I've decided that variety is the spice of life, and that this space takes too long to load and is a bit clunky. I'll try blogging on myspace for a bit to see if it motivates me to be better at writing entries (It won't, I'll get bored too easily). But until I do get sleepy and hide under a bush, read about the exciting world of meness at http://www.myspace.com/fill_be

fun

Well, here it is, term has started, which means revision is underway. I've submitted my final bit of written coursework EVER for university. Everyone says "isn't it scarey?" but I don't think so. I feel the need for change, so every final thing completed is an extra release. Still got to to a bloody presentation to airbus, which is fair enough given that they sponsor our course and want to see some sort of results of their investment, but I wish it wasn't now. And then the project viva next week... oh when will this project finally leave me alone?

Last night was really cool, I went up to Lemmington Spa for my last comedy gig before I've finished uni , I've decided to drop it what with the exam things, and pick it up again in June. Good thing too 'cos already I'm not able to put the time into preparation that new material needs to make it spot on (more on that in a bit...)

The journey up was quite fun, I was sharing a lift with Simon Dunn and Iszi who were also on at the town of the lemming. They're very entertaining, a typical joker and straight man combo (never realised how funny simon can be just by watching him be wound up by little things, he'd be brilliant in a double act just doing that). We played exciting traveling games like 'horse'. Horse involves watching out for horses in nearby fields. when you see a horrse, you shout 'horse!' and point at the horse. whoever sees the most horses wins. I was a bit slow on the uptake of these complex rules so I came in third.

Got to the gig in pleanty of time, some drunkard shouted abuse at us in the street for no reason, and me and Iszi pretended to be Simon's body guards for a bit, which made him self conscious (that'll tech him). Venue was nice, the downstairs room of a scream pub, low ceiling, dimly lit, not too deep, pretty perfect for comedy. The audience was mainly Warwick uni people, which made me feel old, but they were really nice (if a bit quiet). My set went ok, it was more conversational stuff but for some reason I didn't really engague with the audience too well. ummed and erred a bit too much and didn't know the running order of the material so had to keep looking at my hand which I felt really unprofessional about but the majrity of the new material got a laugh. On impulse I finished on one of my older gags which I haven't done in a while. I switched round one of my favouite lines and it hit home like a lightning bolt which felt great, it's never got the response i felt it deserved, but an intelligent audience and nice atmosphere helped it along a treat. the rest of the story got a really good response and I realised that doing old material can feel good; there's no awkward feeling, I know the words, I know all the twists and call backs, it's reassuring, and if I'm sharing it with a new audience then it's still something new for them...

Iszi and simon each did solid sets and we hung rought for the headline act Gary Delany (sp?) who was brilliant, lots of very dark one liners which is nice and different from the stuff at the hatchet or on dvds. My face hurt from laughing, something I haven't had in quite some time.

So that was all a good experience, and I got £4 for the trouble (yay!), I can't wait til june now when exams finish. I've got a week to work on my material in preparation for the So You Think You're Funny competition regional heats in Bath on the 16th June. If I do well I could have some stage time in Edinburgh for the later heats! Watch this space .... it'll have some whinging about revision first, but still....

 

well, i suppose it's about time I wrote in this thingamy again.

 

It's Easter Sunday and I'm sitting in my flat. I would have gone home this weekend but got invited to see 'the cut', a play in the old vic with sir Ian Mckellen by lynne (lynne invited me, she didn't write the play). Was really good, though quite dark and generally too much of the F-word meant that the swearing lost some of the emphatic value after a while (though it is quality hearing Magneto shout "c*nty c*unt f*ck f*cker!"). I couldn't help thinking the writer had just got smashed and listened to an album by the Who (you, know, the one with 'behind blue Eyes' and 'won't get fooled again', i think it's "who's next") as the general story was the plaguing guilt and family life consequences of a man who is essentially an a-moral torturer. New governments and old ones are mentioned in passing, and Sir Ian always mentions that everything comes around in cycles, so i reckon that's it, and that times review that I just read that uses words like 'Orwellian' can shove it.

 

Everyone else is away and I feel very lonely. (one two three....Awwww!) but on the plus side I am finally getting some work done for project management.

