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27 juni myspaceI'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 25 april Into the deep...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....
16 april another month, another yearwell, 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.
12 maart The end is neighOh 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! 26 februari Of Beverages and trainsooh, 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. 12 februari Drumroll please....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.
06 februari Winge of the week, brought to you by Civic BangWell, 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!
21 januari Here we go again...An interesting little couple of week that, let me tell you about it.... are you sitting comfortably?
So, last week of holidays and I managed to break my slight 'lack of work' ethic that had been plaguing me over christmas. wrote and re-wrote a shed load of the group enterprise project. Zi German member of our group finally acknowledged my emails and sent me a page and a half of drivel which had to be completely rewritten (there's nothing so bloody annoying at having to retype a mark scheme for someone and go through all the lecture material to point out all the usefull points to someone when they've had 10 weeks to do the same). that got back to me in an almost acceptable state (though I liked the company organisattion structure that had absolutely NO link between sales and purchasing departments and the MD only had a single link from finance... beautiful) and generally did a generally natty job of it, though unfortunately didn't do a lot of any other work due to the massive amount of effort that this took :S
Last sunday (15th Jan) I did a 10 minuite stand up set in the Comedy Cavern (the celler of Porter's Bar for anyone who's interested) in Bath. Was a really nice venue and a pretty good gig, though I did almost all old material which I just plain don't enjoy as much as 'the joke I thought up a few days ago', and I was stomach churningly nervous as I hadn't done any stand up for a month. Seemed to be fairly entertaining, listening back there was about a minute wich was without laughs and needs to be worked on. Lots of nice feedback from passers by, though I'm a little annoyed cos the venue used to publish revues of acts on their website, but that hasn't been done since last november. I don't think my friend lyndsay's text "fucking hell that headliner was crap, you were the best by a country mile" quite counts as a reference revue, but for now it's all I've got.
oh, and my brother Geoff and his friend Mark came along to support me which was really appreciated.
...but that was just a warm-up gig...on tuesday (17th Jan) I took part in the regional heat of the Laughing Horse New Comedy Act competition. Generally a really good standard, was nice to hob nob with a few people who'd been doing the same thing as me. doubly gratifying was the fact that the more genuinely NEW acts seemed to be the ones that got through (and it was audience voting) whereas the guys who've "been doing it for years, got a bit complaicent and not really going anywhere" suffered a bit. Generally the right result, though the guy that did the cereal killer joke probably shouldn't have been one of the ones to go through. Me and Gareth both went through to the next heat in London somewhere (yet to be announced) and Charlie Baker stormed the gig and rightly got first place.
Only Will came along to support me for this one, which seemed a bit weird. don't get me wrong, everyone had really good reasons to be somewhere else, but it's a bit like "sorry I can't come, i HAVE to go to this other thing" rather than "Sorry i can't go to the other thing but i HAVE to go and support my friend Phill, cos this is important to him'' which would obviously be nicer. Hey ho, what can I do, write a shameless blog to try and guilt some of my 'friends' into kow-towing for my childish attention seeking? I wish. :$
So, yay me, I've been working and making people laugh a bit.
I don't know whether it's that I've only been doing work or comedy really, but I feel a bit detatched from society at the mo. Other than Tim, I feel I've lost any sense of closeness or comradere that I used to have with people, so I've decided to make more effort to be a happy smiley little bunny wabbit and suggest people go to the pub a bit more often. Word. 23 december Long time, no ChipsWell, OK, I admit it, I have been less than efficient at keeping me blog up to date. There's a good reason for it, idleness. so, a quick run down of the first term of my final year doing the whole engineering thing at Bristol.
* Got back from Aberdeen, vowing never to work up there again if I can possibly help it.
* Went to Ben and Ruth's wedding, Congratulations!
* Redefined the Big Project (again) with my project group. Worked with them and researched into all the clever things that are used to move bits of freight onto, into, offto, infront of and behind any type of freight vehicle (well, road rail and air really, cos we're ignoring inland water and sea ships and boring stuff like that) and warehouses. Joy. Not quite as groovy as a giant Sea plane freight terminal, but that's what happens when sodding accedemics and Industry don't actually bother defining a project before they give it to you (and breathe in... and hold... keep holding... and wait til you feel a littly giddy... then breathe out slowly so as to hold on to the dizzy feeling.... nice huh? and pour some of dad's whisky... Mmmmm. Adn continue writing self indulgent stuff)
* Set up a weekly comedy show with Improv and stand up and all the goovy grooves that groovyness entails. There's been some ups and down's but has generally been really good fun and great experience. The whole thing was made for me when one of the audience at the christmas special yelled out "I really need to go for a piss but I don't want to miss anything!". Brilliant, see my ego, smell it, stroke it bit and take it home to meet your mother. If she's a yummy mummy. otherwise, don't bother.
