When I was really young, I used to laugh at expulsions of air.
Pfft.
This is a real joke what I have written and is the only ‘funny’ thing I have managed lately. I have been trying to funnel all of my creative energies in preparation for the radio shows which are starting next week, specifically the 31st of October and the 1st of November 12pm until 3pm. 87.8fm and at http://www.rhonddaradio.com/. Plug!
The problem with this is that while I am still enjoying myself and feel I am being flexed creatively, I am unable to recycle the material for this blog, at least not until after I’ve used it on air. So while my amazing plans for the Tales of Isembard Cannonby and my new game whose title I am unable to type for reasons of secrecy fill me with joy, I am unable to go into them in any detail. Is this what they call a tease?
The creative team of Adfydd (Adam & Dafydd) have been busy ploughing away on pre-records, with 5 episodes of The Cultural Exchange Program recorded, though they all need varying levels of editing. The recording of the fourth, Comedy/Instrumental, and the fifth, Folk/Guitarists, took place outside the studio environment, thanks to the audio equipment I acquired upon the anniversary of the day of my birth. We’ve discovered that even whilst recording in a more casual environment, we are still capable of the faux-professional apparent-shambles we put out in an actual studio. There is some incidental ambient noise provided by traffic, postmen and the dongings of clocks that isn’t present in the studio, but I feel this adds to the diy ethic of our output. Oh yes, our output. Indeed. When outside the studio however, we are, in the course of the two hour recording, tempted by mischief.
In the first of the two recordings a discussion about a black bassist who opted out of a family band in order to further his solo career sparked an irreverent discussion about Michael Jackson, which peaked with Dafydd uttering, in tones of heavy gravitas: “RIP Michael Jackson”, which led to roughly 5 minutes of painful belly-laughter and tears. I replicate that information here as the belly laughter has not made the edit, as we felt it would make us seem unduly nasty. It’s a pity that we have had to sand the spiky edges off our recording in order to make it fit to what we imagine is the ‘serving the community’ ethos of our radio station, but we have kept a copy of the original version, if only for our own amusement.
A similar burst of laughter came in today’s recording when, after our discussion petered out under the weight of a strange tangent, I bellowed Michael Legge’s beloved catchphrase “WHAT’S WRONG?!” into the mic, provoking an unexpectedly gleeful reaction from Dafydd, which subsequently sent me into fits of laughter. Sadly, this too may not make the final edit, as the randomness of the humour may not translate. You never know though, I may drop it haphazardly in the timeline, and say it was an accident. And if people complain, I will merely reiterate the question.
This has been a good week for podcasts, and not only because I have appeared, to varying degrees, in two.
At the very beginning of the week, the unintelligible ramblings of the Welsh Peacock and Gamble (me and Dafydd again) were transmitted via a live satellite link, or as they call them in lieville: an mp3 file, into the real Peacock and Gamble podcast. I felt our input was dealt with masterfully, with Ray and Ed joking that they were unable to understand our accents, or implying that we were speaking in Welsh, which not only provided a platform for their silliness, but also meant that they didn’t have to directly comment on what we were actually saying, meaning our egos were unhurt.
Then, later in the week, my contribution to the whip-round on twitter for questions for the Interview James segment of the Precious Little podcast was used, and therefore in some small way I was involved in that also. This brings my ‘appearances’ in podcasts up to 3, as I have also had some idiotic ramblings read out on the wonderful Trap Sodcasts. As sad as it is that I am genuinely excited to have had my idiocy recorded and internetted in this way, there are only a small number of podcasts to which I subscribe, and I began to genuinely machinate on how I could get my name on all of them.
Atop my list of favourites is the Collings and Herrin podcast, which I could conceivably buy my way into, as they have a history of podcast-sponsorship by fans. Whether or not this desire to have my name in the podcasts I listen to is worth the money it would take to sponsor the podcast is, at this point, uncertain.
Richard Herring’s new Tuesday wonderfest AIOTM would also be possible to get into, as the content is drawn from notable things which have occurred to Mr Herring. It would take a carefully planned undertaking to get onto that one, but I am sure if I ambushed him somewhere on his travels and branded my name onto his forehead with something boiling that was shaped like my name, it would almost certainly make the show, especially as he would have to explain the wound to a bewildered audience. Knowing how sneaky the Herring man can be however, it’s possible he would reverse my name in a sly joke about reading it in the mirror. Damn you Herring.
All past potential contributions to Adam & Joe or Jon Richardson’s shows have failed, but maybe if I raise my game and put real effort into the e-mails I can break through the 6music barrier.
I have recently taken to listening to iszi Lawrence and Simon Dunn’s Sundays Supplement podcast, which is the perfect size for car trips to and from work. It is also funny, which perhaps my length-based criterion failed to suggest. In order to get into that I would need to be mentioned in a national newspaper, or more specifically, in the supplement of a Sunday edition of a national newspaper. Or more specifically, in the supplement of the specific Sunday edition of a national newspaper that one of them had brought that particular week. Or more specifically, in an article of particular interest to one of them that was in the supplement of a Sunday edition of the national newspaper that one of them had brought. Alternatively, I could e-mail them I suppose.
All this planning and I haven’t even reached Rhod Gilbert’s Best Bits (possible), Daniel Kitson’s podcast (fairly impossible) or Robin Cooper’s Timewaster podcasts (hugely unlikely). I’m not convinced that I have the necessary oomph to see this through.
I have also been told that I was on television earlier, though I had anticipated this using my Sherlock Holmes/Sad Git powers and sky plussed it.
I imagine my contribution is limited to a split second appearance in a montage, hopefully alongside iszi Lawrence and Ben Partridge. After all, isn’t being in a montage with more talented people everyone’s real goal?
I think this appearance would be in accordance with the British Montage Act 1947, which states that people who unwittingly appear in a montage alongside each other on a UK terrestrial channel are legally required to enter a legally binding polygamous marriage. In the event of this marriage, I imagine I would be the only pleased party.
