LeishBlog

I had a busy weekend full of nerves a bit of vomit (surprisingly not mine) and a jolly good social time.

It’s always a bit overwhelming going home. I try and stuff as much as I can into such a small amount of time, but this is the first trip back in a while that I truly felt like I had really got some shitz done!

Friday night was pretty manic. I got on a plane in Sydney at 5 and was in Hobart by 7.30 screaming along to make the 8 o’clock gig.

It was good because I hardly got any time to get nervous. I just reapplied the lippie and hopped out on stage. The gig was at the Theatre Royal in Hobart. It is a beautiful old theatre and the ‘oldest functioning theatre in Australia‘. There are cherubs on the ceiling and squeaky old velvet chairs. It is a real treat to see a proper play there and must have been mildly disappointing for those people wanting to experience culture on Friday night when they got to hear me bitching about Supre and Man Colds!

I think the gig went well, how do you really ever know? Most of my lovely friends that came to watch all said they feel mega nervous for me when I come on stage and question their own subjectivity….which I get because if they couldn’t find something encouraging to say I would probably be shattered and have to deck them…I am kidding, (sort of) Wend Harmer was MC for the night and she was encouraging of my skills with the microphone so I suppose that is good.

After the gig we went for drink but I was so pooped that, unusually for me, I couldn’t bothered with the binge drinking so had a sensible amount of bevvies, some lovely conversations. For some reason or another my crew has started calling Simo (big mug on the left) choco. Of course I instantly took on this name for him…he will never be called Simo again… but I am still puzzled as to how he got to be called that. The things you miss when you are in another state. I am sure however, knowing who changed his name, it is uncouth and distasteful.

We high tailed it back to Suzes to sleep……only to be woken up a few hours later by her kids getting up. I love Suzes children. They are the only kids I have ever known since they were bumps. Kate is 4 and Will is 2. They are cute but loud and they wake up early…..like 5.30…..everyday.

When I have children I am going to program them to wake up at 9am. Maybe I will force them to stay awake until 12pm, then they might sleep in. Mmmmm that says extra attention from child services to me. Actually this blog might be used in future court cases so I might keep mu child rearing opinions to myself.

In the morning we were heading into ‘town’ the Hobart city centre. I was sitting wedged in the middle of the two kids. Kate was chatting away about horses….

Kate

‘Leishy, Leishy….. horses are so pretty’

Leish

‘Yes I suppose they are Kate. What noise does a horse make?’

Kate

They go neeeeeeey….blahhhh (sloppy spew)

I instantly (and non maternally) started yelling and carrying on,

Leish

‘Oh my god, Yuckkkk, that stinks…Oh my god it’s all sloppy and it’s on my scarf…I think I can see a piece of toast, it hardly digested!’

Suze, who was still driving the car attempted to calm her distressed child and shut me up thus preventing me from further freaking out her daughter.

The worse thing was that we were driving over the mighty Tasman Bridge and there was no opportunity to stop. Kenny our mate was in the front seat pissing himself while throwing tissues at me and I was attempting to keep the dry reaching ti a minimum.

It was traumatic. But the funniest thing was Kate was fully recovered by the time we had stopped the car and got out the car and trotted around, doing pony impressions and I was in shock for the next 6 hours.

That afternoon Kate decided that she wanted to ‘be a clown’ and very sneakily coloured her face in with textas. She was very stroppy that we were taking the piss out of her, as this photo shows.  Kids are mental.

The rest of the weekend went along fantastically. Sunday Kath, Anth and I ate a super swell breakfast prepared by Kath (she makes restaurant quality eggs) and then decided the best thing to do post eggs was to do a short walk and then eat a lot of ice cream. My favourite flavour is liquorice. It makes your tongue black and because most people go “yuck” like you are probably doing now, no one ever want to share.

This is the tin can that my Dad travels down to Antarctica every year.

It was the most idyllic Hobart Winters day. No clouds, a little bit chilly but warm in the sun. Anth was obsessed with not walking in the shade as not ruin the façade of a warm day so we weaved our way around the shadows.

Sunday night I had another gig. This one was doing some warm up stand up for a fantastic impro evening “Impro-vice”. My mate Ted was the other act and he was funny. The weirdest part of this gig is that it was the first time I had ever played to a small room. All of my gigs so far have been to massive rooms and in theatres, so it was actually nice having a comedy club experience and not being keeling over nervous before hand. The gig was great fun and we stayed and watched the guys do their impro thing, which was very sharp and funny. Good on you boys.

