Don't put orange Berocca in orange juice. Particularly COLD orange juice.

The thing about Berocca, Aspro Clear, and pretty much any other effervescent drink tablet thingo, is that the colder the water is, the slower the reaction is. I rang my water-expert engineer friend Tristan and asked him about it once, but partway through his explanation I realised I had no idea what he was talking about, and tuned out.

Anyway, irrespective of the liquid temperature, there is another excellent and highly persuasive reason why you shouldn't do it. If you've ever tasted OJ that's gone past its use-by date and has fermented, you'll be amazed that OJ with orange berocca in it tastes almost exactly like that. I'm sure I shant get scurvy this week however.

Anyway, to business – last night I went to see Daniel Kitson at the Adelaide Fringe. I'd seen his work on TV before, and he struck me as the sort of comedian I'd like, so I took Mike along to see him.

Man, I don't think I've laughed that much in approximately 14 days (but that's hardly fair, because I saw Tripod that night, so it lessens the impact of the statement). Mike and I got there fairly close to starting time, but not so late that we had to get separated seats. And we got to sit next to Mark and Sam, which was cool !!

Kitson came onto the stage, and it struck me that after I'd been laughing maniacally for about 15 minutes, the guy hadn't really said anything. Certainly not a joke teller; more of a storyteller, but he's got an amazing vocabulary, one hell of an attitude, and he gets distracted fairly easily too.

The thing which struck me most about the show though was how he made it pretty clear that he hated people (not the audience, obviously… just everyone else), but then he'd ask a general question of the crowd. Now, a few of them I had no idea how to answer, but the ones I did I kind of wondered about whether I should or not, because he'd just pretty well illustrated his contempt for human beings, which of course included me. When we were standing out the front afterwards he walked past, and we briefly thought about accosting him, but then decided against it, because there was a good chance our mundane dialogue might just bore him senseless.

Anyway, it was an awesome show – one of his recurring points was that he hates being asked by journalists: “So, how would you describe your style of comedy ?”, because as journalists, describing things is primarily THEIR job. After some discussion he ends up offering “It's like a fat dog raping a cake”. And to be perfectly honest, I can't think of any other description myself. At the end of it all I found myself wishing it was a longer show, because I could listen to the guy for hours.

My only real regret thereafter was that I didn't have the time or the money to go to the Melbourne Comedy Festival.

2004-03-12 : Experiments in the Kitchen that you should avoid: Ch. 1
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