If I go home and discover there is no montage, I will be heartily displeased.
There’s ever a chance I will end up in a montage with Andrea Benfield, which would please me less, but would still be a positive outcome for me.
Remember, whenever we want to go, from just a beginner to a pro, you need a montage.
And lost of practice.
Thursday 22 October 2009
Monday 12 October 2009
Sweet, Sweet Repetition
In further ‘children with a lack of self-awareness say incredibly annoying things’ tales, I was treated earlier to an unwitting Stewart Lee/Richard Herring style repetitive and tedium-goading routine by a group of children. For anyone unfamiliar with these kinds of routines, they revolve around playing with one idea for a seemingly inordinate amount of time, usually repeating the same information or sentiment but with subtle variations in the phrasing. I hope that wasn’t too reductive an explanation. The children then had been arguing over invites to a Halloween party, or a lack thereof, and had decided to fall back on the well trodden joke of “You don’t even need to dress up for Halloween!” with the suggestion being that the individual in question already looks like a monster. Except, of course, the children found it necessary to ruin any subtlety of the joke by actively stating, after a painful gap where no one laughed “because you already look like a monster!”.
Not satisfied with this, another child decided to proceed with the baton of hilarity and take it on a marathon journey. He burst in with “Last Halloween you dressed up as the Grinch didn’t you?” and when this inquiry bore no fruit declared “you really should have taken the costume off by now!” Now, this joke was, at best, a variation upon the earlier theme, and since the original joke had led to no laughter, it seemed unlikely that this more extended adventure would bear fruit. The silence was deafening, but undeterred the child ploughed onward “it’s been an entire year now!” Perhaps the children were un-amused by this declaration because of its untruth, it has only been nearly a year since last Halloween, which may give credence to the saying ‘It’s funny because it’s true’, duly informing us that ‘It’s not funny because it’s not true’. The child then returns to the original thread of the joke, declaring that “You didn’t even have to dress up to be the Grinch!” dutifully filling the silence that followed with “because you look like the Grinch anyway!” Further banishing the silence with the contradictory exclamation of “You never take your Grinch costume off!”.
I am a huge fan of the works of both Stewart Lee and Richard Herring, and find much humour in the work they do. What this episode of child-jesting proves is that when it comes to repetition, there is a thin line between hilarious and tedious. My own personal research informs me that even if the original joke isn’t funny, if you keep pushing eventually you break through the wall of cachinnation, as the conceit gets ever thinner the further you force it, the funnier it will eventually be. I have mixed the metaphors of a ‘line’ and a ‘wall’, but to be fair I’d like to think it was more of a wall, as this sets up tedious joking as a personal challenge to me, to see just how far I can push a tedious joke in order for it to be funny. My conclusion then, in terms of the Halloween/Grinch/Wearing-your-costume-all-the-time/You-are-ugly-enough-to-not-need-a-costume/Take-your-costume-off-ugly! joke, is that the child in question simply didn’t have the comedy courage, or coumrage if you please, to see it through to its inevitably hilarious conclusion.
It may have helped if he knew where the joke was going as well, and perhaps if he had a big deviation at the end as a punch-line.
Maybe as a big finish he could have taken his costume off!!!!!!!!!!!!EXCLAMATIONMARK!
Not satisfied with this, another child decided to proceed with the baton of hilarity and take it on a marathon journey. He burst in with “Last Halloween you dressed up as the Grinch didn’t you?” and when this inquiry bore no fruit declared “you really should have taken the costume off by now!” Now, this joke was, at best, a variation upon the earlier theme, and since the original joke had led to no laughter, it seemed unlikely that this more extended adventure would bear fruit. The silence was deafening, but undeterred the child ploughed onward “it’s been an entire year now!” Perhaps the children were un-amused by this declaration because of its untruth, it has only been nearly a year since last Halloween, which may give credence to the saying ‘It’s funny because it’s true’, duly informing us that ‘It’s not funny because it’s not true’. The child then returns to the original thread of the joke, declaring that “You didn’t even have to dress up to be the Grinch!” dutifully filling the silence that followed with “because you look like the Grinch anyway!” Further banishing the silence with the contradictory exclamation of “You never take your Grinch costume off!”.
I am a huge fan of the works of both Stewart Lee and Richard Herring, and find much humour in the work they do. What this episode of child-jesting proves is that when it comes to repetition, there is a thin line between hilarious and tedious. My own personal research informs me that even if the original joke isn’t funny, if you keep pushing eventually you break through the wall of cachinnation, as the conceit gets ever thinner the further you force it, the funnier it will eventually be. I have mixed the metaphors of a ‘line’ and a ‘wall’, but to be fair I’d like to think it was more of a wall, as this sets up tedious joking as a personal challenge to me, to see just how far I can push a tedious joke in order for it to be funny. My conclusion then, in terms of the Halloween/Grinch/Wearing-your-costume-all-the-time/You-are-ugly-enough-to-not-need-a-costume/Take-your-costume-off-ugly! joke, is that the child in question simply didn’t have the comedy courage, or coumrage if you please, to see it through to its inevitably hilarious conclusion.
It may have helped if he knew where the joke was going as well, and perhaps if he had a big deviation at the end as a punch-line.
Maybe as a big finish he could have taken his costume off!!!!!!!!!!!!EXCLAMATIONMARK!
Friday 9 October 2009
Routines Don't Have to Be Routine
Since getting into a regular routine myself, I have begun to notice that other people go about their business with quite strict routines also. This is never more evident than on my leaving my place of work, where my routine of: iPod, engine, leave, is always followed by being stuck at the very first traffic lights. It is during this wait, where I am stuck cursing the colourful trinity, that I begin to wonder whether the black lady will be waiting by the side of the bus-stop. After driving the same route home every day, I have begun to notice landmarks, and I didn’t consciously notice the black lady until one day she was not there. I panicked.
