So I am on the train again. I am, I think, quite an experienced train traveler. Most of all, I know what I want in a train journey - silence. Silence is by far the most enjoyable sound on a train. As such I take certain steps to encourage those around me to be silent, or as close to silent as one can expect without restricting their breathing. On this particular journey I booked a seat in the quiet coach, often the quiet coach is full of like minded people who expect silence. If this is not the case I have to take steps. I do everything that I can to avoid shouting SHUT UP!!!
Step one - display text books. This is often enough to initiate a short conversation about what I have the books for but this gives me the opportunity to explain that I want silence so I can get some work done. As much as I hate the awkward and stilted chitchat if it enables me to get some work done that is a win. Some people don't even require the conversation, they see the books and make the assumption that I want to do some work that's when general courtesy and common decency takes over and they SHUT THE FUCK UP.
If displaying the books doesn't work I have to rely on step two - a surly stare. Never underestimate the effectiveness of guilt. Guilt has been a powerful tool for getting shit done for a long time now. The catholic church for instance has fleeced billions over the years by guilting people into handing money over. Guilt created a country in the middle east and made me admit to stealing a bag of sweets when I was 8 years old... SHUT UP!
Given how effective guilt has been over the years it makes me wonder why guilt hasn't worked today. I am sitting here, I've got the text books in front of me and I'm staring like a surly superhero but I am still surrounded by a wall of sound. Why? The answer is simple - I'm surrounded by four old women from Kent. Selfishness is kryptonite to guilt and there isn't a more selfish force known like a retired woman from the home counties. SHUT UP!!
It's a complete lack of consideration for anyone around them that explains the behavior of these women. They actually had a conversation about how they were sitting in a quiet coach and how they were clearly going to annoy those around them... and then continued to natter. SHUT UP, SHUT UP, SHUT UP!!!!!
I will acknowledge that writing this blog and hoping that the woman next to me will read it may be the most passive aggressive thing I have done this year. I figure if I keep on writing SHUT UP in capital letters throughout this, she'll read it and get the message to SHUT THE FUCK UP... so far this hasn't worked. It's just not going to work. I'm going to have to say something, but how do you tell 4 women that the slack-jaw drivel coming out of their mouths conjures up phrases in my mind like 'justifiable homicide'.
...
Done. And by done I mean, I completely chickened out and since they definitely wont SHUT THE FUCK UP I'm going to watch a film on my iPad. What's the point?
Saturday 27 October 2012
Thursday 4 October 2012
Guilty as Sin
Forgive me father for I have sinned. It's been a shit load of days since my last blog and I'm feeling pretty guilty about it. Okay, I wasn't feeling that guilty until yesterday when a good friend reminded me that I hadn't posted a blog in a long time. I'm not sure what happened because I really enjoy writing a blog. I know it's low tech and that everyone is doing podcasts these days but it's the low tech aspect of it that I find appealing. If I'm going to do something I want it to be something that is already out of fashion... like a comedian actually writing a blog.
I don't know what's happened in the comedy world lately. Every comedian is doing a podcast. A couple of weeks ago I was a guest on a friends podcast and I've been asked to be on a fair few other friends podcasts over the last couple of months. Sure podcasts are easy to consume, I'm currently trying to learn French via podcast while I run to work each day, but are they really better for a comedian than the art of writing. Surely if you're going to write comedy for a living it's beneficial to occasionally write something down for consumption.
So I thought I'd give you a quick update on what's been going on since I last wrote a blog. The wife and I did a show together at the Adelaide Fringe Festival. It was great fun and we managed to sell out each night for the whole week run, which was a huge surprise to us both. This week we've been doing our tax returns and have tallied up our income and expenditure from the trip. We would have done okay from it except we couldn't drive to Adelaide like we'd planned because the roads from Sydney were flooded so we had to pay stupid money for last minute flights. Also we ate extremely well and often in fancy restaurants so we blew any chance of making a profit on food and wine. If you're going to work hard you should totally reward yourself by spending more than you earn. It's the attitude that has fostered a growing world economy for generations.
I have also just done my first solo stand up show. It was a 4 night run at the Sydney Fringe Festival. It was a great experience really and I need to thank all of my friends for coming along and supporting me. It took a few nights to work the show out and naturally I had industry people come to see it before I had got the show to where I wanted it to be but that's how the comedy industry works. What I found really odd about it was that since I knew a large percentage of the crowd I couldn't do any crowd work. One of my strengths is working through the crowd but that was removed from this show. It made the show harder by admission but also kept me from getting sidetracked and not finishing the show.
