http://www.thepunch.com.au/tags/comedy/ Politics, political opinion, world news, sports news and the latest news and views updated live, daily on The Punch - Australia's best conversation. en Copyright 2012 The Punch penberthyd@newsltd.com.au penberthyd@newsltd.com.au Thu, 09 Feb 2012 01:45:28 +0000 Thu, 09 Feb 2012 01:45:28 +0000 Politics, opinion, world news, sports news, latest news, views, Barack Obama, Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard, Nathan Rees, Malcolm Turnbull, Peter Garrett, Barnaby Joyce, Australian, federal politics, opinion polls, election, The Punch, thepunch, punch ExpressionEngine 1.6.7 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss 15 http://www.thepunch.com.au/images/punch-logo-rss.png http://www.thepunch.com.au/ 144 70 Politics, political opinion, world news, sports news and the latest news and views updated live, daily on The Punch - Australia's best conversation. Search The Punch keywords http://www.thepunch.com.au/search/ http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/operation-your-mum-on-the-ground-in-tarin-kowt/ Writer, comedian and Can of Worms reporter Dan Ilic visited Aussie diggers in Afghanistan last month to perform a series of comedy shows. He writes about his time in Tarin Kowt in this second part of a two-part report. Read the first part here. The next stop on the trip was the Australian stronghold of Tarin Kowt. We flew there on an Australian Chinook, a large transport helicopter that can fit about 40 soldiers and gear. This was an amazing journey. Flying tactically, we buzzed across the Afghan terrain only about a hundred metres off the ground, hugging the valleys and mountains for cover. In the back of my head I knew that only a few weeks before an American Chinook got shot down carrying 30 Special Forces troops. But somehow this was suppressed by the sheer excitement of being in a big loud flying machine. feedback@thepunch.com.au (Tory Shepherd) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/operation-your-mum-on-the-ground-in-tarin-kowt/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/operation-your-mum-on-the-ground-in-tarin-kowt/#item7060 Thu, 09 Feb 2012 01:45:28 +0000 Writer, comedian and Can of Worms reporter Dan Ilic visited Aussie diggers in Afghanistan last month to perform a series of comedy shows. Today, he writes about what he saw and experienced, in the first of a two-part report. Here are some tips for comedians. Never try out new jokes to a hostile crowd. If you do, keep it short. Whatever you do, don’t go out to an unfamiliar audience and give them 15 minutes of new material you wrote just for them until you’ve actually learnt all the jokes. I did this recently on stage in front of a crowd of about 50. I could tell the gig was going to be dull. It’s called Funny Shui: the audience all self-consciously sit as far away as possible from the stage. I couldn’t even make eye contact with this group. Showtime. http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/My-kandahar-comedy-show-that-literally-bombed/ Writer, comedian and Can of Worms reporter Dan Ilic visited Aussie diggers in Afghanistan last month to perform a series of comedy shows. Today, he writes about what he saw and experienced, in the first of a two-part report. Here are some tips for comedians. Never try out new jokes to a hostile crowd. If you do, keep it short. Whatever you do, don’t go out to an unfamiliar audience and give them 15 minutes of new material you wrote just for them until you’ve actually learnt all the jokes. I did this recently on stage in front of a crowd of about 50. I could tell the gig was going to be dull. It’s called Funny Shui: the audience all self-consciously sit as far away as possible from the stage. I couldn’t even make eye contact with this group. Showtime. feedback@thepunch.com.au (Tory Shepherd) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/My-kandahar-comedy-show-that-literally-bombed/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/My-kandahar-comedy-show-that-literally-bombed/#item7058 Thu, 09 Feb 2012 01:45:28 +0000 Writer, comedian and Can of Worms reporter Dan Ilic visited Aussie diggers in Afghanistan last month to perform a series of comedy shows. Today, he writes about what he saw and experienced, in the first of a two-part report. Here are some tips for comedians. Never try out new jokes to a hostile crowd. If you do, keep it short. Whatever you do, don’t go out to an unfamiliar audience and give them 15 minutes of new material you wrote just for them until you’ve actually learnt all the jokes. I did this recently on stage in front of a crowd of about 50. I could tell the gig was going to be dull. It’s called Funny Shui: the audience all self-consciously sit as far away as possible from the stage. I couldn’t even make eye contact with this group. Showtime. http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/bewitched-swapped-dicks-why-cant-men-swap-charlies/ Once upon