Well done to everyone involved and thanks to anyone who graced us with your presence, but i think you'll agree it was worth the entrance fee of £0.
* Did some stand up comedy (gosh Phill, how thrilling! you must really have a lot to talk about at drinks parties... what? they just say "go on then, tell us a joke"? Would they say "Go on then, be a bit of a bitch" if they met Anne Robinson? maybe if more people invited you to drinks parties you'd be able to work out your banter a bit better. hey ho). Generally had a good run of gigs, doing various venues from the hatchet and the richmond spring to the wonders of Jesters comedy club (ooh, 7 mins of unpaid fame! Glory). Got a couple of gigs lai on for the new year... go me!
* Decided to never work with Germans again. This isn't racist or intollerent, it's based on the fact that I've worked with 2 this term, one of whom tried to plagerise 21 pages from Wikipedia, then act all surprised when I told him this was not acceptable. The other one still hasn't produced a single bit of work in the last 10 weeks, well, nothing that indicates that he's actually read the lecture notes or done any research or anything. OK, so it is a bit intollerent. But it's justified. I thought the Germans were supposed to be efficient (grumble grumble)
* Realised I need to decide what to do with my life after Exams this year.
this last point's a bit contentious. hmm. any suggestions?
Oh well, I'm at home now for a few days, hopefully I'll get some work done and master Sodoku. then back to bristol to find something to do for New years. Marvellous.
Take care all, Happy Winterval!! 06 oktober Beggining to Begin Again...Well, it's almost time to start term agian. I've an odd sensation of being detached from university and wrapped up in my own little world: I guess I'm looking forward to lectures, but the project work's going to be a real pain in the arse I can tell. We're doing a course called 'Enterprise studies' and they'll probably put us in groups with people from other courses who, due to not having done a year in industry like our course, couldn't hold a meeting if their lives depended on it. I hope I'm proved wrong, but previous experience shows otherwise....I'll have to wait and see how it all goes. Hopefully I'll be able to motivate myself somehow and then it'll all be good. hooray.
Comedy stuff went really well last week, went down to the hatchet on sunday just to spectate and laughed my arse off cos the audience was startlingly hostile and I wasn't on. Brilliant!
Monday's very first "Improvident Action" improv show at the lansdown was as sucessful as anyone could have hoped, if we can keep up that standard till christmas I'll be amazingly happy. Simon Dunn did some stand up for part of the evening and was really good and my bit of compering seemed to go down well, hooray!
Tuesday I did my first paid gig in Bristol (a cool £10 entering my pocket by the end of the night) at the Richmond Spring in Clifton. I think it went down pretty well if i say so myself, still got to iron a few things out and wait for the moment when I write some amazing material (I think my joke about the Ashes has just about reached its sellby date) that'll get a laugh every second through it, but otherwise a good start. Sadly I think I'll have to cut back on the comedy stuff for the first term (darn it!) so I can get my work sorted out, but i'll squeeze some in here and there.
I'm currently wearing a rather fetching bear ears hair band that I found in the bathroom. I asume it's Tim's, he looks the sort. 27 september Randomly plugging my own lifeWell, my cardiff standup was a bit of a let down, audience was a bit passive and I hadn't rehersed too much cos I'd spent the weekend running around on dartmoor and had about 3 hours sleep the night before, so I have some excuse, but still I'd have liked a good response. Hatchet the week before was awesome . I rocked.
So, on with the plugging:
MONDAY OCTOBER 3rd: The first ever GOATS IN THE SHELL Improv Comedy Gig at the Lansdown pub in Bristol starting at 8pm. come along, it'll be amazinly funny. And free.
Tuesday october 4th: I'll be the opening comedien at the Richmond Spring Pub's Stand up night. Again, It'll be tremendously funny but probably a quid or so to watch. if there's a possiblity of anyone i don't personally know who reads this and is in bristol on tuesday then pleasre come along, I'll be glad of the support!
Monkey's all
21 september Back in the HoodOhh, that's right, I have a blog, not that anyone's reading it, but what the hell do I care?
I've been back in Bristol for a little over 3 weeks now and it's (still!) amazing the feeling of coming home and feeling like an important part of the place. It's something I never quite had back in Ascot and I certainly felt a bit out of place in Aberdeen...
so, what's happened?