I began to wonder who had removed the black lady from her side-of-the-bus-stop vigil, this slouchy dignitary who stands on no plinth. Then I realised that she is an actual person and not just a marker to let me know how far along my route I am, which led me to question my mental process. Instead of going on much of a journey of self-analysis, I decided to compose a song I now sing whenever there is a significant lack of black lady by the bus stop. It goes: “O-o-o-h black lady by the bus stop / where are you today? / Have they taken you away?” but then I am past the bus stop and I lose interest.
If you are wondering, when she is there as usual, I do not have a song to greet her, that would be weird. Instead I just shuffle past nervously, bowing my head, which is a difficult and dangerous thing to do in a car.
Here is another thing I observed whilst driving home. It was already dark by this time, and I was just nearing my old University, when I noticed too men standing awkwardly close to each other and jittering around aggressively. I realised that one of the men had his arms around the other, and looked to be shaking him quite violently. The man who was being held by the other was seemingly of Asian descent, it is impossible to be more specific from the brief glance I had from my side window as my pimped-out Aston Martin ZX Spectrum whooshed past sexily doing one like off Tokyo drift. The reality of the situation then sunk in as I came level to them. What I had originally believed to be a highly localised example of a racial riot was actually one guy helping his friend stay upright as he struggled to 1) stand up and 2) not fall into the road, as he tried to rollerblade. I was momentarily heartened by this, thinking that this is surely the world that Martin John Lennon King had surely dreamt about and/or been able to imagine. Turns out it is easy if we try. I soon got over this rather quickly though, as I decided to be indignant that people were attempting to learn to rollerblade in the dark on the edge of a main road. Bloody immigrants, coming over here, rollerblading on our pavements, right next to a busy road! Direct them to a skate park, that’s what I say.
The new routine I am cultivating involves a midday viewing of the channel NHK World. NHK is a Japanese television channel, where NHK World broadcasts in English and has shows about various aspects of Japanese culture. My sister and I began watching the channel in the summer, when we were much enamoured of the show Nihongo Quick Lesson, an endearingly cheesy show teaching basic Japanese phrases. We decided to put this show on series link using our futuristic Sky Plus technology, but then decided against this as it inundated our planner with infinite repeats since the show is played so many times a day. I randomly went back to the channel a few weeks ago, as there was nothing of any merit on any other channel, so I thought I’d give it another opportunity. And NHK World delivered, though it may not be for the reasons they would have wanted. The channel is run on the same sort of format as community radio, where the news comes in every hour, although on NHK World it lasts for an entire half hour, as though it doesn’t have enough shows to fill anywhere near enough time. And it doesn’t, which is half the reason it is utterly magnificent, where shows that under-run mean that a few minutes have to be filled with footage of squirrels with a lovely piano composition over the top, and also that shows that don’t have enough material have to seek things that have nothing to do with the title of the segment. For example, a show entitled Chinese Noodle Odyssey, which is something I would consider going on, begins by telling you about noodles in China (tick), but then discusses bean paste pancakes (at least it’s still food), then going off completely and showing some traditional Chinese shadow puppets. There was also a wonderful scene where the host ate some Chinese flat bread and basically said “Eugh, that’s gross!” which is the sort of honesty that is utterly missing from Western food programs.
By far the best part of NHK World is the weather, where a woman who, when standing in profile, has the shape of the letter S talks through some weather that you ignore, and then for 5 minutes the screen is full of a list of 5 international locations with their temperature and weather, with calming nothing synth whispering over the top of it. I have decided that this is the most tasteful 5 minutes of footage that will ever be broadcast in any given hour. Anyone who doesn’t want to know the temperature of Los Angeles, London, Tokyo and Kuala Lumpur in the same segment, simply doesn’t deserve a television. It feels like what I imagine television would have been like in the oldie olden days, before everything had to be loud, short and viciously screamed out of the screen into your tearful soul. It is television that can be as comfortable as radio, where even the strange mix of stilted Japanese-English and the nose-wrinkling cheese of American-English accents and dialects can meld together and be enjoyable. One segment had a Japanese-speaking Italian musical-director travelling around introducing ancient Japanese scroll-art. What beautiful individual decided that was a segment that needed to be made? Whoever they are, I love them.
So, about the footage of the squirrels. There was one squirrel which stood still and looked as though it had a marvellous punk Mohican running the length of its body, leading me to exclaim that the Japanese were bound to imagine Pokemon if there are creatures like that inhabiting their forests. The squirrel then moved and it was merely a trick made by holding its tail to its back, which disappointed me deeply but perhaps gives an insight into the creation process of some pokemon. I would like to think that someone who was tricked into believing that a squirrel could have a Mohican would then decide to fill the gap with animation once it turns out to be untrue.
In animal news that is closer to home, I think I witnessed the puppy discovering rain this afternoon. We are attempting to get him to realise that the correct location for bowel evacuation is out the back (of the house and also of his body), and it began to rain when he was out there. The sight of a small dog attacking the sky and almost doing a back-flip will certainly be my favourite image of the day.
But only because there is no such thing as a Mohiquirrel.
P.S. I just helped extricate a bottle of Ribena from a glitchy vending machine for a small child, this is not in my job description and makes me a hero.
I began to wonder who had removed the black lady from her side-of-the-bus-stop vigil, this slouchy dignitary who stands on no plinth. Then I realised that she is an actual person and not just a marker to let me know how far along my route I am, which led me to question my mental process. Instead of going on much of a journey of self-analysis, I decided to compose a song I now sing whenever there is a significant lack of black lady by the bus stop. It goes: “O-o-o-h black lady by the bus stop / where are you today? / Have they taken you away?” but then I am past the bus stop and I lose interest.
If you are wondering, when she is there as usual, I do not have a song to greet her, that would be weird. Instead I just shuffle past nervously, bowing my head, which is a difficult and dangerous thing to do in a car.
