Boss Of Everything

Miss Itchy – On Stage July 19 – Live – Be Afraid… I Mean There. Be There.

Posted on July 14th, 2009 by prinny.
Categories: News.

Miss Itchy – out of mothballs, having survived not only the last 10 yrs stuffed in prop barrels along side the remnants of baby harp seals (plural, each in varying stages of bashedness), a litter of unwanted plucked kittens (some on skewers, some just flattened naturally by a brick) and the hair strands from our patented Hair Walker (gawd remember those?!) but survived being stored in prop barrels at Linda’s fire ravaged Kinglake home. (And the one, two garages/storage sheds before that.)

Risen once again, like the Phoenix. River Phoenix. Drug addled with a bit of sick still in their mouths that the coroner is going to have to suction out before he can even think of embalming the bodies. Is there nothing that can kill eight metres of taffeta that smells like off-cream and bushfire? Hmm, no!

Linda had just survived Australia’s nastiest inferno and I’d just had a human baby, respiratory distress and Cerebral Bells Palsy so when Nelly Thomas asked Loob if there was any chance we’d frock-up to celebrate the opening of their new Character Comedy night at Trades Hall – the sensible answer seemed to be, “Look, if I can find our wigs and they don’t have too many poisonous spiders in them… I’ll ask Fahey…”

I’m shit scared of spiders which is why Miss Gerda always handled our Huntsman when making our Huntsman Scuffs I love them, but I’m frightened and torturing our *FCIC interviewees. (Sorry, Christine.) And why it was also Gerda who did the great escape from the Sleeping Bag of Horror and how it had turned to actual horror when I’d accidental tipped the entire container of live Daddy Long Legs Spiders into the sleeping bag instead of the pocket stapled in the bag and she had to REALLY thrash about to be sure she’d killed ‘em all. Well, being fairly confident she knew kinda where she’d maybe seen the wigs when they packed the house up at Baysie to move to Croydon before their house was built at Kinglake and did I remember how the entire Mud Cake Wrestling in Aspic through a Leaf Shredder onto a Ramp of Terror over Kittens and Guinea Pigs all controlled by Dr. Grog. Or was it Princess Fat… no wait… Princess Criminal the innocent paedophile. Or was it the glamorous Uncle Cockneck with Crickets go? And YES she’s pretty sure there wouldn’t be any spiders left in our wigs!? Surely.

Since our last gig we have still spoken to one another (and a handful of friends and demented fans) in Itchy-speak so that bit would be like falling off an oyster named Janet. It was the rest of it. Ah fuck it. I will if you will. And you know what, I think that’s how it ALL started in the first place!

e-mail sampling #1:
> Been chrying to think how we can have a rool pig for an iPig.

So a goodened oydear. Ut cood be a ginny pig or fayling a rool pig ut cood orso be a block off of baykun. Dirdy, sloimy baykun whot are tucked into dellykut man-pants.

That was about two months ago and it DID seem like an great idea at the time. Pull on a tight wig, wriggle into the aforementioned stinky textile and hey, didn’t I used to wear gloves with that outfit? You DID find the wigs?! Oh yeah, I found the wigs. But I’m scared to wash them…

Character Comedy is the brain child of Nelly and Tanya Lossanno. Now in it’s 10th season proudly taking up permanent residency at Trades Hall (corner of Victoria and Lygon streets in Carlton) the 3rd Sunday of each month, co-produced by the effervescent Toby Sullivan. Character comedy is a hard thing to get right and it’s hard thing to practice/perfect. Stand up rooms aren’t always accepting of someone in a wig or a chap holding a plastic dog so more power to the girls for fostering a safe haven for characters. Doesn’t help Miss Itchy though – cause they’re real and live at the Shrine of Remembrance (cause of the 24/7 BBQ facilities) – always have.

e-mail sampling #2:
Sooo… haven’at chyoo deecoided where Mince CannyGrill wants her stoma site? Abuv or binlow tha nayvul?

Miss Itchy were born out of another (mostly) character comedy night called, Purge at the Limerick Arms out in Sth Melbourne. It was a night to “bring out your dead” the material you were too scared to do anywhere else. The dark stuff. The stuff a normal audience wouldn’t let you get away with. (I know, still makes me pee with glee at the very thought.) Linda and I had been writing and performing together for a couple of years but the stuff that used to make us screamingly fall-down-joyous, we hadn’t really been able to ’sell’ on stage. Purge was a godsend. There’s something to be said for popping on a frock or meat rompers as it was in Gerda V 1.0’s case and being brave. Back then we didn’t even have names, we were just Miss Itchy and we had a wicked song or two (still wicked by today’s standards) and some kittens to euthanise. Seems other people thought it was as funny as we did and that’s intoxicating, so we kept doing it until it wasn’t. Intoxicating I mean.

e-mail sampling #3: (To Tim Harris)
Yesterday I lifted my garage door – (to look for the big tub of stuff, costumes n’ shit for Mince Inchy – tell ya bout that in a second) – and guess who popped his head up and wanted to tell me the temperature?

