Happy Monday, everyone!

I logged on to our website this morning and found one of our new photographs was on rotation as the homepage photograph - an extreme close-up of two enormous iced vo vos. Most alarming. Paul the Website Superman must have deemed them (sensibly) to be worthy of placement as a central motif for Standing There Productions - the end result of course being that I'm kind of hankering for an iced vo vo with my morning cup of tea.

Yesterday I went to a play reading at The Fairfax Theatre in Melbourne. The reading was of a play called Asylum, by Kit Lazaroo, which won the Wal Cherry Play of the Year. Two Standing There Productions Peeps were taking part in the reading: Tim Stitz (who has been in everything we've ever done) and Carly Shrever (who was in People Watching). Both Carly and Tim were (guess what) excellent, as usual. I then went to ACMI to watch a whole heap of AFTRS short films, including The Birthday Boy, which I had never seen before. I went alone. This detail is important because had I not been alone, silent, with headphones on, in a booth tucked away in a corner, maybe they wouldn't have locked me in by accident when they closed for the evening.

I had to rush up to the guy just as he was pulling this enormous wall closed over the section I had been sitting in. Adds a whole new level of fear to moviegoing, let me tell you.

Then last night I attempted to go to a show called Vaudeville X, which I had called up about earlier in the day and they had assured me I would get a seat. Due to the fact that "someone" had told me the wrong thing on the phone, they didn't have a seat for me. I walked there in the freezing cold, hung around waiting for thirty minutes, and then was offered a "standing-room" ticket for TEN DOLLARS. What a sweet deal! Or, to put it another way, what a great excuse to go home and watch The Society Murders on TV.

Anyway, so my attempt to have a culturally interesting day was thwarted by people attempting to lock me in buildings and other people trying to charge me to stand up for an hour to watch musical theatre. Next weekend I think I'll go to the footy.

In other news, Penny Tangey's show Kathy Smith Goes to Maths Camp, which was on in the Melbourne International Comedy Festival and which was directed by someone who almost spent the night at ACMI last night, has entered the Australian vernacular. Go here to see how Penny's show is a measure of the zeitgeist, in that nerds being hip, cool and happening is the simple, undeniable truth. This was reiterated last week when I received a flurry of phone calls from people telling me to watch Catylist, because there's a young girl on it who is partaking in a maths quest and who declares with heartbreaking honesty that she finds maths tables more interesting for the walls of her bedroom than posters of hot guys. In other words, Kathy Smith lives.

Very busy today and so let me just use this space to tell everyone about the new photos on our site.

Paul, the Website Superman, has posted a few more shots on the homepage (namely one of me and Rita) as well as a bigger range of photos rotating at the top of the page.

If none of those look familiar, that's because quite frankly you haven't been paying attention. If the photo looks like someone slightly nerdy doing what appears to be a maths olympiad on stage, that's a photo from Kathy Smith Goes to Maths Camp, which is the show by Penny Tangey (directed by me) from the Melbourne International Comedy Festival.

If the photo looks like it's other people on stage, particularly if those people are wearing Green T Shirts with "People Watching" on them, that's because those photos were taken (now this is fairly complicated) on the set of our play, People Watching.

If the photos are black & white, they are OLD, which means they were taken on the set of the Really Useless Theatre Company show, The Dinner Party.

For BRAND NEW EXCITING photographs of the recent cast and crew screening of our film, I Could Be Anybody, go to the "Current Production" menu, and then select "Screening and Success"

Any questions, see me after class.

I saw two shows this weekend.

The first was at Melbourne University, and it was a musical about working, called Working. I know! How clever!

Seriously though, it was really fun and there were some beautiful voices on stage (embodied by people, you understand) so I enjoyed it, which, given I was completely starving and totally knackered on account of my having dressed up as a judge at seven thirty that morning, was somewhat of a surprise. It starred Reuben and Margaret, who had also dressed as judges that morning, who were (and you'll have to see a couple of posts below for this reference) really quite lawsome.

Then, last night, after the day from hell and with half a mind to stay home and watch crap on TV, I dragged myself to the theatre again. Not only did I drag myself to the theatre. I dragged myself to a show I had heard described as "experimental" and "absurdist" and which had written on the door of the theatre, "WARNING: SHOW CONTAINS SMOKING, FIREARMS, AND ADULT THEMES". Wicked, I thought to myself. The trifecta.

And not only that. I went by myself.

