Best Australian Comedy Writing

by Luke Ryan

  ‘No way.’

  ‘Yes way. Your brain is lying to you. If you close your eyes and I hold a cold spoon to your cheek, you could swear your face was wet. It’s completely normal not being able to tell wet from cold.’

  This was great news. ‘So if I explain this to her – as the reason why I was rubbing her underwear on my face – she’ll understand, right?’

  I was practically begging him to say that science can prove my innocence. He opened his palms to the heavens, Woody Allen-style. ‘I’m not saying I could speak for her, as I don’t know her, but it’s the truth.’

  They say a process of gradual desensitisation can cure a phobia. This involves gradually increasing exposure to the very thing that elicits the fear. If you are scared of spiders, they get you to stare at the word ‘SPIDER’. Then draw a picture of a spider. Then touch a photo of a spider. Then hold a live tarantula while wearing a Spiderman costume.

  That night I composed about eleven drafts of an email to Former Housemate Grace. I explained the scene from my point of view; how the skin mistakes pressure and temperature for the sensation of dampness; how I did nothing wrong.

  I never clicked ‘SEND’ on the email. My phobia told me that sending an email out of the blue, years after the incident, would result in the polar opposite of what the email was intended for.

  My phobia of looking dodgy is telling me to stop writing any more of this.

  * Grace is not her real name but rather her general disposition in the share house we used to live in.

  LALLY KATZ

  Flowers

  ❛Maria had made quite a point of telling me that I must not shame her by the corpse of Jovanka. ‘You should to dress in all black, with the hair up and the earring. Do not walk like crazy person two hour to my house wearing the bad shoe and rubbish.’❜

  I was in Sydney for work, and I was meant to be going to Brisbane with my boyfriend to watch a talk he was doing about his book the next day. We hadn’t seen much of each other for a while because of work travel. I was really excited about going with him. And more than that, I was really excited that he wanted me to go. It was slightly out of character for him to want company. I felt like maybe this would begin a new chapter in our relationship.

  My mobile phone rang. ‘Lally,’ whispered the Hungarian-accented voice on the other end. It was Maria, my 86-year-old former neighbour.

  ‘Maria, are you okay?’ Maria and I talked on the phone most days. And most days it was about an emergency. Such as she’d run out of pasta dura bread, or her back was sore, or a letter had arrived in the post. I called her with emergencies too. Usually romantic ones.

  ‘Jovanka is … died. Her daughter call and tell me. She is died.’

  ‘Maria, no. Not Jovanka.’ Jovanka was Maria’s Serbian frenemy. Jovanka was also one of the most popular characters I’d ever written. She featured in my play about Maria, Neighbourhood Watch.

  ‘She was never sick. I am more sick than her. Why should she to died? Is not fair. Maria is sick too!’

  ‘She always looked pretty sick, Maria.’ Maria has raged against Jovanka since I met her. Suspecting her of laughing at her behind her back, tricking her and not coming to visit her. But from the outside, it always looked to me like Jovanka really wanted to be Maria’s friend.

  ‘I don’t ring her. Because she should to ring me. I never ring the Jovanka before she has died. I am very sad.’

  ‘Maria, the Jovanka know you love her.’

  ‘She was big bastard to me.’

  ‘I’m so sorry, Maria.’

  ‘Lally, the Jovanka family call me. They wanting me to come sit and watch the Jovanka dead body with them. I like to go. I like to show everyone that Maria can do it. Maria go very glamour and she make the peace. No matter how cruelty the person.’

  ‘I think you should go, Maria.’

  ‘But, Lally, I need you come with me. Please. I never ask you for nothing else. Just come sit by the corpse of Jovanka with me tomorrow.’

  ‘Maria, I think the family will think that’s strange.’

  ‘They know you. They love you because the Jovanka all the time love you. Please.’

  A few things ran through my head. One, I was meant to be going to Brisbane with my boyfriend – I wanted to go to Brisbane with my boyfriend. I felt so sure that it was going to be the thing that made our relationship. Two, I felt it would be awkward if I went and sat by the corpse of Jovanka. I had met her husband, but no one else in the family. Three, I am a writer and I am hungry for experiences. And one of my favourite characters had died. My very favourite character was going to sit by her corpse. I wanted to be there too. I would never forgive myself if I missed this story.

