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....