a time there was an endearing little sitcom called Bewitched. It was predictable and more than a little cheesy, but it was good fun. A few decades later, there was another sitcom called Two and a Half Men. It was predictable and more than a little cheesy, and it mightily sucked. Two and a Half Men resumed overnight, after a six month absence caused by Charlie Sheen’s quest to simultaneously screw every woman in the world along with his own dignity. He succeeded in both. feedback@thepunch.com.au (Tory Shepherd) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/bewitched-swapped-dicks-why-cant-men-swap-charlies/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/bewitched-swapped-dicks-why-cant-men-swap-charlies/#item6759 Thu, 09 Feb 2012 01:45:28 +0000 Writer, comedian and Can of Worms reporter Dan Ilic visited Aussie diggers in Afghanistan last month to perform a series of comedy shows. Today, he writes about what he saw and experienced, in the first of a two-part report. Here are some tips for comedians. Never try out new jokes to a hostile crowd. If you do, keep it short. Whatever you do, don’t go out to an unfamiliar audience and give them 15 minutes of new material you wrote just for them until you’ve actually learnt all the jokes. I did this recently on stage in front of a crowd of about 50. I could tell the gig was going to be dull. It’s called Funny Shui: the audience all self-consciously sit as far away as possible from the stage. I couldn’t even make eye contact with this group. Showtime. http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/stand-up-comedians-wont-take-this-lying-down/ Stand-up comedy’s a funny thing…but there’s nothing funny about stealing another comedian’s jokes.  Unless you do it on national television and it spawns hilarious Twitter hashtags like #JordanParisQuotes and #Jordangate.  But seriously, there’s nothing funny about stealing another comedian’s jokes.  Unless it leads to me scrolling through my Facebook news feed pissing myself laughing.  But even then it’s not funny. The Jordan Paris story is right here just in case you haven’t checked it out. And you can see the original Lee Mack routine there as well. Now something that happens a lot is comedians make jokes about the same subjects.  Airplane travel, wives, husbands, kids, jobs, the killing of Osama Bin Laden - the list goes on.  But those jokes are never almost word-for-word identical.  Every comedian approaches things in their own unique way, so while the subject is the same, the journey and the destination are always a little different.  But you’d have to be one hell of a believer in divine synchronicity to suggest that someone isn’t ripping someone off in this instance. feedback@thepunch.com.au (Tory Shepherd) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/stand-up-comedians-wont-take-this-lying-down/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/stand-up-comedians-wont-take-this-lying-down/#item5945 Thu, 09 Feb 2012 01:45:28 +0000 Writer, comedian and Can of Worms reporter Dan Ilic visited Aussie diggers in Afghanistan last month to perform a series of comedy shows. Today, he writes about what he saw and experienced, in the first of a two-part report. Here are some tips for comedians. Never try out new jokes to a hostile crowd. If you do, keep it short. Whatever you do, don’t go out to an unfamiliar audience and give them 15 minutes of new material you wrote just for them until you’ve actually learnt all the jokes. I did this recently on stage in front of a crowd of about 50. I could tell the gig was going to be dull. It’s called Funny Shui: the audience all self-consciously sit as far away as possible from the stage. I couldn’t even make eye contact with this group. Showtime. http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/aborted-chaser-coverage-is-no-great-loss/ The Palace is not amused. A royal edict, delivered not by chariot with unfurled parchment, but via grey-suits and sneaky lawyer speak, has decreed there shall be no Chaser royal wedding coverage. Oh, well. No big loss. Let’s face it, you were either going to salivate over every second of the straight Royal Wedding coverage, or you were going to act like someone with a life and ignore it completely. The Chaser’s coverage, despite this week’s massive publicity blitz, was always going to be of minimal interest to the masses. That’s not to say The Chaser’s take wouldn’t have been a laugh. Without doubt, it would have been an amusing enough diversion from the obsessive fussing over the length of the bride’s train, Beckham’s wedding hairdo and other minutiae. But there’s no way it would’ve been must-see TV, and there’s a very simple reason why. feedback@thepunch.com.au (Tory Shepherd) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/aborted-chaser-coverage-is-no-great-loss/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/aborted-chaser-coverage-is-no-great-loss/#item5716 Thu, 09 Feb 2012 01:45:28 +0000 