 

This holiday's been a real waste, I feel down generally cos I haven't left the city in ages, haven't met any new and interesting people in too long, aren't achieving as much work as I'd like, aren't doing exercise, and generally I haven't a clue what I've really ACHIEVED since I last posted over a month ago (or indeed at all since about this time last year). I worked hard on my group project but I wasn't happy with my end contribution to it. I did do a stand up set last week which made me feel good about myself for a bit (new material that goes down well is always a big kick, old material doesn't cut even close) but that passed pretty quickly when I worked out that it's going to be pretty much impossible for me to get a first this year. That's fair really, I don't deserve one, but then thinking that just makes me feel more down and mr vicious cycle knocks on my door and asks me if i'd care to join him for a walk...

 

Still, I'm going to try and finish all my necessary work fairly early this week if possible and scoot off home for a few days. I haven't seen my cats in ages and there's nothing so reasuring as a truely thick creature that looks cute and thinks you're wonderful, and in the absence of a latvian blonde, it'll have to do.

 

In other news, I am now officially Older. I'm about 23 or so, but didn't make too much fuss for my birthday because I'm lazy, and despite the fact that I need to be the centre of attention to try and cheer up a bit I couldn't come up with anything more imaginative than a last minute trip to the pub. The brewery tap on park row is no longer serving smiles beer. :(

It was great of everyone who came to turn up and I hope they all had a nice time ;)

 

I bought myself things. With Money. I bought some DVDs (Green Wing series 1, Batman Begins and Sin City) all of which were very good, and a couple of CDs. I surprised myself by buying an album by Emiliana Torrini in Fopp for the princely sum of £10; I'd only heard one of her songs which was very nicey-nicey and I've had bad experience with doing this with artists based on 'nicey-nicey' songs (I heard a song by Norah Jones on an internet jazz radio station called 'day is done' and thought it was really good, saw one of her albums for £5 and though "why not". It bored the arse off me and I subsequently found out that 'day is done' doesn't actually appear on any released albums so i felt bummed).

The Torrini Album is something else though, Good variety in songs, nice balance of tonality, musical texture and pleasant tones of half icelandic inflection which make her singing interesting. Think Portishead but nicer. Apparently her second album is acoustic which half fills me with dread, but I live and prey it might be of a quality of 'summer breeze', the nicey-nicey song I first heard and liked.

 

 

Oh dear, two week before end of term and things are getting sticky. That's two weeks to write up my two personal projects and group report contribution, re-read and edit, polish up, print off and pray like a preist in a playground that it'll be well recieved. That'd be fine but there's a presentation and a poster to do as well. I'm writing lots, but I'm not convinced it fits together well, I keep scanning back over, thinking "that's B******s" and deleting, re-phasing and all the rest. I should just attack on section at a time really well, spaff out a load of words, then re-edit it later. I like editing, so that really is the best way of doing it, but it's really hard to stop myself editing incomplete work :S.

 

Ho Hum. I dare say it'll give me something to winge about in the next few weeks :S

 

So, what else is going on? lets do the dinner party conversations first.

Music: Nothing fundamentally new here. Started weening myself off the Detroit Cobras that Tim introduced me to a few months ago and are really fun and catchy. They cover a lot of 60's music but in an american garage rock style which is generally pretty good cos I recognise a few of the tunes (I managed to not notice 'Putty in your hands', a song covered by the yardbirds in about '65 and one of my faves, until it suddenly kicked in on one of the cobras albums which made me so fundamentally happy for about an hour or so). I've decided to listen to CDs more, mainly as the quality is definately better than mp3s, but also as it will make me listen to entire albums again rather than shove a load of stuff on shuffle, which is never as good.

When I was in Guildford a couple of weeks ago I bought the Tchaikovsky 1812 overture (which is wonderfully pompous, but I think deliberately a bit camp and taking the piss out of Bonepart) and some Bach (schoolboy error, i accidently bought C.P.E. not J.S., what a moron!) and another 'best of the yardbirds' cd. I don't know why I did this last one, there's about 5 tracks on it I didn't own already in some form or other and only two of those I think are any good. A cursory glance at the back of the case would have told me that it wasn't the Best of at all, no 'Shape of things' or ''Mr, You're a better man than I'', so quite plainly it was the 'best before Jimmy Page Joined" or something similar. Never mind, it was 3 CDs for £15 and that's what's important.

