Day Four, Cairns: Sweet Reef

Let's start with the massage. As I type this, I've got four hot eucalyptus patches burning holes into my shoulders and lower back, working their secret, ancient magic. It feels good, I think. I just hope I don't lose too much skin tomorrow morning when these puppies come off.

After performing in front of a sold-out crowd at the Civic Centre, post-gig night massage (at Cairns's famous Night Markets) was a level of rock star* luxury I couldn't pass up. As was purchasing the burning eucalyptus patches. When my day started, I never could have anticipated that it would end with a young South Korean man digging his elbows into my buttocks, but I suppose life is full of surprises.

I enjoy massage, I think. To be honest, I can never just fully relax and get into it, as at least 35% of my attention is reserved for observing and commenting on the experience. During a massage, my inner monologue goes a little something like: "Oh, okay. This is how it starts. Right. That's a lot harder than I thought he would-- oh, that tickles. I didn't know I was ticklish there. How can it kind of hurt and tickle at the same time? Is that good? Is that helping or making it worse? And now...okay...that was a crack. He's cracking my back now. Right. Okay. And now, he's moving further down. Interesting. Are those his elbows? Is he using his elbows? That feels like elbows. Those are definitely elbows. Jesus, how far in is he gonna go with-- oh, okay. Just to there. Yeah, I guess that's fine. Massage. This is a massage. I am getting a massage right now."

The other thing that happens when I get a massage is, I fall a little bit in love. I'm sure it's just the intimate nature of human touch triggering certain pleasure centers in my brain. At least, that's what I'd like to think and not just that I am overly emotional and perhaps starved for affection. When this young man massaged my hands, part of me was thinking, "That feels very nice. I love this. Well, I guess I have a boyfriend now. I hope we're always together, just like this, and our relationship never ends. I love him. He's my boyfriend."

I have to say, that massage was sweet reef. Sweet reef, if you don't already know**, is the cool new way to say that something is fantastic. Let's say you don't go to the falafel place I went to for dinner tonight, where the guy is mean and has no front teeth and threatens not to serve you if you don't want the wrap and only want the falafel on a plate and then, only after your male comedian friends step up and get involved, he finally relents and serves you falafel on a plate but puts so many raw onions on the plate (a truly ridiculous heap of raw onions) that you're certain this is his subtle way of continuing to be an asshole about the fact that you don't want a wrap as if your inability to digest wheat products is somehow a personal affront to him and his entire falafel business, and instead of doing what I did, you go somewhere else and have a delicious falafel. You might say of that delicious falafel, "Dude, that falafel was sweet reef." Meaning, of course, that it was one delicious falafel, and that its falafelness was as falafelly as it could possibly get. Sweet reef.

I came up with this little slice of slang (which I do truly hope will catch on, and spread) while snorkeling at the Great Barrier Reef today. Now, THAT was sweet reef. I feel like I don't have the brain power at the moment to try to assemble the most precisely evocative words with the proper amount of poetry to communicate what a truly unique, beautiful, and awesome experience it was. Instead, I'll chuck some words at you and let you fill in the gaps: amazing, trippy, slightly terrifying, parrot fish, finding Nemo, colorful, sticky intestines, floating, mild panic, wave-slapped, spit, sunblock, giant clam.

I do feel changed by the experience, but that might just be because MY FOREHEAD IS DENTED FROM WHERE THE SNORKELING MASK WAS. Still. Like, visibly and tangibly dented. It's been nearly twelve hours since I've taken off the snorkel mask, and yet my forehead is not only dented, but sports a horizontal red line. Snorkeling at the Great Barrier Reef was a great experience, but I'm less and less sure it was worth permanent facial damage.

Or maybe it was. It's not everyday one is on a boat before 8 a.m., being enthusiastically yelled at by abnormally cheerful young folk, while they shove used and moist apparel in one's face. "Good mornin'! How you goin' today! You ready to get out there and see the reef!" I replied as I thought we were meant to (and really, as the energy of the situation warranted) with a big ol' "WOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" I was the only one who attempted to match the skippers' joie de vivre, though. The other 30 or so people on the boat just eyed me sleepy-eyed and suspiciously.

As did this gentleman, as I tried (and I suspect failed) to covertly take his picture.



He's not one of the young, chipper chaps and gals in board shorts and polo shirts, but he's still representative in his own way of the type of people this sort of business attracts. This was the guy trying to rent us underwater cameras for the day. Note the blond dreads. Note the beaded bracelets. Note the weathered skin and general resignation trying to pass as relaxation that maybe life didn't turn out quite like he thought it was going to. Dude, whatever. I'm gonna slap on some sunglasses and just be with the fish, man. Be with the freakin' fish.

