Haribo, Lack of Ideas, Wil Hodgson and a World Cup Song

I am in work, and a child just pronounced Haribo 'huh-ree-bo' (rhymes with Kuriboh)(the example says more about me than I would like). Very amusing indeed. Kids and grown-ups love it so, across all the social classes it seems.

I have been at a loss for things to write somewhat this week, a mix of staying up late playing Final Fantasy 9 and having wrestling moves dancing around my mind during any free moment is not a healthy environment in which whimsy can flourish.

I went with mates to see a comedy gig last night, and I can't really write about that, because a page full of superlatives strung together to describe Wil Hodgson, while accurate and sincere, would probably seem mawkish. He is one of the most engaging performers I have seen, and surely a genuinely unique act.


It was one of the strangest room I have ever been in, we sat, as is our custom, right at the very front. We figure that having paid to get in, it makes sense to get as close to the performers as possible. Whereas everyone else decided it would be better to sit in the very back of the room, leaving a huge swathe of empty seats in the centre. This came together to give the impression that, for a lot of the time, our table was receiving a private, special gig. Which sounds either amazing or filthy, depending on how your mind works. It was amazing.

The gig was being compered by Elis James, which we didn't realise until the fact, which was a lovely bonus as he is a beautiful human being.  I will leave my strange praise there.


I frightened a man in the toilet afterwards, (filthy), when I walked in and saw a poster advertising 'An Audience with Derek Acorah' and said "oh for fuck sake!" much louder than I had intended. It is one of the ugly inequalities of the world that Hodgson plays in the lounge room and Acorah will play in the theatre. It is an indictment of the area that people will turn up to it. If there's any karmic justice in the world then ghosts will be proven to exist and Acorah will be pulled inside out by a Greater Demon during his set. I am getting a message from beyond, it says to buy Wil Hodgson's DVD from www.gofasterstripe.com. Them ghosties know what they are on about.


I am circumcising this blog entry here, as I have to record a World Cup-based song for our radio show tomorrow, since one of our running sections where we cynically jump on a bandwagon to become 'popular' is returning. I have to write the lyrics now, although I think I am going to be relying on 'hilarious' singing to sell this one, rather than incisive satirical points. I pulled Algeria and New Zealand in the office sweepstakes, so they will feature heavily I assume. If only as much fuss had been made of the rugby World Cup and I'd picked those teams (with Australia instead of Algeria). That might also appear in the song.


I am loath to actually end this entry now, as I feel that if I keep blagging my way through then I will accidentally stumble on things I can do in the song.


Nope.


~fin~

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.

Rue-tine

My days have molded into a routine where I feel as though I can never get anything substantial organised. As things stand at this point I am attempting to prepare some sections for our new scaled back radio show. We are only on for the one day now, so I am trying to prepare stuff so that it is full to the brim, rather than having long downtime where we don't have all that much time to ensure that we will come up with something entertaining eventually.

Its a weird one because I don't necessarily want to keep on a lot of the old sections, some of them are quite flexible and still fresh, the C-Section for instance, which is malleable enough to go anywhere, and include anything. But there are a number of sections which I feel may have had their time. Footballer or Religious Figure is one of the founding sections, which is becoming increasingly tedious, both in researching and actually delivering. The problem with scrapping it is it also means God or Fabio drops off the radar, which is not ideal as God or Fabio is one of the most reliably energetic sections we have.

What we need to do is come up with some new sections that can house the energy of sections which have run their course, but with the routine I am stuck in, as I said earlier, there's no real time to invest in coming up with new things. Due to the compering gig I have tomorrow, it would be smart to prepare radio things today, leaving me free to concentrate on the gig tomorrow. I am planning on taking a Cannonby in this Saturday, since I have left it hanging for ages, and it really does need to be brought to a close. Preparing an episode of Cannonby usually takes until the early hours, and I feel like I will struggle to battle it out tonight, but leaving it for tomorrow will just ensure that it doesn't get done.

It is likely that the drabness of the routine feeds into this. I hardly do anything that is out of the ordinary for me, with the obvious exception of this compering gig tomorrow, which I hope will throw up an interesting story at least. The nerves for that gig have already set in, although I already feel that flagging that fact is redundant, as I am likely to type that every single time an unusual gig comes my way. Which, bearing in mind how few venues I have currently played, will be the vast majority of gigs that do come my way. It is currently in the 'I just want to do it' stage, which, again, is probably a hindrance in preparing stuff for the radio, because I half feel I should be preparing for that gig. Which I have already done. It is going to rock. I am going to tear the place up. Leave me alone.

We were having a new front door fitted this morning, which meant that my usual morning routine was disturbed, which probably hasn't help put me in a productive mood. I usually spend the morning exercising, which gives me plenty of alone time. Instead of this I opted to hide in the bath reading Dracula, while the dog was locked in the kitchen letting out a neverending barking stream which quickly became infuriating. In the book the Count is described as having a strong jaw and a moustache. Sometimes the tiniest bits of information can shake a worldview to its core. Dracula, with a moustache!? What sort of bizarro world are we living in?

This blog is metaphorically treading creative water, so I will bring it to an abrupt end here so that I can prepare for the radio properly.

Hope that's okay with you. It is? Cool.

Actually, as an afterthought, I have tried to be more observant lately as I have realised I am fairly ignorant, which, as someone who is attempting to be known as a creative writer isn't a fantastic way to be. What I have noticed today is that male children enjoy playing FPS games where the characters are chunky blocks of lego, and female children enjoy watching youtube videos that are very slow photo montage of gay emos (male) kissing. I wasn't heartened by this discovery, as it supports heteronormative assumptions, but I can take solace in that my research sample probably isn't representative. And that out of the 3 female children here 2 are playing the FPS lego shooting game, while only 1 is watching slideshows of snogging emos. That's right snogging. It was either that or macking. Both are useless.

I am no good at ensuring a representative sample, it was a good decision to escape academia, I don't have the patience needed.

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