Best of the Fest (7th May 2009)

Another work from home Thursday for me and lovely Rosel popped over to catch up over lunch and brought me lunch too - aww, you're so sweet :) Thursdays was also when I have samba lessons with Clo, and as usual, drove over to Aro Valley Community Centre for my 6pm class. I was minding my own business, driving along in the traffic jam and pulled to a stop at the lights when a Red Bull car pulled up beside me. The girls in the car were waving at me to wind down my window. What happened next was both weird and funny - the Red Bull girl in the front passenger seat wind down her window and out came a fish net with a can of Red Bull inside! And sure enough, I took the free drink and laughed at what had just happened. The lights turned green and we drove along. One car behind me accelerated and zipped ahead to chase the Red Bull car for the free drink, both cars then causing a slight traffic delay as they did the fish net thing with several unhappy drivers honking at the hold up. Haha!

Samba class itself was alright. Still found it rather challenging and Clo would tease me a lot in class "Angelica, move more!" or "Angelica, need to move knees faster!". Eeks...

Caught up with Damien for dinner at La Casa Pasta on Dixon St after class. It was all very last minute and I already had a salad for dinner so just had cheescake for dessert while he had his meal. Hmm, neither of us could remember what the place was like but it sure looked much nicer now. Somehow have a vague memory that it was rather dimly light with a very different layout. Will need to come back to try their food another day.

Around 10pm, Damien dropped me off at San Francisco Bathhouse on Cuba St where I was catching up with Stacey and Bronwyn to see the Best of the Fest. Best of the Fest is a comedy show featuring the best local and internationl comics performing at this year's NZ International Comedy Festival and occurs every Thursday night for the next 3 weeks. I've never been to a stand up comedy show before so this was a first for me - really didn't know what to expect. All I know is it would be fun :) This festival occurs annually with shows from both local and international comedians held simulteneously in Wellington and Auckland for over 3 weeks. How could I have not attended any in the 7.5 years that I've lived here???

Wow, the queue into San Fran is so long! Lucky for me, I bumped into Flo, Colm and Rachel who were already in the queue and joined them...hehe...They were wearing santa hats they got from the previous comedy show at San Fran by comedian Jason Cook - funny! Flo had an extra hat in his bag so I had a blinking santa hat too, hehe!

Cost $15 door sales to the show. Stacey and Bronwyn already had a table so the rest of us joined them. Haha, they too were at the Jason Cook show earlier and had hats on - we were a whole table to santa hats! I will have to go see Jason Cook's show myself tomorrow since everyone had such a great time at the show. He was the comedian that had Lego man type of hair (bell-like haircut) and was the MC for tonight's Best of the Fest. Oh my god - I laughed SO much that I cried! He was SO funny, cracking the crowd up with jokes and playing around with the folks sitting near the stage. Note to self: never sit at the front in stand up comedy shows unless you want all the attention and be a subject of humour. We were fortunate to sit 3 rows back but still stood out thanks to our hats - almost every comedian that came out tonight had a comment or two about us :P Come to think of it, if we were to line up in twos in the dark, our hats would look like a tiny airstrip!

We had Jarrod Baker, Janey Godley and Chris Brain for the first half of Best of the Fest tonight. Most of us thought Jarrod Baker was bad - other than him ability to play the melodica well, he wasn't at all funny. Janey Godley, she was one provocative Scottish woman with lots of swearing but still funny (might check out her show tomorrow) and Chris Brain, was so-so. For the 2nd half, we had local Kiwi, Simon McKinney, and Canadian Jason Whitehead who were both awesome. I still like Jason Cook the best :) Must check him out tomorrow!

The show ended around 12.30am. It was supposed to end at 11.30pm (a 90-minute show) but the comedians just went on and on as the crowd asked for more. Felt tired but well worth all the laughter. Haven't laughed this hard and much for awhile! Really had a great time with awesome friends for my first stand up comedy show. Looking forward to more!

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