Thursday, March 27, 2008

27/03/08 Seconds away...



It was certainly an action packed evening at Black Bo’s Comedy Club last night. It would probably best be described as “like a bad night in Baghdad”.
It was a shame because most of the audience were totally up for the comedy and really enjoying the evening…
However there were a few twats who just wouldn’t shut upall night.
At one point there was something of an uprising as a few of the audience who were wanting to listen to the comedy starting having a pop at the idiots, and it all kicked off.
There did seem a genuine possibility that it all might explode in a flurry of violence, but thankfully this didn’t come to pass.
Things came to a head during Viv Gee’s headline set…It was such a shame really, as most people there were very much enjoying performance and were desperate for her to be allowed to perform without interruption.
At the start of the evening there were a couple of low-level gits (characterised by chatting between themselves at length while the acts were on, and getting up in the middle of sets to go for a fag).
After I admonished one of them gently for talking all through a comic’s set, a couple of high-level gits got involved and got fairly aggressive and threatening with yours truly…
It was slightly unnerving that one of the aggressors had a bottle of HP sauce in his pocket. I sensed that this had the potential to be a highly effective improvised weapon.
It would have been vaguely ironic for me to be beaten to death by a HP sauce carrying thug, as HP Sauce is one of my most favouritest things ever.
They just got progressively got more and more vocal and annoying as Viv’s set went on, and sadly she had to cut it short as it just became farcical trying to compete with the dickheads.
After the show finished, the heated arguments continued…
The comic contingent eventually decided to head to Bannerman’s for a respite pint.
Of course, having a night like this represents an inherent danger in having a free gig in a bar.
It does make you question whether it is worth the grief.
You can still get incidents like this in pay-to-get-in comedy clubs, but it’s a little less likely as the audience have at least all made some financial commitment to the evening.
Ah well, at least my new “linesman” joke got a big laugh.
It’s funny how new words just appear out of the ether.
I don’t think I’ve previously heard the term “mis-spoke” used.
(Hillary Clinton yesterday used this term to describe the seemingly blatant lie that she came under sniper attack when she arrived for a visit in Kosovo 10 years ago ; the video suggested there was nothing going off at all)
Of course, at comedy clubs up and down the land, you know that comics will be paraphrasing their material with stuff like “I’m telling the truth here…I’m definitely not mis-spoking…no siree…!”
The same thing happened when someone once said at an inquiry they they weren’t telling lies, they were merely being “economical with the truth”.
An expression still widely used in a jokey sarcastic way.
And since John Reid said that the Home Office was not “fit for purpose”…that’s become the hip way to say that something is basically a load of old shite.
I prefer calling things a load of old shite to be honest.

Wednesday, March 26, 2008

26/03/08 Now Hear This...










I had a gig at The Stand on Monday.
I’d say it went down pretty well, but the performance was rubbish.
I’d intended doing a high energy babbling style, trying to cram loads of material into a manic 10 minutes, but then changed my mind for no apparent reason just before I went on.
Also, I fumbled a lot of lines.
This was odd because I’d spent a lot more time than I usually do going over what I was going to say, and made a few edits and stuff.
So that’s what you get for being diligent.
I got a more than a few disapproving tuts at some of the “questionable taste” material as well. That doesn’t usually happen as most audiences regard the material as more idiotic than offensive.
Anyway, a few new things went well, so mustn’t grumble too much.
I’ve always been a big fan of global warming, particularly the predicted rising of sea levels.
I appreciate this will likely lead to an environmental catastrophe, but I still look forward to visiting my friend Iain when it all comes to pass.
Iain is a true anorak, and has successfully climbed every “Munro” in Scotland.
To mark this achievement, he has a large map of Scotland in his kitchen with hundreds of tiny flags pinned in it to represent every Munro he has successfully “bagged”.
I think it would be hilarious if rising sea levels caused a number of Iain’s conquered peaks to lose their Munro classification, (ie they are no longer at least 3000 ft above sea level).
I’d take great delight in removing the appropriate number of flags from the map and casting them to the floor as Iain looks on in stunned silence.
I know what you’re thinking….the satisfaction at witnessing a geeky friend’s upset hardly compensates for the accompanying global devastation…
but that’s just your opinion.
My switch from Betfair to Stock Trading has made a fantastic start.
I bought then sold Lonmin for a good profit (selling just before it dropped like a stone), then transferred everything onto the Royal Bank of Scotland, guessing (correctly at the time of going to print) that the Banks had hit their bottom value last week.
It’s shot up this week so I am sitting on a great big profit.
It was a great manoeuvre, reminiscent of Richard Burton jumping from one cable car to another seconds before the first cable car explodes and plummets to the ground.
It was just like that.
I miss the instant gratification of winning a Betfair bet, but the stocks thing feels like a more adult relationship.
..and yes what you’re thinking is absolutely correct…what a wanker…!!!!

