30/10/07 Jim Park Is Unwell

Got a flu type thing at the moment...
It's grim, but I reckon I've passed the worst of it...
I've had 3 gigs since I last penned this web ting.
The first was at Heresy where I boldly decided to do 90% new material.
I was pleasantly surprised that a good chunk of my set went down really well.
The delivery was fairly shambolic, but I could tell that the audience had bought into the ideas and found them funny.
The bits that worked well were ;
the Beachy Head/"clay pigeon shooting" style centre ; "Paedophiles Do The Funniest Things" TV show pitch ; buying a book "Ventriloquism For Dummies" (it teaches you how to move your eyes from side to side with someone's arm up your arse) ; embarking on a relationship with a charred corpse (carbonised dating really works)

The bits that didn't work so well were a piece on the phenomenum of people always saying at the scene of a fire "it's like a scene from Dante's Inferno", and another piece based on the fact that it would be inappropriate to say "There's more fish in the sea" to a recently divorced Canadian fisherman based in Newfoundland in 1992 when the stocks of Atlantic Cod catastrophically collapsed, (need to say something else..."there's more snakes in the grass?" :-))
I thought today for quite a good tag on to the "Ventriloquism for Dummies" piece...
ie there's an enormous range of titles now available in this series, but I haven't been able to find one that could teach me "sign language".
The next gig was at the Antiquary Bar in Stockbridge...
I was compering.
I started off with a couple of "bullet proof" jokes and was somewhat surprised to see a large piece of tumbleweed roll past me.
You can just never presume anything in this game.
It turned out to be a great gig in the end as I eventually managed to get the audience onside by rejoicing in my crappiness as an MC.
I think my compering is improving, but I'm miles more comfortable being an act.
But hey I like a challenge and I'm determined to get better at this skill.
I've got great admiration for the people I know who excel at it.
We were all slightly apprehensive about the gig, as it was free, and in a bar on a Saturday night...but people generally listened attentively...and Keir McAllister, Iain Johnstone, Matrin McAllister and Ricky Callan were in searing form.
And The Antiquary want to have another one. hurray!
After the tumbleweed incident it was great to then have very strong gig at The Stand with the same jokes that got nothing getting laughter and rounds of applause.
C'est la vie!
I've got a weekend of gigs coming up at The Stand on 8/9/10th November.
I'm really looking forward to it.
It's been a long time since I've done a weekend...I've really missed it because it's great...and I know I'm much better prepared this time.