It could be worse I suppose...mustn't grumble...!
It's been an interestingly diverse month in terms of comedy gigs...
The sequence of events has reminded me of the climactic scene in "Raiders of the Lost Ark" when those nasty Nazis finally open the Ark.
As the lid is opened (after the dust bit), there is a rhapsody of colour and beauty as smiling ghost like figures soar round the building,mesemerising and captivating the watching Nazis.
To them it all seems a wonderful and joyous occasion and they gawp with wonder at the miraculous splendour of it all...!
Of course, this doesn't last, as the initially friendly apparitions suddenly mutate into apocalyptic avengers, sending searing bursts of flame through the Nazi's bodies and then melt their faces down to the bone. Nice...
The first part of that scene was reminiscent of my gigs at the start of April, with the current crop bearing a greater resemblance to the Nazi come-uppance scene.
It's truly a confidence thing this comedy lark.
A week ago I was chomping at the bit for more gigs as I really felt on a roll, with audience reactions better than I've ever experienced.
Now I'm anticipating a couple of gigs in Glasgow this weekend with the same unbridled enthusiasm that someone held captive by a terrorist group in Iraq would show if he was ordered by his captors to put on a nice orange jumpsuit they'd brought him.
Yes, this week's "Black Bo's" gig was tough...hard work...as free pub gigs tend to be..I'm torn as to whether to pursue it or not...there definitely is some potential for a good gig though...hmmm
In keeping with my eccentric lifestyle I have now decided I want to be cricket player.
I turned up last night for "Nets Practise" with my work cricket team.
Unfortunately, I can hardly walk today.
The first delivery I faced came at me at what I estimated to be 90mph, and thudded into my left thigh like an exocet missile.
"Have you got thigh pads on?" my tormentor asked as I hopped round the crease, desperately trying not to cry.
"No!" I said, (I was unaware of the existence of "thigh pads")
In spite of this I actually played quite well for the rest of the session, and have been promised some first team action in the upcoming league fixtures...woo hoo!
Tragic as the events in Virginia are, it jars slightly that this story gets so much wall-to-wall TV coverage in comparison to the relatively perfunctory reporting on the hundreds of violent deaths occurring in Iraq.
The whole media circus surrounding these events is conducted almost to a script.
There's the voyeuristic details of killer and victims, (in the age of the WWW, the media have a wealth of ready information to flesh out victims lives... Why run around looking for quotes from friends and relatives when you can just look at their myspace pages).
There's the short (and ultimately pointless) debate on gun control in America.
There's the ritual bashing of the culture of violence inherent in TV, video games, rock music etc etc
It's almost beyond comprehension that the NRA spokespeople don't see it primarily a problem of "gun availability", but bemoan the fact that the victims were not allowed to carry weapons on the campus, and consequently been able to defend themselves against attack.
They don't seem to grasp that for every incident like this, when possibly the gunman could have been stopped, there would be thousands of other incidents involving people being blown away over a parking space dispute.
The only certainty to emerge is that once the media mob have left town to allow Blacksburg to begin its recovery, there will be other psychotic loners who will have been watching the rolling news coverage obsessively, fantasising about also bowing out of this world in an orgy of violence and destruction, in the full knowledge that their global notoriety will be assured.
On an embarassingly trivial note, when I heard that the gunman was South Korean, I hoped he wasn't called Park (this is a very common name in Korea)...
Who wants to share a surname with a mass murderer?
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