Here is another thing I observed whilst driving home. It was already dark by this time, and I was just nearing my old University, when I noticed too men standing awkwardly close to each other and jittering around aggressively. I realised that one of the men had his arms around the other, and looked to be shaking him quite violently. The man who was being held by the other was seemingly of Asian descent, it is impossible to be more specific from the brief glance I had from my side window as my pimped-out Aston Martin ZX Spectrum whooshed past sexily doing one like off Tokyo drift. The reality of the situation then sunk in as I came level to them. What I had originally believed to be a highly localised example of a racial riot was actually one guy helping his friend stay upright as he struggled to 1) stand up and 2) not fall into the road, as he tried to rollerblade. I was momentarily heartened by this, thinking that this is surely the world that Martin John Lennon King had surely dreamt about and/or been able to imagine. Turns out it is easy if we try. I soon got over this rather quickly though, as I decided to be indignant that people were attempting to learn to rollerblade in the dark on the edge of a main road. Bloody immigrants, coming over here, rollerblading on our pavements, right next to a busy road! Direct them to a skate park, that’s what I say.
The new routine I am cultivating involves a midday viewing of the channel NHK World. NHK is a Japanese television channel, where NHK World broadcasts in English and has shows about various aspects of Japanese culture. My sister and I began watching the channel in the summer, when we were much enamoured of the show Nihongo Quick Lesson, an endearingly cheesy show teaching basic Japanese phrases. We decided to put this show on series link using our futuristic Sky Plus technology, but then decided against this as it inundated our planner with infinite repeats since the show is played so many times a day. I randomly went back to the channel a few weeks ago, as there was nothing of any merit on any other channel, so I thought I’d give it another opportunity. And NHK World delivered, though it may not be for the reasons they would have wanted. The channel is run on the same sort of format as community radio, where the news comes in every hour, although on NHK World it lasts for an entire half hour, as though it doesn’t have enough shows to fill anywhere near enough time. And it doesn’t, which is half the reason it is utterly magnificent, where shows that under-run mean that a few minutes have to be filled with footage of squirrels with a lovely piano composition over the top, and also that shows that don’t have enough material have to seek things that have nothing to do with the title of the segment. For example, a show entitled Chinese Noodle Odyssey, which is something I would consider going on, begins by telling you about noodles in China (tick), but then discusses bean paste pancakes (at least it’s still food), then going off completely and showing some traditional Chinese shadow puppets. There was also a wonderful scene where the host ate some Chinese flat bread and basically said “Eugh, that’s gross!” which is the sort of honesty that is utterly missing from Western food programs.
By far the best part of NHK World is the weather, where a woman who, when standing in profile, has the shape of the letter S talks through some weather that you ignore, and then for 5 minutes the screen is full of a list of 5 international locations with their temperature and weather, with calming nothing synth whispering over the top of it. I have decided that this is the most tasteful 5 minutes of footage that will ever be broadcast in any given hour. Anyone who doesn’t want to know the temperature of Los Angeles, London, Tokyo and Kuala Lumpur in the same segment, simply doesn’t deserve a television. It feels like what I imagine television would have been like in the oldie olden days, before everything had to be loud, short and viciously screamed out of the screen into your tearful soul. It is television that can be as comfortable as radio, where even the strange mix of stilted Japanese-English and the nose-wrinkling cheese of American-English accents and dialects can meld together and be enjoyable. One segment had a Japanese-speaking Italian musical-director travelling around introducing ancient Japanese scroll-art. What beautiful individual decided that was a segment that needed to be made? Whoever they are, I love them.
So, about the footage of the squirrels. There was one squirrel which stood still and looked as though it had a marvellous punk Mohican running the length of its body, leading me to exclaim that the Japanese were bound to imagine Pokemon if there are creatures like that inhabiting their forests. The squirrel then moved and it was merely a trick made by holding its tail to its back, which disappointed me deeply but perhaps gives an insight into the creation process of some pokemon. I would like to think that someone who was tricked into believing that a squirrel could have a Mohican would then decide to fill the gap with animation once it turns out to be untrue.
In animal news that is closer to home, I think I witnessed the puppy discovering rain this afternoon. We are attempting to get him to realise that the correct location for bowel evacuation is out the back (of the house and also of his body), and it began to rain when he was out there. The sight of a small dog attacking the sky and almost doing a back-flip will certainly be my favourite image of the day.
But only because there is no such thing as a Mohiquirrel.
P.S. I just helped extricate a bottle of Ribena from a glitchy vending machine for a small child, this is not in my job description and makes me a hero.
Thursday 8 October 2009
Here Is What I Have Been Doing In Far Too Much Detail
Busy, busy, busy. Ish.
Due to my few-hours afternoon job, I am usually free to lollop around and sleep through the morning every day, but it seems as though the fates have conspired to ensure that this week my mornings have been booked, forcing me out of my lazy stupor. Properly booked in as well, I have a diary and everything. And I wrote the stuff in there to be sure I remembered. I was proud of how grown up I am become but then I remembered that I turn 22 next week so perhaps my pride is more than slightly hubristic. I have far more of a tee-hee-hee mentality than my age can honestly justify. Although I have to counter that by saying I also have a streak of bleak cynicism also. This is now turning into a sell-yourself love ad, which is depressing for many reasons which I have no vested interest in pursuing.
My Monday morning enforced wake-up was due to more training I (and my broadcompadre) was undertaking in order to be fighting fit when the station goes live. I have chosen this phraseology as I enjoy the image of a radio station coming to life and rearing up like the Megazord, from off’ve the Power Rangers (Mighty Morphin’). I have a similar lexical imaginings when it comes to the line “The hills are alive” which conjures up visions of a golem terrorising Austrians, though this is ruined by the arrival of the line “with the sound of music”.
