in this bracket rarely have voices better than competent karaoke standard, or ‘good enough for rock and roll’. The most common mistakes with this style are making a song too long, or repeating bits; unless the song is amazing, we don’t want to hear the exact same gag more than once. Used sparingly and/or executed well, though, they’ll certainly make you laugh as part of a show, and sometimes the crapness is part of the gag.
  There are a few sub-categories:
  • Filking – the art of taking a popular song and changing the lyrics to be about something else. The term ‘filking’ comes from sci-fi fandom, and is an intentional corruption of ‘folk’, since originally the practice referred to rewriting folk song lyrics to be about Star Trek. ‘Weird Al’ Yankovic does this on an grand scale for his parodies, with musical genius and low-brow comedy. Stand-up comedians, lacking a band with an extraordinary talent for mimicry, generally do without the genius: they use either a karaoke backing track or a few basic guitar chords. The results vary wildly but in the right hands it’s great fun, especially if you like the chosen song.
    Examples: Janelle Koenig – Swell, Simon Pampena in Super Mega Maths Battle for Planet Earth!
  • “I wrote a song about it” – some comedians go the extra step and write their own music as well as lyrics, though again this seldom goes further than a few simple guitar chords. It’s basically filking without license fees, though note the degree of difficulty depends entirely on ambition and musical style. The songs are rarely great musically, but as always there are exceptions and even the musically suss ones can survive on charm and clever lyrics.
    Examples: Josh Earl is XXVII, David O’Doherty – Let’s Comedy, Jimeoin, Lawrence Leung & Andrew McClelland – Time Ninjas, Lano and Woodley
  • The production number – this one’s a rarity, and often comes as a surprise; it refers to comedians who have spent some time and effort on making the song a big, bold, brassy part of the show. Comedians attempting this gambit are usually at a higher than average vocal standard and may have worked with proper musos to write and record the music. The end product often relies on the incongruity of dropping musical theatre conventions into an otherwise straight comedy show, but when it’s pulled off well it can be as effective as a Broadway show-stopper.
    Examples: Tim Minchin – Ready For This? (in addition to his usual stuff; see below); I know I’ve seen more of these, but I can’t think of any right now – suggest some in the comments!
• Music with comedy in – this category is reserved for comedians who are trained musicians whose comedy shows make great albums. Non-musical material generally consists of banter between songs, used to set up any necessary premise; most songs in this category stand on their own, though. There are two main types:
  • Real people – the comedian is a musician and is doing their own stuff (or, at least, is doing their on-stage persona’s own stuff – though that’s a subject worthy of it’s own Geek Comedy 101). This is the stuff that rock star comedians are made of.
    Examples: The Bedroom Philosopher – Songs From the 86 Tram, Tim Minchin – Ready For This?, Tom Lehrer, Flanders and Swann, Geraldine Quinn – Hex and the City
  • Real characters – the act is essentially a parody, often of a group whose fortunes are fading or with a twist. This sometimes means the band is deliberately a bit crap, but since the show still consists mainly of their music, it always hits a mark – even if it’s one created specifically for the show.
    Examples: Wilson Dixon Rides Again, Otis Lee Crenshaw Featuring Special Guest Rich Hall, Die Roten Punkte – Robot/Lion Tour, The Axis of Awesome vs Bee
• “Proper” musical comedy – mixing comedy and music together in equal measure, these performers come from a variety of backgrounds and styles. It’s not easy to make a generalisation about this sort of thing, so I won’t. Here are my fairly arbitrary categories:
  • Straight up – this is the most familiar kind of musical comedy – a blend of stand-up banter, sometimes in character, with original comedy songs. Arguably this works best with a group.
    Examples: The Doug Anthony All-Stars, Tripod – Idio Clips, Hooray For Everything, Scared Weird Little Guys, Cutthroat: The Story of Two Guys Who Stuck their Necks Out
  • Cabaret – probably deserves an article all on its own, since even luminaries in the field cannot agree on a specific definition. At the crap end is so-called “Sondheim on a stool” – a collection of Broadway repertoire show tunes vaguely linked by a story of the artist’s life. At it’s best, though, cabaret taps into a rich history of social and political commentary, original songs and music, and a distinct lack of fourth wall. It might take the form of sultry singing, musical sketch or any one of a number of things, but when it’s good, it’s very very good.
    Examples: I am Glace Chase, Karin Muiznieks, Evening: A Cabaret, Dolls Cabaret, Eddie Perfect, Geraldine Quinn – Hex and the City
  • Musical theatre – tacking ‘The Musical’ onto the end of a show title has become stupidly popular, but just like having the words ‘Best of’ in the title, it means nothing in and of itself. ‘The Musical’ shows often fall into one of the above less music-heavy categories (like Howard: The Musical) or aren’t really musical at all (like Rod Quantock’s 2050 A.D.: The Musical, Hannah Gadsby’s Meat: the Musical or University revue’s Melbourne Model: The Musical). This lax attitude to calling something a musical is all the more galling when you consider how demanding the genuine article is, requiring as it does devotion to at least three disciplines: music, acting and comedy. Add in dance – and so few comedy festival ‘musicals’ do – and that’s four areas that must all work together. Luckily for us there have been some great musicals in the past few years – though perhaps surprising is the number of improvised musical shows in recent years.
    Examples: Keating!, Shane Warne: The Musical, World War Wonderful!, Call Girls the Musical, Spontaneous Broadway