You might think, it being fa' no'th Queensland and all, that we'd be given a quick lesson about or at least a placard indicating all the dangerous creatures we might encounter while floating alone in the depths of the ocean, and the various injuries those dangerous creatures could inflict. Nope. What we got was this form to sign.



I'm not sure if it's legible, but I'm pointing out two little words on the form there. Those two little words are "WRONGFUL DEATH." As in, I will not hold Cairns Diving Centre (CDC pty ltd) responsible for any of the following blah blah blah blah blah....including WRONGFUL DEATH. Hmm. I'll just go ahead, jump to a few conclusions, and assume that this expedition could get a smidge dangerous. Thanks for the heads up, CDC.

The lecture we did get was about swimming. "Captain Klaus," a prematurely wrinkled man of about 45, took us snorkelers up to the deck, and asked those of us that could swim to raise our hands. "Hmm, I see," he said, surveying us while he paced back and forth. "You can swim." And that's when his voice changed. "You know what? THAT'S THE BIGGEST LIE I'LL HEAR ALL DAY!" He snorted. "You can swim. Where can you swim, in a pool?" he asked derisively. "Well, this isn't a god damn pool! This is the ocean! The ocean! The ocean doesn't care if you can do some pansy-ass doggie paddle in a pool. That won't cut it in the ocean. You better change your attitude RIGHT NOW! I'm looking at all of you, and all I see are liabilities. I consider you all liabilities. You can swim? Please."

Captain Klaus was quite a change from the chipper kids, but I appreciated the contempt in which he seemed to hold us, his paying customers. He then went on to ask us each where we were from, seemingly interested in small talk, but only reeling us in for further humiliation.

"Where are you from?" he asked me.
"Oh, the U.S.," I said.
"And where in the U.S?"
"New York."
"New York..." he paused, and for a moment I thought he was going to say something like, "Oh, I spent some time there," or "That's a nice place." Instead he barked, "That's pretty far from the ocean!" I am not exaggerating when I tell you he had the same exchange with each of us, individually. "Where are you from? Where in England? Manchester? That's pretty far from the ocean!"

And fair enough. The ocean was pretty choppy today, and we were getting tossed around like cliched sexist jokes at a taping of Two and a Half Men. Which is to say, a fair bit. I did have one small moment of panic (fine, among quite a few small moments of panic) when I was headed back to the boat for lunch, having been the last one left out on the seas. After drifting quite far away, lost in my own wondrous underwater world, I started swimming toward the boat and realized a little too late that I might not have left myself enough mental and physical strength to battle the waves. I briefly considered calling for a life ring, but decided no, I'm not that weak. If I have to, I will just sink and die right here near the Great Barrier Reef. It's been a good day, and I've seen some amazing sights, and if I can't make it back to the boat, well, I'm at one with Nature now. I get it. Natural selection. Take me if you have to, Nature. You win this round.

Obviously, I did find the inner strength to flipper my way back to the boat. The question now is, do I have the inner strength to keep writing about today? And, you know, I don't think I do. I'm massaged and patched-up and forehead-dented and happy and exhausted. So I'll leave you here. May your tomorrow be sweet reef.

*If "rock star" luxury means it costs $15 and happens in what's really a glorifed strip mall.

**i.e., if you're not one of the 3 other people that went snorkeling with me today.

Day Two, Cairns: Moderate Stinger Risk

Let me dive right into it. I know you're all wondering what became of Pab "Poontang is the shit" lo.

(Wow. This is where I paused for about 2 minutes, thinking that that sentence could be a really cool start to a novel. (And this is where I paused for about 45 seconds, thinking how much I don't enjoy when the same word repeats itself in a sentence, even when that word makes sense, as in the above "that that" example. (And this is where I paused for about 25 seconds, wondering if my penchant for parenthetical thoughts ever gets annoying. (And this is where I paused for about 12 seconds, deciding that it doesn't.))))

So, Pablo. Sam did indeed bring him on stage, where he was allowed to utter four words only. I'm sure you can imagine what those words were. The folks seated in the Cairns Civic Centre paying upwards of $30 a ticket didn't find the exchange quite as hilarious as we did the night before, but Pablo did indeed have his moment to shine.

Today, a bunch of us piled in the ride and headed off to Palm Cove, a swank little beach town about 25 minutes from downtown Cairns. It was on the way to Palm Cove, when I found myself worrying about whether or not I had enough sunscreen and/or whether or not there would be sufficient shade and/or whether or not I could refill my water bottle and/or whether or not I would want an extra towel so that I'd have one to dry off on and one to lay on the beach with, that I had to admit to myself that I am not, by nature, a laid-back, beach-going type of person. No one has ever accused me of being "easy-going." I've never been leaning back, smoking a joint, listening to The Steve Miller Band and going, "Yeah. I relate to that shit." I don't even own a pair of sunglasses. When it's sunny, what I do is, I take off my regular glasses, and then I squint and occasionally complain.

