Weekend Round-Up

From this weekend's experience it seems that only doing a Saturday show is a very good decision. We were really up for it, and I think it was one of the most solid shows we've done for ages.

Similarly, having the Sunday completely free to loll around being lazy and spending the entire day simply reading was an immensely enjoyable thing.

Last Friday there were several odd events that I didn't write about as I was planning on talking about them on the radio, so I'll do a quick recap of them now.

I have a standup routine about how I am unable to deal with kids, and given that I work in a room full of them everyday, its probably surprising how seldom new bits get added to that routine. The routine is set up as combating the 'kids say the funniest things' attitude, as in my experience their utterances tend to be on the highly annoying/brain numbing spectrum. Last Friday, however, I witnessed a kid saying something which amused me, and I decided I would commandeer this comment for my own comedic ends. When I actually got on stage, however, I forgot to add it in, so I'll tell it here instead.

I was in the toilet, washing my hands (in the sink hur hur hur), and a kid came in and asked me whether I had seen his friend. I indicated to him that I was in the toilet, and therefore had seen no one. He quickly understood his foolishness, but decided to awkwardly stay in the toilet regardless. He stood right up against the sink, staying there even when I moved away to dry my hands, so I commented that he must be very fond of the sink. He replied: "Yeah, it's my brother-in-law". While this isn't incisively hilarious, it was quite the surreal swerve ball, and I was quite amused. And then I kicked him out. Kicking out is the only language they understand. Apart from English. And some of them speak Welsh as well.

It was a fairly unconventional gig for me on Friday, I was originally meant to be compering a music gig, but it panned out so that I was actually doing two five-minute spots in between the bands. It went quite well, although the second set suffered because of the drunkenness of the audience and the state of shouty-excitement they had been whipped into in the meantime. It is possibly my failing that I couldn't win them around the second time, but instead I opted to call my set short and bring on the last band early. I think it was a correct decision.

After the first bit I fled the room. I was there completely on my own, so I figured it would be slightly weird to tag on to the end of a table after having just been on, so I escaped to the main bar. Whilst I thought I had secluded myself in an alcove, I had in fact sat myself right in front of the main door, so every single smoker in the crowd filed past me during this time. Most just passed through, though some stopped briefly and said "that was funny", which was really nice. I think it's probably par for the course that the comments I will remember will either be the negative or the boggling ones. Luckily I've not had any explicitly negative comments as of yet, and one of Friday's feedbacks is easily the most boggling.

A slight man, probably in his late teens, came up to me, looking slightly bedraggled and bemused. I haven't much experience of conversation with people on drugs, so this was quite easily the most stoned I have ever seen a person, but I would hazard a guess that he was very fucking stoned indeed. His opening gambit was: "Heeeeeeeeeeey! Mister Comedian!". It was an example of, literally, high camp, and I really wasn't expecting it as I attempted to cool down with a glass of water. I laughed in his face, which he seemed to enjoy. He followed this up with: "Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeey! Bill Hicks!". As I look back on it, I wish I'd replied: "I think you've mistaken me for somebody else", but in the moment I replied: "Yes, he is a comedian". He then asked me about Ricky Gervais and the IT Crowd, before admitting that he would say something about the set I had just done, but that he was so stoned it went over his head. I think I like the fact that he didn't engage in any way with the act, but felt it was necessary to come up and talk to me. I say 'I think I like it', because I am not really sure. It did amuse me. If I shamelessly morphed comments that people had given me after gigs together, I could describe my act as being 'a borderline surreal, byzantine and labyrinthine Bill Hicks'. Which sounds amazing, and anyone who'd want to see my act on the strength of that description would be incredibly disappointed.

I was very pleased after the gig, and this carried over into Saturday, and hopefully into the shows. The show after ours (3-5pm) is presented by a group known facetiously as ACRE Jr, made up as it is of younger siblings of 2 of the ACREs. BUT WHICH ONES!?

It was the birthday of one of the ACRE Jrs, so I celebrated by manhandling him off the windowsill (but what was he doing there!?) carrying him on my shoulders in a reverse torture rack position, before 'eliminating' him over the top of a settee. I did this not by, as is conventional, dumping him off my shoulders, but by throwing myself bodily over the settee, still carrying him there. We ended in a crumpled explosion on the floor, stuck upside down because our arms were entangled. I then later forced him to play an Arthur Isherwood track, the medley 'Happy Birthday/One Year Closer (To the Grave)'. The track begins as a grizzled tearjerker over the top of plinky old-school piano, complete with buzzing vinyl pops, but then morphs into contemporary death metal, eventually including more experimental death-ska. It is painfully disparate and chaotic, especially at the ridiculous volume we played it in the studio. I capped this off by climbing on the desk, and adding the the screamed vocals 'HAPPY BIRTHDAY!' in studio. I felt it was appreciated. And just hated in general. (Appreci-hated, hahahaha, I got paid to tell jokes last week so shut up). That track can be downloaded from our website.

Here ends the entry.