The reason I made myself go to this show even though I felt like a clump of oatmeal, is that it's on at a brand new theatre called The Black Lung, which is in Smith Street, Fitzroy (see here) and which is run by a bunch of people I know who are all very clever and very interesting and who also make me laugh. Anyone who decides to start their own theatre deserves at least the price of my ticket (which was ten dollars by the way - which should be the price of ALL theatre in Melbourne and which is why I find it endlessly amusing that the MTC runs all these "investigative sessions" where they ask random selections of "young people" why none of them go to the theatre. But I digress). So I knew that these people were smart and interested in making different stuff, and so I made myself go even though it was experimental and absurd and I felt like the most experimental and absurd thing I felt like doing was going to bed without brushing my teeth.

Anyway. It was called Avast, and somehow they managed to have it make sense but contain no cohesive narrative whatsoever. In that sense, it was genuinely insane. I was sitting on the edge of the room where I could see the audience reaction, which at times was half the point. The woman next to me was a pysch nurse who expressed her genuine concern for one or two of the performers' mental health. The guy on the other side of me was prone to a donkey-like laugh that would set off whole sections of the audience, and one or two members of the cast.

Okay, so here's what happened: There was a guy in a washing machine with Ochre in his pants (of course) who told this other guy he was adopted and so the other guy pretended he was blind and then slipped during the fight scene and appeared to break his nose (brilliantly done). There was a guy who played a tin whistle and ran full-pelt into a closed door. There was a bloke in a mask who recited a speech until he was shouted down by the other actors. There was this couple in the audience who tried to leave because the woman was feeling sick and things were a little politically incorrect and quite crazy and claustrophobic and she was sobbing, sobbing, and her boyfriend was trying to leave but they were shouted at by one of the actors, who then apologised and called off the show and offered everyone their money back and then after people started leaving the theatre this woman in a full opera costume got up from behind a chair and sang an aria while simulating sex with the tin whistle guy.

And then everyone went for beers.

You've just got to love the theatre sometimes.

This has been my timetable this week:

Monday: work at Victoria Law Foundation, go out in evening to Arts Law Week event entitled "You Be The Judge," which is all about sentencing laws and which is attended by members of the public with various agendas and which makes me think it should be compulsory for people in law schools to sit through such discussions (ie discussions about what happens to the offenders the lawyers help convict, and what the public thinks of the legal system). Also very interesting to see the people who run the legal system defend it (very impressively in this case).

Tuesday: boring.

Wednesday: Victoria Law Foundation in the afternoon (after a most unproductive morning in which it was proposed by me that I get up early, go to gym and get lots of work done, but which was overruled by me so that I did virtually nothing, got cross with myself and went to work). After work, went to a play reading for Arts Law Week, which happened to star everyone's TV favourite Bud Tingwell, and... my sister. Bud was good I guess, but he was clearly threatened by the stage-stealing performance of my sister, who had only two lines (both of them in the first half) and who was as excited as I was by the fact that the catering at interval was provided by the CWA.

Thursday: Unproductive morning followed by self-induced fury (see Wednesday). Afternoon: go to Victoria Law Foundation, get wig and gown in order to dress as judge and stand in street at seven thirty Friday morning advertising law week because haven't found anyone else to do it, make phone calls, rush out. Go to eye doctor, who renders me temporarily visually impaired so that cannot read either of the two books I am reading (breaching the one book rule), and cannot even guess at the sudoko, which Stewart smugly completes while I sit by and tell him my pupils are being diluted. ("With what?" he asks). Specialist tells me he's never seen healthier eyes in his life, sees me for five minutes, charges me nearly two hundred dollars and tells me to wear sunglasses for six hours. After blindly stumbling home to parents' house to return and borrow things, I go to a Centre of Contemporary Photography exhibition, get in the car, go home. Pass out.

Today: Wake up at OBSCENE O'CLOCK (possibly a quarter to). Get ready to spend morning dressed up like judge in front of streams of people getting off train at Flagstaff Station, most of whom I went to Law School with and are in some cases only a decade or so away from being dressed as judges themselves, step outside to find it is DARK and there is a fog so thick you can barely see you sister who you are going to work with because she often gets up this early and thinks nothing of it and in fact is going to gym before work and pilates in her lunch break. Go and stand outside Flagstaff Station. Call out things about law week, not thinking to be quite as hilarious as the other two people working on Parliament Station, who later reveal that their spruiking campaign is based on the phrase: "Law Week - It's Lawsome!" After spruiking, spend rest of day at Law Foundation, drive stuff around Melbourne returning it, get home, go with Rita to musical at Melbourne University (it's called "Working" - should be interesting) then go to drinks, other drinks, other drinks, possible other drinks, and then home. Collapse, pass out etc.

Tomorrow? Production meeting at 9.30am. Possibility of Rita being late and Lorin being later: somewhere in the high 90% range.

Today is the first Sunday for four weeks that I haven't had to cram everything in before a seven thirty show. It's the first day of no comedy festival shows whatsoever.