Originally the show had a introspective thread through it reflecting on my comedy career. By the second night I got rid of that and replaced it with a joke about a butt-plug. I realised that I'm a standup and I do standup. I find those honest and frank shows really wanky and I just couldn't sell it with any conviction. I tell jokes and by the end of the run that's what the show was, an hour of jokes. Just the way I like it.
Not a lot else is going on... oh yeah, the wife's pregnant. That's kind of a major thing that's going on in my life. It's due in January and I'm starting to get marginally weirded out by the whole thing. I guess future blogs (and yes there will be more) will talk about this in more detail but I can say that everything is going well. I can also say that I'm really happy the whole strange body transformation and carrying the unborn baby thing is happening to the wife and not me. It looks really hard!!
I've been doing some reading on this baby thing and books talk about how amazing the miracle of child birth is but it just looks really hard. There's a uncontrollable sick feeling and now the baby is constantly moving and kicking inside the wife causing discomfort and complaining. I'm just saying, better her than me.
I guess that's probably my first blog back. There will be more although I have a few rules with my new blogging focus. No editing. These blogs may on occasion not make much sense and that'll be because I won't spend hours editing and perfecting them. Sometimes i found that I'd spend too long on them and that discourages me from writing as often. I'm going to operate a more is more policy. So you'll see a more honest and more regular blog but with more grammatical errors and more incoherent ramblings.
Don't blame me. Blame my friend who guilted me into it.
I don't know what's happened in the comedy world lately. Every comedian is doing a podcast. A couple of weeks ago I was a guest on a friends podcast and I've been asked to be on a fair few other friends podcasts over the last couple of months. Sure podcasts are easy to consume, I'm currently trying to learn French via podcast while I run to work each day, but are they really better for a comedian than the art of writing. Surely if you're going to write comedy for a living it's beneficial to occasionally write something down for consumption.
So I thought I'd give you a quick update on what's been going on since I last wrote a blog. The wife and I did a show together at the Adelaide Fringe Festival. It was great fun and we managed to sell out each night for the whole week run, which was a huge surprise to us both. This week we've been doing our tax returns and have tallied up our income and expenditure from the trip. We would have done okay from it except we couldn't drive to Adelaide like we'd planned because the roads from Sydney were flooded so we had to pay stupid money for last minute flights. Also we ate extremely well and often in fancy restaurants so we blew any chance of making a profit on food and wine. If you're going to work hard you should totally reward yourself by spending more than you earn. It's the attitude that has fostered a growing world economy for generations.
I have also just done my first solo stand up show. It was a 4 night run at the Sydney Fringe Festival. It was a great experience really and I need to thank all of my friends for coming along and supporting me. It took a few nights to work the show out and naturally I had industry people come to see it before I had got the show to where I wanted it to be but that's how the comedy industry works. What I found really odd about it was that since I knew a large percentage of the crowd I couldn't do any crowd work. One of my strengths is working through the crowd but that was removed from this show. It made the show harder by admission but also kept me from getting sidetracked and not finishing the show.
Originally the show had a introspective thread through it reflecting on my comedy career. By the second night I got rid of that and replaced it with a joke about a butt-plug. I realised that I'm a standup and I do standup. I find those honest and frank shows really wanky and I just couldn't sell it with any conviction. I tell jokes and by the end of the run that's what the show was, an hour of jokes. Just the way I like it.
Not a lot else is going on... oh yeah, the wife's pregnant. That's kind of a major thing that's going on in my life. It's due in January and I'm starting to get marginally weirded out by the whole thing. I guess future blogs (and yes there will be more) will talk about this in more detail but I can say that everything is going well. I can also say that I'm really happy the whole strange body transformation and carrying the unborn baby thing is happening to the wife and not me. It looks really hard!!
I've been doing some reading on this baby thing and books talk about how amazing the miracle of child birth is but it just looks really hard. There's a uncontrollable sick feeling and now the baby is constantly moving and kicking inside the wife causing discomfort and complaining. I'm just saying, better her than me.
