My Sketchy Bank Holiyesterday

Since yesterday was a day where the banks were on holiday (hence; Bank Holiday = ETYMOLOGYTASTIC!?) both myself and my ACREmpatriots spent the day playing with creative equipment, attempting to bash out some more sketches to showcase on our youtube channel.

Sometimes our slapdash, last-minute approach to sketch writing makes me slightly nervous as to whether or not certain ideas will be funny or not. These nerves are further compounded by the knowledge that if we got a sketch filmed, we would definitely put it out regardless. I think I should've learned to have faith in our funny bones by now.

I was ill in the run up to the filming day, so I wasn't bringing any ideas to the meeting, but luckily my dearth of new ideas didn't spread to my ACREolleagues, who both brought funny nuggets that we spent the day nurturing.

The first idea we worked on, Sampson's, was a parody of old instructional videos. Sampson turned up in combat slacks, so the idea was to have a video helping a soldier reintegrate into society. This sketch will probably seem the most polished by the time we're done with it, because so much of it is done in the editing, specifically a patronising voice over and sound effects (cheesy ones). We observed that the extent to which the video was defined by props that came to hand was ridiculous, but delightful. The various 'steps' of how to reintegrate were almost completely informed by various items we found around the house we were filming in. Hopefully this won't come across as slapdash in the finished sketch, it is, however, meant to seem random. We were quite pleased with the flexibility of the way we film, and how we can adapt the sketch to implement these silly props, but in the end it all depends on how funny it looks. We edited the majority of it together, and we were still giggling by the end, so I suppose that augers well. The voiceover is still to do, and we're planning to release it tomorrow, the same time as the podcast. Fingers crossed.

The second idea was to do another mock-news report using my Benjamin Bold character, which I was quite pleased with. I am glad that we are happy and confident in suggesting that we integrate other members' characters into new ideas. The actual topic of the mock-report, however, would require filming in a variety of locations, and as daylight would likely abandon us mid-filming, we decided to put the sketch on the backburner, until we can plan it properly and dedicate an entire day to the filming. I doubt I'll wear the toothbrush moustache for Bold this time around, perhaps I will research other fascistic facial hair and have it on a rota-system for him.

So in the end we decided to film the third idea instead, which was a much simpler, straight sketch proposed by Dafydd. Writing and practising the sketch, which was just a conversation between the three of us, was reminiscent of the first time Sampson and I decided on the topics of our first material. Hard to believe that was over a year ago now, but it was heartening to realise that we are still committed and on the same path, knowing that the decision to get creative wasn't a flash-in-the-pan fad.

The three of us had a meal in The Billygoat's Gruff (pub anonymised) and workshopped turns of phrase for the sketch ad nauseam, until we had a huge list which we cherry-picked from. The assumption there is that we actually came up with some cherries, which, of course, you'll have to be the judge of. I had one single pint of cider with my meal, and devolved into something of a mess, which, as a young male, is something of an embarrasment. It would be very cheap for me if I become an alcoholic. We commandeered the function room upstairs, since Dafydd is an Ogreman at the Billygoat's Gruff (this changing the pub name lark is probably confusing) and so we had the run of the empty room. I had expected the room to be akin to the dingy pits which pass for function rooms in these parts, and so I was very pleasantly surprised. It was genuinely classy up there, which will hopefully add to the sketch, although when I took a preliminary glance at the footage it looked quite dark, so it may end up seeming quite moody and gritty, which will contrast (hopefully comedically) with the actual sketch.

The last sketch was the hardest to film, because it was quite late by this point, and we were all flagging slightly. Not wanting to name any names but Luke Samspon specifically proved a handful, with me and Dafydd having to coax him into action like children poking a spiderweb with a stick in order to rouse the spider. Luckily we all kicked into action eventually, though that episode may prove to be the point where the historians look back and nod sagely and declare that it was all a tragic inevitability.

If our comedy endeavors ever bear fruit commercially, I can envision a time when we will have to struggle with the rampant diva side of Sampson's personality. It'll get us some publicity I suppose.

I don't think I've played it up enough to be really ridiculous here, so the accusation that Sampson is a diva may sound like a real criticism. It isn't meant to be.