What I have learnt from my two radio training sessions is that people who are in the business of training are cruel people indeed. There is a definite method to the training process, which is to shock and frighten the trainees initially, and then eventually tell them they are great and their show will be brilliant. I resent this emotionally trying method, where the anally retentive radio schedule must be adhered to SIEG HEIL! but then also make sure to be yourself in the show, whilst not forgetting to cater for the community, and for god’s sake don’t forget to press the button when its time for the news and for god’s sake don’t say for god’s sake on the air because people complain more about blasphemy than swearing. Whether that last fact is true across the entire country I’m not sure, but it certainly is the case that in South Wales at least, the people with Ofcom on speed dial are the aged religious watchdogs, quick to do some stomping on any anti-religious broadcast. Jordi Cruijff! It is likely our show may not become a fast favourite among the religious contingent, as every pre-record so far contains off-hand bashing of christian rock (whose initial c was automatically capitalised, but I have gone back to make it lower case, because I am subversive as a U-boat).
My Tuesday was spent taking the puppy to the vet for routine jabs and flea spraying, where he was incredibly well behaved, and if I was a less staunchly serious individual I would describe his conduct as ‘brave’. I was later messed around by the clinic, who arranged an appointment for me to fill out some forms for criminal compensation, sat me in the waiting room, only to tell me 10 minutes later that the doctor wouldn’t be in today. Which I was pleased with, obviously. The meeting was rearranged for Wednesday, and the doctor was stand-offish and unnecessarily curt, harrumph. I am easily displeased.
Today I was awake in order to attend a corporate welcome, where I was reassured I was important, before I was able to grab as many free pens and key-rings as I clandestinely could, before slipping away without anyone noticing. Because I am important.
I was actually in something of a grump as I sat myself at an empty table, only to have the table sporadically and systematically fill up with each new arrival picking the seat furthest away from me. It was then that I fully realised that I can be quite inapproachable, decorated as I am with an intimidating beard and an automatic vacant grimace. The man stood behind the pensions stall seemed to appreciate my social awkwardness, just as I appreciated that he looked like a stretched Gordon Brown (stretched upwards) though I’m sure he realised my tenuous and superficial questioning about pensions was actually a wafer-thin premise to help myself to free pens. It takes a significant amount of social awkwardness to keep me away from free pens.
By my own introspective reckoning I am a social dualist, where, depending on my mood, I can be either Jekyll or Hyde. Although more accurately, I can be either extremely socially confident, or a complete hide-away. Last Friday I managed both within the space of a few hours.
I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to talk about it for fear of looking like a self-aggrandising hubristic tool, but I did an open spot in Cardiff, and it went really well. However it was a prime example of the awkwardness I am capable of.
The Chapter Arts Centre has been recently refurbished, but some sections of it are still being renovated, which is why there was a section just off the room where the comedy was being held that was pitched in complete darkness. After saying a stilted awkward hello to the organiser and noting to myself the good omen that was the opening strains of Desmond Dekker’s 007 (Shanty Town) drifting from the room, I retired to the dark place to wait, which must have looked like a creepy weirdo attempting to be tortured and artistic. It wasn’t. I felt as though since I hadn’t offered to help set up the room during the initial meeting, doing so now would look like a limp gesture, so I hid away. And instead of talking to other human beings, I decided to wait in the dark wrestling with my imagined faux pas. Or my faux-faux pas if you please.
Later I decided to loiter awkwardly just inside the door, where I failed to talk to Iszi Lawrence because the opening gambit that came to mind was “I follow you on twitter” and I decided it would be better just to look suspicious in the corner. Suspicious in the corner is a look, I discovered, I was born to wear, as my thought process of: “she’s tall, I wonder if she’s wearing heels, no she’s wearing two-tone shoes, two-tone shoes are cool, let’s look a the two-tone shoes for a bit” actually left me with a bowed head looking as though I was unashamedly ogling. I would like to take this opportunity to exclaim that I was not. I strive to do my level best never to ogle, and in situations where there are instances of ogling, there is always an abundance of shame.
When stood at the front of the room being funny, a situation where ogling is encouraged (hypocrisy), I was equally enthralled, although the compliment that you are at least as amusing/interesting as your shoes is probably not the sort of praise anyone wants. Some consolation can be taken in the fact that she is being compared to very engrossing shoes, and also in the fact that this entire mess of a paragraph exists only because I can’t find an interesting way to say: “Iszi Lawrence did some jokes, she was really funny”.
She mentioned her podcast at the end of her set (the self-publicising random insult!), which I was glad of because now I have 60+ episodes with which to block out the inane warblings of 11-year-olds choking each other. I think that was the exact reason those podcasts were recorded, and if at the end of my life I have created something that can be used in order to drown out children, then I will be able to donate my usable organs and have the rest of me cremated a happy corpse.
First prize for funny goes to Ben Partridge who doused himself violently with water in order to rouse a reticent crowd, stipulating that if they were unable to laugh at a sodden man, they wouldn’t laugh at anything. They laughed.
Also, my set went really well, did I mention that?
Due to my few-hours afternoon job, I am usually free to lollop around and sleep through the morning every day, but it seems as though the fates have conspired to ensure that this week my mornings have been booked, forcing me out of my lazy stupor. Properly booked in as well, I have a diary and everything. And I wrote the stuff in there to be sure I remembered. I was proud of how grown up I am become but then I remembered that I turn 22 next week so perhaps my pride is more than slightly hubristic. I have far more of a tee-hee-hee mentality than my age can honestly justify. Although I have to counter that by saying I also have a streak of bleak cynicism also. This is now turning into a sell-yourself love ad, which is depressing for many reasons which I have no vested interest in pursuing.
My Monday morning enforced wake-up was due to more training I (and my broadcompadre) was undertaking in order to be fighting fit when the station goes live. I have chosen this phraseology as I enjoy the image of a radio station coming to life and rearing up like the Megazord, from off’ve the Power Rangers (Mighty Morphin’). I have a similar lexical imaginings when it comes to the line “The hills are alive” which conjures up visions of a golem terrorising Austrians, though this is ruined by the arrival of the line “with the sound of music”.
