The Melbourne International Comedy Festival is almost at an end and so too is Dead Under Fluorescent Lights. For those of you who’ve come out to see the awkward face behind the awkward prose, it’s been a delight to meet so many of you. Those same folk also know that the whole point of the show, the message so to speak, is to quit your job if you don’t love what you do. So in order for my words to have any sort of weight behind them, I had to do the honest thing and quit my job. There would be no use in me spewing office epiphanies at the crowd if I was to trundle into work the next morning and sigh my way through the afternoon.
So what does that mean for the blog? I have no idea. I won’t be working with any of the characters that contributed to the success of DUFL, which is oddly bittersweet. On one hand I feel like shedding tears of joy and on the other I feel like learning how to breakdance so that I can do a victory pop ‘n’ lock through my living room. The blog will definitely stay around, but I think it’s going to evolve into the post office adventures as a writer and a comedian or it will simply have engrossing details of collecting unemployment benefits.
There are still 3 shows left if you haven’t already been to The Workers Club in Fitzroy. Tonight, Friday and Saturday – and then I shall get so drunk that I will prove my Grandmother right about everything she has said about my generation.
There’s also the People’s Choice Awards, not only do I get to shove the award all up in the grill of my Grandmother, but the people who vote get a chance to win a ticket to Montreal for The Just For Laughs Festival. Sweet deal. Just look for Simon Keck – Dead Under Fluorescent Lights to vote.
So I’ve already done a weekend of shows for the Comedy Festival and it was brilliant. Despite the near debilitating nerves, it all came together and I had a whole bunch of people come who weren’t even friends or friends of friends – that’s a good sign methinks. People seem to be particularly responsive to the Nazi joke and the Sales Guy Happy Place bit. What are those bits? You’ll have to hit the Workers Club to find out.
I’ve still got fourteen shows to do and my liver is already keeping me up at night with loud weeping sounds. I think I’ll drown it into submission tonight with some of the $2 beers on offer. Also, Tuesday nights will be a 2 for 1 type deal on the door – just email me at frenchelbow@gmail.com if you’re thinking of coming down and I’ll make sure a seat is saved for you.
I do have a wee favour to ask of my fellow fluorescent prisoners. If you enjoy the blog then it’d be a huge help to me if you posted the following link on your facebook status (or blogs and other social networks, hell you can graffiti that link in a public toilet if you want). Word of mouth still seems to be the best way of getting info about the show out there.
By the way, this year they are doing a People’s Choice Award – even if you can’t see the show it’d be great if you could vote Dead Under Fluorescent Lights as they’re giving away a $5,000 cash prize. With that kind of money I could almost break negative. Almost.
I hope to see you there so that I can amuse/depress/offend you in person!
In answer to your many emails, yes I am alive.
The reason I have been busy and posted no new DUFL’s of late is due to something really quite cool. I started Dead Under Fluorescent Lights in March 2009, so it seems only fitting that in March 2010 something a little different should take place. To all those in the cubicle club, I give you…
Dead Under Fluorescent Lights at the Melbourne Comedy Festival!
If you’re a fan of this blog, you can purchase TICKETS from Ticketmaster as of today.
I’ve also got a group discount, so if you bring along 6 or more co-workers it’s cheaper – even better, get your boss to fund it as a work outing!
They love tax write offs that have booze attached.
After removing my damp nostrils from a stranger’s armpit, I hopped off the overcrowded morning train and started walking in the direction of my office. I bumped into Steph just outside the train station and our greetings were deflated by the blaring siren of a fire truck that hurtled past us. I found it amusing that we both crossed our fingers when we saw it.
Sadly our office was still intact when we arrived, but just outside the entrance was a junkie who bore a striking resemblance to Iggy Pop, in as much as he looked like a vein wrapped around a skeleton. I gave him a small handful of shiny and after we entered the lobby Steph berated me for handing out money to him. I explained that it was only a few dollars and I enjoyed helping someone, even if in a shallow and token way. She argued that I was only enabling his drug fuelled lifestyle.
When it was time for someone to do the morning coffee run, Steph was arguing with Mike over a latté he owed her from a few weeks ago. Mike was adamant that it was the other way around. They continued to squabble loudly across the walls of my cubicle until I calmly stood up and gave Steph the money needed for her morning caffeine, which she gleefully accepted.
It’s nice to know I helped two addicts get their fix this morning.
You can tell when it’s Christmas time in an office. The atmosphere is somehow different, everyone is full of cheer, cheer being an amalgam of ‘cheap’ and ‘liquor’. The multitude of parties and lunches has certainly left some rosy cheeks and greying livers, but if being fuzzed from intoxicants creates a happier environment, who am I to Scrooge on their parade.