The next morning I got up at the crack of and went back to the good old ‘Hobart International Airport’ (no I am not kidding they had one international flight come in, in the 80s and decided that they should qualify for international airport status). I am really not good at getting up early. I am zombie girl, so basically I got dressed and sat at the airport ready to go back to bed on the plane. This went well for a while. I sat down (aisle seat!) and got all comfy to sleep again. As usual I was placed next to Mr McChatty but I silenced him by putting on my sunnies and making it really obvious that it was ’sleep time now’ and that I was no to be disturbed.

About an hour into the flight my head was lolling around and I was having lovely dreams when McChatty shook me awake. I thought that either;

A: We were crashing and we were about to die; if this was the case then he should have let me sleep through it, less painful and traumatic.

B: He needed to go to the can

C: He was an annoying shit who wanted to tell me that the flight attendant dropped a napkin on my arm but picked it up again!

Fuck me. In my sleepy delirium I jumped up out of my sleep thinking it was B. It was not. He laughed at me and I scowled back at him.

Stupid man for getting in the way of me and my sleep.

We landed and I proceeded to catch 28 modes of public transport and went to work.

I was tired Monday night but I shared a couple of wines with Flatmate Sarah and slept like a rock.

Lastly I have been peer pressured into joining facebook. So if you are into it, look me up (like I don’t spend enough time on the internet already)

L

When I was 12 I remember one Saturday night Dad and I were channel surfing when we came across The Late Show and Tony Martins now infamous Robert De Niro sketch. Dad instantly keeled over with the traditional McCormack guffaw and cried with laughter (and he still does when we watch the DVD). None of the other kids at school where probably allowed to watch it but I became obsessed, so much so a couple of Christmas later when the video was released, after about 3000 viewings, my Grandmother hid the video from my Cousins and I because she was,

“Bloody sick of hearing those idiots go on and on, and what is Muckraking anyway? Go to the beach, ride a bike, enjoy the summer”

So with our video hidden somewhere Grandmas Linen Cupboard and we re-enacted sketch after sketch until she agreed to give us back our precious video,

“As long as stopped making so much noise and we watched it in the garage”.

So anyway last Thursday I was very lucky to head to Melbourne to go and watch my lovely Friend Julia Zemiro appear on Thank God You’re Here.

After work I headed to the airport, driven by the most friendly and sleaziest cab driver in Sydney. I don’t have a big rack but this guy kept his on my prize for most of the journey, so much so I ended up putting my backpack on my lap and sort of hunched over to be really obvious. Icky poos.

I made the journey to foggy Melbourne and then battled another cab driver about where the hell Nunawading was. He clearly didn’t know where he was going but still insisted that he would ‘find it eventually’. This worried me as I had very tight time limit to get all the way out there.

The Nunawading Global TV studios are pretty old school, shows like Neighbours,  Prisoner, Rove Live and of course Thank God You’re have all been shot there.

It reminds me a bit of a highschool, lots of beige and Lino and there is a mustiness around, it could be the smell of decomposing soap stars careers….not sure.

When I got there we were ushered into a greenroom and they gave us booze! Yay. We were given lanyards with different coloured string to represent that we were too cool for school and then taken into the studio.

I love studio shoots. It so organised. Everyone seems to have a purpose and there is always such a great energy. That’s just me I suppose but I was really excited to be there. I am still pretty sure that one of the most thrilling experiences I have had was watching Conan O’Briens show in New York….sure there are the sights and stuff but I could have sat in that studio for ever, just feeding on the wonderfulness of it all. And Conan is a honey, surprisingly Oh dear. I need to get our more. 

The show itself was put together pretty quickly and I was uber impressed that in between the sketches the sets where constructed and deconstructed without minimal noise.

Julia was fabulous! She is just so witty when it comes to impro. There was rarely a beat or a pause and I felt so nervous for her, before she went on but she looked so casual about it all. I won’t give away anything about the actual show because I will get spanked.

After the show finished we were told to hold up our lanyards and we were ushered into another room. Half of the original lanyard people were lead into the car park but we were taken to the Green Room.

(If these names that I am about to drop hard and fast don’t mean anything to you, I advise you take yourself down to the video shop and have an afternoon in watching Frontline and The Late show and then take a good hard look at yourself)

I gave myself a little pep talk about not making a dick of myself and then instantly stood with Tom Gleisner for 10 minutes and made a dick of myself. The one good thing was that he was surprised when I mentioned that I loved the Warwick Todd diaries. They are a must read for anyone that find things funny. Pure Genius.

Determined that the whole Working Dog team not think of me as a lunatic, I proceeded to meet Rob Sitch without saying anything too silly and then surprisingly Glen Robbins remembered me from when I interview him in Hobart last year and we had a lovely chat.

The triumph of the night for me was talking to Michael Hirsh, who is a bit of a legend in my books having acted as Executive producer for The Late Show, Frontline, Thank God You’re here, The Castle… and so much more. I blatantly begged him for a job and he asked lots of questions about my experience etc. I felt I held it together adequately.

