Adam Hills – better (three years) late than never

A pretty cool thing happened to me a few weeks ago. Have been meaning to blog about it.

You see, I’ve always been a big fan of comedy. (Surprised? Seriously. It’s true!) Every year in April, we celebrate the Melbourne International Comedy Festival. From the age of 17, I was a regular patron. And not just a regular patron. An obsessed one. I used to pore over the guide in The Age on the day it was released. Circle everything I wanted to go to. A few years later, public liability insurance brought the prices of the tickets higher so I had to be more selective. But I always made sure I at least saw my two regulars – Wil Anderson and Adam Hills. Why? They went to the effort of writing new material every year. And they are funny.

The last comedy show I went to was back in April 2007. It was an Adam Hills show.  And the night was not a success for me. We went to the show along with a friend of ours, who drove that night. My hearing had suddenly switched off that afternoon – wonderful timing. I could hear Jase and Cam chatting and laughing from the front of the car, but not well enough to know what they were saying. I stared at the digital clock on the car radio in silence, willing my hearing to come back in time for the show. It did not oblige.

That night, I sometimes heard the start of Adam’s jokes … but never caught the punchlines. Jase looked over at me several times, knowing I was struggling. I smiled and pretended to laugh along at the jokes, not wanting to ruin his night by having him worry about me. There were only two things that stood out about the show – an image of a funny-looking carrot that was shown to us on a screen, and Adam Hills dancing around on the roof of a car (an on-stage prop) at the end of the show. Oh and I do remember hating the music that he was dancing to – I couldn’t identify it, it came on very suddenly at the end. It was loud, distorted and it hurt. And I wasn’t even wearing hearing aids at that point.

So anyway, the other week, I was flipping channels on the TV and came across an Adam Hills comedy show on the ABC. Perfect. I settled in my chair. I was going to enjoy this.

I thought I might have to revert to captions, because comedy moves so quickly sometimes, but I was pleasantly surprised. It was pretty easy for me to follow without any captions. (Now I applaud captions, I really do, but gee it’s nice to not need them when you’re watching stand-up comedy. So much about the humour is to do with the way it is delivered, the timing of it all. Often, the captions just can't keep up and, if you can’t keep up, half the jokes aren’t even funny.) I was loving this new (old) way of watching stand-up.

But as I listened to the jokes, I started to frown. Were they familiar? Sort of, but I didn’t remember any of the punchlines. Still … some of what he was saying did sound familiar, like I’d heard the jokes before. And then he started talking about a funny-looking carrot he’d been given. My jaw dropped. It was that show! It was the show I’d gone along to but completely missed! Sure enough, it was recorded in Melbourne, same year. Different night, because there was no Auslan interpreter on the night that we went, but same show. The show is called ‘Joymonger’.

And here I was a few years later, catching every word of his jokes at the speed at which they were being delivered. I was so happy to have finally heard the show that I missed that I’m sure I laughed twice as hard at every joke from that point forward. You just couldn’t wipe the smile from my face.

Especially at the end of the show, after he’d explained how a friend of his from Egypt told him that the traffic jams were so bad that they would just get out and start dancing on their car roof while they waited. Ohhhh!! That explains the dancing! (Picture a light bulb switching on inside my head.) And the music at the end – Egyptian, of course! Not so horrible at all, though a little high-pitched and ‘squealy’. But the genre is totally identifiable now.

Being able to enjoy this show, even if it was 3 and a half years later? Well that was a definite CI moment for me. :-)

(Oh, and hats off to the act of channel surfing finally delivering something other than Beauty and the Geek or The Farmer Wants a Wife. Thank god for the ABC.)