Well, let's start with the theropy stuff. Aberdeen turned out to not be sucessful in a professional context. My final assessment didn't take place until my final day due to commitments of my line manager. Who then criticised me for holding the assesment on my final day. And criticised my attitude throughout the placement, saying that I'd been reactionry rather than proactionary and that this isn't the attitude that BP wants from it's employees.
"Oh," says I, "So why is it that my line manager has waited 10 entire sodding weeks to try suggesting I need to change my attitude? There was me thinking that this was a learning experience when all along it was just a 10 week long assessment. BP can take it and shove it where their embelem doesn't shine" or words to that effect. I'm OK about it now, I wanted the oportunity of a job, but probably for the wrong reasons (money). The only reason I'm really pissed off is if I want a reference for jobs now, I need to go back to Rolls-Royce for one. There's no way I'm letting that miserable scottish sod tinker with my job applications. The b****rd said I'd failed to fit into the team which makes either him or the people that wrote in y leavers card liers.
(And breathe in... go to your special place, you know, the one with the waltzing hippos.... hehe, they dance in tripple time ! Brilliant! Ah, all better now)
I'm so glad that Hippo place moved in next door. I'd go mad without it.
Next on the list is Ben's wedding. Not much to say really, the religous stuff went over my head in preciely the way it always does when in a large group of churchy types who take it all very seriously and wave their right arms in the air when fairly benial "Christian Rock!" music washes over them as if the arm is the holy anteae to the soul. (Sorry, I shouldn't have started this entry on a negative note, it's left me all cynical). But still, was very good to see Ben and Ruth off into the rest of their lives and catch up with a few people. I'm sure they'll do well for themselves. and the food was good :P
Comedy! Ah my excuse for not doing work (actually I've watched an excessive amount of crap DVDs which has got more to do with the bad work ethic). I've been putting in a fair bit of effort to get our 'Goats in the Shell' comedy group remotivated and actually achieving humerous things.
Me and Will did stand up at the Hatchet on Sunday, in many ways my best set yet. I played the filth card quite a bit but went for a more dead pan delivery which went down surprisingly well. I hope that some people will never look at Carol Vordeman in the same way again. I'm following this up with a repeat of the material but in Cardiff this coming Sunday. Fingers crossed!
I've also been trying to arrange a weekly Goats show at a pub in Bristol. Looks like we're going for it, I need to get on to the Lansdown people to book the room but, all being well we start on Monday 3rd Oct and it's mainly going to be an Improv show. Yipee! Still lots to sort out and I need to be careful that it doesn't take over my life and my final year of degreedom, but I'm sure I'll cope... somehow. 30 augustus Almost there...Hooray! Three days left and I'll be out of Aberdeen! I know I've made it sound like I hate the place which is slightly unfair cos I'm sure I haven't seen it all (cos the other students here look blankly at me when I mention going to free jazz or seeing if there's any cheap standup or anything) and it's not as bad as Slough. The thing about Slough though is that you can actually get to london or the south west or other interesting places where my friends are nad people only refrain from murdering you for the actions of your anticendants because you might have money in your pockets and be spending it in scotland and buy one of their hats with the ginger hair at the back that they seem to think tourists want.
I'm currently trying to write about what a busy little chap I've been this summer and how I've fitted in and how BP would lose out by not offering me a job (haven't quite decided that I really want a job but it'd be nice to be offered it on a plate so to speak). And it's soul destroying. I hate talking about myself and i REALLY hate writing about it. it always sounds either meak and underachieving or arrogant and unpleasent. So I'm comming across as being meakly arrogant. Like Hugh Grant but without the (allegedly) inailiable charm. And I can deliver a joke. Moron.
Right, so, I'm flying back home on friday evening, then back to bristol on saturday morning in time for a shower and a change before heading up the road for my friend Ben's wedding. I may have to duck out for half hour stints to go to the Highbury Vaults because Good God! I've missed decent beer.
If you ever find yourself being a channel 5 late night script writer who's lacking inspiration then check out Genesis 38 (in the Bible). It's filth, that's the last time I random page that thing in the hope of enlightenment on a lonely eveining in a hotel in Newcastle. 22 augustus Still alive...:PI know I am I checked my pulse this morning.
Still in Aberdeen, still working, though I only have two weeks left. Hre's some of the fun stuff I've been up to:
* Played poker and drank whisky. OK, so I drank whisky and allowed some "friends" to evenly distribute £2 evenly among themselves.
* Went up to a place to watch people with big cranes play jigsaw with huge multimillion pound subsea equipment. marvelous
* Went to Edinburgh for 5 days, taking in 23 shows and eating black pudding. I paid £3.18 for a Guinness. I was not amused.