Julia floated around the room and as a total pro. I took notes.

At the end of the night we cabbed it back home and I stared at the ceiling for about an hour about the surreal-ness of meeting my career heroes.

The next morning as I headed back to Sydney I called my Dad to tell him all about the night. After gushing away Dad said,

“Leish that’s all very exciting but you know…. they’re just people,”

And Dad was right, they are just people but shit oh dear I had a grand time.

Just lastly today while eating breakfast in the leafy north shore suburb of Hunters Hill, I had my first mega celebrity sighting, Cate Blanchett, her husband and kids strolling along being normal. We tried not stare, but damn she looked good, even on a Sunday morning. I felt like a bag in my runners and jeans. Oh well that’s what millions of dollars and a fabulous bone structure (not to mention talent) will do for you!

Best Late Show Web Site

Tonight I made $75 bucks for talking about soup. No it’s not my new act its Market Research!

When I told Flatmate Sarah that I was going to do market research she said,

“Leish please tell me it’s not medical trials….if you need money just ask!”

She go all flustered, it was cute!

A couple of years ago when I lived in Sydney the first time I was a student and poor. A friend told me about the food tasting market research Company in the area and I signed up. As pov as it sounds it was actually pain free and it payed well. Throughout the year I tried new flavours of Pizzas, milk, yogurt, gave my opinions about packaging and then at the end of the sessions they handed over an envelope with cash.

I had totally forgotten about this extra steam of revenue until the company called me  earlier this week to ask if I was still interested. Fuck oath I was.

Tonight’s session was in Crows Nest, which is just up the road and it was about Soup. I thought I would be tasting soup but as it turns out it was all about a proposed new variety of soup. Whatever.

It’s funny to see the type of people that sign up for these things. Yes like you I would picture bogans and desperados (ah hello!) but they actually are quite specific about target audience, so tonight’s group was all chicks and I believe the 26 to 30 range (I have already been lumped with the 30s category; just whisk my youth away….sorry over 30s, you’ll make it, you’ll get somewhere, there’s still time! Not long…oh dear, poor you).

Anyway I diverse. We were led into a boringly nice conference room with sensible sandwiches and stuff.

As soon as we sat down I (of course) picked a few people that instantly pissed me off that I would become fixated with throughout the session. The girl next to me ‘bohemian girl’ thought believed she was a comedian of the group….yeah I know….. and jumped in straight away with her routine and I even caught the head research lady rolling her eyes when she was talking. There was also ‘Repetitive Asian Girl’ who felt that when she didn’t have something to say she was just repeat the last thing that she said. Genius.

I liked the girl next to me ‘Runner Girl’ because she was as cynical as me and agreed with me when I dared to question the validity of the heart foundation tick. (it means shit because companies pay to have it on their product, McDonalds has a tick, like I believe that).

The Head Research Lady was nice enough but she overdid her fake interest in what people where saying and at one point it appeared that she may have been on crack due to her enthusiasm in such an inane topic,

Head research lady:

“Ok ‘Repetitive Asian Girl’ tell me about soup, do you like it?”

Repetitive Asian Girl

“Um, I really like soup because it is good to eat!”

Head research lady:

“Mmmmmmmmm, That’s fascinating ‘Repetitive Asian Girl’ what do you mean by ‘its good to eat, tell me more”

Repetitive Asian Girl

“Well, it’s like um really good to eat, it tastes good, because it’s good, you know?”

No fuck face, that’s what we are here for.

Surprisingly, in this situation I am the quiet one, preferring everyone else to do my work for me and then receiving the nice envelope in the end, without having to exert myself.

Head research lady:

“Aleisha, tell me about your experience with soup?”

Bugger it

Aleisha:

“Well, it tastes good, soup is cheap, you get all of your veggies without having to eat broccoli and did I mention that it is cheap?”

Anyway we looked at pictures of soup and I was bored by the end of the session so I just started disagreeing with everyone’s else’s answers to spice it up a bit. I could tell it was working because the Head Research Lady started to look at me for answers instead of asking ‘Bohemian girl’ and ‘Repetitive Asian Girl’.

I lost respect for ‘Runner Girl’ in the end because she started to talk about counting calories and how many kms on the treadmill that she would have to do to run it off.

Come on ‘Runner Girl’ its soup. Go eat a Mars Bar. No actually, go and eat 2!

As we left the Head Research Lady handed us our $75 and said

“Thanks so much, you have been such a big help”

We aren’t curing cancer here lady, just talking about soup.

I shall drink that money on Friday night at the ritzy club, which will buy me 2 drinks! Yipeeee.