I guess that's probably my first blog back. There will be more although I have a few rules with my new blogging focus. No editing. These blogs may on occasion not make much sense and that'll be because I won't spend hours editing and perfecting them. Sometimes i found that I'd spend too long on them and that discourages me from writing as often. I'm going to operate a more is more policy. So you'll see a more honest and more regular blog but with more grammatical errors and more incoherent ramblings.
Don't blame me. Blame my friend who guilted me into it.
Monday 23 January 2012
Exercise is Boring
I'm sitting at home, the West Wing is on, the stove is on and I'm cooking some pasta. I have just hung up a load of washing and there is a strong likelihood that after writing this blog I will vacuum the house. This is my Saturday afternoon.
My wife has gone to the hairdressers and I am home alone. This is why my day is full of structure yet will ultimately end with very little actually getting done. This is what I do. This is not what I had planned. I should be doing some exercise right now. That's what I said I would be doing right now. But here is the thing - exercise is boring.
My wife and I spent this morning rehearsing for our show. Trying to remember lines is almost as boring as exercise but we're getting there. If anything I'm proving to be the weak link, in my defense I'm actually very good at delivering lines once I've remembered them, unfortunately I'm not very good at remembering them. So what I thought I would do was use my afternoon wisely and do some exercise because as soon as my wife gets home I'm going to have to do more rehearsing.
Which brings me back to my initial point, exercise is boring. I always feel better after exercising but it's all about the motivation to start the exercise that trips me up. I was going to go for a swim, but I would have been equally happy to go for a run. Just doing some exercise would make me feel like I've achieved something with my day. But the motivation isn't there because the actual exercise itself is boring.
Any exercise that I do today would be by myself and exercising by yourself is boring. Sure I can listen to my iPod (I probably wouldn't listen to my iPod if I went for a swim), but if I wanted to listen to music I could do that on my sofa and eat Doritos whilst doing it. Listening to music does make it less boring but it doesn't completely mask the fact that exercise is still boring.
What I don't want to acknowledge is that I'm nervous. All guys get nervous when they're in my position. We don't like to admit it and we won't talk about it amongst friends down the pub but this, right here, is as tense as a man's life gets. It's my nerves that is causing my lack of motivation. But why am I nervous? Because my wife is at the hairdressers!!
When your wife goes to the hairdressers one of two things is going to happen. The first option is that she goes and has a haircut but you don't notice the difference. That is a problem, you need to notice. Not noticing is wrong and not an option. Men hate change but, Ladies, there needs to be enough of a change for us to notice so we can comment on how nice the hair looks. Commenting that the hair looks nice is also the only acceptable response by the way, don't even entertain the notion of saying that it doesn't look nice. If you are a man who is contemplating saying that your lady's hair doesn't look nice I have one word for you - DON'T. Given that I already know she's at the hairdressers, and actually drove her to the hairdressers myself, it seems unlikely that I won't remember that she went to the hairdressers. I need to remember. I must notice.
The second option is a tricky one. This is what I'm sure I'll be facing when my wife gets home this afternoon. This is where there is a sizable change to the hair, either in colour or in cut. It's the not knowing that causes the stress. After a couple of days I'll get used to whatever she has done, men are adaptable that way. But she said that she was going to go from blonde to brunette. That's a lot of change for a man (me) to deal with in one day.
The thing is, it doesn't matter what her hair looks like, my wife will always be beautiful to me. But if this haircut sucks my beautiful wife will be upset, and then I'm going to have to make her feel better. That will involve romantic gestures and a trip back to the hairdressers at a later date to 'fix it up'. Then I'll have a whole day of stress again next week. So next weekend will suck as well, all because the hairdresser fucked up. No man can deal with 2 weekends in a row of haircut stress. Do hairdressers know how important they are? Do they realise the ramifications of their mistakes?
So you see, I can't exercise today. I'm a nervous wreck. I'm going to start drinking. Maybe if I'm asleep when she comes home it'll buy me some time. I'll figure out a plan... after the next episode of the West Wing.
Note: The wife returned an hour after writing this blog and her hair looked very different. I can happily report that not only did I notice this change but my wife is also very excited about her new hair colour. This really was the best possible outcome for everyone (and when I say, "everyone" I mean, "me"). By the following day I was used to the new colour and, apart from a minor hiccup in the supermarket when I couldn't find her because I was still looking for a blonde, life has returned to normal.