What I have learnt from my two radio training sessions is that people who are in the business of training are cruel people indeed. There is a definite method to the training process, which is to shock and frighten the trainees initially, and then eventually tell them they are great and their show will be brilliant. I resent this emotionally trying method, where the anally retentive radio schedule must be adhered to SIEG HEIL! but then also make sure to be yourself in the show, whilst not forgetting to cater for the community, and for god’s sake don’t forget to press the button when its time for the news and for god’s sake don’t say for god’s sake on the air because people complain more about blasphemy than swearing. Whether that last fact is true across the entire country I’m not sure, but it certainly is the case that in South Wales at least, the people with Ofcom on speed dial are the aged religious watchdogs, quick to do some stomping on any anti-religious broadcast. Jordi Cruijff! It is likely our show may not become a fast favourite among the religious contingent, as every pre-record so far contains off-hand bashing of christian rock (whose initial c was automatically capitalised, but I have gone back to make it lower case, because I am subversive as a U-boat).
My Tuesday was spent taking the puppy to the vet for routine jabs and flea spraying, where he was incredibly well behaved, and if I was a less staunchly serious individual I would describe his conduct as ‘brave’. I was later messed around by the clinic, who arranged an appointment for me to fill out some forms for criminal compensation, sat me in the waiting room, only to tell me 10 minutes later that the doctor wouldn’t be in today. Which I was pleased with, obviously. The meeting was rearranged for Wednesday, and the doctor was stand-offish and unnecessarily curt, harrumph. I am easily displeased.
Today I was awake in order to attend a corporate welcome, where I was reassured I was important, before I was able to grab as many free pens and key-rings as I clandestinely could, before slipping away without anyone noticing. Because I am important.
I was actually in something of a grump as I sat myself at an empty table, only to have the table sporadically and systematically fill up with each new arrival picking the seat furthest away from me. It was then that I fully realised that I can be quite inapproachable, decorated as I am with an intimidating beard and an automatic vacant grimace. The man stood behind the pensions stall seemed to appreciate my social awkwardness, just as I appreciated that he looked like a stretched Gordon Brown (stretched upwards) though I’m sure he realised my tenuous and superficial questioning about pensions was actually a wafer-thin premise to help myself to free pens. It takes a significant amount of social awkwardness to keep me away from free pens.
By my own introspective reckoning I am a social dualist, where, depending on my mood, I can be either Jekyll or Hyde. Although more accurately, I can be either extremely socially confident, or a complete hide-away. Last Friday I managed both within the space of a few hours.
I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to talk about it for fear of looking like a self-aggrandising hubristic tool, but I did an open spot in Cardiff, and it went really well. However it was a prime example of the awkwardness I am capable of.
The Chapter Arts Centre has been recently refurbished, but some sections of it are still being renovated, which is why there was a section just off the room where the comedy was being held that was pitched in complete darkness. After saying a stilted awkward hello to the organiser and noting to myself the good omen that was the opening strains of Desmond Dekker’s 007 (Shanty Town) drifting from the room, I retired to the dark place to wait, which must have looked like a creepy weirdo attempting to be tortured and artistic. It wasn’t. I felt as though since I hadn’t offered to help set up the room during the initial meeting, doing so now would look like a limp gesture, so I hid away. And instead of talking to other human beings, I decided to wait in the dark wrestling with my imagined faux pas. Or my faux-faux pas if you please.
Later I decided to loiter awkwardly just inside the door, where I failed to talk to Iszi Lawrence because the opening gambit that came to mind was “I follow you on twitter” and I decided it would be better just to look suspicious in the corner. Suspicious in the corner is a look, I discovered, I was born to wear, as my thought process of: “she’s tall, I wonder if she’s wearing heels, no she’s wearing two-tone shoes, two-tone shoes are cool, let’s look a the two-tone shoes for a bit” actually left me with a bowed head looking as though I was unashamedly ogling. I would like to take this opportunity to exclaim that I was not. I strive to do my level best never to ogle, and in situations where there are instances of ogling, there is always an abundance of shame.
When stood at the front of the room being funny, a situation where ogling is encouraged (hypocrisy), I was equally enthralled, although the compliment that you are at least as amusing/interesting as your shoes is probably not the sort of praise anyone wants. Some consolation can be taken in the fact that she is being compared to very engrossing shoes, and also in the fact that this entire mess of a paragraph exists only because I can’t find an interesting way to say: “Iszi Lawrence did some jokes, she was really funny”.
She mentioned her podcast at the end of her set (the self-publicising random insult!), which I was glad of because now I have 60+ episodes with which to block out the inane warblings of 11-year-olds choking each other. I think that was the exact reason those podcasts were recorded, and if at the end of my life I have created something that can be used in order to drown out children, then I will be able to donate my usable organs and have the rest of me cremated a happy corpse.
First prize for funny goes to Ben Partridge who doused himself violently with water in order to rouse a reticent crowd, stipulating that if they were unable to laugh at a sodden man, they wouldn’t laugh at anything. They laughed.
Also, my set went really well, did I mention that?
Thursday 1 October 2009
What am I Driving At?
I am spending a lot of time driving at the moment; driving to work, driving to the radio and driving a golf ball straight onto the green. Hilarious joke I think you will agree. Incidentally, I have absolutely no interest in golf.
I amuse myself with a friend on the trips to and from the radio, and with podcasts on the way to work, but I find myself bored on the way home. “Well Gilder, simply put another podcast on your iPod!” I hear you bellow. I would, of course, do this if it did not mean I would likely be out of new podcasts by midweek. So instead I make time for a little bit of silence, for thinking about silly ideas and for hate.