The funniest moments of the recording process, for us, often come when we mess up, which is why we put a blooper after every sketch. Quite innocuous things can seem substantially funnier because of the strained and contrived situation that filming/acting is. Because we are so aware of what is meant to happen and what is meant to be said, any deviation from this can be stupidly funny.

It takes us ages to film stuff, far longer than it probably should, because of how dedicated we are to trying to make each other laugh, rather than sacrificing the laugh in the moment to make sure the sketch gets filmed and is funny. It's a similar thing in the radio, when I would sneak hidden abusive messages to Dafydd in the playlist information to throw him off his game when introducing songs. When we were filming the conversational sketch in the function room, Sampson brought us out of our slump and injected energy into the proceedings using two novel methods which I will now outline.

In the first instance, he picked up a number of bar mats before flinging them individually, Gambit-style, across the room at his camera, each time repeating "Muh-fucka". Apparently, this was an impression of Ike Turner.

The second method was to give us a quick run-through of his 'Hitler's Mother Sketch', in which Hitler's mother is characterised as a loud, shrill, stereotypical New Yorker Jewish woman, which is both reductive, xenophobic and mesmerising in equal measure. It is impossible to not get swept up in the passion of the performance, in which Hitler's Mother offers him advice as though shouting up the stairs to her reclusive son, advice such as; "You've got to get ayngree Aydolf, they won't listen to ya if you're not ayngree".

I'm not sure yet which of those will appear at the end of the sketch, 'Hitler's Mother' is hilarious, but possibly offensive. I am uncertain how easily misconstrued that performance would be. We'll see how it looks in the recording.

In other 'me-being-involved-in-comedy-on-youtube' news, the video roundup on the Welsh Unsinged Standup Act (WUSA) Competition from my heat is up now, with me alphabetically placed at the beginning of the video, which is handy for people who want to see me in it (which is everyone, I am the king). My set was edited so that the very beginning and the very end appear on the video, which is interesting because it's a mix of my oldest jokes and brand new stuff I'd only tried that night, and the rude bits from the middle are gone, which means I can show it to my mother. Which is nice.

That video can be found here.

We should be releasing a new podcast and the sketch tomorrow, in which case I will be plugging away to my gut's distress, so keep your bananas peeled for that.

I hope you have a pleasant evening.

@adamgilder
acrecomedy@googlemail.com
www.theacre.net

Cooking Dynamo

I am betrayéd.

Having spent the most of this week floundering about watching sitcoms, listening to podcasts, reading books, playing games and gorging hideously on any foodstuff I can be arsed to put into my mouth, I, perhaps unsurprisingly, find myself in a creative slump.

I don't know whether the decadent activities listed above took place because of this slump, or whether the slump has been brought on by the activities, in all probability it is a symbiotic mix of the two. I have destroyed my eyes by staring for hours at my laptop screen, slogging my way through a gruelling and brain numbing re-design of The ACRE website, brought on by needing to incorporate the amazing new logos designed for us by Heather of HLW Design onto the site. It was fiddly work for me, as I am fairly clueless about such things, and even with the aid of iWeb (the web design equivalent of a tricycle with stabilisers) it took me many long hours. Dragging and clicking. Urgh.

But with bleeding eyes I can take solace that the website now looks far more professional, with many thanks to Heather for designing the logos and the banners, and for not complaining over the vagueness of my ideas or the tardiness of my replies. They are class.

The website is teal as well now. I fucking love teal.

So back to the betrayal.

Having been stuck in a fug, unable to force out any of the latent creativity I have sloshing around inside myself somewhere, it was there last time I looked at least, I decided to be pro-active and make myself something to eat, rather than just stare at a blank text window gurning in anxiety and frustration.

The "meal" I settled on was slapdash, a mix of unusual plate-fellows. However, I learnt everything I know from mawkish idealistic RPGs and superheroic epic tales, and I figured that a ragtag band of culinary heroes would do better than a tactically sound, well gelled team. I was wrong.

Not only was I wrong, but I was also blighted by a plague of misfortunes throughout the cooking process.

The backbone of my meal was to be a cod fillet in breadcrumbs. My meat preference is usually chicken, but given that I need to kickstart my brain, I figured some "brain-food" would be the smartest option. I slapped the fillet into a baking tray, and ferried it into the oven. No problem, I am an oven veteran. It was a flawless move.