I'd love to be the gal that just slaps on a tank top and flip-flops down to the shore, body board balancing atop tan and muscular shoulder. But that is not who I am. I only wear tank tops indoors, flip-flops hurt my sensitive widdle toes, I've never body boarded and my shoulders are pale and pokey, like anemic triangles or Kristen Stewart's ears. Years ago, I would have felt like admitting all this was limiting. Today, I feel like it's liberating.

So, here we go: I like the beach, but I am not good at it. I do not enjoy being hot. I do not enjoy getting sunburn. I do not enjoy the feeling of sand in my orifices. What I do enjoy is reading in the shade, and that's what I do at the beach. I could put an ocean sounds CD on in a library and have pretty much the same day.

Palm Cove, though, is lovely. In fact, as this sign attests, it's the cleanest beach in Australia:



Or was, seven years ago in 2003. Here's another sign, graphically detailing the dangers of beach-going in Australia:



"Marine stingers may be present in these waters." "Crocodiles may be present in these waters." Just so you know, beach-goers. See this silhouette of a many-tentacled jellyfish and this silhouette of a sharp-toothed, squinty-eyed crocodile? Well, your imminent death MAY be present in these waters. Severe maiming MAY be in your near future. You can't say you weren't warned.

Oh, and just in case you aren't quite clear on what's happening, here's today's stinger risk:



Moderate. Not negligible, but not outrageous. You know, moderate. Average. Today's stinger risk is moderate. It's adequate. It's fair. There is a fair chance you will get stung by a marine creature. Today. In these waters. It is a risk, moderately.

I'd never heard the term "stinger risk" before, and I like it. I'd like to chop the apostrophe s off that sign, so it would read like a rock club marquee. Today: STINGER RISK. "Stinger Risk? No way! The way they play the nematocysts is so wicked, man."

Oh, and speaking of Wicked, check out this Wicked Camper Van I spotted today:



Inspect Her Gadget! Get it? It's like Inspector Gadget, but kinda sexist. I wonder what other nostalgic cartoon characters they tried to turn into perverts before settling on that one. Flasher Gordon? Scoob her doo? Monchichis? (Obviously, the Monchichis do not need to be altered to sound dirty, combining as they do the sound of both "munch" and "chichis.")

While at the beach, I also saw the whitest two people I have ever seen anywhere.



Of course, I had to pretend to be capturing the picturesque surrounds in order to snap that photo for you. Here I am, claiming mild outrage at Inspect Her Gadget while meanwhile, I'm clickety-clacking away at girls in bikinis on the beach. Well, just another day in the life of bloggin' for DeAnne Smith.

And I'll leave you with a photo of this little guy, who we met on the way to Palm Cove. This is exactly who I want to be if I'm ever reincarnated: the happiest dog in the world.



Goodnight, eyes in space. More tomorrow.

Day One, Cairns: "Poontang is the Shit"

Greetings from tropical fa' no'th Queensland!

I've decided, internet friends, that this year while on the Melbourne International Comedy Festival Road Show, I will blog daily. "Daily?!" you say. "But we are so used to your sporadic and haphazard tri-monthly blogging schedule. A daily blog will blow our tiny minds!" Well, then, unzip your skulls and lean back in sweet anticipation, readers, because your tiny minds are about to be blown.*

In an effort to be unburdened and carefree, I didn't take my camera into the Cairns CBD (a well-intentioned mistake I will not make twice, much like shaking hands with homeless people), so in lieu** of Cairns photos, here is a grainy picture of me, solemnly swearing to blog daily.



Daily, I say!

So, Cairns. We got in around 5, not that I would totally know, since I seem to have lost my watch this morning. I have some hope that I've absent-mindedly stashed it away or that it's fallen into a bag somewhere, as its disappearance defies logic. Check this out: last night, I was inside my home with my watch on. This morning, my watch was nowhere to be found. I'm afraid I can neither quickly nor succinctly explain to you how disturbing I find this. But I will try my darnedest, which is what this daily blog is all about. I've done a lot of soul-searching in the hours since the lost watch incident, and I think these equations most accurately convey my feelings:

my watch = small attempt at appearing fashionable + sense of control + accomplishment

(I have wrists small enough to warrant unsolicited comments from strangers, so finding a time piece that does not make them and therefore my entire self look ridiculous is no small feat.)

lost watch = reversion to former stark and unadorned nerdiness + chaos x general sadness at growing realization of own mortality

I will say, however, that watching Invictus on the plane helped put the lost watch into perspective. At the end of the day, it is just a lost watch, not, say, 27 years of wrongful imprisonment.