* Went to Newcastle for a two day valve training course (I know, how do I afford this Rock and Roll Lifestyle?). then decided to take 2 days to change trains at Edinburgh on the way back
*This gave me the opertunity to catch up with Will and Nick S, drink copious amounts at lunchtimes with little known imrov players, see some shows and, (oh yes did I mention?...no?... how remis of me!) do some fairly unprepared new stand up material at 1:30 in the morning in the upstairs room of an edinburgh pub. (so did Will). And I don't mean to boast, but we walked away from that gig with a cool £2.50. Oh yes. Each.
* Took part in a murder mystery evening in Aberdeen. I was the murderer and walked off with the best actor award too. I pulled out all the Essex Lines ("See these shoes? Them's brown leather. none of your cheap stuff. And this watch? Stainless steel mate, stainless, you couldn't stain that if you tried, not even with red wine of which I have started drinking"... and so on)
Now I have a cold and have to work for 2 more weeks and then back to freedom.
Take care all 20 juli Aberdeen in all it's..er...gloryWoohoo, I found my own blog again!
I'm sitting at a desk reading stuff about subsea oil and gas production. Sounds dull, but every now and them I come across a gem of terminology like
Xmas Tree: principal flow control system that sits on a subsea well
and
Pig launcher and retreiver: a device that launches and retreives pigs
Pig: a device that fits inside a pipe. these can be cleaning pigs, pipe integrity test pigs, and even welding pigs. Gosh.
...ok, so they aren't that funny, but there's no regular comedy in Aberdeen. The archetecture seems to largely be based on the grey blocks of granite that the buildings are made from. and my friends aren't here. there's lots of other interns but they're just not the same. hey ho, roll on august when i get to spend my weekends in Edinburgh!
Better look like I'm working, take care all!
23 juni And I'm Off!Well, here it is, end of the term and I'm off home this afternoon, then up to Aberdeen for the summer, back in september. So, what have I been up to? Well, had the whole project planning week that went ok, but still fairly nebulous. Never mind, I'll get some stuff written down and poke round some libraries in Aberdeen to find out more stuff that's relevent (or not). Been doing lots of good comedy stuff, went to the Bath Finge festival to perform some improv with some of Pantosoc (see Walcot Nation Day in the photos) which went pretty good considering we've never performed in public, with a microphone or outside before. Some games didn't work quite as well in the open air, and the musical cluedo was a bit of a flop despite some of the rehersal musicals we did being really good. The three headed song (3 of us singing one word of a made up song at a time) was awesome though, and some of the other games definately had their moments. Next time will be better I'm sure ;) Done stand up twice at the Hatchet now, and one more time at the union for glyn's farewell do. The first Hatchet gig went down well, all new material which I'm sure the audience (that largely consisted of my friends ) appreciated. everyone's very complimenting about it, which is nice ;) Most importantly, I was able to get away with jokes about ginger people with a scotish bloke in the audience. Amazing. The more recent gig on sunday was pretty cool, I went over my first set (largly about David Attenbough and Whale penises, it's great!) and felt so much more relaxed than before. again half the audience were people I knew, but without them there'd hardly have been anyone, so I don't feel too bad :P Glyn's gig was the worst so far, I hadn't really had time to prepare in the week due to project planning, so I turned up and was told I was next on. Great! Quickly wrote some notes on the back of my hand and strutted on stage. the material was ok, but looking back at the video was a bit slow paced. I need to up the number of jokes a minuite a bit i think. but good experience none the less, and apparently I had good stage presence (consolation prize compared with "you had good material") Really got annoyed by that bloke who left the comment on my election post, what the hell was his point? to try to read in stuff between the lines that wasn't intended and then violently dissagree with it? Moron. And claiming Howard wasn't Jewish, seriously, I don't tend to pontificate too much unless I've got some idea about what I'm talking about. Grr, but anyway, on with my packing. Have Fun Everyone! 03 juni Freedom!yes, that's right, my exams are over for another year, generally went ok-ish in places and I'm VERY happy they've finished. Went to the improv comedy workshop for the first time in a couple of weeks which was well fun generally but at times the mood felt a bit down (i don't think everyone's finished exams yet, so it's understandable). The musical was the sinking of Atlantis and it generally went pretty well, a bit more propper interaction than normal, story was quite short and snappy and we had a fantastic unspoken agreement on how it was going to end that somehow the audience didn't see coming. Propper nice. I carried on drinking through the interval, the second hafl, afterwards until the epi closed, then a few of us sauntered off to Baroque until about 1am, then went to Lynne's for more wine... then it all got a little hazy, but somehow the bag i was carrying a bottle home with me split and so i spent some time at 3am trying to sweep up brocken glass and make the comunal corridor not smell like a stillery... whilst slightly intoxicated. :S I think i got away with it... Last night some of us went to the Corri Tap for cider which is ALWAYS a mistake, but for some reason everyone forgets this and keeps going back there. had a nice enough time just chatting away about stuff that wasn't exams. My plans for the weekend are to do some standup at the hatchet pub on frogmore street on sunday evening, do a bit of excercise cos i've been a lazy sod for a couple of months now, sort out my finances for the next couple of months and make a sock puppet. 