Writer, comedian and Can of Worms reporter Dan Ilic visited Aussie diggers in Afghanistan last month to perform a series of comedy shows. Today, he writes about what he saw and experienced, in the first of a two-part report. Here are some tips for comedians. Never try out new jokes to a hostile crowd. If you do, keep it short. Whatever you do, don’t go out to an unfamiliar audience and give them 15 minutes of new material you wrote just for them until you’ve actually learnt all the jokes. I did this recently on stage in front of a crowd of about 50. I could tell the gig was going to be dull. It’s called Funny Shui: the audience all self-consciously sit as far away as possible from the stage. I couldn’t even make eye contact with this group. Showtime. http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/witty-tweets-beat-twitty-bleats-on-twitter/ As fossil fuels dwindle and we struggle to feed a hungry population, the world faces a new shortage. As we speak, implausibly rugged scientists are being taken by chopper to a secret bunker while Robert Redford does his best to convince an old special forces type to leave his forest cabin for one last job. They told us the supply wouldn’t last. “Ration it out,” they told us, “there’s plenty to go around”, but we didn’t listen. That’s right, because of our greed and refusal to acknowledge the finite nature of our resources, the world has run out of Charlie Sheen jokes. feedback@thepunch.com.au (Tory Shepherd) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/witty-tweets-beat-twitty-bleats-on-twitter/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/witty-tweets-beat-twitty-bleats-on-twitter/#item5378 Thu, 09 Feb 2012 01:45:28 +0000 Writer, comedian and Can of Worms reporter Dan Ilic visited Aussie diggers in Afghanistan last month to perform a series of comedy shows. Today, he writes about what he saw and experienced, in the first of a two-part report. Here are some tips for comedians. Never try out new jokes to a hostile crowd. If you do, keep it short. Whatever you do, don’t go out to an unfamiliar audience and give them 15 minutes of new material you wrote just for them until you’ve actually learnt all the jokes. I did this recently on stage in front of a crowd of about 50. I could tell the gig was going to be dull. It’s called Funny Shui: the audience all self-consciously sit as far away as possible from the stage. I couldn’t even make eye contact with this group. Showtime. http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/dr-death-makes-suicide-a-laughing-matter/ Jim Carrey. Ricky Gervais. Adam Sandler. Steve Martin. All well-known funny men. Well, move over, guys. Philip Nitschke, the world’s best-known euthanasia activist, is considering a career change. Life must have been pretty dreary for Nitschke lately. He has spent the last fortnight or so touring the British Isles in the dead of winter, touting his message of suicide on demand. It must be a bit demoralising to give a passionate lecture to a sea – a pond actually – of blue rinsed and bald heads in chilly local halls week after week. But things are looking up. Dr Nitschke is contemplating a career as a stand-up comedian. No, this is not, repeat, not a joke. He told the newspaper Wales on Sunday, “There is a proposal to do some sort of stage stand-up comedy. It will be comedy associated with the issues of death and dying directed more at entertainment, that’s what we are looking at.” feedback@thepunch.com.au (Tory Shepherd) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/dr-death-makes-suicide-a-laughing-matter/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/dr-death-makes-suicide-a-laughing-matter/#item5273 Thu, 09 Feb 2012 01:45:28 +0000 Writer, comedian and Can of Worms reporter Dan Ilic visited Aussie diggers in Afghanistan last month to perform a series of comedy shows. Today, he writes about what he saw and experienced, in the first of a two-part report. Here are some tips for comedians. Never try out new jokes to a hostile crowd. If you do, keep it short. Whatever you do, don’t go out to an unfamiliar audience and give them 15 minutes of new material you wrote just for them until you’ve actually learnt all the jokes. I did this recently on stage in front of a crowd of about 50. I could tell the gig was going to be dull. It’s called Funny Shui: the audience all self-consciously sit as far away as possible from the stage. I couldn’t even make eye contact with this group. Showtime. http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/if-i-were-an-atheist-id-still-believe-in-ricky-gervais/ I recently watched Ricky Gervais hosting the Golden Globe Awards and found it hilarious. He’s got guts. In his closing line he shouted out that he wanted to thank God for making him an atheist. I think that also took guts - on top of everything he mentioned during the night he finishes off the show with a jab at religion. It makes me wonder sometimes, being a religious person