Back to Cairns. First, we ventured into the Night Markets. If you find yourself in Cairns between 4:30 and 11 p.m., and you have a hankering for any of the following:

-novelty t-shirts
-macadamia "sensations"
-opal jewelry
-fried, MSG-laden seafood dishes of indiscriminate origin
-$15 massage
-anything made from kangaroo scrotum

then the Night Markets are for you!

My favorite*** stand in the Night Markets is the "Healthy Gourmet Grill," which proudly serves large tubs of chips (that's french fries to you North Americans), various meats in sauces, battered mystery chunks, corn, and peas. When I asked the girl working if there was any MSG in the food, she replied, "Emesgee? No, sorry. We don't have emesgee." A quick check with the man behind the counter confirmed that there was MSG in everything, including the vegetables. The vegetables! Mmm mmm. Because you know what goes great with corn? Heart palpitations and swollen extremities!

Then, after a quick stop back at the hotel-- actually, no. I'm going to have to take a minute to tell you about the infestation in my room. My room (308, if you wanna stop by with some Raid) is overrun with the smallest ants in existence. Tiny, tiny, tiny ants that are at this very moment crawling in and out of my bag of Goji berries.**** Teeny, eensy weensy ants that I accidentally ingested while eating a handful of Goji berries earlier. Miniscule, nearly microscopic ants that I then ingested out of spite once I realized they were also on the gluten-free coconut raspberry cupcake I brought all the way from Sydney. You may have ruined my Goji berries, impossibly infinitesimal ants, but you will not ruin my cupcake! And guess what? I don't regret one delicious bite. If ever again I am faced with a choice between not eating a cupcake or eating ants, my decision is crystal clear. I almost enjoyed the extra protein. I almost wish I had to make that choice every day. Hear that, you little jerks? Bring it on!

And as long as I'm admitting unsavory character traits, here's something: I watched ten minutes of an episode of iCarly in my room today. Sample dialogue:

Carly's Plucky Blond Friend: Oh my god, he's so hot I wanna bake cookies on him.
Carly: I would eat those cookies.
Canned Laughter: [Canned Laughs.]

But Cairns! We're in Cairns! Okay, so after a quick stop back at the ol' ant pit, we headed back out into the sultry, tropical night.

A member of the tour (who shall remain nameless. We'll call him "Weed") sauntered up to a group of youth (G.O.Y.) and in the fastest street deal I have ever witnessed, scored a certain substance (that shall remain nameless. We'll call it "Dan"). Now, normally I would not consider this transaction particularly blog-worthy, if it weren't for what happened next.

We continued on, and after crossing some sketchy railroad tracks and hacking our way through the bushy median in the road, we made it to our destination, The Green Ant. (Jesus, they're everywhere!) And who was seated there, in the middle of a birthday toast and subsequent slurred rendition of the Happy Birthday song? The G.O.Y! How the G.O.Y. managed to beat us there without us noticing them along the way is as mysterious to me as my lost watch.

[moment of silence]

One of the G.O.Y., Pablo, was celebrating his nineteenth birthday, and insisted on proving this to us by flashing his driver's license.***** He was visibly shocked and upset to learn that our group was "in our 30s." I believe his response was: "WHOA!" So notable was this fact to young Pablo, that it became our introduction. "This is my friend Mike," he said to us, when his friend joined the table. And to Mike, he said, "These guys are 30." No names, just a general ballpark age. We smiled and waved.

Pablo then proceeded to hit us with the inside scoop on Cairns. We should go to a place called The Wool Shed. We should go to a place called Velvet. We should go on a Thursday, especially if we want to get some poontang. Then, Pablo leaned in and conspiratorially whispered, "Poontang is the shit."

Poontang is the shit.

And with that bit of wisdom from a newly-turned-19-year-old, I will leave you for tonight.

Feel free to tingle with anticipation about tomorrow night's installment, in which we will follow up with Pab "Poontang is the shit" lo. See, at some point during the evening, Sam Simmons invited Pablo to get up on stage with him tomorrow, and while some might consider this a half-hearted joking gesture, I think it's going to happen. We'll find out.

Oh, and also, Cairns has gigantic bats.


*This is/was an attempt at a dirty joke, i.e., having your mind "blown." Get it? I'm not sure I do.

**I went through every possible combination of the last three letters of that word before finally settling on the correct one.

***Sometimes I pretend things are my favorite when they are, in fact, highly disappointing to me. It's just a little game I play with myself, and the reason I keep watching Woody Allen movies.

****You can understand that anyone who travels with their own bag of Goji berries would be crushed (crushed!) to learn that a place called Healthy Gourmet Grill is, in fact, none of those things.

*****If anyone out there is interested in counterfeiting, you might want to start with Queensland licenses. They look really easy to fake. Just saying.