Saturday, March 22, 2008

22/03/08 Do They Know It's Easter?




I thought Edinburgh city centre might be quiet today as most people would be be off doing something more holiday-ish than wandering around the shops.
What an idiotic idea that was.
It was about the busiest I've ever seen it.
Walking along Princes Street was reminiscent of the big get-together in Mecca.
Things weren't helped by the highly original "robot dancing" man causing a big obstruction of a large section of the street with his ground breaking body popping.
In spite of all this I had a couple of eavesdropping smirks as I made my way home.

Scene 1 ; middle-aged couple sitting arguing on a park bench in Princes St

Man (loudly) "What part of 'I am NOT fucking senile' do you not understand???"
(at this point the woman turned away and rolled her eyes in exasperation)

That was quite good...

Then...

Scene 2 ; another middle-aged man and woman talking in St James Centre (I get around!)

man: I got married 8 years ago...

woman : That's brilliant!...Congratulations..!!!

man : actually, we split up 6 years ago

woman : oh... sorry to hear that!

Of course maybe this meeting of long lost friends had a happy ending.
Perhaps they always fancied each other, and the lady was secretly crestfallen when he said he'd got married, but her hopes rose again as he revealed he was actually single..

Fascinating stuff...

ok anyway, I hope this guy achieves what he sets out to do...although it sounds horrendous...
I just think that at some point he will regret his decision to carry that banner thing AS WELL...!!!

Friday, March 21, 2008

21/03/08 Regime change





I didn’t think I’d gotten THAT drunk at The Stand party on Wednesday night, but the evidence of the following day seemed to contradict this belief.
After describing last Sunday’s experience as my worst hangover in living memory, Thursday more than eclipsed this accomplishment.
I eventually got out of bed at 6pm, shuffled about for a while, then retreated back into bed at 9pm. Grim.
That’s 2 days of my life I’ve completely wasted in the last 5 days.
It’s on the wagon for me for a while I think.
I’m in the huff with Mr Booze and the sadistic way he’s been bullying me of late.
I’ll see if I can beat my highly unimpressive current record of 18 days alcohol abstinence.
On a brighter note, I’ve managed to avoid Mr Nicotine successfully for the last 2 weeks, and as if that wasn’t impressive enough, have smashed through the 13 stone barrier for the first time in ages (I mean being less than 13 stone ,of course).
Losing weight and stopping smoking at the same time.
How impressive is that?
I should be able to get on the “Richard and Judy Show” with stuff like that.
I’m not really on a diet or anything.
Diets are inherently pointless unless you maintain them indefinitely.
I’ve just bade a tearful farewell to my beloved kettle crisps, tend to avoid bread and potatoes most of the time (likewise chocolate), do a bit more exercise and there’s no eating between meals…
That’s all really….but as a consequence of this half-hearted regime, I’ve lost more than a stone in the last 5 weeks (although that does include the unintentional 10 day Atkin’s diet in Canadia). But I'm eats lots of salad and fruit and shit like that, ken...
btw how good is this?????
(it's the mime for "ladies" that makes me chuckle)

Wednesday, March 19, 2008

19/03/08 Hurray! Back at Work!



I'm doing another 3 month IT contract...it's not ideal for coming up with interesting blogs.
Although in fairness, I did see a man rollerskating along Princes Street yesterday weaving in and out of congested traffic.
His style was reminiscent of the nonchalant, swaying motion of the speed skaters you see every 4 years during the Winter Olympics.
I suspect he's probably been run over by a lorry by now.
It did look completely suicidal.
My other observation of note occurred during a feature on "Scotland Today" last night on the matter of the lack availability of NHS dentists in certain areas of Scotland.
There was a couple of interviews with people protesting that their life was "hell" as they had no dentist to go to.
Then we had some dentist stock footage, as the reporter summed things up.
The footage started off very humdrum with people just having their teeth inspected on the dentist chair.
Then suddenly, it cut to a man, who was obviously under general anaesthetic having his teeth hurriedly yanked out by a dentist, as if he was competing in a hilarious "It's A Knockout!" style dentist game...battling against the clock!
There's not that many TV moments which lead me to involuntarily shout out...
"Jesus Fucking Christ! What are they showing that for??", but this was definitely one of them.
That was quite interesting.
I've been spending a couple of hours a day demonstrating outside "Ladbrokes" with a "Renounce The Wages Of Sin" placard.
Hopefully, I can persuade others to renounce the evils of gambling and join me on my path of righteousness.