  I called my boyfriend. ‘I’m coming back to Melbourne tonight.’

  ‘Why don’t you just fly from Sydney and meet me in Brisbane tomorrow?’ he asked.

  ‘Jovanka’s died. Maria wants me to come and sit by her corpse.’

  ‘You should do that.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Don’t be sorry. You have to go with Maria.’

  We hung up. I was sad. Decisions always feel so high-stakes, like you’re always choosing between one possible life and another.

  Back in Melbourne the next day, I walked the two-hour walk to Maria’s house, buying pasta dura bread on the way. Maria had made quite a point of telling me that I must not shame her by the corpse of Jovanka. ‘You should to dress in all black, with the hair up and the earring. Do not walk like crazy person two hour to my house wearing the bad shoe and rubbish.’ I’d decided to risk walking, but carried high heels and a heavy dry-cleaning bag of black grieving clothes.

  I rang Maria’s bell. She opened the door wearing an old jumper, and her hair was very frizzy. This was certainly not how I’d expected Maria to dress for sitting by Jovanka’s corpse.

  ‘I just have to change,’ I told her.

  ‘Ja.’ She nodded and walked over to the stove where she was cooking soup.

  ‘Don’t you have to change?’ I asked her.

  ‘No. Maria don’t change. Don’t rush. Have the soup first.’

  ‘But you said we have to be there five o’clock, no later.’

  Maria looked at me. ‘We are not going.’

  ‘We’re not going?’

  ‘No, why should we to go and sit by the corpse of the Jovanka with the family? You who don’t know the family – no I don’t like that. Her daughter very nice call and say she pick me up, take me, but I no going. Rest of the Serbs will push me down. No, we are not going. Instead we go to florist and get one very beautiful wreath, Serbian colour, that we take on the funeral tomorrow morning.’

  ‘But you said we were going to see Jovanka today. That’s why I brought these clothes over –’

  ‘Ja, you wear them to funeral tomorrow.’

  I realised that I was here for nothing. I’d cancelled going to Brisbane, and now we weren’t even going to sit by Jovanka’s body. ‘Well, I have to tell you, Maria, I’m very angry. Because you’re always telling me that I change the plan, but I don’t change the plan, you change the plan! You said we were going to see Jovanka’s dead body, and now you change the plan!’

  ‘Ja, because now I got better plan!’

  ‘Well, I was meant to be going to Brisbane with the boyfriend and I change so I can come with you to sit with the Jovanka’s body.’

  ‘You never tell me that! Why you tell me that now? Why you come here and then say I should to be there instead of here. You hurt me very much. The Jovanka has died and you is hurting me.’

  There was no winning this. I’d made my choice. And Maria was right. Her best frenemy had died. ‘I’m sorry, Maria. I’m just sad because I wanted to see the Jovanka.’

  Maria brightened. ‘Don’t be sad for that! You will see the Jovanka! Tomorrow morning when we go to funeral is open casket!’

  After eating soup, Maria got dressed and we caught a taxi to the florist she liked. As we got out of the taxi, I realised someth
ing. ‘Maria, this florist, this is near where Jovanka lived, isn’t it?’

  ‘Ja. You were there. Very close lived the Jovanka.’

  Maria and I looked for the right flowers. Maria kept asking the short-haired, tattooed florist questions. ‘Tell me, how much is these?’

  ‘They’re $65. The same as when you asked two minutes ago.’ The florist didn’t like Maria. She was very busy wrapping pre-orders of flowers. It seemed like a big day for them.

  Finally we picked out white roses and took them up to be wrapped in the colours of the Serbian flag. At the counter, Maria muttered, ‘But bastard, what is the Serbian flag? I forget.’

  ‘I’ll check on my phone,’ I offered.

  ‘You can do?’

  ‘Of course.’ I googled the Serbian flag. It came up on my phone with three stripes: top red, middle blue and bottom white. ‘Here it is, Maria.’ I showed her the phone.

  ‘No, Russian. That is the Russia flag.’

  ‘Serbian.’

  ‘Russian.’

