Watch or listen to the stand-up comedy special 'Joy Harvest' (2012) by Arj Barker on Comedy Buff. Transcript available. Tracks include: Country Time Song, Alchemy of Joy, Intro (Star Wars), and Dust Storm.

Arj Barker

Joy Harvest

and now I'm going to fucking play a song this is a country song well I call it it's my own genre of music called country time which isn't quite music but it was inspired by my trip to Nashville and the beautiful music and amazing musicians I saw there I said damn it I want to try to write a country song so this is my effort it's basically it's about love and friendship two of my favorite things in the world but two things that don't always go well together and I hope you like it here we go people been saying you found someone new I can hear what they're saying but I can't believe it's true could you just walk away from all the fun we've had like the time we threw that scarecrow off the freeway overpass listen to me Craig I'm talking to you is this really how you want it to end because she might have a breast or two but she'll never have sword fights behind the shed used to go out drinking nearly every night at least three or four times a week I'd buy you lots of drinks and wait till you passed out then take pictures of my nutsack on your cheek I posted them on Facebook change your profile though it's complicated are these the type of good times you just let get confiscated because she might have a little t and a but she'll never hold you down and fart in your face and I will this is the part of the song where if I was a more shit-hot musician I'd probably kick it up a couple keys kicking it out here I'd be like but it's going to stay right the fuck where it was remember when I took that pet lizard from your house I put him in a styrofoam cup I tied that cup to a helium balloon and watched that little lizard going up you got real mad it said hey what's your problem I said take it easy man he's just doing his job he's a lizard astronaut and he'll be back next week and he promised that he'd bring back some important sky data like barometric pressure and cloud thickness you and her have a baby but what does that matter to me I've known you for 25 years my friend you've known that fucking baby for a week he might have a real nice face but she'll never hold you down and make you punch yourself why are you hitting yourself what would you do then are you mad at yourself and now you're using both hands she might have some real nice ways she'll never have sword fights behind the shed shed shed on guard thank you very much sydney thank you very much i love you australia good night thank you But I just like animals, and although I eat meat, and that's very hypocritical, and I'm the first to admit it, I really have a soft spot for animals.
I quit fishing because I started to feel weird when I pull the fish out and just see them flopping around like... It's like, "Jesus, fish. Take it easy. You act like you've never been outside before. It's like a really nice day and stuff." Then I thought, "Okay, I think fishing's exciting, but clearly the fish aren't that into it." Yet they call it a sport. But if fishing's a sport, I'm pretty sure one of the teams doesn't even fucking know it's playing.
And that's what bothers me a little bit about it, although I'm not judging anyone that fishes, but for me, golf's a better pastime because in golf, I'm not trying to kill something that's going about its day. The only thing I'm really trying to kill in golf is my own ego, because that's the problem. And that's why golf's so difficult, because you just get so mad so easy. And what golf taught me, and it's a great life skill, golf taught me how to take a negative and turn it into a positive.
And in golf, you have to do that nearly every hole. Like on the first hole, the ball went right into the sand trap, and I could get so angry there. Just the very start of the game, but instead I said, "Oh, the ball went in the sand trap. What a wonderful opportunity to practice hitting out of the sand." And I call this amazing technique the alchemy of joy, where you take a negative, rubbish, useless emotion and you turn it into a flowering, wondrous, gem-like emotion of joy and light and bliss.
And you need that in golf just to get through the 18 holes. Like on the fourth hole, I hooked it into some really tall grass. And it's a little embarrassing, but I actually said this out loud on the golf course. Thank you, ball. Thank you for going there. Because now I've got the opportunity to improve at hitting out of the rough. A necessary shot for any golfer to master. Alchemy of joy. And on the last hole, there was a pond.
A pond was only about 15, 20 meters across, which isn't very far in golf terms. And then it's all fairway. But most importantly, the pond is there. And the pond is there. Now, do you think I hit it over the pond? Because if you do, you don't know much about storytelling. As you can imagine, that ball went straight up and bloop, right into the middle of the pond. And I was, God, I was just so proud of myself, how I was able to handle that.
Because that should have been it for me, right? I should have completely melted down. But I actually said, "Oh, there it goes. There goes my last ball, right into the pond." And I couldn't be happier. Because now I've got the opportunity to acquire proficiency at throwing my entire set of clubs in the pond. While screaming, "This golf course and everyone on it can go fuck themselves as loud as I can."
Before getting arrested. Alchemy of joy. Oh, jail. What a great opportunity to confront my limitations. Alchemy of joy. Getting my ass kicked. I can't even think of a way to make that good. It's just bad. Give it up for Arch Barker! Thank you very much. Thank you. Good evening. Very happy to be here tonight in Sydney, one of the best cities that I play in and I love it. And I know some people are seeing me who've seen me before, but some people are seeing me for the first time.
