Tomorrow is the opening night of the Melbourne Comedy Festival.

What does that mean? Well, it means that the comedians who have been working very hard for months preparing their shows for the festival all go out until five in the morning to the opening night party and contract various strains of the flu.

That, and it means cheap tickets until after Easter. Go here and check out the "local heroes".

Meanwhile, tell me if you think this is a good start to a week:

SUNDAY: Drive to Yianni's - Arrive late - Work for several hours - Leave late - Arrive home late to print out tech script for Penny's trial gig - Freak out while printer has existential crisis - Recruit Stewart to fix printer - Leave Stewart alone in house with printer - Drive a hundred and fifty metres to Glitch Bar - Dodge the issue rather unconvincingly when Penny says, "Lorin where's the tech script?" - Receive call from Stewart with a diagnosis re printer being "buggered" - Assume Emergency Position: call Rita - Recruit Stewart to film Penny's gig - Stewart arrives, hugely impressed by my contribution to his evening - Rita arrives, saves universe by providing tech script just before gig starts - Penny's gig completely hilarious - After Penny's gig, Yianni's gig - Recruit Stewart to film Yianni's gig - Stewart starving as has not eaten due to various distractions involving computers and filming - Stewart orders pizza - Lorin orders noodles, eats noodles and pizza, regrets not going to gym more - Mel calls with news that she has just completed a marathon - Lorin eats last piece of pizza - Yianni's gig finishes - Convince Stewart to drive to parents' house to transfer film from camera to DVD - Stewart asks during drive to parents' house whether Lorin has the requisite cable for transfer of film to DVD - Lorin assures Stewart she does - Lorin does not - Return camera to Tim - Return home Find toilet blocked and flooding - Recruit Stewart to help - Look at Stewart's face - Get completely weak with giggles - Fix toilet - Go to bed.

MONDAY: Get up one hour early and walk to work at Law Foundation (inspired by marathon and pizza) - Work all day on sending out stuff about Law Week and various other things - Receive phone calls from professional people on useless phone that does not work and hangs up on people constantly - Completely fail to finish mail-out on time - Manage to be last person out of building - Buy extremely annoying, broken card that sings only half a song, for Stewart's birthday - Walk to Stewart's Birthday drinks - Engage with actual people - Walk home - Go to bed.

Tuesday
Get up, write notes on gigs - Email notes to Penny - Call Yianni with notes - Get off phone to Yianni several hours later - Get dressed - Rush to Law Foundation - Finish mail-out - Rush home for brief moment on way to Trades Hall - Use moment to pour cup of tea because not eating properly and need something - Pour tea into huge urn thing with lid on it to take to rehearsal - Carry folder, laptop, huge urn, bag, extra clothes - Reach for door - Hurl urn of tea through air, watch it bounce - Tea all over walls, floor, furniture, self - Tea very hot - Shout expletives - Recruit Stewart's help - Stewart gets weak with giggles - Take offence at Stewart's mockery - Assume Emergency Position: call Rita - Arrive late to gig - Set up in theatre - Order baked potato with lentils in attempt to be healthy at meal break - Scoop lentils out of raw potato and choke on cheap cheese - Finish rehearsal - Go home without dropping by old friend's going away party - Feel crap about being bad friend - Go to sleep.

And today, well today has been going well. It's my lunch break now and I have to go to the bank, go to Half Tix, go to the shops, eat lunch, and post this.

Tonight is Yianni's preview. Come along for cheap tickets. You might get to see me spill something.

Poetry from the pen of someone who knows about my computer skills and who doesn't know Nick from a bar of soap but who hasn't let that stop him, let me introduce our next poem in the poetry-slam.

'Twas an Internet Butler named Nick,
Went abroad on account of his dick,
Who had promised he'd find,
Women who'd blow his mind,
'Cos his accent was Aussie and thick.

But his mates at home were all dark,
Especially our friend Lorin Clarke,
Her few skills in I.T,
Could not be called mighty,
And relied on Nick's trustworthy spark.

But on the eve of this comedy fest,
Let's remember how much we've been blessed,
We'd not have this site,
Nor poems this shite,
If it weren't for Nick's generous bequest.

(Now, Nick, there is slim possibility this is libellous. I know some very good lawyers but I must say I kind of like any poet who refers to me as "dark". So many layers of meaning).

Big kudos to our new Mystery poet. See you at the Comedy Festival, you bawdy wordsmith.

A couple of diary entries ago, I declared that if someone could write a rhyming couplet about the comedy festival and the fact that the Internet Butler, our friend Nick, has gone overseas... I would give them comedy festival tickets.

Since then, the following submissions have been received:

We're sad for Nick, our funny friend
Whose time with us is soon to end.

... which is so good I can imagine studying it for year twelve English... And then there's the pitch-perfect and painstainkly true:

Comedy is funny but won't stop us grieving
For Nick our friend, who is leaving.

Now, I understand that a lot of you don't know what a rhyming couplet is, and a lot of you don't know Nick and a lot of you have never heard of the Comedy Festival. However, everyone can write poems.

Write me some and ye shall be rewarded.

If you don't want to be acknowledged, just go to the Contact Us page. I promise I won't tell.

Bad poetry is not encouraged but will be patiently tolerated and nurtured at the highest possible standard by our staff. In other words, bring on the poetry: good, bad or otherwise.

