Todd Pierce

Category: Sketch

  • When you’re still on book and you’re a month out, here’s a hot tip: Go to Bali and listen to recordings of yourself beside the pool.

    I’m writing this retrospectively after the show run. And out of order too as it turns out.

    You have a choice. Get serious and learn your lines, or go on holiday for a week.

    It’s a tough choice. So yeah, why not both? Read your lines on the plane, read your lines in your room, read your lines beside the pool, read your lines when you’re out for dinner…

    Here’s a tip, cadets! Don’t run down to the pool straight after breakfast and ask your partner to help you read lines. If it is before noon it, will not end well.

    But the show is called Born Annoying for a reason. As an annoying person, expect rejection.

    Pre-record yourself reading your lines and listen along with noise cancelling headphones. You didn’t want to hear those other people anyway. Maybe it will soak into your head. I don’t know – I’m not a neurosurgeon.

    It’s an annoying podcast featuring yourself. But you get to have a Bintang with a negroni chaser beside the pool.

    A Bintang with negroni chaser beside the pool. Enjoy it, because while you’re on holiday in Bali..

    You’re going to have to get real.

  • I have a serious problem with writing complicated props and costumes into my sketches part two or how to create a stupid car hat

    Yes, I’m at it again. More props. This time it’s a car hat. Don’t ask why. Come to the show and all will be revealed.

    Step one. Take a cardboard box that is about the size of a hat and roughly shape it into something that you hope sort of looks like a car.

    Papier mache that bad boy. I had a moulded shape of my head left over from the imapala hat process, so I taped it into the underside for that smooth, smooth hat fit that you have come to expect.

    Make some cardboard wheels, and paint the whole thing. OMG! That’s so realistic!!! Is that a real car on your head? Don’t patronise me, I know what it is.

    Note: my tongue is doing that because I’m making car noises.

  • Surprise visit to emergency room affords me the opportunity to have a short staycation to recharge the batteries

    A whirlwind week of medical tests ended in a couple of days in hospital. I didn’t need the distraction or the drama, but man it’s nice to be forced to have a break.

    Went to the GP with a list of intermittent minor problems:

    1. Nausea after poopies
    2. Sore hip
    3. Unimportant occasional slight shortness of breath when exercising

    I suggested the GP choose two out of the three. He picked 2 and 3. Apparently breathing issues are existential, and poopies are just poopies. Ah well, next time, poopies! He sent me off for bloodwork, as well as a chest x-ray, a hip x-ray and an ultrasound.

    The blood results suggested clotting. Is there anything blood doesn’t know? Anyway now I needed a chest MRI. So I got one!

    Long story short, the radiologist said it’s multiple pulmonary emboli. Hang on, that’s called pulmonary embolism or blood clots in your lungs! He told me to go to emergency immediately. I was pretty sure he knew better than me about such matters, so I complied.

    Yay! Here I am enjoying myself immensely in hospital, thinking about delicious hospital sandwiches.

    So I had a lovely overnight staycation. Lots of lovely doctors and nurses put up with me for the night and sent me out with a treatment plan and a promise of improvement.

    Yes it’s somewhat serious! But not “cancel the show” serious. Some slight modifications will be required, but hopefully it will be largely unchanged. A bit less jumping, perhaps.

    It’s also not “cancel your holiday” serious. Here I am getting ready to learn some lines beside a pool somewhere.

    PS: The nausea is probably lactose intolerance. The sore hip is gluteus minimus tendonosis.

    End.

  • I have a serious problem with writing complicated props and costumes into my sketches, or how to make papier mache antelope horns

    I have a serious problem with writing complicated props and costumes into my sketches, or how to make papier mache antelope horns

    I wanted to make some antelope horns for a sketch in my show Born Annoying. So I put fingertips and rubbed the sides of my head for luck, and this is what I came up with. I think it works pretty good.

    Getting the correct shape for the horns took a bit of thinking. I tried cardboard, I tried foam, but they didn’t work. Then I figured on softening and bending taper candles. I could papier mache over the top, then melt the wax. Pictured here I have softened the candled and carfeully wrapped them around a stick as desired.

    Here I am multitasking. The hat bit is cling wrap, with layers of tissue paper and craft glue. The horns are well underway, with layers of tissue paper. I also fixed old toilet roll insides to the base for attaching to the hat bit later.

    To create realistic ribbing for the horns, I wrapped twine around the horns. Later I continued to apply more layers of tissue paper and watered down craft glue.

    As you can see, I also drank coffee. Plus I just noticed all those bottles of booze shaming up the background.

    Here are the horns glued and taped to the hat bit, with more and more layers of tissue paper and craft glue to hold them on better.

    Not pictured is the bit where I melted the wax out of the horns. I did this in the oven, set on 100 c, with a bent coat hanger holding the horn upright, where the wax could drip into an oven tray and ruin it completely. A small price to pay.

    I painted the horms with acrylic paint to look nice and shmick!

    Next I bought this fur fabric and begged my partner to stick the fur on top. I think my begging did a pretty good job.

    We decided to add the ears too to help soften the devillish vibe.

    You’ll have to come to the show to see this prop in action.

  • The first post is always about your declaration to start a blog or a diary and this post is no exception

    I decided to start a blog diary about my debut Melbourne Fringe show. It’s for my personal use, but you can read it too.

    I’m going to use it cathartically, as a thing to help me decompress when I’m feeling squished. I’m going to use it as a reminder about why I wanted to do this show in the first place. And I’m going to use it as a warning (or welcome) sign for future generations of noobs, to stop (or start) them making the same foolish mistakes that I made.

    So here we are at the start. An unfunny post about comedy.

    There was a time when dark thoughts followed dark events and led me to feel like I should not be funny, and that I should never have tried.

    I was planning for some solo guitar gigs and I signed up for improv classes, wanting to improve my stage banter.

    I don’t want to say improv saved my life, but it changed my course. I started writing again, and I was surprised. I liked it. It was effortless, and satisfying. And I started performing, without the stress and anxiety I felt performing music.

    I realised that if you feel good trying to make people laugh, you were probably born annoying and you should just roll with it.

    Ah, so that’s why I’m doing this show!