29 mei Crazy Jam and all that FudgeSunday morning, time for another Blog!!!! So... What's been happening, well , not a lot really, Exams Exams Exams, but they finish on Tuesday which is fantastic. I plan to spend the rest of the week in a variety of levels of intoxication, write comedy stuff, play my sax, sort out my tax, book flights to aberdeen... maybe see friends and stuff, who knows? Me and Will are shuffling forward the Goats in the Shell master plan by doing some stand up at the hatchet next sunday, so I've got to write and practice some material by then. or reuse the old stuff, but we'll see how it goes. Last night was Ruth's Birthday so a bunch of people went to the White Bear and drunk a-pleanty.. Rob and Justin noticably hitting the sambuca (oh dear...) rather hard. I sensibly stuck to the beer and didn't overdo it (at £2.60 a pint I can't afford to!!) but i count it as saving myself for when I've finished my exams. Everyone seemed to have fun and I got to catch up with some of the kids in more social context with very little whining about the state of Exams. So, appart from the examy things I'm really happy and looking forward to having a bit of free time and then getting some money in over the summer :D Monkey Monkey Monkey Monkey 19 mei Elevator Wars: Revenge of the LiftWell, went to see "Revenge of the Sith" last night at the odean at about 12:30. Really weird though, the cinema management seemed to have the thought "Hey, a load of Star Wars Geeks are turning up at well gone midnight to see this film... we'd better put a live band on for half an hour before hand" and so they did. They were an ok band. I guess. I might have even called them good if they were background music in a pub somewhere. But in a cinema when all i really want to do is watch the film... One amusing thing though, some guy shouted "Show the Movie!" after one song which the female guitarist (Female guitarist!?!? WHAT!???... steady Phill, it was an acoustic guitar, just there to fill out the harmonies, it's not like it was a propper guitar or anything) heard as "Show your boobies". Oh well, can't blame her for being self conscious... The film was ok, certainly the best of the new ones, though to be fair the story line is "He goes BAD!" but some of the characters, mad flying machines and things were pretty cool. Go for the eye candy, stay for the amusingly hammy "Nooooooooo!" from Darth Vader. Munchin' Had two exams this week, both of which were a bit poo, can't see me getting more than 60% over those (and they count for a quater of this year... so the equivilent of all my year 2 work). Grrr. I can feel my first slipping away from me, which means I'll become an engineering hermit next year to try and make up for it. Maybe the others will go much better .... :S Song of the day is Otis Lee Crenshaw's ballad about prison rape entitled "he almost looks like you". There are some boundaries that perhaps shouldn't be pushed... :P 10 mei GrrruzzafuzzawuzzaAs Muttley would say.... Hmm, had my Spanish oral test today and it went un-brilliantly. Don't quite know what happened but i froze up, and all the work i'd done on getting verbs sorted out in my head went out of the window so it was like hitting a big red 'random conjugation' button every time a doing word came up. Being the arrogant b*stard that i am, I took this personally (if i don't do well at stuff then i really beat myself up for a bit afterward. propper twisted stuff about me lacking foresight and insight into exactly what was going to be asked, not being enthusiastic in classes, not having devised propper drills for how to say different things, not having gone to spain for a week or so at easter and so on...I do the same for improv comedy stuff. If i don't think it's gone brilliantly then i'll have a glazed look on my eyes for a bit while I metaphorically kick myself a few dozen times) So I'm not too happy about that. To cheer myself up I just watched the film of The Wall by Pink Floyd. which sounds an odd way of cheering yourself up what with it being a horrificly graphic film including drug abuse, self harm, psychotic delusions, images of naziism, war, insecurity complex, superiority compex, the list goes on (pretty much every scene in it has massive negative emotional qualitity to it) but actually it worked pretty well. The over-riding (terribly British) mental comentry went: * what fantastic juxteposition of imagry! * Wow, where did that come from? * Oh I say, that's a bit strong! * Now that's just wrong... * I wonder if this was produced after Akira? * How would you do a stage version of this....? * ... well, at least I'm nowhere near being that f***ed up. So I'm feeling a bit better now, ready to face some heat transfer problems for the rest of the day. Hooray! |
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