 

Books: Just finished the third book in Stephen Lawhead's 'pendragon' cycle. This has been my current charity shop campaign, I'll buy the next book in the series if i see it in the charity shop, but not otherwise. The first two books ('Taliesin' and 'Merlin') were alright, they had some nice touches here and there and filled an idle hour. not gripping page turning stuff, and some glaringly stupid things like mentioning potatoes in 6th century Britain and having battles with tens of thousands of people on either side (which just plain didn't happen too often, let alone every year, the population sizes were two small to susstain it (and I'm not going to touch on the supply chain infrastructure Noth of Hadriens Wall at that time).

Inthis one though,  Arthur pops up and the whole sory just jets really repetative: "those pesky Pict and Saxons, they outnumbered us ten to one but we gave them a good kicking because of our wonderful men. and Merlin Prayed a bit. Then everyone important survived. then we went back home for winter and the other british kings were petty and scheming. Then the pict started getting lary again so..." BLAH BLAH BLAH absolutely no attempt at characterisation or anything, just some spaffing half considered stuff about the spread of christianity and what a nice bloke arthur was and how Merlin's mum was quite fit. weird.

I'd recommend Bernard Cornwell's "Warlord" trillogy as being better by a country mile should you want a retelling of the arthurian story. It's much more cynical, realistic and original despite pleanty of references to the folk stories.

I've just picked up "Samurai William- The Adventurer Who Unlocked Japan", the true story of Europeans visiting Japan in the 16th Century. Only read the first chapter but it's already pretty interesting and nicely written, with a good break up of story telling and quotations from people of the time. I've a freind out in Japan at the moment and he says the culture's a little strange, what it must have been like back in 15 hundred and something though...

Apparently, the Portugese first set up trading routes between Japan and China, as the Japanese Like a bit of silk, but the Chinese blamed the Japanese for Pirate raids on its shores, so the portugese supplied a merchant service and made an absolute killing. Some of the artwork is weird... obviously very early drawings and wood carvings from both cultures in their own unique styles, but with subject matter from the other place and of the other people. Very odd.

Also, us Europeans were really scabby back then, had no table manners and didn't wash. At all. Where as the Japanese were very civilised, but cut people's heads off for not saying please and thankyou to someone of a slightly higher social standing. And their Emperor was bankrupt, but still emperor, despite living like a hobo in cardboard city (Kyoto). Oh, and the bhuddist monks at the time ritually sodemised boys after every prayer. Weird. Anyhow, like I say, I've Just started, I expect the Jesuits are going to stir things up a bit. The Japanese seemed to be quite happy to convert to christianity for a cut of the merchants' action and the possibility of getting their mits on some guns, which is missing the point in my opinion, but never mind.

 

Theater: OK, the Easter Panto, James Blonde: For Your Thighs Only. Saw it on tuesday and was pretty impressed for two week's rehearsal. I still think the plot was poo and didn't make enough sense (and I helped edit the sodding thing, it's better than it was!) but some of the people acting in it did a great job and delivered most of the jokes pretty well. I legitimately gate crashed the cast party last night and had a nice enough time chatting to people. Left at about 1am and got snowed on. Brr.

 

Right, enough of my opinions (other than the leader of the World Food Organisation is one of the fattest men I've ever seen!), time for some tea and some work or something.

Keep the swathe of comments coming!

ooh, what an exciting week or so... well in places anyway.

I've had and still have a cold, it's not a bad one but it's slowly draining the life out of me. Thursday night I was coughing quite a lot and couldn't really sleep, which made me feel even worse friday. My work productivity has gone down the toilet, I keep writing the most absolute crap for my project, coming back to it and being too disgusted to even edit it up to acceptability, so junking it straight away. We went on a bit of a road trip round the west country to look at potential sites to put a new massive freight hub, took some photos, watched ali vomit and generally decided that the country is far too nice a place to go about industrialising. Hmmm.

 

Friday night I jaunted up to Cheltenham (dozing on the train) for a quick comedy gig at the Manor By The Lake, which is well worth a trip to just to see a sodding weird bit of higgdy piggldy archetecture and some nice wooden beams. I bet the barmaid that their pint glasses were level pints, not over sized glasses (and lost) and saw a couple of good acts. My set went ok, but was generally a bit quiet. I'm not doing something quite right to connect with smaller audiences, but I'll work on it :S

I had to leave early to get the train back to bristol and then cycled up the hill. Oh sweet Jane! it was COLD. I got into the flat and had brain freeze or something cos I was staggering around for about half an hour like a drunkard before going to bed. I'll have to watch out for that one.

