Oh Can I, Can I Cameo?

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.

I Survey from My Lofty Snobbery-Pony

If I don’t start writing now, I feel as though I will let an entire week pass without provoking a dragon of any variety. Which is unthinkable in a week where I have been attempting to flex my creative muscles in as many arenas as is possible, so here we go with a straight retelling of my activities (we’ll see).

I began the week by forcing myself out of bed at an unreasonable hour in order to pre-record a radio show idea that my radio compadre and I had been preparing for the better part of a fortnight. The actual premise for the show, which is far more unique and thrilling in my imagination than it can possibly be in reality, has been bouncing around since the later part of last year, and it is incredibly strange and exciting to actually have an episode of it recorded.

We were shown a heartening amount of trust and were left to our own devices in the studio, which certainly helped, as a recording would probably be awkward and forced were there someone overseeing our efforts. As it transpires, I feel the first few sections were still a bit jerky and nervous, but I think we were far more affable and amusing after that.

I once again delved into the time-consuming world of editing as it was necessary to have certain errors removed, such as playing the wrong tracks (Dafydd) or mistakenly putting the ‘.co.uk’ ending when plugging the website (me). It is good that mistakes came from us both I think, as if it were one of us in particular dragging down our average this would lead to bitterness and resentment, eventually culminating in a huge fall-out where one of us is drugged, lugged into a hemp sack and dumped in the river Selsig. Which would result in an evening of drug-induced damp slumber.

More of my time was taken up with the weekly reviewing project I am involved in, or perhaps co-founder of, of which I feel it is my duty never to miss an entry. This is likely going to prove impossible, although with sufficient organisation and dedication I will be able to meet the weekly deadline ad infinitum, however it has been in the realms of both organisation and dedication that I have always been slightly lacking. My review this week was of the film Paprika, which I have seen several times before, and is a film I genuinely adore, which perhaps made it quite so easy to write a review for, if it was slightly more difficult to stop writing. In order to begin a back-catalogue of reviews I decided to watch Vexille today, so that I could accumulate notes on various pieces in order to not be forced into watching whatever is on hand on the reviewing day in question. I really enjoyed the piece, though I am glad I watched it so far away from a deadline, as some of the comments I have regarding it require research in order to substantiate them, as I don’t fancy making wild statements and invite upon myself the rocket-powered vitriol of internet geekrage (as I saw it described in a Guardian comment section, although I added the term ‘rocket-powered’ myself).

At times I don’t really understand my own dedication to the blog phenomenon, or ‘blognomenon’ if you please, with my original reasons having their roots in giving me somewhere to workshop stand-up comedy ideas in the dark where a handful of would perhaps read them. More and more it has simply become a repository for my topical musings, due to the vast amount of news I read whilst in work, and also for the logging of my day to day doings, which I don’t particularly want to make a regular occurrence, mainly due to the fact that I don’t get up to very much interesting, case in point being the fact that I have so much free time as to enable me to pump out over 1000 words a day for a blog almost every other day. I would like there to be more of the sort of stupid expansion of a story in a similar vein as drowning my radio co-presenter in a shallow river, but in reality I tend to do more of this self-referential indulgent mememememememe rubbish. Now for something hopefully amusing.

On the drive back from work every evening, it is necessary for me to pass through the main road directly in front of the University in which I studied until I graduated this summer (yay me, I am cleverclogs). Now that it is term time once again, the roads are packed with returning students and excitable freshers, and the humbuggery that non-students stereotypically feel for students has not been long in worming its way into my psyche. The short autumn days ensure that I am driving home in darkness, and nothing impacts my driving more negatively than poor-lighting conditions and excess flesh. Wednesdays are the worst, as the University clearly still runs the midweek event ‘Score’, I could tell simply by the vast swathe of vapid hatefuls swamping the road. Now in the country where I live, Wales, it was my understanding that the road was where the cars go, and human beings, for their own safety really, are to walk along the pavement. Of course, I would prefer that vacuous brain-dead knock-off trend-plebs stayed indoors, or at least out of the beam of my headlights. If I accidentally run over a dog or a cat, that would be a shame and a pity, if I ran over a ‘party animal’ it would be a nuisance. I want to get home and into the warm as quickly as is safely possible, which is one reason why I am quite so much at odds with these people who insist on getting all dressed up and going out. I also have a quarrel with the phrase ‘getting all dressed up’, because the actual process is less about putting clothes on, and more about seeing how little it is possible to wear and not be arrested and/or die from hypothermia.

As much as vacuous near-nudity both distracts and frustrates me, pride of place goes to one particular bell-end who managed to dispossess me of any nostalgia and longing I may have felt for Uni just by walking down a street. The fellow in question was weaving foolishly between the other users of the pavement, holding his hand on his forehead as though it was some sort of fin, and pulling an ‘amusing’ face. It was not this negligibly annoying behaviour that fired a nuclear dart of fury deep into my brain and withered my soul, rather it was his chosen garments. Or more specifically, the ‘hilarious’ words writ upon it. Now I would argue that a rugby shirt should be worn on a night out on only 3 occasions: 1) fancy dress, 2) St David’s Day or 3) when the rugby is on. Now having noted that no one else was in fancy dress I could guess that this fellow was a bell-end. The final nail in his coffin, the coffin of my judgemental prejudice to be exact, came as I read the words on his back and realised he must be what people refer to as a ‘character’. Emblazoned upon his shoulders was the moniker ‘Captain Poon’.

He may as well have been carrying a sign which said “You are not going to enjoy my company”.

Luckily for the both of us, our brief liaison was merely a glance from a passing car, as just as he would have very little of value to add to my existence, I hardly think my clever dickery would be amusing to him, and I have no intention of debasing myself to amuse students.

At least, not now that I am no longer one myself.

Ah, hubris.