One of the ideas I enjoyed toying with was of mounting a wide-angle lens camera (either still or video) onto the bumper of the car that could record the journey, where the happenings around the car can be kept seen in a far more expansive scope than can be seen from behind the windscreen. My reasons for wanting to do this are far from artistic, having their roots in petty pedantry and the constant quest for what is correct. Like a scientist, except interested exclusively with the occasions where I feel I have been wronged, or individuals have acted in a particularly foolish way.
I have chronicled before my experiences with Captain Poon and his hilarious rugby jersey, but road-based idiocy isn’t usually as amusing. I am repeatedly exasperated by jaywalkers who insist on timing their reckless road-crossing to ensure they pass as close as is humanly possible to the back of my car without actually having their foot chewed up by my tyre. In this bracket also reside the people who feel it is necessary to stand on the absolute edge of the pavement as a zebra crossing, as though they have so little time to spare that they are willing to risk having their wrists broken by a passing wing-mirror.
Of course it isn’t just pedestrians that annoy me, it seems as though this week the road-faring characters have been well and truly out in style and no mistake sonny Jim! People are bombing into/out of junctions, failing to indicate at roundabouts and, my very favouritest thing of all, manically swinging an all-in-one-go U-turn in the middle of the road. I’m half expecting to see a Dukes of Hazzard style jump interrupt my commute, sending a car barrel-rolling over my bonnet, playing out the horn-blast just as the windscreens come parallel and a toothless, silver-haired geezer flashes me a thumbs up and a cheeky grin. Before landing the vehicle on its roof where it bursts into flame, the trickle of fire slowly winding itself to the petrol tank as the driver struggles furiously to escape from the seatbelt that is holding him upside down in what has become a motorized oven, and before he has time to utter an antiquated expletive the flame reaches the petrol tank sending the car into a molten inferno which I see slowly shrinking in my rear-view mirror and scream to myself “That’ll serve you, you COCK~!”
As I’m sure you will have gathered by now, I have borne witness to some damn stupid feats of driving. I attempt to only get angry in retrospect, as I feel exploding behind the wheel is likely to cause a troublesome occasion. What I certainly never do is stare directly into the rear-view mirror of the car in front, gesticulating wildly and screaming muffled obscenities. The reason behind this is that, should something go awry on the road, what I want is for everything to be in order again as fast as is humanly possible, and I don’t feel that antagonising the driver in front will achieve this aim. I have to turn right on a four-way intersection in order to make my way into work every day. The traffic is passing both ways parallel to each other, and so it is only possible for me to turn right once the traffic passing in the opposite direction has cleared, but the vast quantity of furious tools that don’t understand why I don’t simply drive headlong into oncoming traffic so as to be less of a bother to them is truly astounding. I am 100% sure, however, they are incredibly busy and on their way to do something of incredible value. Such as taking their seatbelt off and driving as fast as possible into a wall.
So I have become worried about some of the things I write here, and how they would be taken in a new context, such as if I was involved in a road accident. What impact would this blog have? It is mostly intended to be frivolous, and even this somewhat more exasperated piece is really meant to be amusing, though I’m not really certain I am achieving that at this point. This query originally occurred to me as I was driving through a 40 zone that is a notoriously dangerous strip where several people have been run over and killed. This time of year it is dark by the time I pass through this stretch on the way home, so I always pay particular attention going through there, though having never seen people walking, the main impetus for vigilance is idiotic over-takers. There is a gag about over-takers soon seeing undertakers there, but I’ll be huffed if I am going to wrestle that one out properly now.
On the side of this particular bit of road, there is a wooden fence lining the road, and standing flush to the fence are steel girders. In order to explain the slightness of gap between the fence and the girders I would say that if you tried really hard, you could fit a single emaciated idiot in there, multiple if they stood side by side. So there were between 3 and 5 emaciated idiots jammed betwixt fence and girder, and I worried as I went past that they would slide something under the car, such as a rock, a Police-style stinger strip or the sliding trapper from Ghostbusters. Thankfully they did no such thing, but I was left wondering what sort of trouble I would get into if one of them foolishly darted out into the road and I ran him/her over, whether it wouldn’t be seen as accidental because I’d written a flippant blog about running someone over. Similarly should any sort of RTA occur to me, would this blog be dug out as some sort of character evidence, even if it is 2030 and I am in my forties and I look back on the person who I was when I wrote this blog and think I/he am/is an idiot? Would I be condemned because of my feeble attempts at comedy?
I later realised it definitely wouldn’t. After all, we will all have hovercars by 2030 and so there are no tyres there for people to get chewed up by. Although they might get mutated by the radioactive waves upon which my Ford Glider zips over their heads. Although hopefully I will, by then, be the President of a huge global umbrella company named Gilder Inc. and so I will be able to manufacture my own hovercars and so I could be driving the Gilder Glider. Or I could be a super-villain and be called the Giddler.
I have to drive into Cardiff tomorrow; I am going to the Chapter Arts Centre in order to attend a comedy open spot. It will be my first time in an actual comedy bill, as all my other live forays have been in competitions or fully open mic nights, so it will be interesting to see whether my stuff is able to stand alongside the material of professional comedians in any way, or whether I truly am a self-impressed pretender. The reality is likely somewhere in the middle, but true populist drama needs the extremes, so for the sake of goading a reaction out of readers I am either a genius or utterly shit.
I am not looking forward to driving in, as I have never driven directly there before, having been a passenger and led astray by the sat-nav last time, and then trekking quite a way to reach the actual building. Hopefully it will all go well, and I will be spared death, both in reality and in metaphority.
I think when somebody dies they go to a wonderous place, and that place is called Metaphority.
That is quite enough rubbish for one day, have a nice *insert appropriate time of day here*.
I amuse myself with a friend on the trips to and from the radio, and with podcasts on the way to work, but I find myself bored on the way home. “Well Gilder, simply put another podcast on your iPod!” I hear you bellow. I would, of course, do this if it did not mean I would likely be out of new podcasts by midweek. So instead I make time for a little bit of silence, for thinking about silly ideas and for hate.