I am a huge fan of potato, but given that chips, or some variant thereof, makes up the vast majority of my potato intake, I decided I would change tack, and go slightly exotic. Microwave mash in no way fills the bill in terms of 'exoticity', but that's what I cooked. I say 'cooked'. This pot of microwave mash is said to serve two, and though i am something of a pig, I decided I would abstain from eating the entire lot. However, cutting a patty of refrigerated mash potato in half ranks quite high up in my league of 'Pathetic Things I Did Today'. Having to move the wad of mash into a different bowl also scores highly. In a world where people still starve, I cannot find another human being willing to split mash with me.

I would have been happy with my plate of mash and fish. I decided to compliment the meal with some apple squash. As it turns out, the apple squash was the only item whose consumption went to plan. it was lovely squash.

The mash reacted badly to being microwaved in a different container. It grew a burnt crusty skin around itself, which was off-putting, to say the least. And fucking disgusting, to react dramatically. I was disgruntled, and returned to the oven to reclaim what I imagined would be the saving grace of my mealtime, a delicious piece of fish to offset the filthy mash.

But oh, no. Oh very no.

I had been tricked by my father's penchant for keeping food in non-labelled freezer bags. What I had though to be a heavenly cod in breadcrumbs was, in fact, something altogether more sinister. It is said that the devil makes work for idle hands, and I imagine that the work those idle hands undertook resulted in the invention of this satanic invention.

Chicken kiev.

My entire day lay in ruins on my plate. My tears of humiliation lubricated the crusty mash, the chicken kiev postured damply by its side, like the lewd length of moist meat that it was.

I turned to some simple bread and butter for solace. Its purity and simplicity washed away the surface torment of the freakish mash and the licentious chicken kiev, restoring some measure of dignity to my evening.

I am clean again, but I can't be certain that the scars will ever fade away.

www.theacre.net

@adamgilder

Re-inventing the Vagina

I encountered a study in University today which looked at the social construction of genitalia through the amount of synonyms that people could produce for them.

 

The actual study focused on terms for the penis, of which there many.  The set up of the study had 4 white, middle-class, American males, aged 18-21, situated in their living room attempting to generate as many of these as possible.  Similarly a group of 8 mostly white, middle-class, American females, also aged 18-21, situated in their own living room attempted the same.

 

Though I am tempted to be churlish and say that the male participants ‘won’, that’s not how research works, and the four contesta—sorry, subjects received no prize for their commendable 144 terms that they generated in only half an hour (a rate of almost 5 terms-per-minute).

 

On the other side of the cock-spectrum, the eight female contesta-subjects only managed a pathetic 50 terms.  They just weren’t trying.

 

I won’t provide the list of terms, but a few select extracts are: ‘Carnal King’, ‘The Purple Avenger’ (though I’ve heard it as Crimson), ‘Kimosabe’, ‘The Commisioner’, ‘rectum wrecker’, ‘visions of horses’ and ‘the leaning tower of please-her’.

 

The overall conclusion of the piece, such as it is, is that male invented terms for the penis are often very violent or war-related (meat spear, pink torpedo, heat-seeking moisture-missile) or personify the penis in such a way as to allow the actual man from being responsible for its actions (the persuader, the initiator, the Chief).  This was seen as being indicative of an unhealthy male attitude to women, with which I can only partly concur, as I would certainly be tempted to sideline that argument on the grounds of the general silliness of the majority of the terms, in my mind the synonyms are creations of humour overall.

 

However a disparity seemed to surface as the seminar progressed, and we were invited to consider whether it would be possible to generate 144 terms for the female genitalia (don’t panic, I won’t attempt it here).

 

This peaked my interest as I am fully confident that I could produce humorous synonyms for the penis ad infinitum, and would feel creatively bereft if I could not manage a vast amount for the vagina as well.  As the seminar progressed however, it became apparent that I wasn’t being invited to douse my fellow students in my pubic-based linguistic flexings, and so I saved it until I was by myself in my room (stop looking for innuendo).

 

The main problem with the terms I had heard or had concocted were that they were all fairly negatively charged, which, in was in stark comparison with terms for the penis.  ‘Muff’ really doesn’t stand up to ‘Hammer of the Gods’, even if it does have delicious aural connotations through sounding like the word ‘muffin’ (muff-in, get it?)(Grow up if that’s what you thought).

