oh, ha ha HA! shalini's google obsession pays off yet again!
i found the following review on chortle.co.uk -
"Fiji-raised Shalini Anhkil spoke of her Bollywood obsession, but overlooked the fact that punchlines are kind of important in comedy, and her routine became dangerously close to a media studies lecture."
well, well, aren't we supportive? anyway, just what were you expecting? if we were all as good as it would have taken to make this guy say something nice about us, maybe we would have missed the point of performing at raw comedy? and learn to spell, buddy! (no, i should be nice, maybe he just couldn't get his hands on a copy of the program they were giving everyone as they entered the venue).
on the other hand, i think i could handle a career as a media studies lecturer.

oh, ha ha! i just found a letter i wrote got (edited and then) published in the age. Scroll right to the bottom of the page to read the edited letter, which i had written in response to this article. more herald sun than fairfax, don't you think?
on a totally different note, i've added a blog shout out to this page, meaning you can now leave a response message right here after you finish not-reading my blog.

still haven't heard from anyone re: reading this blog, oh well.
now, lets talk about the raw comedy national finals. what a day!
mark dropped me off on the corner of collins and swanston on the way to his paintball game. there were already two seperate groups formed outside - the girls near the door, and the boys to the side. when we finally got in, we did paperwork and stuff first, before introducing ourselves and saying a bit about our acts. we broke for lunch, and on our return went to the greenroom. we had professional makeup artists do our faces, and it was only about three o'clock. i had the rather surreal experience of sitting in a makeup chair in a very small room with sarah applying my makeup while a tv cameraman held his camera barely two inches away from my face as his sound guy stood behind him with his big boom, no one saying a word the whole time. we all got interviewed, again with the cameras literally five centimeters in front of our faces, then we each went on stage to test out microphones and get a feel for the place. i must say i now realise that i wasn't totally comfortable at any point in the whole day.
when the program finally kicked off, everything happened so fast it was dizzying. people were being miked up and sent on one by one while the rest of us watched them on the monitors backstage, trying not to lapse into 'vegging on the couch' mode. i saw beck, al, naomi and meg on the monitors and started feeling a bit 'ooh-err' in the gut. before i knew it there was a radio mic clipped to my jeans and duct tape down my top, and i was standing in the wings. i heard what i thought was my name - and i walked out on to stage. grabbed the mic. said my first line.
all i can remember of the next five minutes is random thoughts like 'why aren't they laughing?', 'oh excellent, they're laughing', 'why aren't they laughing?', 'this was such a stupid idea', 'god that man has a large face', 'i'm fucked'. oh, and 'why aren't they laughing'.
i walked back to the green room totally dejected, and greeted the applause with 'yeah yeah, i need a beer'. adam gave me a high five and a hug, brett got me a beer, and the drinking began.
then time for the anouncement and we all trouped back on stage - nelly won! (and steve). i am rapt for her, and him - though naturally i am biased toward nell, because she's cool and i always thought she'd win anyway.
we had a private after party (ooh, la-di-dah) on the balcony of the town hall, and when the bar closed there, we went to the spinning wheel, where i fulfilled two lifelong ambitions - expressing my disappointment to richard fidler at the axeing of 'race around the world' when i'd finally organised my passport; and thanking scod from tripod for 'rock eisteddfod', which i sang repeatedly throughout the day to calm my nerves, by singing it to him. into his ear.

two things.
one - i haven't received any emails from anyone, so i guess that means no one reads this apart from me. i'll keep writing, though - blabbing to an imaginary audience is probably good practice for if i ever get to work in radio
two - i found out on friday that i will get a chance to sass and strut it at the raw comedy national finals!
it's all very surreal and quite interesting, but i am looking forward to next sunday. i'll write more when i can think straight. insane.
in-sane.

does anyone apart from myself read this, i wonder? if you're not me and you're reading this, drop me a line via the email link at the bottom of the page.
well, i've been trying not to think about why the comedy fest guys haven't called me back as yet. i contacted nelly and found out that she still hasn't gotten a call, so that appeased the freak-out demons inside me for a bit. but it's a thought that's buzzing constantly inside my skull, colliding again and again aginst the back of my eyeballs like a fly against a closed window, and it distracts me. we all know how i love to obsess about things. in the meantime though, i've taken one bit out of my routine and added a new bit and reshuffled some of the lines, all the while hoping that i'm not tempting fate, because how ironic would it be if i put together a kick-ass routine and didn't get a chance to sass and strut it at the finals?
not that you'd know if i didn't tell you, but the previous line was the second time i meant to write kick-ass and accidently typed kiss-ass. just what is my subconcious trying to tell me?
i sent out another submission to an anthology today, this time a clipped version of my 'coffee boy' story, though how clipped can it be if it went from three thousand words to two thousand eight hundred and ninety nine words?
maybe i'd benefit from some editing lessons.