myself, how different would life be if you’re an atheist? I moved into a new house not long ago and on our first night’s sleep, we discovered a note was cellotaped to the back of our bedroom door. It was a prayer, one I hadn’t heard before. The following morning I looked it up and discovered that it’s a life prayer. feedback@thepunch.com.au (Tory Shepherd) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/if-i-were-an-atheist-id-still-believe-in-ricky-gervais/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/if-i-were-an-atheist-id-still-believe-in-ricky-gervais/#item5119 Thu, 09 Feb 2012 01:45:28 +0000 Writer, comedian and Can of Worms reporter Dan Ilic visited Aussie diggers in Afghanistan last month to perform a series of comedy shows. Today, he writes about what he saw and experienced, in the first of a two-part report. Here are some tips for comedians. Never try out new jokes to a hostile crowd. If you do, keep it short. Whatever you do, don’t go out to an unfamiliar audience and give them 15 minutes of new material you wrote just for them until you’ve actually learnt all the jokes. I did this recently on stage in front of a crowd of about 50. I could tell the gig was going to be dull. It’s called Funny Shui: the audience all self-consciously sit as far away as possible from the stage. I couldn’t even make eye contact with this group. Showtime. http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/its-the-end-of-the-world-as-i-know-it-and-so-what/ As an avid consumer of news, I’m considering adopting a few new hobbies over the next few months. They include: Developing a crystal meth addiction, having 12 sugars in my morning coffee, throwing cinder blocks through shopfronts, having unprotected sex with at least four people a day, permanently wearing one of those beer helmets and making a giant inflatable ark-type thing out of all those condoms I won’t be using.  In case you’ve been living under a rock in a Cold War-style nuclear bunker, the end of the world has been slated for 2012… or 2036… or something. feedback@thepunch.com.au (Tory Shepherd) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/its-the-end-of-the-world-as-i-know-it-and-so-what/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/its-the-end-of-the-world-as-i-know-it-and-so-what/#item5111 Thu, 09 Feb 2012 01:45:28 +0000 Writer, comedian and Can of Worms reporter Dan Ilic visited Aussie diggers in Afghanistan last month to perform a series of comedy shows. Today, he writes about what he saw and experienced, in the first of a two-part report. Here are some tips for comedians. Never try out new jokes to a hostile crowd. If you do, keep it short. Whatever you do, don’t go out to an unfamiliar audience and give them 15 minutes of new material you wrote just for them until you’ve actually learnt all the jokes. I did this recently on stage in front of a crowd of about 50. I could tell the gig was going to be dull. It’s called Funny Shui: the audience all self-consciously sit as far away as possible from the stage. I couldn’t even make eye contact with this group. Showtime. http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/diary-of-a-liberal-frontbencher-heavy-flood-levy/ WEDNESDAY 02/02/11 9:00am In Kerang, Victoria, visiting mother. Helping clean up house after floods. Damage has been extensive, and mother’s insurance may not cover the entire bill. Mother is at least relieved that, as a flood victim, she will get an exemption from Gillard’s flood tax levy. Maybe I should change my postal address to also avoid levy? Go downtown for breakfast. Locals keep telling me I look familiar. Reluctant to reveal that I am an MP. Have already heard my quota of flood stories from mother. Decide to tell locals I work in insurance. Serious mistake. Pretty sure I would be better off pretending to be Greens Senator. Decide not to change postal address - don’t want to end up representing these people. feedback@thepunch.com.au (Tory Shepherd) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/diary-of-a-liberal-frontbencher-heavy-flood-levy/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/diary-of-a-liberal-frontbencher-heavy-flood-levy/#item5075 Thu, 09 Feb 2012 01:45:28 +0000 Writer, comedian and Can of Worms reporter Dan Ilic visited Aussie diggers in Afghanistan last month to perform a series of comedy shows. Today, he writes about what he saw and experienced, in the first of a two-part report. Here are some tips for comedians. Never try out new jokes to a hostile crowd. If you do, keep it short. Whatever you do, don’t go out to an unfamiliar audience and give them 15 minutes of new material you wrote just for them until you’ve actually learnt all the jokes. I did this recently on stage in front of a crowd of about 50. I could tell the gig was going to be dull. It’s called Funny Shui: the audience all self-consciously sit as far away as possible from the stage. I couldn’t even make eye contact with this group. Showtime.