Comedians

As I took my seat at Alain de Botton’s “Religion for Atheists” last week, I caught sight of a postcard promoting the upcoming Global Atheist Convention.

It listed the usual suspects - Dawkins, Harris, Myers (and sadly not Hitchens). But then I was confused. Was the Atheist Convention trying to save money by co-advertising with the Melbourne International Comedy Festival?

Out of the 34 speakers, 10 are comedians: Ben Elton, Mikey Robbins, Lawrence Leung, Jim Jeffries, Catherine Deveny, Simon Taylor, Tom Ballard, Stella Young, Craig Foster and Mr Deity. Sounds like good news for Melburnians - buy one ticket, get two conferences.

Continue reading "God I’m sick of comedians laughing at religion" »

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.

Continue reading "Stand-up comedians won’t take this lying down" »