 

That was just the warm up gig for the main event though, as saturday morning I trecked down to temple meads to relive the train lifestyle and head to guildford. Met up with Justin for lunch (Justin says 'hi' to anyone who gives a monkey's), tootled around, played pool at justin's dad's place, then headed off to Kingston for the Laughing horse new Act of the Year Competition Quarter finals. My experience of dying on stage a bit the previous two gigs paid off, and i really went for it, a couple of jokes had been subtley reworked and paid off big time (my weather girl joke worked!) but wasn't too sure of my timing. Looking back I think I was a little short and that everyone else was possibly pushing the 5mins definition a bit. Not that I think that affected the outcome really, the audience voted and three solid acts went through ( :( me not one of them sadly ) but I did everything I could to make it a tough competition. Next year I'll sodding hammer them. It was great that Justin and Adam made the effort to come along and support, that was really appreciated.

 

I crashed at Justin's place for the night and headed back on the train at about midday.

I've developed a new mental complex which I've decided to call Wodehouse Syndrome. Basically it's the manifestation of deep seated psychological interpersonal problems that need to be solved through a 'happily ever after' story, preferably involving a chance encounter with a pretty girl and seemingly unsurmountable social boundries which can only be solved by a clever butler and saying the word 'golly' quite a lot.

Today's episode was the good old 'repeatedly seeing the same pretty girl on several successive trains event'. This is a well documented Wodehousian event in which the well to do young gentleman sees girl on platform, thinks 'golly' a few times, walks up the carriage, realises his reserved seat is down the other end, coincidently just the other side of the isle to the aforementioned creature (gosh!), and she happens to be going to the same destination (including a change at salisbury). She also eats twix (my particular chocolate snack of choice) and we both happened to be reading  novels based on Arthurian legends.

Now this is where the fiction version says that some coincidental event happens, such as her watch breaking and sliding along the corridor. The hero of the story retrieves it and says that his uncle is a watch repairman and will have it repaired and sent on to her at a later date (thereby getting her address, the chance to see her again and, indeed, the chance to have any conversation at all with her).

 

In reallity I was going through a combination of giggling quietly to myself as the narative continued to build itself in my head, feeling mildly guilty for looking like i was stalking someone and coughing my guts away between sips of lemsip reinforced hot orange squash from my thermos flask. I susspect that I may be a danger to society, and should probably be incarcerated for my own safety and that of the wider population.

 

I await the next episode when my brother manages to lose the family fortune on a red hot tip at the goodrich horse races and has to embark on a wacky scheme involving me dressing in a false beard and asking the way to Basigstoke in a loud voice on a Thursday morning in order to persuade some old benefactor to release the trust fund three years early so that...< I'm going to stop now>

 

If anyone's completely Baffled, read absolutely anything by PG Wodehouse, author of the 'Jeeves' series, of whom I have read far too much. If I start trying to convince people that I should be made high king of the Island of the Mighty, you'll know that my book on the Arthurian legends has got to me a bit.

Ladies and gentlemen, I have a new nomination for the prestigeous title of worst film in the world!

Yes that's right, last night I sat down and watched 'From Dusk til  Dawn' on the tele (starring George Clooney or however you spell it, i don't care)

 

For thos of you fortunate enough to have not seen it, allow me to summarise the plot.

Clooney (I just looked it up and that's right, what a stupid name!) plays a professional thief, he and his brother perform some sort of heist and escape to mexico by taking hostage a family of three and their camper van. everything's going along pretty well, we're all there wondering if the creapy brother will rape the daughter and whether the father will piss off Clooney too much and get a cap in his ass. All good stuff, reasonable characterisation, nice bit of hostage tension going on, seems pretty good.

They then go to a bar in Mexico to meet Clooney's associates. It's a bit rough and they have to beet up the old beardy man on the door to get in. The Barman's that heavy bloke who threw knives in 'Desperado' and the dancing girls are frumping around the place, everybody's drinking whiskey and having a nice time. Then they have a bit of a scuffle with the doorman again.

