Tonight I Met a Murderer at the Comedy Club

OK... so before anyone has a heart attack or anything, let me reassure you that everything is fine. I just came back from one of the weirder evenings of my life, is all!

Our house mate Brandon had scored a whole bunch of free tickets to a local comedy club, so he invited everyone to come out and enjoy an evening of stand up comedy acts. Figuring this might be an interesting way to learn a little bit more about Aussie humour, Jen and I decided to tag along.

The headline act for the evening was a guy named Chopper, who is apparently famous in Australia for murdering a number of drug dealers and getting away with only a light jail sentence. He is called "Chopper" because during his time in jail, he cut off his own ears as a way to get moved out of his cell block, apparently because all of his cell mates wanted to kill him. Stranger and stranger!

Let's just say that most of the comedians who were on the bill tonight were not to my liking. In general the humour was very crude and relied mostly on an abundance of swear words and lewd references in order to draw laughs from the crowd. There were actually many times during the evening where I thought the comedians went right over that fine line between risque humour and offensive material. But hey, the evening was free, and just like when you go to a bad movie, I kept hoping it was going to get better. In reality the first act was by far the best. Jen and I aren't sure if this was because the first comedian was British and therefore we better understood his jokes, or what.

Chopper came on as the last act of the evening (apparently he appears at this comedy club every Monday night). The title of his act was "I'm all ears", in reference to the fact that he hasn't any. (It took me until the tram ride home to get that joke!). He was accompanied onto the stage by a burly bodyguard who was SCARY too look at - every inch of skin on his face, neck and hands was covered with tattoos. I'm pretty sure the rest of him was also inked, but there's no way I was gonna go and ask him! The bodyguard prowled the stage throughout the act, watching the audience closely. It was really unsettling and to be honest, completely killed (haha) any humour that might have been going on - he was simply too distracting.

During Chopper's act, the MC would read out questions that had been supplied by the audeince, and Chopper would answer them, sort of like a biker-gang version of a "Dear Abby" column. It was really strange. I didn't find it at all funny. After the show, Brandon told us that Chopper is usually funnier than he was tonight, but that apparently tonight he was completely stoned out of his mind. I'm not sure if a sober Chopper would've been much of an improvement. I kept getting distracted by his bodyguard; there were a few times during the act where the bodyguard went right up to the MC and draped an arm over his shoulders. I'm not sure if this was to enocurage the MC to get on with the show or what, but the MC was clearly nervous and uncomfortable having the bodyguard so close. Heck - I was nervous and uncomfrotable with the bodyguard on the other side of the room! At the end of the evening, I declined to have my picture taken with Chopper - after all, it would've cost $5! :-)

The night also proved to me once more that old saying about comedy clubs - never, ever sit in the front of the room! Thankfully our table was about halfway down the room from the stage. But the poor folks in the front were picked on rather mercilessly by each of the comedy acts. I was more than happy to be in the background!

So yes. All in all, a very strange evening. In fact, I'm pretty sure the best part was the tram ride home. There were eight of us there from my house, and we giggled and told jokes and picked on each other like teenagers pretty much the whole way home.