Too Many Ideas

This may not be the normal thing for a comedian/writer to complain about but if you've been reading my blog you'll be aware that I can complain about pretty much anything. It's not that I'm a very negative person, I'm not, but I do tend to concentrate on the minutiae instead of the big picture. That's how I write my stand up too, I pick a situation, then I look for the little snippet of information that we all just take for granted and pick it apart. This strategy seems to work pretty well for me, most of the time.

I guess it works well for me because I fixate on an event and let it stew in my head for a while before writing about it. I'll have the makings of a joke churning around in my head for days if not weeks or months before I write it out and it becomes an official joke. That makes it sound like all jokes have to be written out and approved by the council, like planning permission for a joke extension.

Until a joke is properly fleshed out it's not funny enough, it's just a casual observation. And I just can't seem to flesh out ideas on paper, only in my head. This method of writing has failed me this week because, quite simply, I've had too many ideas.

I have had loads of ideas over the last week and they're all too far away from being funny for me to write down. My wife says that I should just spend a day writing them all out and then I'll have loads of new jokes that I can add punchlines to later. But I don't write that way! I write most of it in my head, I edit on paper but if it's not almost there by the time I write it down I will never make it funny. Again, I know this sounds stupid. It's kind of a superstition of mine, that if I write down an unfunny idea it'll never become funny.

(I am also aware that I'm going to be getting a lot of comments and emails pointing out that most of my jokes are unfunny etc... I'm waiting, do your worst.)

With too many ideas floating around in my head I haven't been able to find the funny bit in any of them. When I only have one or 2 ideas in a week it's great because I can be really neurotic about them and find an angle that others haven't noticed. But this week I've been drowning in an ocean of unfunniness.

That's not to say I don't often have unfunny ideas. I have loads of them. But I don't write them down because after a week of thinking about it I tend to notice that it's not funny. I also have loads of ideas that sound a lot funnier in my head than they ever sound said out loud. I had a joke this week about Steve Jobs resigning as CEO of Apple that I thought was hilarious on the day he resigned, but when I said it out loud to an audience that night, they chose to disagree with me. For the record, here's the joke:

"So, Steve Jobs resigned as CEO of Apple today. The Telegraph newspaper ran an article entitled, 'Steve Jobs - A Career in Pictures'. It was just a series of photos of Steve Jobs getting gradually thinner."

I thought it was hilarious! And to be fair, I still think it's pretty funny. When it didn't work I assumed the audience was wrong so I did it again the following night... nothing. Even after adding a reference to putting the pictures into a flip book, the audience wasn't having any of it. I know it's not a fantastic joke but, for a topical gag, it's not terrible. It's also the only thing I've written this week so I was putting all of my eggs into the one turtle-necked-basket.

That's the danger in topical gags, the desire to do it while it's topical means that my mind doesn't have time to realise that an audience won't like it. I'm not bagging on the audience for not liking my joke. They paid their money, they get to make up their own mind. Some of the funniest jokes I've ever heard have been said by comedians back-stage. Jokes that made a room full of comics cry with laughter but jokes that, all the comedians there unanimously agreed, an audience would never like.

But what will happen to all of the ideas I've had this week? I will probably forget most of them. Some of them probably weren't ever going to be funny anyway but there may have been one idea in the lot of them that, if i had thought of it on a slower ideas week, could have become a fantastic joke. I like to console myself by thinking that if it was a really good idea that I'll think of it again. But I probably won't. It's gone to die with my Steve Jobs joke.

It is a commonly held maxim that comedy is all about timing. People have always taken that to mean that the delivery of a joke has to be perfect to get the most out of it. While that's true, it's also true to say that writing comedy is all about timing the perfect moment to have the idea in the first place. Unfortunately you can't plan to have more or fewer ideas. Which leads me to conclude that writing comedy is more about good luck than I had ever thought.

Chicken or Egg

Sorry about taking so long since my last blog, I've been busy. My life has been substantially occupied by drinking and constructing Ikea furniture. Those aren't related events although, in my experience, constructing Ikea furniture often leads to a desire to drink. But that's not the point of this blog, normal blogging services shall begin now:

I think that being a comedian is much like any other job. Obviously the hours are different, there's a lot more traveling involved and most jobs don't have free booze but apart from that it's much the same. There is gossip, office politics and everyone thinks they should be paid more for what they do.

You also make friends at work. As a comedian you don't see the same people every day when you go to work but you do seem to have runs of gigging with many of the same people and that can be lovely. Some of the other comedians you gig with become your friends, some become very good friends, and some you don't like but have to work with anyway. That's the same with any job.

However I have noticed that a lot of the really really successful superstar comedians that I know seem to be really good friends with other really really successful superstar comedians. Even though I know and get on quite well with a lot of these people I wouldn't say that we're bestest friends. We're friends and colleagues but we're not close enough to share each others deepest darkest secrets and to be god-parent to their first born kind of friends.