One of the ideas I enjoyed toying with was of mounting a wide-angle lens camera (either still or video) onto the bumper of the car that could record the journey, where the happenings around the car can be kept seen in a far more expansive scope than can be seen from behind the windscreen. My reasons for wanting to do this are far from artistic, having their roots in petty pedantry and the constant quest for what is correct. Like a scientist, except interested exclusively with the occasions where I feel I have been wronged, or individuals have acted in a particularly foolish way.
I have chronicled before my experiences with Captain Poon and his hilarious rugby jersey, but road-based idiocy isn’t usually as amusing. I am repeatedly exasperated by jaywalkers who insist on timing their reckless road-crossing to ensure they pass as close as is humanly possible to the back of my car without actually having their foot chewed up by my tyre. In this bracket also reside the people who feel it is necessary to stand on the absolute edge of the pavement as a zebra crossing, as though they have so little time to spare that they are willing to risk having their wrists broken by a passing wing-mirror.
Of course it isn’t just pedestrians that annoy me, it seems as though this week the road-faring characters have been well and truly out in style and no mistake sonny Jim! People are bombing into/out of junctions, failing to indicate at roundabouts and, my very favouritest thing of all, manically swinging an all-in-one-go U-turn in the middle of the road. I’m half expecting to see a Dukes of Hazzard style jump interrupt my commute, sending a car barrel-rolling over my bonnet, playing out the horn-blast just as the windscreens come parallel and a toothless, silver-haired geezer flashes me a thumbs up and a cheeky grin. Before landing the vehicle on its roof where it bursts into flame, the trickle of fire slowly winding itself to the petrol tank as the driver struggles furiously to escape from the seatbelt that is holding him upside down in what has become a motorized oven, and before he has time to utter an antiquated expletive the flame reaches the petrol tank sending the car into a molten inferno which I see slowly shrinking in my rear-view mirror and scream to myself “That’ll serve you, you COCK~!”
As I’m sure you will have gathered by now, I have borne witness to some damn stupid feats of driving. I attempt to only get angry in retrospect, as I feel exploding behind the wheel is likely to cause a troublesome occasion. What I certainly never do is stare directly into the rear-view mirror of the car in front, gesticulating wildly and screaming muffled obscenities. The reason behind this is that, should something go awry on the road, what I want is for everything to be in order again as fast as is humanly possible, and I don’t feel that antagonising the driver in front will achieve this aim. I have to turn right on a four-way intersection in order to make my way into work every day. The traffic is passing both ways parallel to each other, and so it is only possible for me to turn right once the traffic passing in the opposite direction has cleared, but the vast quantity of furious tools that don’t understand why I don’t simply drive headlong into oncoming traffic so as to be less of a bother to them is truly astounding. I am 100% sure, however, they are incredibly busy and on their way to do something of incredible value. Such as taking their seatbelt off and driving as fast as possible into a wall.
So I have become worried about some of the things I write here, and how they would be taken in a new context, such as if I was involved in a road accident. What impact would this blog have? It is mostly intended to be frivolous, and even this somewhat more exasperated piece is really meant to be amusing, though I’m not really certain I am achieving that at this point. This query originally occurred to me as I was driving through a 40 zone that is a notoriously dangerous strip where several people have been run over and killed. This time of year it is dark by the time I pass through this stretch on the way home, so I always pay particular attention going through there, though having never seen people walking, the main impetus for vigilance is idiotic over-takers. There is a gag about over-takers soon seeing undertakers there, but I’ll be huffed if I am going to wrestle that one out properly now.
On the side of this particular bit of road, there is a wooden fence lining the road, and standing flush to the fence are steel girders. In order to explain the slightness of gap between the fence and the girders I would say that if you tried really hard, you could fit a single emaciated idiot in there, multiple if they stood side by side. So there were between 3 and 5 emaciated idiots jammed betwixt fence and girder, and I worried as I went past that they would slide something under the car, such as a rock, a Police-style stinger strip or the sliding trapper from Ghostbusters. Thankfully they did no such thing, but I was left wondering what sort of trouble I would get into if one of them foolishly darted out into the road and I ran him/her over, whether it wouldn’t be seen as accidental because I’d written a flippant blog about running someone over. Similarly should any sort of RTA occur to me, would this blog be dug out as some sort of character evidence, even if it is 2030 and I am in my forties and I look back on the person who I was when I wrote this blog and think I/he am/is an idiot? Would I be condemned because of my feeble attempts at comedy?
I later realised it definitely wouldn’t. After all, we will all have hovercars by 2030 and so there are no tyres there for people to get chewed up by. Although they might get mutated by the radioactive waves upon which my Ford Glider zips over their heads. Although hopefully I will, by then, be the President of a huge global umbrella company named Gilder Inc. and so I will be able to manufacture my own hovercars and so I could be driving the Gilder Glider. Or I could be a super-villain and be called the Giddler.
I have to drive into Cardiff tomorrow; I am going to the Chapter Arts Centre in order to attend a comedy open spot. It will be my first time in an actual comedy bill, as all my other live forays have been in competitions or fully open mic nights, so it will be interesting to see whether my stuff is able to stand alongside the material of professional comedians in any way, or whether I truly am a self-impressed pretender. The reality is likely somewhere in the middle, but true populist drama needs the extremes, so for the sake of goading a reaction out of readers I am either a genius or utterly shit.
I am not looking forward to driving in, as I have never driven directly there before, having been a passenger and led astray by the sat-nav last time, and then trekking quite a way to reach the actual building. Hopefully it will all go well, and I will be spared death, both in reality and in metaphority.
I think when somebody dies they go to a wonderous place, and that place is called Metaphority.
That is quite enough rubbish for one day, have a nice *insert appropriate time of day here*.
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