 

Then the lead dancing girl turns into a Vampire.

 

Then all the bar staff and other dancing girls turn into vampires.

 

They have a bit of a vampire ruckus where the only people left standing are clooney, the family of three, some huge black fella and another big fella who has a short stubby gun with two revolver chambers attatched to his groin (like a cock).

 

At this point it all goes a bit silly. a pneumatic drill is re-rigged with a wooden stake at the end,a super soaker is filled with water which is blessed by the father of the family, who it turns out is a lay preacher. Rubber jonnies are also filled with holy water to be used as water bombs, though I have to point out this wouldn't work too well as jonnies are quite a strong and deformable rubber which it's quite difficult to burst. that's the point of them.A repeater crossbow is also found and so a big gratuitous vampire killing spree ensues, which ends up with all the vampires being burned by the sunlight coming in from all the bullet holes.

 

they come out of the bar, meet clooney's associates, do the deal and all go their seperate ways (although the family all die appart from the girl).

 

Am I wrong to be so critical? It actuallly won four awards (the prestigeous 'saturn' awards and MTV's Best Breakthrough Performance for Clooney among them) as well as a nomination for 'worst supporting actor' for Quentin Tarantino (Who played Clooney's Brother).

 

At least I got a few cheap laughs out of it.

 

Well, not really a winge, more of a generic update with the occasional embittered passing comment, but nothing special ;)

 

So, just had a 'design review' presentaion of our major project work to airbus. That took pretty much all of today and a fair chunk of the weekend to sort out properly. Nick (one of my team members) was ill so i had to present his bit (think I just about got away with that!) and generally it went pretty well. Appart from when we said "if you have any questions just ask them at any time" and then they waited to the end and conveniently forgot all the important bullet points and decided to critisise and misinterpret the other ones. One guy was really annoying and kept attaking one of the bits of analysis (about three times on the same point) and wouldn't back down. I got (noticably) rattled, even though it wasn't my section he was criticising, but it just got on my tits. I like criticism, when it's constructive, but this was just poking the dangerous lizard of intellectual assumption with the pointy stick of self satisfied cock-headedness. If he'd been heckling in a comedy gig, I'd have told him to shut his filthy yak hole and taken the piss out of his uncontrollable blinking, but sadly there was no microphone, no mob of like-minded people beying for the blood of the mouthy twat, so I had to remain content to sit there grind my teeth. Grr!

 

But generally it went pretty well... Good.

 

In response to Rob's comment about my not advertising any of my exciting comedy gigs, here's a quick list of some for the next couple of weeks:

 

Sunday 12th Feb: The Hatchet, Bristol. It's Free, but don't come to this one, there's a reasonable audient there and I want to try out all the hackneed old stuff I'm going to be spaffing out at the next few gigs, so it'll be all rough and un-good.

 

Friday 17th Feb: Manor by the Lake, Cheltenham (tickets £5, should be pretty good from what I hear. it's only 45 mins on the train, com on! it'll be brilliant!)

 

Tuesday 21st Feb: Jesters Comedy Club, Bristol. Regional Heat of the National Student Comedy act of the year (from those loverly people at Chortle). No Idea how much it costs, I imagine it starts some time after 8pm but I don't really know. That would be too easy.The winner is selected by the walking corpse of Princess Dianna (or one of her representatives), but I hear the decaying remains of the queen of hearts can be o'er-swayed by popular opinion, so support is welcomed.

 

Saturday 24th Feb: The Cricketers pub, Kingston. Laughing Horse New Act Competition Semi-finals. I'm sh*tting my knickers about this one for some unknown reason. Looked up the other contestants that have been anounced so far for this heat and even though I didn't recognise a single one and could only find a review for one of them i still couldn't shake the "i'm soooooo dead" feeling. Which is nice.

Tickets are about a fiver, but it's in kingston so i don't expect anyone to turn up :(

(Except Justin, cos I'll kick you in the ankle if you don't!)

 

And then that's my last gig for a little while cos I'll be working like an bee-ach for the rest of March I reckon.

On that last point about me looking up other comedians, I wondered if they were doing the same to me, so googled my own name. I found that Jimi hendrix had a sound man called Phill Brown at some point, and that I also share a name with the guy who played Luke Skywalker's Uncle in the original Star Wars film. woo!