Sunday, March 16, 2008

16/03/2008 Ho Hum



Well I had a couple of lapses before the snowboarding in jaunt in Canada, so I can't lay all the blame on the land of Mounties.
However, in the course of the holiday there was once again regular partaking of the evil cigarette by your correspondent.
I've been off them again for a week, so the saga continues.
I have also now permanently closed down my Betfair account.
I'd actually been doing extremely well of late and had been very disciplined with my betting strategy.
This all fell apart last weekend, as I made a string of colossal losses as the form book broke several windows in various sporting events, ie Scotland beat England at rugby (yes, I treacherously backed the Auld Enemy...I can't apologise enough), the FA Cup shocks and Aberdeen and Celtic drawing.
I'd effectively thrown away all my hard earned profits and was now sitting on a loss.
I'd fallen into the classic idiot gambler scenario of betting just because I fancied a bet rather than carefully selecting what represented a good value bet.
Then I did something even more stupid.
I decided to do the "double or quits" bet thing, and wagered an extremely large bet on England beating Ireland at rugby yesterday (I can't tell you how much, but just believe me it was big).
This would retrieve all my losses and leave me slightly in profit over the long term.
I decided though that regardless of what happened, I would quit gambling on Betfair for ever. Too stressful.
As Ireland raced to a 10 point lead after 5 minutes, my sphincter adopted the characteristics of a giga counter switched on in Chernobyl.
Thankfully Ireland didn't add to this score and England won in the end, although for long periods it was a close game, and it was thanks to some stupid mistakes from Ireland that the final scoreline was so convincing.
Anyway, I got away with it, and have now renounced the evils of gambling.
It's just very difficult to make a lot of headway in the long term.
I'm just going to stick to the stock market from now on.
Much less risky!
There was a new review section added to the Scottish Comedy Forum which made interesting reading.
It was then withdrawn because apparently some of the contributors complained that their permission had not been sought in terms of posting their reviews.
I found this a bit odd as the reviews seemed to be excerpts from people's blogs.
I mentioned in a post that this was akin to streakers complaining about people looking at their cocks.
I thought that part of the vainglorious idea of doing a blog was that you want as many people to read it as possible?
(then my post got binned. It's 1984 all over again! :-))
Was at a birthday bash at The Jam House last night.
We had a meal at 6.30pm and then just stayed on and listened to the bands and got drunk.
Due to the early start/late ending of the evening, I now have a colossal hangover.
I'd say about 80-90 % of the punters were female (some readers might find that statistic helpful)
I nicked along to The Stand to see Jo Caulfield heeadline (very funny) before rejoining the party action.
I remember (vaguely) being intrigued by the choice of covers the band played.
We had The Proclaimers/500 Miles ; All Right Now/Free ; Doobie Brothers/Listen To The Music ; Duran Duran/Hungry Like The Wolf amongst others.
A fairly eclectic selection I'd say.

Tuesday, March 11, 2008

11/03/2008 Kapow!



I loved "There Will Be Blood". What a movie!
Although saying that, if any actor other than Mr Day-Lewis was playing the lead role then it could easily have been a bit of a turkey.
Totally mesmerising performance.
He completely dominates every scene he appears in...there's just this brooding menace going on the whole time in his character. I loved it.
The young priest didn't quite convince as much, and he kept reminding me of Gene Wilder's portrayal of the nervous accountant Leo Bloom in "The Producers", (particularly when he started shouting like a maniac)
My wallet turned up!
I had to pay a 3 quid admin charge as well as 10% of the cash recovered to the Lost Property Dept at Waverley Station.
Everybody's on the make these days....
The main thing is I got my drinks discount card from The Stand back...
That's worth about 10 000 pounds a year to me in savings.
There are few things I enjoy more than being out in the country with a large column of boiling water and steam spouting from the top of my head.
I like to think I'm a bit of an active geezer...