 

So in order to restore a sort of balance to the, quite unequal, mismatch of terms, I strove to create positively-charged terms for the vagina.  See, my reasoning and justification for this pastime is completely justified, I am not childish or churlish or any other kind of –ish.  Though I am slightly peckish (Peckish – pecker – peckerish, like a cock)(Grow up again).

 

I thought that the best way to concoct these terms would be to generate a fictitious dialogue between Man X and Woman X.  In order for these characters to fully come to life, I will need to fill you in on some background.

 

Man X and Woman X are two heterosexual human beings who have been dating for a number of years, around five or six.  They are aged 18-21 (like the original subjects) and are in a relationship that is serious, though not sanctified by any of the world’s major doctrinal faiths or governments.  Neither Man X nor Woman X believe in marriage.  I know you are thinking, surely they must be married they have the same surname.  X is not their real surname, they have been anonymised in order to protect their identities, even though they are hypothetical and fictitious.  They are in no way related to Malcolm X.

 

In this conversation, Man X is fulfilling my role of attempting to generate non-offensive or positively charged terms for the female genitalia.  I don’t know why he is doing it, I hope he has the flawless justification that I have.

Here is a basic blow-by-blow (grow up) account of their, fictitious, conversation:

 

Man:    How is ‘muff’ not a positively charged term?  It has connections with the term ‘muffin’, which is a delicious thing to be connected to.  Everyone loves a muffin (grow up).

 

Woman:           It isn’t a positive term as it reduces the vagina to a foodstuff, a snack to be consumed on the move or after a meal, as a dessert.  The positive terms for the penis are often categorised by weaponry or war metaphors…

 

Man:    ‘Love trench’ then, that’s got a war reference in there.

 

Woman:           Are you suggesting that the term ‘trench’ has positive connotations?  This is the very same term which described the arid, dank, fetid landscape of World War I battlefields.  The trenches were plague ridden wastelands, that were also the site of the death of almost half of the world’s population.

 

Man:    Point taken.

 

Woman:           Stay away from war terminology anyway, that only promotes ‘sex as war’ which isn’t a healthy attitude to be promoting, try creating a term in the field of mythical creatures, as many penis terms are based on myth and legend.

 

Man:    Okay, erm, ‘Gorgon hole’, no… sorry.  ‘Pink Pompeii’ because every now and then it… no…sorry.  ‘Fleshy Cthulhu’?

 

Woman:           I think you should deconstruct that in order for you to find out yourself whether the term ‘Fleshy Cthulhu’ is a good terms with which to refer to a vagina.

 

Man:    Well, Cthulhu is an alien from the Sci-Fi series of novels by H. P. Lovecraft.  Bear with me.  Cthulhu as a creature is ascetically aquatic, which conforms with other manifestations of vagina-terminology which sees the vagina as a sea-related beast.  It is positively charged as Cthulhu is a popular, underground cult figure, immortalised in literature and game.

 

Woman:           Of course, Cthulhu is also however, an immense Octopus-monster of horror-fiction, it is essentially the harbinger of death and destruction, effectively the bringer of the apocalypse.

 

Man:    It is also sometimes called ‘The Lurker in the Shadows’.

 

Woman:           That sounds more like a cock.

 

In the end, the only term I have thus far concocted whose positive affiliation overrides the negative is ‘Garden of Eden’.  However, this also raises problems, as that is the location that humanity was denied because of the greed of a woman, and so it is a term filled with poignancy and irony.

 

My tentative conclusion then is thus:

 

If Eve hadn’t taken the fruit that she’d been told not to eat, she had been told, then maybe God wouldn’t have cursed womankind with a sexual organ that resisted any form of positive terminology.

 

Of course, my conclusion does have some shortcomings, namely 1) there is no God and as such 2) nothing in the Bible ever happened and as such 3) it is my inability that informs a lack of positive terminology, rather than any “evidence” taken from Judeo-Christian scripture.

 

This was supposed to be about willies and foofies and it ended up about religion.  Thus I falsely syllogise that everyone who is religious is either a cock or a cunt.

 

I am grown up, I am.

 

References

 

Cameron, D. (1992) Naming of Parts: Gender, culture and terms for the penis among American college students American Speech 67 (3): 364-79.