Tag: Adelaide

Finishing Line

Well, the Adelaide run is over, and while I didn’t get as many bums on seats as I might have hoped, you bums who did turn up seem to have (mostly) loved the show. Check out the reviews on TalkFringe – you guys put me in the top 50 shows on the site!

Thanks to everyone who made it along. I can confirm there are more shows in the works, though I’ll be sitting out the Comedy Festival – these things are expensive to get into!

And please remember, if you have any questions, queries, suggestions or even erudite criticisms for the Man in the Lab Coat, please please send them along to ben@benmckenzie.com.au. My ears and eyes are always open.

Adelaide tales

Thanks to all who came along to the Adelaide premiere of Evolutionary last night; if you went and you’re reading this, why not rate the show and give some feedback on the talkfringe web site?

In an update on the germ warfare front, the little fellas are tenacious, I’ll give them that. There’s a possibility the throat goblins are viral, in which case the antibiotics will do nothing to slow them down, but I did manage almost the entire show last night without going hoarse, even if I paid for it this morning. But don’t worry, lab coat fans – science will prevail.

Oh, I forgot to mention: if you’re reading this blog and want to bring your friends along, then you can get yourself some cheaper tickets by booking a group of 10 or more and giving the password “Erasmus” – $10 tickets for everyone who does so! And all because you love the lab coat. Or potentially love the lab coat. I’m hopeful you will, and even possibly the man inside it.

Here’s an experiment you can try at home.

Just to show me they appreciate their starring role in my show, a bunch of microorganisms have decided to swarm and multiply in my throat, first making their presence felt at 5am on the morning I left for Adelaide. I’m booked in to see a doctor today; we’ll see how the little rascals do trying to evolve their way around some antibiotics…

The problem is, of course, that some bacteria have evolved resistance to antibiotics. Remember, these microscopic villains reproduce incredibly quickly; even though some species do not reproduce sexually (and therefore lack the sophisticated variation of those who do), they still have more than enough variation through simple mutation over the millions of individual organisms and hundreds or thousands of generations that are currently living inside me to have a fair crack at it.

But never fear; the Man in the Lab Coat’s mighty constitution (at least 14, for the D&D nerds out there) is up to the task of battling these foul invaders, even if medical science isn’t. The corpuscles are massing, indeed the offensive has already begun, and come Friday my sweet voice shall be unadulterated by germs.

See you all at the show!

Evolution Sunday: Wow.

In case you haven’t heard, Evolution Sunday is the latest part of the Clergy Letter Project, a collection of clergymen who are standing up to be counted and insisting that Darwinian evolution via natural selection is perfectly compatible with Christian faith. On Evolution Sunday, preachers from around America spoke to their congregations about Darwin and his theory in a positive light.

One day, we’ll look back on this and wonder why it was all necessary. Seeing something like this makes me wonder why I spend so much time and energy promoting the idea of evolution, but the answer I always come back to is that it’s wonderful. It’s an elegant, beautiful, powerful idea that makes such amazing sense. I find wonder in it without any sort of religious connection, but I’ve no bone to pick with those who find wonder in both. The bone has always been with extremism – both the Creationist kind, and the kind that uses natural selection to justify rascist, classist or otherwise -ist nonsense. Slowly the power of that extremism is ending in America, though there’s still plenty where it came from.

Adelaide is two weeks away. Get yourselves ready.