So that’s my vaguely taxonomic analysis of musical comedy trends. It’s not perfect; some acts have wandered between categories (Geraldine Quinn and Karin Muiznieks spring to mind), and I don’t know quite where to put the Suitcase Royale Space Show, for example. It’s closer to The Mighty Boosh than any of the above. Is it musical theatre? Sketch-based cabaret? Something else entirely? Let me know what you think – and what shows you’ve seen, and how they fit into the above.

First up isn’t a joke from a show, but a ‘fact’ in a blurb. For his show Let’s Talk About Sex, Mark Butler claims that “ducks are the only birds to have a penis”. This is not true; other waterfowl (swans etc.) also have penises, as do flightless birds. It is true that ducks have the best penises, but I will say no more in case Mark uses startling but true information in his show.

Jim Jeffries reportedly claimed on stage this week that Jesus was only 4′7″ tall (that’s about 140cm in the new measure). This is a case of a ‘possible answer’ which seems to have been debunked. No-one knows for sure how high Jesus was (though it would have been considerably taller on Good Friday); there’s not even a single physical description of him in the Bible. (Well, some claim there is in Isaiah; but even if that is about Jesus, all it tells us is Jesus was nothing special in the looks department.) This would normally leave the field open for any kind of suggestion, and it is true that humans were generally shorter a couple of millennia ago, but I’m told Jim ‘proves’ this ‘fact’ by saying there’s a direct relationship between the average height of humans and how far back into history you go. That’s not true, however; human height has gone up and down for a whole stack of reasons over the centuries. Varying estimates I’ve found put Jesus at anywhere from 4′9″ to 5′7″ (145cm to 170cm) or even six feet tall (183cm), though the latter is highly unlikely. Sorry Jesus; not only does Jamie Kilstein say you’re not real, but we don’t even know how big a hole you leave in so many people’s lives.

Nina Conti set up shop on my home turf with her show Evolution (my second show was called Evolutionary), so my standard for accuracy was pretty high. In general she impressed; her grasp of the processes of natural selection isn’t too bad. On the other hand, if you’re going to explicitly ‘cash in’ on the anniversary of Origin of Species with a faux comedy lecture (see Geek Comedy 101: the comedy lecture), you should do your homework, and Nina gets a few things wrong.

First, she claims that “life has been evolving for 4.3 billion years” – but that’s (roughly) the age of the Earth. This is a tricky one, though, since we’ve not yet settled the question of what counts as life; in any case, the earliest evidence of life as we know it (Jim) only goes back 3.5 billion years.

Nina claims humans evolved from amoeba 500 million years ago, and this is wrong on two counts. First, we not descended from amoeba. We are, ultimately, descended from single-celled organisms – as is all life – but just as we are not descended from modern monkeys, we are also not descended from modern single-celled organisms like amoebas. We do share a common ancestor with amoebas, but it’s like we share a great great great aunt (let’s call her Felicity). Amoeba just looks more like Felicity than we do. The other problem here is the date; 500 million years ago is way off. Our ancestors had backbones by then – and they were fish. I don’t think we’ll be seeing any amoeba ‘n’ chips shops popping up any time soon, either.

That’s it for this week – but have you heard something in a festival show that didn’t sound quite right? Let me know! And I fully expect you readers to keep me honest and tell me if I get something wrong, too.

Let’s get nerdily analytical, and using as our case study an example from this year’s festival: Miss Kat and Miss Jane’s A Stitch in Time: A History of Frocking Up. Comedy lectures generally have the following characteristics:

• One subject – comedy lectures are focussed. That focus may be fairly broad, but you never have to use the word ‘and’ to describe what they’re about. A Stitch in Time is about the history of fashion.
• Enthusiasm – you have to love the subject. This is usually a given; no-one writes an hour long show about something they’re not mad keen on. Kat and Jane have this in spades.
• Accuracy – lectures come inherent with the convention that you know what you’re talking about. You can’t make stuff up – except, perhaps, if the whole thing is entirely fallacious. I don’t know much about fashion, but I reckon Kat and Jane did their homework. Note that this is a constraint, and one many comedians chafe under; for my money though, it forces innovation and experimentation.
• Visual aids, not “big props” – comedy lectures may use a little or a lot of stuff, but they’re (mostly) relevant objects. Kat and Jane have projected images, a paper doll, and of course lots of clothes.

Comedy lectures have a benefit to the comedian, too: they’re easy to market as niche. If they have a failing, it’s that can often err on the side of interesting rather than funny (much like today’s column). I know that’s something I’ve struggled with in my own shows.