Sunday, March 09, 2008

09/03/2008 Sunday Sunday



There's been a bit of a debate in the past couple of weeks in Scottish Comedy land.
Basically, The Stand took a swipe at the "Scottish Comedian of the Year" award in particular, and the concept of comedy competitions in general.
Most people have avoided commenting as they don't want to burn their boats with either promoter involved.
Fair enough, but I suppose Blogs are meant to be used for droning on about such things.
I've been impressed with the professionalism with which the SCOTY award has been run.
However, I do think that the award itself should be prefixed by the organisation which is running it.
The current name does imply a consensus of the Scottish Comedy Industry in its running, and this is clearly not the case.
If either the "Laughing Horse New Act Of The Year" or "Amused Moose Search for a Star" comedy awards suddenly decided to call their competition "English Comedian of the Year" there would be an avalanche of guffaws and pelters.
The main reason I don't enter competitions in general is (WARNING ; highly subjective recollection alert) based on an experience is a southern based comp.
I'd got through to the second round and travelled down to London for it.
I had a stormer, and was really pissed off that I didn't qualify and felt cheated.
But what really annoyed me more than anything was the knowledge that if it was a non-competition gig, I would have headed home delighted with the way things had gone, rather than sulking North to think again.
However, there are so many new acts scurrying around desperately seeking stage time, that it's inevitable people will run competitions.
They are fairly lucrative to the organiser.
You don't pay anyone and you can charge normal comedy club prices in the knowledge that each contestant is likely to bring a few supporters with them.
I think personally you should always have a experienced compere and closing act in setups like this, but it doesn't always happen.
In the early rounds it's effectively an open mic night with an inflated entry charge.
Fascinating stuff, huh?
(just as well nobody ever reads this)
I'm back working for the man again...it's just a 12 week contract...may it pass quickly...
I had 3 gigs this week...one great, one so-so and the other difficult to tell because there were so few people in the audience.
It was good to see Scotland beat England yesterday at the rugby as they've been having such a crap tournament.
However, for the neutral watching Ireland v Wales and Scotland v England, it was pretty grim stuff.
That old clip of the Barbarians try against the All Blacks which always pops up now and again shows a form of Rugby Union completely unrecognisable from the turgid shite on display these days.
They still need to get the rules sorted out I reckon.
I've signed up to go on a "Deliverance" style canoeing/hillwalking trip in May up in Sutherland.
It's good to have things like this planned because it gives you an incentive to get fitter and not be the pathetic runt out of the 10 of us who are going.
I'm probably not going to play the Burt Reynolds character, but I definitely don't want to be Ned Beatty and would be happy to to take the Jon Voigt role.
Just been for a 2 mile run and never stopped once...amn't I the one?

Wednesday, March 05, 2008

05/03/2008 Back



So anyway, my holiday got off to a spectacular start when I lost my wallet on the day I was leaving. Nice...
I had to cancel all my cards and then went to the trusty Alliance and Leicester to take out a big wad of cash to take away with me.
According to the bank teller, my card hadn't been cancelled. Hmmm...
So they had to phone again to cancel it before they would give me the dosh.
They had to phone the same call centre that I had, and it took about 30 minutes for them to get through and request that the card got cancelled, (I had definitely done this myself earlier on).
You'd think there would be some sort of direct line from the branch to the call centre for stuff like this...but apparently not.
This is mental...
I couldn't get angry with the teller though as she was far too attractive for that.
She made me laugh as well.
"You've Lost That Loving Feeling" was being piped through the bank.
She mentioned that when she split up with her first serious boyfriend, she was devastated and tearful and was later picked up by her dad in his car.
As he drove home, that song came on the radio, prompting her dad to enthusiastically sing along... blissfully unaware of the tragic resonance the lyrics would be having on his daughter.
A classic example of male insensitivity I'd say.
Well the boarding was great...but a bit more snow would have been appreciated.
I like Canadians...very friendly folk...
One criticism though...you need to broaden your adjective use...everything seems to be "awesome"...
Now, if I saw a grizzly bear shagging a moose up a tree...that certainly would be universally agreed as "awesome" (I'm not saying I did see this)....BUT if I produce the correct change for a quarter of a pound of sherbert lemons in a confectionery store (which I did), then that's not really "awesome", although it was enthusiastically described as such by the young male assistant.
However, it was quite awesome to be somewhere which still stubbornly clings on to Imperial Measures, and be able to ask for a quarter of a pound of sherbert lemons rather than this 200g nonsense.
I'm seriously thinking of going veggie.
I must have eaten about 3 cows with a couple of pig side dishes in the 10 days I was out there.
I've probably lost weight as it was something of an unintentional 10 day Atkins diet with a daily exercise routine.
You don't see too many vegetables out there....