That's not to say that I don't have some fantastic friends in the comedy world, I do. But, while my close comedian friends are very good comedians (some of them are blow-your-mind amazing comedians), none of them are releasing best selling DVD's or have their own TV show.

The other thing that I noticed this week, as I was assembling cheap Ikea furniture and drinking 2 for the price of 1 bottles of wine, was that I'm not a mainstream superstar comedian either. And it got me thinking, are we really good friends because we're not famous or are we all not famous because we're really good friends? It's a real chicken or egg situation.

They say you can choose your friends but you can't choose your family. While it's true you can't choose your family you can choose to ignore them. But equally you don't get a real choice as to who your friends are. Your friends find you, they are like minded people who put up with you. And if you have as abrasive a personality as I do you should be thankful for everyone person willing to deal with you and be your friend. I know I am.

Your friends like you for your personality and to say that you can choose your friends implies that you made a choice as to your personality. You don't choose your personality. You are who you are, and you should embrace all who want to be around you. I certainly do. My friends are fantastic people but they're not for everyone and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Similarly, in the comedy world, I don't think you choose what type of comedy you do. Sure you can choose to tone it down occasionally or choose how you're going to deliver it but you have to tell what you think is funny and that's engrained in your personality. My close comedian friends laugh at the same things I do, we seem to feel the same way about a lot of things and we like to hate the same things with competing passion. We are often very different comedians but we make great friends.

What I'm really wondering though is, are we holding each other back? I haven't made friends with them based on their comedy nor on what they could do for my career. If you need proof of that you only have to look at the superstar fame that I have attained in my career. But if my theory is correct, if one of them breaks into the big time them surely that will mean a DVD deal is just around the corner for me.

This is a call to my friends in the comedy world - hurry up and get famous!! My career needs a serious leg up. I didn't start doing comedy to get famous, I do comedy because I love doing stand up. There isn't a better feeling in this world than being on stage making a crowd laugh, but a little fame leads to more money and I'm sick of having to assemble my own flat-pack furniture.

To me success is being wealthy enough to purchase already-assembled-furniture. So my conclusion is that if my friends aren't going to be considerate enough to get famous and drag me up the comedy ladder with them, then the least they could do is to come over and help me assemble this fucking desk because I can't figure it out.

London Burns

I don’t think I could have written this blog on anything other than the events of the last few nights in London. There isn’t any point of trying to comment on the latest happenings of the London riots because it’s all changing so quickly that as soon as I’ve written something it’ll be old news. At the same time I don’t think it’s really my place to comment on what caused, what the media has called, the civil unrest. How very British – civil unrest. They’re burning and looting the shit out of London, there is very little civility on show.

After 10 years of living in London, I moved to Sydney at the start of this year. I didn’t move because I didn’t like living in London. I love London; it’s a fantastic place to live and one of the most amazing cities in the world. I moved because my wife and I had an opportunity to move and we felt like we needed a change. They say a change is as good as a holiday, I’ve never really bought into that so we had a long holiday as well. Better to be safe than sorry.

I am, by common definition, Australian. When I say, ‘by common definition’, I mean that I was born in Australia, I’m an Australian citizen and when asked to write it on a form I will say that my nationality is Australian. However, I moved to London straight after graduating university, when I was still 20 years old. So I was never really an adult in Australia. I became an adult in London and the majority of my working life was in London. The majority of the time I’ve been interested in politics and social issues was in London. I guess that, as an adult, I could be defined as a Londoner.

The reason I’m explaining all of this is because I want you to understand my connection to London. London helped define who I am and it’s that link that I feel to London that makes watching what’s happening so hard. I actually want to be there. Not to do anything about it, but to feel it. London is hurting and I feel like I’ve let it down by not being there to share it’s pain.

Let’s be honest, if I was there I would have reacted in the stiff-upper-lipped-British way – I would have tutted loudly and shaken my head in disbelief. But it’s not about doing anything, it’s not about helping (if you’ve read any of my previous blogs you’ll know that selflessness is not one of my overriding personality traits), it’s about being a part of it.

When you go to a funeral you’re not going to help the person who’s dead. Sure you’ll convince yourself that you’re going to help the other mourners come to terms with their grief. But in reality you’re going to help yourself deal with the emotions that you’re feeling that you can’t quite understand. By seeing others who feel the same as you it validates what you’re feeling. It makes it okay to not understand but to just feel.

That’s what I’m going through now. London is in crisis and for as long as I’ve been of an age to care I’ve lived in London. With the exception of my wife, the people I know here in Sydney don’t feel the same and I can’t talk about what I’m feeling because I don’t know what I’m feeling. All I know is that they don’t feel the same and they should. If I was in London I wouldn’t have to know what I was feeling, all I would have to do would to be surrounded by Londoners to know they were feeling the same.

