I love the Melbourne International Comedy Festival. It is by far my favourite time of the year. Most years I will splurge on a long time favourite like Arj Barker, Cal Wilson or Frank Woodley one night, and then at least once wonder past the town hall with my Dad and pick something random from the flyers thrust towards us. In 2012 I even ventured out for a night on my own, and to my delight stumbled into a Sara Kendall show.
Whether the show is spectacular or a total flop, it’s always a good time.
Last year I was living in Perth at comedy festival time, and was very disappointed to have missed it. So this year was going to be different! I was going to throw caution to the wind and get to as many shows as I could muster. I almost entered the Funny Tonne (if I won I would be allowed access to all the shows, but be required to write a review of each one), but since I’d recently embarked on a new career and started a new job I decided it was best left for another year. I’d been unwell for the month leading up to the festival, so I felt I deserved a little pick-me-up. Who needs savings, right?!
Then I unexpectedly lost my job.
My hopes for this years comedy festival came crashing to their knees (along with my self esteem and financial security).
All hope was not lost. I recalled in 2011 when a funny tweet I made scored me a free double pass to see Man Vs Wil, and turned to Twitter once again. (The tweet was “Ban food, make them all do a tequila shot every 10 minutes, last one standing gets the Gold Logie.” in reference to what should be banned at the logies).
When a fellow MICF buff and Anderson fan invited me to go with her friends to see ‘Wiluminati’ I was SO happy, if nervous about meeting strangers from the Internet. After some Internet sleuthing (read stalking) I concluded that she was, indeed, a real, normal person. Success! My comedy festival was saved.
But the twitter scrawling didn’t stop there. Retweeting the venue manager at the Imperial Hotel got me tickets to ‘Nellie White is the Shitty Carer’, followed by ‘3 Little Gigs’ on the opening night (Wednesday), Lauren Bok awarded me tickets to the ‘Radio Variety Hour’ on Thursday and a competition via theMusic.com.au got me tickets to John Kearns’ ‘Sight Gags for Perverts’ for Friday and Justin Hamiltons ‘Johnny Loves Mary Forever 1994’ on Sunday. Another twitter competition got me a double pass to Jennifer Wong in ‘Laughable: The One-Liner Show’ to round out my Sunday night. So that makes 7 free shows and it’s only day 4 of the festival! May have been a couple more, but I took Saturday off to spend some time with my honey. This could shape up to be my most successful comedy festival yet.
With my career and my health in jeopardy at the moment, it’s lovely to be able to share some laughs with friends.>
Miry Mosey's Hellcat 
Leave a comment