I am going to the Sydney Festival this weekend. There are some fairly exciting cultural forces to be reckoned with up there this weekend, including Standing There Captain of Industry Melanie Mars Bar Howlett and a chap who goes by the name of Beckett (seems to have written a couple of plays).

Speaking of culture, did anyone watch that brilliant, brief, dirty adaptation of Macbeth on the ABC the other night? Some of my favourite British performers and some presumably very happy production designers were let loose on a script that has traditionally bored me, despite its obvious brilliance. The whole thing was set in a kitchen, leading to a brilliant combination of Jaime Oliver undertones and ready access to sharp knives. Can't wait to see if their Taming of the Shrew is going to be as good as Ten Things I Hate About You.

(This leads me to an obvservation I have made many times to housemates and long suffering friends: don't you think that the easiest way to tell where a TV show was made is to mute the sound and look at the lighting? Bright or soft warm = America. Dark and shadowy or blue and alarming = Britain, anywhere close to Britain. Stark yellow or flat and white = Summer Bay. It's the Asian ones that are hard to pick. Try it.)

Anyway, the writing's going well thanks.

Shut up.

Will fabulous friends of mine please stop meeting brilliant and gorgeous life partners and staging fantastic, show-stopping, spectacular wedding extravaganzas that run all night and are populated by interesting people who I desire to speak with on a range of matters.

I am trying to write a comedy festival show.

Honestly. Do people even think?

It has now reached the stage where I have received a fake email from a friend of mine pretending to be Anthony Lane wanting to meet me for coffee.

People know about my weakness for the film pages of The New Yorker and they are starting to exploit me for it.

Very funny, people. You tease me now, but read this. If I'm going to fall in love with writing, I may as well fall in love with someone who uses the word "scumbled" as though it's the sort of thing people say at the breakfast table.

Meanwhile, I went to the physiotherapist today to check up on my (previously broken) wrist. She said it would be fine for work. No worries, she said. Writing and typing and working? Fine. Gym? Brilliant. Not a worry. Manual labour? Ace.

Frisbee? At least a month. Six weeks, maybe more. No frisbee. Ever. Scouts Honor.

Stupid dumb broken wrist. How is that fair?

So, I know I'm supposed to be writing a show and everything, but...

2006 Standing There Productions Website Statistics That Made Me Laugh:

--> 69.4% of you come to the website for thirty seconds, or under, and then leave. Bastards.

--> Someone got to our site by searching "changeroomcam". Honestly.

--> I know a bloke who is repulsive, on many levels. His name is on our website from an era before we discovered precisely how many levels he was repulsive on. He has googled himself at least five times in the last year. Haha! Knob!

--> But having said that, there is nothing wrong with googling oneself, within reason. There is a slight possibility - I haven't checked this - that everyone mentioned on this website has been googled. Most probably by themselves. I know I've done it. If I didn't, I wouldn't know that there is a very speedy long distance runner in America called Lorin Clarke who does very well in many painful sounding events, and who I am proud to have as a namesake. Self googling is not a problem on its own. Once or twice? Fine. Five times? Self obsessed wanker. Obviously.

--> Other searches that people have done to get them to our site include the following:

Medical questions were some of the highest searched...

"one pupil bigger than the other"/ "broken arm cast"/ "one pupil bigger than the other one"/ "broken arm" / "one pupil bigger than the other after concussion"/ "broken arm comments"/
"broken wrist cast"/ "slapface disease"

... etc... This just made feel sorry for everyone. My medical advice is as follows: rent some dvds and drink lots of water...

Confusion about the name of our company led a few people astray...

"standing room only productions"/ "where there's a will productions"/ "standing in the corner for punishment"/ "i was standing you were there"/ "a guy standing there"/ "photos of people standing around"...

And then there are just the plain odd...

"travolta"

"maths for music"

"vo vos"

"home work vandalism"

"funny old comedy radio programs"

"sodoku for visually impaired"

"leotard"

"commonwealth games village bad behaviour"

"who will the oscars" (who indeed)

"maths fun" (keep searching there buddy)

"where is charmaine's boyfriend"

"vegetarianism and the economy"

"melbourne gay photographers"

"hack productions" (I am drafting a letter to google as we speak. This is just insulting)

"fun with maths" (dude! GIVE UP!)

"poetry eclairs" (yum)

"get well grandma poems"

"rash and vomitting"

"photos of benicio del toro"

"karate girls"

something very nasty about Helen Razer

"jokes about law"

and my personal favourite:

"rita walsh computer".

2006. What a year.

If you're ever performing at a festival, be it musical or otherwise, here is some advice on what to say if you run into trouble and need to get the crowd back on your side:

a) Scream "Make some noise, Melbourne!" (obviously insert whichever local reference will win you the most support here. The more specific the reference to the crowd, the better). If you can mention the locality by slipping it into some lyrics or referring to a local sandwich shop/how good the burgers are/the queue to the toilets etc, you're doing well.

b) Scream the reason for the festival, followed by a long woooooo!!!! (For instance, a mere "2007 Woooooooo!" will set the crowd going for another half an hour)...

c) Imply somehow that the crowd is discerning/rebellious/unspeakably attractive. I was at Falls Festival the other day and someone asked for a show of hands as to how many people had managed to sneak alcohol into the venue. This is a perfect example. Naturally, every single person on the entire surf coast raised their hands and shouted for joy at being included in such a dangerously edgy minority.

d) Rock. Sometimes it doesn't matter what you say. If you're really quite excellent at performing, you'll be alright.

So, there's my first advice for the year. Happy new year everyone. 2007! Woooo!

If you ever need inspiration for writing, the media during the Christmas season provideth.

Not only are there TV shows on during prime time that didn't quite work the first time they were aired (very good lessons, all of them) but the newspapers run stories like P-plater caught drunk with bathtub and Paris Hilton's Parents Enjoy Watching Her Sex Tape.

There are also people writing actually quite interesting things, although hardly any of these people are Australian, unfortunately. For instance, this, which is essentially a gossip column about Freud, and of course it is riddled with hilaaaarious freudian references and double meanings, but Freud is more interesting to me personally than a front page story about a country singer arriving at an airport (see here).

Also, anyone who has read Patrick Suskind's Perfume and is interested to hear it is being made into a film: read this.

I wish I could read more. In the meantime, I will read what little I can, watch bad TV, listen to good music, and wait for inspiration.

But inspiration, like everything else in my schedule at the moment, has a due date. The deadline for inspiration is the third of Jan. If I'm not writing on the third of Jan, I am firing myself.

It's official. I've been warned.

Today we went to check out "the space" (that's dramaspeak for the stage) at fortyfivedownstairs in Melbourne. It brings a whole new frightening realism to the pending deadlines of having a show on when you can actually see where the audience would be sitting (if it existed yet).

I wonder what it's like for a doctor to meet the patient s/he's about to perform brain surgery on. Probably just something you get used to, right?

Right?

Guys?

Er...

Is this thing on?