Tonight, after a gig at Trades Hall, the great old workers' building in the middle of Melbourne, Yianni and I went to find my car.

Yianni, for those of you who haven't been doing your set reading, is one of the people I'm directing in the Melbourne Comedy Festival. We met when we were both training to not be lawyers together at Melbourne University Law School (breeding ground of some of the best people who aren't lawyers in Australia).

Anyway. We've worked something out, Yianni and I.

Six or seven years of working together on law exams, comedy festivals, and huge essays about section 52 of The Trades Practices Act... We've worked out that the best things happen in the car.

We are... and I'm by no means exaggerating... the funniest two people on EARTH when we're alone together in a car, parked outside a building we've just come out of or are about to go into.

Tonight, after Yianni did a small spot in the lineup at Trades Hall, he followed me out to my car and we prattled on uselessly as we walked to the carpark. Then, suddenly, inside the car, we came alive! We were brilliantly original, bitingly clever, and touchingly sensitive to every nuance of human behaviour. We were truthful, and honest, and yes sometimes that makes people vulnerable but you know what? In the car, vulnerable is okay. Vulnerable means strong but also accidentally completely hilarious. It means insightful and kind. Generous but tough.

The Ford people, when they made my car, I bet they were watching Oprah.

Anyway, so my point is, come and see Yianni's show, but if you know what's good for you, come and get in the car with us afterwards.

You can even use some of my lip balm and try and make the radio work.

The rule is though, once there's condensation from too much talking, it's time for us all to go home.

The Melbourne International Comedy Festival Guide came out on Friday with Melbourne's Age newspaper. For those of you not in Melbourne, you can check out the program here, with the added bonus of not having to read The Age.

Last week, in preparation for the festival, I went to a comedy gig every night. It really does take the romance out of the experience. Not that comedy is terribly romantic. (Romance can be pretty funny though. I still have, in my room, a home-made necklace from a "boyfriend" in high school. When I say necklace, what I really mean is a short length of hose on a piece of string with "I *heart* LORIN" written on it in white-out.)

So, romance is funny. Comedy, well, sometimes it's funny.

When it's almost midnight and some idiot you've never heard of is up there telling another poof joke disguised as an accidental slip up... Not so funny.

Just saying.

The Comedy Festival is pretty huge. Choose wisely.

In other news, Rita and I had a meeting this morning with some people who don’t exist. We met with this cool company called Eskimo (click here) who do everything from graphic design to DVD authoring. An Australian telecommunications company that shall remain nameless but which (if you believe their TV ads) is run by a whole lot of yawning rhinos and screeching baboons, was attempting to convince them over the telephone that they didn’t exist and that they probably never had.

Despite the obvious setbacks associated with their not existing, however, the meeting was fruitful and we’re now busy with film things again. We’re also working towards a cast and crew screening in the week beginning May 15. That’s 2006, for those of you who think you’re clever.

And no, that’s not a promise. Shut up.

Last night I got heckled at a comedy gig.

No, I wasn't on stage. I was in the audience. Yianni was on stage. He's the one who heckled me.

I love working with comedians.

To be fair, I kind of had it coming. I'm working on my reputation as a hard-arse director who doesn't let anyone get away with anything. Except for a public heckling. He's allowed to get away with that because he has to have an outlet for the pent up rage and frustration of being subjected to my forensic precision day after day in the pursuit of a better final product.

I like to think of Yianni as a ballerina and me as the artistic director with the big stick and the limp from that injury years ago that put an end to my brilliant career in dance.

But there’s no need to tell Yianni that, if you see him.

Now, if life were a Shakespeare play at the moment, it would definitely be a tragicomedy. All this face-achingly ridiculous comedy that I’m going to night after night at various different venues around Melbourne, juxtaposed against a couple of really quite tragic events. Namely the departure of Nick Jaffe, the brilliantly named (it was him, not me) Internet Butler for Standing There Productions.

Nick, who we originally knew through Stewart, our Director of Photography, from Art School, volunteered to help out on our film, I Could Be Anybody. Turned out, he was nearly everybody. I can’t remember what credit we ended up giving him, but there wasn’t a credit that said “nearly everything”, so we just short-changed him completely.

Anyway. Nick is leaving us to live in Germany. We’re trying not to take it personally. I went to his going away party the other night and someone accidentally burned a hole in my neck with a cigarette. A lasting scar to remind me of the metaphorical hole left in Standing There Productions now that Nick can only provide his Internet Butlering service from overseas.

Nick, we will miss you. Probably more than we’ll give you credit for. As usual.

As for the other “tragedies” in life at the moment, well they’ve been eclipsed now. I can’t remember them. Probably just things like me wearing brown with black. But needless to say Shakespeare would find a way of weaving it all in to the Comedy Festival/Nick leaving subplots in a way that was both poignant and naughty.

But I’m not Shakespeare. So, in summary: comedy is funny and it’s sad that Nick is leaving. Turn it into a rhyming couplet and I’ll get you a free ticket to the Comedy Festival.

By way of following up on my previous post (see somewhere below) I feel I must inform you all that "there is nothing in the Australia Post Rules or Charter that precludes sending a package through the mail marked WARNING: CONTAINS HUMAN HEAD".

The guy said though, that "in these times" it might "freak people in the mail room out".

Sometimes I wonder what my ASIO file looks like.

(For more details on Melbourne International Comedy Festival Show, Yianni's Head, go here)