Ahh Alphonso the Room Temperature Pony. Is there a room temperature you’re not familiar with?

[Above. Alphonso & his Dad. Itchy Couriers. And two ladies, two drag queens. Which is which? You be the judge, judy & elocutioner.]

It’s been a looooong time. Two babies, five houses, two continents, a bushfire, a new art career and a sore shoulder (I hurt it carrying Mo around Harvey Norman the other day) between drinks. Fluffy Duck or a lovely cricket mashed Grasshopper for the lady?

One more drink sounds delicious.

Can I get you one?

Here, come on through to the Trades Hall bar. Upstairs on the corner of Lygon and Victoria Streets. Show starts early, around 5ish? Check the website. It’s all here.

Alphonso will nuzzle your coat.

e-mail sampling #4:
Hey yeah, we HAVE still got it. Only I don’t know if my gut is going to fit into my frock.

til next time,

Miss Candy-Girl’s keeper. xxxx

*FCIC, Fucken Cunt in a Cage. Our interview segment from our “Inaugural Barry Award Winning” Breakfast Show. It’s a whole story on it’s own but suffice to say, I deeply apologise to Ms Christine Basil who had an angry 7 legged Hunstman dropped on her while she was trapped in the cage one night after he spooked Miss Gerda’s handler and she wissed in her man pants and dropped him. It’s one thing to have a spider dropped on you, it’s quite another to have one dropped on you, while you’re in a cage, on stage in a sold out room with bright lights burning out your retinas – retinas that would have been handy for focusing on and capturing the aforementioned pissed off arachnid. I also sincerly apologise to the audience I stampeded across (kinda like a kelpie in a sheering shed) in my efforts to put as much space possible between me, Miss Candy-Girl and that spider. Sir Marcus Wellsby, was retired that very night and we believe, still lives happily in the trees outside the Melbourne Town Hall, waiting… watching…

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700 People Walk Into A Bar…

Posted on February 21st, 2008 by prinny.
Categories: Stories.

Comedians ain’t hooked up right. They’re just not. Needy, selfish, narcissists (you can see why I became one). But I gotta tell ya, when one of the pack needs help… I first saw it when we (as a comedy community) lost a mad soul, John Herouvim – or Hairy Bum to his friends. A brilliant comic. Too brilliant to stay and play. The next gut wrenching loss was Dave Taranto (beautiful tribute page, Paul). Dave was THE beacon of genius that nurtured up and coming comics – he always managed to see ‘it’ in a new comic before anyone else had. The trick was, if he saw something in you, well! *bliss* When Dave died, so did a large chunk of Melbourne comedy. Then, Gibbo. Red wine drinking, mad dancing, insane smokers-cough laugh, show-yer-undies Gibbo. That bastard Ovarian Cancer kicked Gibbo’s arse. It sucked so hard. However, her funeral was one of the funniest most joyful occasions I’ve attended in a long time. The point is, each time, at each one of these awful events I saw the same faces. The same blacker than sin gallows humour ripped around our circle and reminded us all who we were. The sense of community was indescribable. It had to gladden even the darkest of bitter comic hearts. But jesus on a unicycle, enough with the funerals already!

Adrian is a comic I have known for almost as long as I have been doing stand-up. He’s one of the good ones. A quirky bugger. Not what you’d call a dick-joke comic. He has an intensely quiet charm that is punctuated by intelligent rage and a wicked brain that operates on just the five and a half of it’s six cylinders. He’s lovely to watch. He’s battled long and hard with a wicked form of Rheumatoid Arthritis. Luckily, it hadn’t affected his drinking elbow or smoking hand :roll yer own eyes!:. Ades was having Chemo treatment for his RA way back in the late 90’s. He was funnier, angry-bald. Then, just around Xmas time this year. Ades gets sick. Proper on life support sick. An uncomfortable swelling in a gentlemanly area (is there a more ironic place for a comic to get sick? His balls?) Ades has Necrotizing Fasciitis – which Adam Hills made a fantastic joke about which I cant remember now nor will repeat for fear of fucking up the joke but the guts of it was, “Adrian’s been having sex with Benito Mussolini?” They rush him to theatre and obliterate his scrotum (seriously, could it be any funnier?) and then he’s back in ICU on the “We’re Not Mucking Around Here. He’s Crook” list. Over the next (what must have seemed, interminable time to his beloved, Benne) Ade’s a bee’s dick away from having his life support switched off. And, they do. Twice! After they unhooked him the second time and he kept on keeping on, the docs thought they should try at least as half as hard as Ade was to stay alive. It’s now that the Melbourne comedy community kicks in and whacko, it’s benefit time.

_______

Benefits are sooo much nicer than funerals. Although the buffet was missed and playing grab ass with the grieving widow – not quite as macabre. It was bloody lovely to not see Adrian in a tacky pine box. His recovery will be slow and long but at least now he and Benne can pick out a lovely fake-scrotum caddy while he heals.

Onya Ade. In my dreams, you will always have the full compliment, downstairs.

Proud Card Carrying Melbourne Comedian Member #8867 xxxx

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