And they might be wondering, "What's going to happen?" Well, let me tell you what's not going to happen. You're not going to see a bunch of bullshit. Because I worked too hard on my show to come up with innovative, creative material that you're not going to have to sit through some tired old airplane premises. You know, the kind of jokes you've heard a dozen times before. Stuff like, "Hey folks, what's with the black box, huh?"
Every time a plane goes down, they always recover the black box and it's working perfectly, right? So I'm thinking to myself, "Why don't they just build the whole goddamn airplane out of the black box?" "This shit's indestructible." Okay, it's actually a really good point, but that joke is like 30 years old. It's time to let it go. The new school of comedy is about coming from in here. And you can talk about what you did yesterday if you're going to make it good.
You know what I did? I just chucked in one of my favorite DVDs, one of the best movies of all time, 1977's Star Wars. And I love that movie because it's got heart. And my favorite scene, Luke Skywalker's attacking the Death Star. He's in his little ship and everybody's firing at him. And he's taking all kinds of fire and his friends are pressuring him. They're like, "Come on kid, you can do it kid.
It's up to you kid." And he's probably thinking, "Fuck, I didn't sign up for this shit." But instead, he reached down deep, and he found that inner strength that we all have. And he said, "All right, I got this." One shot. Into a hole like this big. And he fucked up the whole Death Star. And I saw that, I thought, "All right, that was a pretty good shot." And I'm glad he didn't miss because it would have been a way different movie if he had.
But you know what bothers me just a little bit about that scene? Is that ten minutes before that scene is a really iconic, famous scene where his friends were trapped in the trash compactor of the Death Star. The wall starts closing in on them. And they're freaking out because they don't want to get crushed. And then somebody had a pretty logical idea. They said, "We'll blast our way out." You know, took the pistol laser at the wall.
But the laser beam just went boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And ricocheted all off the walls and nearly killed everybody. So I'm sitting there watching it. I'm thinking to myself, "Why don't they just build the whole goddamn Death Star out of the trash compactor?" This shit's indestructible, people! All right, all right. We're off and running. That's my first joke.
And guess what? That joke just won an award at the Berlin Comedy Festival for the longest set-up. It's not the top prize, but I'll take it. And I love seeing the people of Sydney coming out and enjoying themselves. It shows what a survivor this city is. Hasn't even been a year since the terrible dust storm. And I think the dust storm was a real reminder just how fragile life is. And the dust storm taught us that we have to live each day to the fullest.
Because you never know when a big orange shit cloud is going to come out of nowhere and coat everything with a fine sediment. And that's why I thought it would be appropriate because we have over an hour together. Why not take less than a minute out of it to just reflect on those who weren't as lucky as you and I. The real victims of the dust storm. To just take a minute and hold them in our hearts.
Maybe somebody who had just washed their car that morning. Perhaps was trying to put on contact lenses with the windows open. And, wow, what the fuck? Did I use the wrong shit? Or maybe, and this is almost too terrible to even contemplate, but maybe somebody was trying to apply a new protective screen to their iPhone when it hit. And you only get one shot at that. And if you fuck it up, game over.
If you get one molecule of sediment under that thing, sayonara, sister. You got a bumpy iPhone for the next year. And there's no app for that. I've got a tiny bubble on my iPhone screen. It's like the upper right-hand corner where I must have fucked it up when I was laying down the little protective plastic bit. And it's probably the size of maybe three pinheads, you know, next to each other. It's tiny, but it's there.
And I probably spend between maybe one to three hours a day trying to squeegee it out with a credit card because I want my iPhone to be perfect. But it never works because there's no stickiness under it. It's never going to go away. And then I get pissed off and I feel like throwing my phone at a wall or throwing it in the ocean. But if I focus on the other 99.5% of my screen that's perfect, I feel perfectly happy.
You know, I'm just hanging out playing Angry Birds Halloween edition. You know, getting shit done. And so what that taught me is that about myself is that whatever I choose to focus on can actually dictate sort of my whole state of mind. And so I think that that's true for a lot of people too because I know some people that they're miserable all the time. And I think because they focus on something that bothers them, like the price of petrol.
There's always somebody moaning about the price of petrol. It doesn't matter what decade, what year it is, there's somebody who can't get over it walking around like, oh God, why is petrol so expensive now? I don't want to buy petrol anymore because it's so expensive to buy the petrol now. I don't even know what they're fucking talking about. The price of petrol never even changes. Every single day I go in there and I say, give me $5 on number seven.
Sometimes I got to go in there two or three times a day. The price never goes up a penny. And that's why sport is so powerful because if you're, are you a sports fan, sir? It's amazing because whatever kind of day you're having, maybe you got in a fight with your partner or your bills are stacking up. You're just in a bad mood. Then the game comes on and suddenly you're out of yourself. You know, forget about your troubles.
You're focusing on this positive endeavor, this communal effort, and it's such a powerful thing. It's such a positive thing, and it's just downright exciting. Sport is so exciting li