With my funeral metaphor I’m not saying that London is dead. London is stronger than anything that a bunch of children can hurl, burn or steal. It’s stronger than them because London isn’t the buildings, as beautiful as they are. It’s the people. The people of London have dealt with a lot over the years. They don’t feel the need to talk about it and they don’t. They just deal with it and move on. London will get on with the next day because that’s what London does. But they move on together and right now I’m feeling a little lost because I’m not moving on with them.

To those who read my blogs regularly, I’m sorry that I didn’t write a funny light-hearted blog on something else. I just wasn’t in the mood. I’ll get back to the funny writing tomorrow. By then I will have moved on too.

Here, Read This

The title of this blog “Here, Read This” is not just a cunning advertising ploy on my part to grab the attention of passing internet traffic… although if it did I’m glad you’re here. “Here, read this” is what my friend said to me last week when he gave me a book to read. It is one of his favourite books and a book that I am now obligated to read.

It’s a theme of my blogs that I have to clarify my point and make sure you know that I’m not a complete dick, so allow me to acknowledge the following points:

• Loaning me a book was a very nice thing to do. He thought about me, about my tastes and felt that I would really enjoy reading this book
• This is his book, his property, so to hand it over to me and to trust me with its well being was also a nice thing to do

So can we agree that I’m not oblivious to the realities of friendship and that I am aware of the positives that are glaringly obvious from this exchange? I felt it was necessary to include the above disclaimer because the statement that follows kind of makes me sound like a bit of a dick.

My friend gave me a book to read. What an arsehole!!

Now I’m under pressure to read the book. I don’t deal well with pressure. I’m a ridiculously slow reader. Even if I gave it my all, the absolute earliest I would have this book read by is Easter next year?

I’ve been reading Don Quixote for the last 14 months and that’s not an exaggeration for comic effect. Obviously I haven’t been reading it constantly for all of that time. I’m about 3 quarters of the way through it and I have half read another book in that time. I also stopped reading it completely for 5 months when I went travelling through China, Vietnam and across Australia. My point is I don’t have a lot of focus when I read.

It’s not that I don’t enjoy reading, I do. Reading is fantastic. I absolutely adore the English language. I am a professional wordsmith (that is, without a doubt, the wankiest way I’ve ever described myself). I’m a comedian and I make a living from my ability to turn a phrase. It’s an ability I have because of the fantastic literature that I have read. However, I have the attention span of…

When I lived in London I would take the tube everywhere, and I always had my book in my bag, so whenever I sat down on the tube I would pull out my book and read. It was a fantastic way to enjoy a book and to pass the time of an otherwise dull journey. The only downside is that I got out of the habit of reading at home. I got out of the habit of making time to read a book. Now I walk everywhere in Sydney. So I don’t have an opportunity to read on trains or buses and I haven’t had the discipline to make any other time to read.

I do read a lot though, I read loads of blogs and articles. I read them when I should be working on the computer, I can also read them on my phone while I’m waiting to meet a friend. They’re convenient and it means I take in a lot of different points of view on a lot of different subjects. But a book is a commitment that I am out of the habit of making. A while ago I realised this and recently I started reading when I go to bed. Just for 15 minutes a night but it’s amazing how quickly I’ve started to look forward to it. Telling my friend about this that inspired the loaning of the stupid book in the first place. Me and my big mouth, always getting me into trouble.

So now I’m faced with a dilemma. Do I finish the other books first or do I drop them and read my friends’ book first? If I finish the other books first it may be some time before he gets his book back, but if I don’t continue with the books I have on the go I may never finish them.

I haven’t even started to examine the pressure that I’m under to like this book. This is what always bugs me about when someone lends me a book. Eventually I’ve got to give it back and when I give it back he’ll ask me what I thought of it. When he gave me the book he told me that it’s one of his favourite books, that he loves it and that I’m guaranteed to think it’s amazing. I would hope you would think I would like a book if you lend it to me: for me a book is at least a 6 month commitment so I can’t waste time with books that you aren’t certain I’ll like. But don’t make a big thing about it because that just puts the burden on me to love it as much as you do. I can’t guarantee I’m going to ‘love it’. I’ll do my best, promise.

This is one of my longer blogs and I could have spent this time reading that stupid book. But I didn’t, I wrote this blog so you could read it instead of reading a book yourself. You’re welcome and I hope you enjoyed it. Books are great but blogs and articles are so much more convenient. If you suggest to a friend that they should read a blog, it’s easy to read and you don’t have to physically give them the blog. You don’t hold it over them and put them under immense pressure to finish it in a reasonable time. There is no guilt-trip to love it just as much as you. It’s just a blog, email them the link and see if they enjoy it. If they do, they can read the next one. If they don’t, they haven’t wasted the best part of a year reading something that sucks.

This wasn’t just a subtle hint for you to tell your friends about my blog. But if you want to, I’m not going to stop you. Tell the people you like about it. If you don’t like someone, loan them a really long book. Then, a week later, ask them if they’ve finished it yet.