I was strolling through the kitchen to kill time, and find some aspirin for my boss, when I happened upon a small festive cardboard box on the counter top. The note on the side welcomed food and toy donations for the neighbouring housing projects and already it was half full of tinned food and other groceries. I immediately decided to head over the road to the supermarket and grab a few things to donate. Out of curiosity, I peered inside to see what people had given. Under some chips was a packet of condoms with a note taped to the front that read
‘your kids break my windows – please stop having them, Merry Xmas’
I know what you’re thinking “If my cockles get any warmer, my heart might start a fire”
Our servers have been down for most of this morning, we couldn’t even log on to our computers. Strangely, a boring day bled into brilliance when I watched Craig, an awkward pause made flesh, stop playing solitaire on his PC and pull out a deck of cards to continue his game without missing a beat.
No matter who you are or what position you hold within an office there is one golden rule “Hold it together in front of the client”. You might have just found out that your mother died during intercourse with your girlfriend and a Dyson, but as far as the area above your neck is concerned, it’s client-face until that final handshake in the lobby. Elevators are made for crying, boardrooms are made for firing. Steve, the man who tact forgot, is usually the grandmaster of client-face. Today I saw that mask slip a little, well if I’m honest, a lot actually. Quite a lot.
In the middle of a very important strategy meeting for next year’s Sales pipeline, which basically means how much money the Sales team will be bringing in. My boss likes to refer to the pipeline as ‘The Ho-Basket’. The name came about from some after work drinks where I pointed out that rappers must have some form of Budget for the Ho’s in their video clips. That there is literally an accountant who sits there and dictates how many rump flapping girls they can afford to drape over the rap artiste at any given time. My boss enjoyed the concept so much that The Ho-Basket moved into our office lexicon.
The Sales Manager Polly was pointing out the value we could add to the client’s advertising campaigns for 2010 and I was doing my best to keep my client-face shining. Steve’s pocket rang out loudly. I didn’t recognise the tune, it was your standard teenage pop-starlet type of song. The kind where you know the singer was carefully strategising when to leak her next accidental sex-tape, complete with Pepsi product placement next to a set of vibrators and furry handcuffs.
Steve played it cool, excused himself and stood just outside the door of the meeting room. I could clearly hear him yelling out “Yes!” from the gap in the door. When Steve walked back in, he was all smiles and looked like the proverbial cream filled cat. We all turned to him as he sat down and with great excitement he blurts out
“She got her period. Fuckin’ A”
My boss’ face went redder than the time he ate a double quarter pounder in one go.
I’m guessing there will be fewer Ho’s in next year’s basket.
Since my boss returned to work he’s noticed a distinct lack of morale in our team. It has a little bit to do with the huge workload we have and everything to do with the fact my boss keeps interrupting me, hauling my infuriated carcass into his office and forcing me read the dating profiles of all the women he’s interested in, just in case they’re actually men. The process involves checking how muscular their shoulders are and seeing if their hobbies include indoor soccer. I talked him out of asking for photographs of their hands and necks as that might come off as somewhat creepy. I fear there may have been an incident on his trip to Thailand.
Sensing the blanket of malcontent our department is rugged up in, my boss took the initiative of preparing a motivational slide show for us to sit through. The majority of slides were of people standing on mountains or footprints left on a sandy beach. It was the final slide that really stood out. The photo showed a young man in a superman costume who was clearly mentally handicapped. The message above him read “It’s time to turn this Down syndrome, into an Up Syndrome” At that point my boss gave us all an exuberant thumbs up to really hit the point home, much like the final glossy red swing of a seal club.
When Mike pointed out that this might be considered offensive, my boss countered with the argument
“You can’t really make fun of retards because they’re oblivious to it. If a mongospaz doesn’t get the joke, then were you ever really making fun of them?”
I’m no expert, but I’m fairly sure he got that from ancient Zen Buddhist scripture.
Oh shit, it just occurred to me. Perhaps he wants the ones with Adams Apples.
When I go back to work after a holiday I feel as though I have a form of jetlag. A Funlag if you will. My body is seated in front of the keyboard yet my mind is waiting for my monitor to take my cocktail order. It can get so bad that when I look at my cup of morning coffee, my brain fills in the gap by adding a little umbrella.
My boss on the other hand doesn’t suffer from Funlag. He has returned to the office with a renewed sense of purpose and loads of ideas on how we can ‘actualise’ more as a team. I’m not sure what that means, when he said it the work experience kid nodded like a hostage so I guess it must be good.
I’ve often wondered what my boss actually does, from what I can see his role is comprised of making PowerPoint slides of overlapping circles featuring pictures of smiling men in ties shaking hands with women doing the thumbs up gesture, usually there is one black guy off to one side standing way behind them quietly approving of the thumbs.
This morning my suspicions of were confirmed when my boss had me sit through a meeting where he projected a graph depicting how effective graphs are.
I went to the pub straight after the presentation.
My liver has become the dipstick for my mental health.
I have been a bit busy of late on some other writing gigs and that equates to fewer DUFL’s for you to read. Apologies for that, to hopefully make up for the lack of schadenfreude in your lives I’m going to share a video that some friends and I recently made. We all felt that filtering our Internet simply wasn’t going far enough – so here is a further solution.