Lastly I must say that today at work I met the Blue Wiggle (Anthony) but because I am not a 6 year old I wasn’t that excited.  I will say however, he was charming and he had lovely white teeth. I kept thinking, you have made millions and millions of dollars doing something that I do in front of my mirror as I curl my hair, prance around and sing like a bit of a prat! Actually they do do it much better than me so good on them.

Also yesterday I met Stephan Dennis from neighbours. You might know him as the perpetually evil Paul Robinson. He was pretty short and when I asked him to stare at me with evilness, neighbours style and say “Aleisha, I am secretly married to your sister and we are having your baby” he looked at me like I was insane! Oh well that’s one less moronic thing I will say on Thursday night in Melbourne I suppose.

Arrivederci

Well I haven’t done this in a little while so I thought I let you know I’m not dead nor have I been institutionalised. (Surprised?!)

I have been pretty busy with work. Well that’s a lie. I have been enjoying work a bit more, getting it done, and I have also been making a concerted effort to get out there and give it a big red hot go here in Sydney. Hurrah for that you are all saying. No more boringly drab whinging Blogs. Yeah well good fucking luck with that one.

I am ultra excited because this week I am flying down to Melbourne to fulfil a bit of a life long dream and that is to be in the same room as Rob Sitch. My lovely friend Julia Zemiro (name dropper) is going to be on Thank God You’re Here and because she is fabulous she has invited me come along and be her backstage guest to watch it all come alive!

Yahooooooooooooo

I am practising being cool because most of you would know that I am really bad at being cool and that in this situation in particular it is probably best to be a quiet observer and burst on the inside rather that being the normal yappy Aleisha.

Without sounding like a tool the whole Working Dog team have been a huge influence for me and I really look up to them. I shall report back in graphic detail after Thursday!  

On Friday I am going to a workmates farewell at one of the more interesting clubs in the city (lucky guy is moving to New York: Go Mike!). It called De Nom and it  is an 18th Century French salon, inspired by the grand European palaces of Louis XIV (The Sun King), tucked away in the attic of Ruby Rabbit’s Oxford Street establishment.

Check this out!

This is how their web site describes the get up!

The design features silk-tented ceilings, 23-carat gold gilded wall panelling, cascading chandeliers, lush velvet day beds inset into the bar to the Versailles-like flux of mirrors, American burr walnut bar panels and period furniture.  This second level addition to the award winning bar again demonstrates owners Paul Schell and Phil Cawood’s ability to set new standards with this luxurious interior matched only by service worthy of a clientele accustomed to the comforts of nobility.

 (ah yeah that is totally me)

I know I can hear a couple of you guys (you know who you are!) collectively sighing saying that place is wank, but man it looks cool. No doubt I will be disappointed when they take one look at me and realise I am not wearing the right coloured shoes and won’t let me in, but I will give it a bash.

My other news is that I am no longer creatively blocked and I have a stand up gig!

It’s funny for 2 months I have been in such a comedic rut. And it’s not just not being able to write. I have personally found myself so unfunny to be around. 

Every time I sat down to write I ended up on You tube looking at other funny people but when it came to me getting my shit together and actually writing a new act nothing would come to me.

One afternoon flatmate Mick and I were sitting around watching dvds, as we do on a Sundays when he is around. Mick is funny. After a big night on Saturday he can sit for 8 hours in front of the TV, like a rock. I like to sit around too but he says if you set up a time lapse video with us on the couch it would show him sitting not moving like a hung-over effigy and me twitching and moving every 3 seconds. I suppose it’s true.

 One Sunday, I suggested we watched The Comedian, a fantastic doco about Jerry Seinfeld’s return to Comedy after Seinfeld ended. Jerry retired all of his old material and started from scratch. One of the most interesting things about the film is that you get to watch one of the most polished, professional and talented comedians look like a bit of a doof standing in comedy clubs trying out new material.

I went for a big walk after the film ended and though all about the mantra that we were fed after we finished Raw Comedy ‘it’s not how you go in raw comedy, it’s what you do after it’.

I was really pissed at myself for not getting it together and I really didn’t want to waste any opportunities. Sure I had been feeling pretty shitty lately but I realised I was the one that had to pull myself out of it. So by the time I got back to the house I had my first bit written I my head and I was ready to go.

So I have spent the past couple of weeks weeding the old act out a bit and I have written 4 minutes of new material which I think is pretty good.

Now I have a gig. It is in Tasmania in a couple of weeks. A big theatre. I think I am happy about it all. I like my material and hopefully I can get someone to film it so I can post it. If you are in town come along!

Ok well I am boring myself now so that is it.

Leisha

(I hope that poster has lost any Young Liberal fans that might have been reading this blog.  Also just because I am doing the gig doesn’t necessarily mean that I am showing my political colours…oh the comedy continues…just want to put that out there.)