19th April 2014 - 8:30 pm
I don't enjoy being preached to. That's one of the over riding things that I thought coming out of Ballard's show.
Wil Anderson often bangs on about his personal beliefs and thoughts on the world and what not. Though he usually qualifies his statements by saying that it's his own thoughts.
Tom Ballard's core idea in his show was good.
It's basically a slideshow through a trip around Australia he did when he was a kid, ending for him and his brother at least on the Gold Coast and beginning in Warrnambool, going all the way up to Darwin and then across to Brisbane and "Hollywood on the Gold Coast".
If only he'd stuck to those ideas.
To be fair on him the audience was some somewhat reticent to laugh. It was Easter Saturday and we're edging into winter. Also the Melbourne Town Hall council chambers are not exactly designed for performance. It’s a nice room, though probably not for comedy.
At the end of the show Ballard said that there'd be a bucket or some sort of receptacle for the audience to put some loose change in to be donated to a charity for asylum seekers.
It was this and how this subject tied into his show that I have an issue with. If I'm seeing a show that makes its philosophical leanings clear then that's fine. But there's nothing really on his MICF page that indicates this.
Ballard himself says something of the effect that whatever beliefs people have is their own concern. Believe what you want.
I imagine that to extend to having your own philosophy.
I didn't appreciate the guilt tripping at the end, the suggestion that we *should* give some change.
I will give to charity, I give to organisations I believe in. I had already given to Capril, the charity Steele Saunders champions on I Love Green Guide Letters, because I believe in that and his offer wasn't...I don't want to say hollow but...
Steele Saunders, at the start of I Love Green Guide Letters and in his tweets mentioned Capril (which is about raising awareness of depression & other mental illness).
At the end of the podcast recording he encouraged everyone to give their change to Capril into the bucket at the door.
He also said the podcast would match any donations.
I had already decided to give money (all the change in my wallet essentially) but that offer showed conviction to the charity.
While Ballard's, I just found a little bit hollow and guilt tripping.
What content in his show related to his offer that we could give some money wasn’t convincing enough for me to give and I felt guilt tripped into it.
Going back to his show, I enjoyed it.
But I didn't really enjoy it.
It made me laugh, but there were very few insights into him or his life.
I wanted to like it, I liked his show last year.
I think that’s it, I wanted to like it a lot more than I actually did.
The basic idea of the show was a good one, but the execution was a little bit too linear. While I do like a good narrative which are in general a linear affair this was a little too so.
His road trip in the mid-90s resonated, I had had similar experiences in the past, going to Movie World, doing the theme parks. Some of his photos (on his slide projector) looked like my family’s photos.
I should have liked it a lot more than I did.
I kinda feel that with so much gold from his and his brother’s diary that there could have been more to the story than what was told.
Hannah Gadsby also had some photos from her childhood, and wrapped them up into a show. Although hers was also about art.
Ballard himself says his brother’s diary of the trip was a ‘comedy gold mine’. But while many of the insights were funny, it was more like a silver mine where you occasionally find some gold than a constant stream of gold ore.
I don't enjoy being preached to. That's one of the over riding things that I thought coming out of Ballard's show.
Wil Anderson often bangs on about his personal beliefs and thoughts on the world and what not. Though he usually qualifies his statements by saying that it's his own thoughts.
Tom Ballard's core idea in his show was good.
It's basically a slideshow through a trip around Australia he did when he was a kid, ending for him and his brother at least on the Gold Coast and beginning in Warrnambool, going all the way up to Darwin and then across to Brisbane and "Hollywood on the Gold Coast".
If only he'd stuck to those ideas.
To be fair on him the audience was some somewhat reticent to laugh. It was Easter Saturday and we're edging into winter. Also the Melbourne Town Hall council chambers are not exactly designed for performance. It’s a nice room, though probably not for comedy.
At the end of the show Ballard said that there'd be a bucket or some sort of receptacle for the audience to put some loose change in to be donated to a charity for asylum seekers.
It was this and how this subject tied into his show that I have an issue with. If I'm seeing a show that makes its philosophical leanings clear then that's fine. But there's nothing really on his MICF page that indicates this.
Ballard himself says something of the effect that whatever beliefs people have is their own concern. Believe what you want.
I imagine that to extend to having your own philosophy.
I didn't appreciate the guilt tripping at the end, the suggestion that we *should* give some change.
I will give to charity, I give to organisations I believe in. I had already given to Capril, the charity Steele Saunders champions on I Love Green Guide Letters, because I believe in that and his offer wasn't...I don't want to say hollow but...
Steele Saunders, at the start of I Love Green Guide Letters and in his tweets mentioned Capril (which is about raising awareness of depression & other mental illness).
At the end of the podcast recording he encouraged everyone to give their change to Capril into the bucket at the door.
He also said the podcast would match any donations.
I had already decided to give money (all the change in my wallet essentially) but that offer showed conviction to the charity.
While Ballard's, I just found a little bit hollow and guilt tripping.
What content in his show related to his offer that we could give some money wasn’t convincing enough for me to give and I felt guilt tripped into it.
Going back to his show, I enjoyed it.
But I didn't really enjoy it.
It made me laugh, but there were very few insights into him or his life.
I wanted to like it, I liked his show last year.
I think that’s it, I wanted to like it a lot more than I actually did.
The basic idea of the show was a good one, but the execution was a little bit too linear. While I do like a good narrative which are in general a linear affair this was a little too so.
His road trip in the mid-90s resonated, I had had similar experiences in the past, going to Movie World, doing the theme parks. Some of his photos (on his slide projector) looked like my family’s photos.
I should have liked it a lot more than I did.
I kinda feel that with so much gold from his and his brother’s diary that there could have been more to the story than what was told.
Hannah Gadsby also had some photos from her childhood, and wrapped them up into a show. Although hers was also about art.
Ballard himself says his brother’s diary of the trip was a ‘comedy gold mine’. But while many of the insights were funny, it was more like a silver mine where you occasionally find some gold than a constant stream of gold ore.