  I decided the only way to solve this was to search for the Russian flag. It came up the opposite to the Serbian flag: top stripe white, middle stripe blue and bottom stripe red. I showed it to Maria.

  ‘Ja, Russian,’ she said.

  I brought up the Serbian flag again. ‘You see the difference, Maria?’

  ‘Ja, Russian,’ she said.

  I was beginning to get very angry.

  ‘No, Maria! This is the Serbian flag! The other flag is Russian!’

  ‘Why you all the time so stupid? You tell me you can find Serbian flag but all you find is the Russia!’

  ‘You’re the one who’s being stupid, not me. This is the Serbian flag.’

  ‘Maria know the Serbian flag, I was married to one Serb. Lally don’t know nothing.’

  Just then, we were interrupted by a soft voice. A tall woman, probably in her forties, was speaking gently to Maria in Serbian. She was dressed in black, and her eyes were very sad. She was the spitting image of Jovanka.

  Maria spoke to her in Serbian for another moment, and then turned to me and said, ‘You know who is this?’

  ‘Are you Jovanka’s daughter?’ I asked her.

  She nodded, tears in her eyes.

  ‘I’m so sorry about your mother.’

  ‘She’s at peace now.’ Part of me, looking at Jovanka’s grieving daughter, thought, Here she is. Here’s the story I didn’t go to Brisbane for. And the other part of me thought, Here she is. She’s real and she’s so sad. I’m glad I didn’t sit with her at her mother’s body.

  I asked her, ‘Do you know what the colours of the Serbian flag are?’

  ‘Yes. Red, then blue, then white.’

  ‘I told you,’ said Maria.

  ‘You did not tell me –’ I hissed before reining myself back in.

  Jovanka’s daughter picked up two wreaths she had ordered for her mother’s funeral the next day.

  ‘I am sick too,’ Maria told her. ‘More sick than the mummy.’

  The daughter looked worried, and told Maria to only come to the funeral if she was well enough. She smiled at us, thanked us for getting her mother flowers and left.

  Maria watched her leaving and said, ‘Very fat. She has grown. Like the mother.’

  Maria paid for the flowers. We decided to get another taxi instead of the tram. After all, we had a big night ahead of us, preparing for the funeral.

  Two months later, my boyfriend and I would break up.

  Originally appeared in The Monthly, June 2014

  ANDREW DENTON

  Welcome to HED 2015

  ❛Let me share with you just a few of the milestones that have made HED the pre-eminent place for people actively engaged in ‘talking about doing things’ to gather.❜

  Welcome, fellow Earthians, to HED talks 2015, tonight coming to you from Sydney, Australia.

  On this very day, twenty years ago, the first HED talks were given in a geodesic yurt in Costa Rica, the brainchild of Feldenkrais guru Françoise Musk and ethical burrito franchise billionaire Tip Wilson.

  Their dream: to create a space where people could come together and solve all the world’s problems by talking about them. A lot. With pictures. And, ideally, music.

  The programme for that first conference was only four talks, but each one set a new standard for public discourse. Let me remind you of those first, seminal, presentations:

  Skylar Pascaarl’s moving What I’ve Learned from My Profoundly Deaf, Vegetarian and Angry Neighbour.

  Dr Luce Schwitter’s revolutionary Why Breathing Matters.

  The thought-provoking Re-engineering Zebras to Fight Measles, presented by the late Professor Zlatco Zemanek, interpretative geneticist.

  And, of course, Margaret Fynne’s game-changing visual presentation, How Just Thinking About Poor People Can Make This Graph Different Over Time. There wasn’t a dry eye in the yurt after that one, I can tell you.

  Four amazing talks that are as relevant today as they were then.

  In the past twenty years, HED talks have taken place in more than fifty countries and, on one occasion in 1999, in 140 hot air balloons roped together above the deserts of Saharan Africa as a show of support for the Tuareg people of Mali.

  The three letters that make up the word HED – H for Hype, E for Exaggeration and D for Drama – have proven to be prophetic as, each year, remarkable thinkers have come forward to help us reimagine our universe.

  Let me share with you just a few of the milestones that have made HED the pre-eminent place for people actively engaged in ‘talking about doing things’ to gather.