Have you seen any good comedy lectures? Let me know in the comments below! Perhaps you have a style of geek comedy you’d like me to investigate, or a question about it all? Let me know that too!

“Well, what sort of stuff do you like?”

“Something funny!”

Every comedian, festival volunteer and – especially – info booth and WOT Squad worker knows this routine off by heart. (Janet A. McLeod is a champion at the game.) We’re supposed to be experts: surely we know what’s good and what’s not? Of course, it’s never that simple.

Comedy, like all art, is incredibly subjective. I’m not about to get all po-mo on you here, but it’s clear that plenty of people actually find, say, Big Bang Theory or Kath and Kim funny.  I don’t. So if one of those people asks me what to see, to do the job properly, I will have to recommend something I don’t like at all.

Determining what that thing will be is often very, very hard. Most people can’t articulate their likes; they don’t have the vocabulary. It’s rare that someone can confidently say “I enjoy clever, well-crafted comedy which takes gentle jabs at conservatism” or “I prefer in-your-face ironic gagfests full of  dark insight and a little self-loathing”. Perhaps unsurprisingly, everyone is much better at telling you what they don’t like. My Mum, after some prompting, eventually told me she doesn’t like comedy with politics in. That one thing means I wouldn’t recommend at least four of my favourite comedians, because I love comedy with politics in. Well…the good kind.

For the record, my taste is pretty broad. I’m a bit of a comedy sponge; I like sketch, I like musical comedy, I like clowning, I like theatre. When it comes to stand-up, there’s a special place in my funny bone for comedy which is about something. I generally don’t go in for a random set of gags with vague segues. Well…not unless they’re very good gags.

But there I go again. No one thing can decide if comedy is for you or not. If it’s political, is it savage, or witty? If it’s well-crafted, is it subtle, or blunt? If you like X, will you really like Y, or will one of the things that sets them apart outweigh all the things they have in common? And we haven’t even mentioned the form the comedy will take: some people just aren’t “into” sketch, musical comedy, cabaret or even traditional stand-up.

Now, even assuming I can determine if something is “good”, as a comedian myself, what do I do with that opinion? I try to see a lot, and if I like something, send people along, but I can’t publicly say so. Even when doing it one-on-one as I do  I have to be careful to declare my interests. For one thing, I have many, many friends who are comedians, and I like nearly all their work; I want them all to succeed. My beloved is a performer, too, and while I think she’s excellent, it’s impossible for me not to be biased. And of course there are things I’m involved in, which I will probably avoid mentioning much here.

If someone of Minchin’s calibre and success is a nerd, then surely the pundits must be on to something. But is he a nerd? In what sense? He doesn’t fit the geek comedy stereotype – his scientific, rationalist view is nothing unusual for a left-leaning comedian. He doesn’t do jokes about Rubik’s Cubes, zombies or sci-fi movies. Sure, there’s room for those things in geek comedy, but the stereotype misses the point: you can be geeky about anything. Star Wars, stamps and Dungeons and Dragons are just the familiar tip of the iceberg. Minchin is a “rock ‘n’ roll nerd” not because he’s a nerd who plays rock ‘n’ roll, but because he’s nerdy about rock ‘n’ roll.

To be geeky, all you need to do is be passionately interested in something that most people aren’t – and that’s why it makes such good comedy. Passion gives comedy it’s edge; if the comedian doesn’t care, why should we? But if they do care, then they’re riveting. This geeky passion is what makes Mathew Kenneally and Courteney Hocking great political comedians. It fuels our appreciation of Andy McLelland talking history or music, Simon Pampena teaching us maths, even Asher Treleaven and his terrible literature. (Think I’m stretching this a bit far? Search the online festival programme for “geek” and Treleaven’s show Open Door is the only result.) It’s even possible to be geeky about comedy itself, most noticeably in the deconstructionist musings of ComedyZone’s Laura Davis, the anti-comedy of Nick Sun or the latest character piece from Damian Callinan in which he plays a comedian.

As for evidence this sort of comedy is on the rise, we have plenty of new subjects this year, from newcomers and old hands alike. Miss Kat and Miss Jane (A Stitch in Time, though I’d forgive you for thinking it was a show about Mr. Squiggle’s assistants) are geeking out over fashion, while Danny McGinlay presents not only a solo show about food, but a weekly cook-off between real chefs and comedians this year. The subject of geeky desire isn’t necessarily the focus of the show, either – Dave Bushell and the Suitcase Royale troupe leak their love of music and culture at the seams of their performances, while The Hounds are never far away from a movie pastiche or loving homage, even though their new show is “about” the last bucket of water on Earth.

Really, though, the subject doesn’t matter. If someone truly, madly, geekily loves something – anything at all – then they will capture you with the sheer gravitational pull of that passion. It’s no substitute for good writing and good performance, of course, but it can take an act a long way. I’m hoping to get out there and find it, because the only thing as good as your own passion is someone else’s.