Tuesday, March 27, 2007

27/03/2007 A New Hope?



I was thinking, if THEY can do it...surely Alan Anderson & Mac Star can get along....

The Scottish Comedy Community holds its breath...!!

Monday, March 26, 2007

26/03/2007 A Pant In The Country



I've been trying to get fitter of late.
I'm due to be going away on an arduous weekend of climbing/walking at the beginning of May, so I need to be ready for it...
Unfortunately, I had flu 2 weeks ago and this has set back my progress.
I walked up a hill yesterday which would have been a piece of piss to do a month ago...but yesterday I was really struggling...it's like the bug has sapped my strength...goddamnit!
Traditionally these walks are like "Deliverance" theme weekends in which I play the "Ned Beatty" character, and all the others play the "Burt Reynolds" character..
I struggle behind, and by the time I catch up, they move off again, so that I feel constantly under pressure to keep up...
I mean, don't get me wrong...they are very supportive and all that, but still, deep down I think they really enjoy my physical distress, as it affirms their superior fitness levels when they see a mere mortal staggering about out of breath carrying a ridiculously large rucksack...
This may well happen again, but I'm determined to be in better shape than usual...
(thankfully I have so far managed to avoid being raped by gap-toothed hillbillies on any of these outings...!)
One thing I've noticed about the last few gigs is that I get bigger laughs the more deadpan I play it...
I can't keep it up though...I just find it irresistible to join in laughing...
To not laugh would be equivalent to being at an orgy but having to make do with having a wank in a corner, outside of the main action...
However, it could be convincingly argued that laughing at your own jokes is an inexcusable form of wanking in itself...
It's a catch-22 situation...
I must apologise to my younger readers for the graphic sexual content of this latest piece...

Sunday, March 25, 2007

25/03/2007 Boring



I know that my blogs are much more interesting when they describe me dying on my arse on stage.
But, in all truthfulness, this hasn't happened for ages, and I had another great gig at the Glasgow Comedy Festival last night...
I'm not sure why...I think that perhaps I have finally found my "voice" (now that doesn't sound pretentious at all...does it?)...but who knows...?
Anyway, it's fair to say that I've had literally three requests from people wanting to know what my upcoming gigs are...
I've been having issues updating the old web page, so here they are ...
27th March, Canon's Gait Cellar Bar (compere)
29th March "Heresy" " Jekyll & Hyde, Edinburgh
3rd April, The Stand, Glasgow
9th April, The Stand, Edinburgh
15th April, The Stand, Edinburgh
21st April, The Comedy Womb, The State Bar, Glasgow
22nd April, The Stand, Glasgow
30th June, The Comedy Womb, Glasgow
11th - 17th Aug, "The Free Mouseketeers", Jekyll & Hide (with Jo Romero & Clara Heimerdinger)

Yesterday there was a massive Orange Parade in Edinburgh.
It was the biggest I've ever seen.
The liberal, tolerant part of me wants to say, ok, on you go, celebrate your tradition...it's your democratic right to parade and all that...let's just all live together bla bla bla...
The problem is that they are a difficult crowd to love...
I was walking across the Meadows in Edinburgh where they were all lining up, and it became clear that a lot of the people involved were psychotically drunk....
I saw one of the "official" Orange stewards take a bottle of "After Shock" out of his pocket and have a big slug...
Jeezo...that stuff is absolutely lethal...I can't imagine what anyone would be like after drinking a whole bottle...!
I saw a foreign student getting hit on the head with an umbrella because he cut across the line of the parade becasue he wanted to cross the street...(you're not supposed to do that...apparently)
This is all well and good, but it was such a big parade that Edinburgh was effectively split in half, and it was difficult walking across the city without incurring Orange wrath.
And of course, the traffic in Edinburgh was completely gridlocked all afternoon...
The weird thing is though that part of me still really likes the sound of the flutes and the drums in spite of all the negative connotations associated with this cultural event.
As a little kid in Glasgow I found it all very colourful and exciting...
But at the same time it is very intimidating, and there's a sneering swagger of triumphalism running through the participants.