  In 1996, HED Sarajevo saw Jahan El Murad invited to address the United Nations after his presentation, How a Single Rubber Ball Can End the Conflict in Gaza and Restore Balance in the Middle East, electrified the conference.

  In 1998, at HED Tuvalu, the future was unveiled in front of our very eyes when Pradeep Mandesh of the Bangalore Institute of Technology demonstrated a robot that could exactly replicate most of the dance moves from Pat Benatar’s ‘Love Is a Battlefield’ video.

  In 2001, HED Poughkeepsie saw Turkish electric bouzouki virtuoso Istvan Ornek’s translation of the Bhagavad Gita into music prompt Peter Gabriel to declare, ‘Those were six of the most entrancing hours I have ever spent in my life.’

  In 2007, at HED Mogadishu, Lyn Portillo’s address, I Am a Boy Trapped in the Body of a Girl and I Am Dating Myself, became the first HED talk to get more than 1 million hits on YouTube.

  And Thabo Nkwele’s provocative 2011 HED Tenerife keynote, Is Joseph Kony Hiding in the Cloud?, continues to stir debate around the globe.

  But HED is about more than just talking. In 2004, the first HED Scholarships were announced, rewarding ‘Ideas That Sound Great When You First Hear Them’.

  Winners that year included Patsy Squelch, who showed us how to crowdsource our own breakfast, and Diwash Biryani who demonstrated that, over time, badgers could be trained to harmonise using simple melodies.

  Of course, HED has its critics. But for those who doubt that it is a powerful agent for change, just one example: in 1997, Jed Campbell presented a compelling argument that small acts of sacrifice in the first world could completely eliminate poverty in the third world. Campbell’s plan, outlined in this famous graph designed by Ziggy Woltare from the KAPOW! Kollective, was hailed as a breakthrough in simplifying the complexities of world aid.

  Today, eighteen years later, as a direct result of Campbell’s HED talk, I am proud to tell you that more than five million African households now have a copy of this graph up on their walls. Many in colour. Yes, you may well clap.

  I am also pleased to tell you that the HED Travelling Fellows Programme – established in 2008 – continues to make a difference. After the initial success of Sharon Stone’s fact-finding mission to the Middle East, we have since sent Dennis Rodman to North Korea to help normalise relations with that county’s troubled regime, and, most recently, One Direction to the Taliban heartland of
Waziristan in northern Pakistan as ‘Hopefulness Ambassadors’. That was a few weeks ago. We still haven’t heard anything, which we are taking as a positive sign.

  Tonight, Musk and Wilson’s self-styled ‘Mochaccino Revolution’ continues and, as always, it features some of the innovations for which HED has become famous:

  For people who are not quite as important as you, there are nearby ‘simulcast’ lounges where they can share in the HED experience on large screens.

  For those here tonight who may become overwhelmed by the intensity of the ideas, the Steve Jobs Worship Room – where you can sit quietly and just think about Steve – is back.

  The ever-popular firewalking pit, as always generously sponsored by KFC, will also be open. Though, once again, a reminder to parents: please don’t leave kids unattended, no matter how well their chakras are aligned.

  And, of course, beginning tonight, there is our unrivalled programme of speakers, headlined this year by Freelance Happiness Consultant Debbi Nasht with her game-changing talk, How I Used Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Tumblr to Tell the World I Need to Be Alone.

  Immediately after Debbi, over on the Panasonic Gaia Stage, HED is honoured this year to hear from the father of the internet, Tim Berners-Lee, with his talk, Did I Mention That I Invented the Internet?

  Then at midnight we will be crossing live via satellite to the Middle East, where The Kinetic Philosopher himself, Dr Flint Edema, will be giving a remarkable demonstration of the power of stories to change the world. From an elevated platform in southern Turkey, Flint will be broadcasting humorous anecdotes through one thousand-kilowatt speakers across the Syrian border and directly into some of the region’s outlying ISIS camps.

  As you watch Flint subtly change our world, I urge you to keep in mind the deepest truth about HED: whether you are motivated to do something or not, what’s most important is that you can say, ‘I was there.’ Especially to people who were not.