So I got up at two this afternoon, after a rather colourful night at the festival club, and I thought very seriously about getting some of the work done that Rita and I had scheduled in for Sunday. Then I got dressed in what clothes I could find that weren't held together by cigarette smoke and rain (it's been a very healthy couple of weeks) and I went for a walk. Which was quite adventurous, considering the other option was staying in bed.

In other news, Sammy J, the guy who plays the Young Liberal in I Could Be Anybody, was awarded Best Newcomer last night at the comedy festival, which is enormously exciting and he should be sent to the congratulatorium (along with Tim Stitz, who is already there. They can have cups of tea together by the fire and talk about what to do next).

Also, I went to the Victorian College of the Arts graduation ceremony the other night. I was outraged that I had to pay thirty dollars to go and watch someone walk up on stage and collect a piece of paper. I would now like to retract that outrage. It was quite brilliant, with bits of film, music, dance, and performing that really made me wonder (once again) what life would have been like for me if I'd gone to art school.

Ben Hjorth, who played Oliver in our play, People Watching, led the most astonishing chant from the back of Hamer Hall in Melbourne. The people who did Men of Steel at the comedy festival performed some of their hilarious food-fight puppet comedy (a genre consisting, I should think, only of them) and the kids from the school of dance made me wonder what the hell I'm doing with my body (walking? sitting around? Pathetic!). Then, hours into the ceremony, a shambles of musicians appeared onto the stage and played some awe-inspiring stuff (and I'm leaving out the actors and the film makers because I'm far more interested in watching things I don't know anything about). So there. Pretty excellent stuff. Stew graduated (and surprised everyone a little when he took a polariod of the actual moment he shook hands with the Vice Chancellor) and then my friend Simon graduated, as did our 1st AD from I Could Be Anybody, Eva Tandy (who was whooped with considerable gusto by the rather reserved audience). I'm very lucky to know these people.

Anyway, I have to go and fall asleep over my new book, Surely You're Joking Mr Feynman. Yay for learning things from other people.

In training for the Sydney Writer's Festival, I've decided I need to finish the books I've started (those on the top of the pile next to my bed). Until then, I'm not allowed to buy or borrow new ones because I don't deserve them.

Over the years, I've become a hopeless reader. When I was a kid, I used to read every book from cover to cover, and then read every other book by that author, in order of books written. Now, I'm hopeless.

You know on your computer, if you press ALT and TAB at the same time, it flicks between one program and another? That's how my life works. There I am, working on a film and then ALT + TAB I'm also working at the Comedy Festival but ALT + TAB I'm working at the Law Foundation and ALT + TAB I'm working at Radio National. All the other windows are open and the programs are running and stuff, but I'm flicking between them all the time, so I never quite optimise my experience.

That's how I read, too. I've had Alan Bennett's new book (which is so funny and brilliant) next to my bed since I ordered it online so I'd get it before anyone in Australia could claim to have read it before me. Several ALT + TABs later and I still haven't finished it but I've read several Joanna Murray-Smith plays, two brilliant scripts by Tom Stoppard and the beginning of a book called Boyhood by Coetzee. I also started a book by Will Self but I lost it down the back of the bed somewhere and I wasn't sure I didn't resent and despise it anyway, so at least this way I don't have to find out.

I do feel so guilty about these books I don't finish. It's a form of infidelity, not unlike when you have to turn off a CD in the middle of a really intense bit where the singer is belting out a particularly complicated couple of bars of climax and you have to rush out of the house but you know you're not paying enough respect to Aretha, or Buckley, or more likely if I'm being honest, Ben Folds.

Anyway, point being, book-wise, I am turning over a new leaf. Last night, after visiting Penny's and Yianni's shows (yay for them by the way, they're selling out)... I went home.

Yes! Home. Not to the Festival Club. Not to a Kitson gig or to support one of the local heroes or to a bar to hang out with people I don't see enough of anymore. I went home, I had a bath and I finished Indian Ink by Tom Stoppard. Yay for Tom Stoppard being clever about British snobbery and writing good characters for women and being a little bit obscure and making you wish you'd studied history right the way through university.

So, I'm on my way. For a lovely take on the reading of books, check out this. Nick Hornby, writer of things like About a Boy, writes a column about what he reads versus what he plans to read every month. Depressingly, he reads more than I do and complains about not reading much and being a philistine. But all that will change now I'm sure and I will become the sort of person Nick Hornby wishes he could be. Or not. We'll see how that one pans out.

Last, ALT + TAB, a dig at The Age, which I realise is a dead horse, but COME ON. Yesterday, they (the Melbourne newspaper that sponsors the comedy festival) ran reviews of Ross Noble (who so desperately needs a good review), two people with national TV shows, and two Americans.

Good. Excellent. So people know what the things they won't be able to get into because they're SOLD OUT are going to be like. What a service to the community.

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.