This weeks interesting links are Rangers fans singing in Spain and getting into trouble with UEFA.
I'm glad that someone is finally taking the bigots to task.
I'm a Rangers fan and I want my club back.
These are the sort of twats that forced me away from attending games.
It's not just offensive in content...; it's also probably the worst singing I've ever heard in my life...
There's absolutely no diaphragm control going on there at all, and they're way out of time and pitch...
I think we need a BBC "Sectarian Fame Academy" and get Leslie Garret to knock the boys into shape...
The next clip is the Ricky Gervais Comic Relief film...pure genius...
The look that Ricky does to camera after sarcastically saying to Bob Geldof that "the Boomtown Rats were still really big in 1985" is one of the funniest things I've seen in my puff....

Saturday, March 17, 2007

17/03/2007 Talk Talk



The TALK TALK Sales team tell me how it is all going to be great and that....



So anyway, I decided to switch from the evil overpriced Telewest empire to the brave new world of Talk Talk...
Unfortunately the transition has been accompanied with a dirty large seam, and as a result I have been without access to the Interweb for the past 3 weeks.
Did you miss me ?
Every single day?
Did you hang my picture on your wall?
...as the fat guy who we can't mention by name anymore, who wore the tin foil suit and the bad wig and sang about such things...
I'm on at The Stand this Monday (19th), so come along and have a pint...
The past few gigs have gone worryingly well, and a dangerous perceptible level of confidence is creeping into my psyche...
Where/when it will be crushed is anybody's guess...it could happen anytime...worrying...worrying...
Meanwhile...
I was walking down Dalry Road the other day at lunchtime when I saw in the distance what I thought was some kind of political demo taking place...
Curious, I advanced towards it but was ultimately surprised to find it was a gigantic queue of pupils from Tynecastle High School at "Greig's" the Bakers...
So much for Jamie Oliver's campaign!
Without wishing to sound like "Outraged, of Tunbridge Wells", I did find it a little depressing that literally hundreds of kids were queuing up to eat nutrition free gunge...
Don't their parents give a shit?
No wonder we are shit at Sports...
I was a little shocked...I naively thought that the Scottish diet thing had moved on a bit...I wiz wrong...!
For no reason in particular, I remembered this family anecdote today...
In her later years my Gran became just a little confused sometimes...
When she was at our house once, she noticed a large white Husky Dog soft toy which was situated in the corner of our living room.
"What do you feed it?" asked my Gran in all seriousness.
Quick as a flash, my Dad replied "We stuff cotton wool up its arse!"
I was thinking about that walking up the street today and burst out giggling, attracting quizzical looks from the oncoming pedestrian traffic.

Saturday, March 03, 2007

03/03/2007 Me, I like a good laugh, I do



Well, my brother caused me a fit of giggles yesterday.
He wanted to print off my last blog at work (he was curious about the Saddam picture)
He duly did this and nipped out for lunch.
However, he actually succeeded in printing the entire 2 years worth of entries of this here Blog, much to the annoyance of his co-workers as they waited to use the departmental printer.
"Who is this bloody Jim Park anyway?" they reportedly moaned many times as the vast printing output built up.
Here are a copy of links to things which have amused me greatly in the last week.
The first one is an article about a policeman in Fife with an interesting hobby...
The next is a classic clip from "Harry Hill's TV Burp"...

Thursday, March 01, 2007

01/03/2007 Pub Closedown Shocker!



I had something of an out-of-body experience last night at the comedy club.
I was dancing on stage wearing a Saddam Hussein rubber mask to the Scissor Sisters
track "I Don't Feel Like Dancing".
I'd earlier roughly choroegraphed a routine which was a combination of "River Dance", Disco and "The Slosh" style.
As I looked at myself, I wondered what the adolescent Jim would have thought if he'd been shown this nightmarish vision of Jim the adult.
I've no doubt he would be horrified.
(the idea of the piece was "to satirise the illegal war in Iraq through the medium of dance", in case you're interested)
Great night though....
And it was also the last night of the club at this venue, as the Holyrood Tavern is now closed down...as of today...!
I think they just kept it open last night to make a bit of cash as we again brought in a room full of customers...
(the average Wednesday nights there had about 3 people in the bar before we started running the club)
So we're on the lookout for a new home.
Thanks to all the acts who appeared and to everybody who came along and supported us.
And if you didn't make it to any of the nights, then you should be deeply ashamed of yourself, and I sincerely hope that you have enormous difficulty in sleeping at night for the foreseeable future.
How could you?
Bastards, bastards, bastards....!
On a brighter note, Ted the resident feline has been very ill but is now back to his manic self.
Hurray!
The comical Dee Custance remarked on stage last night that I reminded her of her Dad...
Ouch!