My wife has gone to the hairdressers and I am home alone. This is why my day is full of structure yet will ultimately end with very little actually getting done. This is what I do. This is not what I had planned. I should be doing some exercise right now. That's what I said I would be doing right now. But here is the thing - exercise is boring.
My wife and I spent this morning rehearsing for our show. Trying to remember lines is almost as boring as exercise but we're getting there. If anything I'm proving to be the weak link, in my defense I'm actually very good at delivering lines once I've remembered them, unfortunately I'm not very good at remembering them. So what I thought I would do was use my afternoon wisely and do some exercise because as soon as my wife gets home I'm going to have to do more rehearsing.
Which brings me back to my initial point, exercise is boring. I always feel better after exercising but it's all about the motivation to start the exercise that trips me up. I was going to go for a swim, but I would have been equally happy to go for a run. Just doing some exercise would make me feel like I've achieved something with my day. But the motivation isn't there because the actual exercise itself is boring.
Any exercise that I do today would be by myself and exercising by yourself is boring. Sure I can listen to my iPod (I probably wouldn't listen to my iPod if I went for a swim), but if I wanted to listen to music I could do that on my sofa and eat Doritos whilst doing it. Listening to music does make it less boring but it doesn't completely mask the fact that exercise is still boring.
What I don't want to acknowledge is that I'm nervous. All guys get nervous when they're in my position. We don't like to admit it and we won't talk about it amongst friends down the pub but this, right here, is as tense as a man's life gets. It's my nerves that is causing my lack of motivation. But why am I nervous? Because my wife is at the hairdressers!!
When your wife goes to the hairdressers one of two things is going to happen. The first option is that she goes and has a haircut but you don't notice the difference. That is a problem, you need to notice. Not noticing is wrong and not an option. Men hate change but, Ladies, there needs to be enough of a change for us to notice so we can comment on how nice the hair looks. Commenting that the hair looks nice is also the only acceptable response by the way, don't even entertain the notion of saying that it doesn't look nice. If you are a man who is contemplating saying that your lady's hair doesn't look nice I have one word for you - DON'T. Given that I already know she's at the hairdressers, and actually drove her to the hairdressers myself, it seems unlikely that I won't remember that she went to the hairdressers. I need to remember. I must notice.
The second option is a tricky one. This is what I'm sure I'll be facing when my wife gets home this afternoon. This is where there is a sizable change to the hair, either in colour or in cut. It's the not knowing that causes the stress. After a couple of days I'll get used to whatever she has done, men are adaptable that way. But she said that she was going to go from blonde to brunette. That's a lot of change for a man (me) to deal with in one day.
The thing is, it doesn't matter what her hair looks like, my wife will always be beautiful to me. But if this haircut sucks my beautiful wife will be upset, and then I'm going to have to make her feel better. That will involve romantic gestures and a trip back to the hairdressers at a later date to 'fix it up'. Then I'll have a whole day of stress again next week. So next weekend will suck as well, all because the hairdresser fucked up. No man can deal with 2 weekends in a row of haircut stress. Do hairdressers know how important they are? Do they realise the ramifications of their mistakes?
So you see, I can't exercise today. I'm a nervous wreck. I'm going to start drinking. Maybe if I'm asleep when she comes home it'll buy me some time. I'll figure out a plan... after the next episode of the West Wing.
Note: The wife returned an hour after writing this blog and her hair looked very different. I can happily report that not only did I notice this change but my wife is also very excited about her new hair colour. This really was the best possible outcome for everyone (and when I say, "everyone" I mean, "me"). By the following day I was used to the new colour and, apart from a minor hiccup in the supermarket when I couldn't find her because I was still looking for a blonde, life has returned to normal.
Monday 9 January 2012
The Christmas Break
Hope you had a good Christmas break. Sorry about not writing for a while. I've been quite busy rehearsing for the Adelaide Fringe show my wife and I are doing. I've mentioned it before, it's called Mr&Mrs and you should totally come... or at least read about how it's going (when I get around to writing about it).
The rehearsals are going well. We've pretty much written it all now, although some minor editing is going on with every rehearsal. I'm not sure I'll remember all of the changes so there will be bits that we just have to wing. You don't get to do that when you're an actor performing someone else's work. But since we wrote it in the first place I guess we can screw it up as much as we like on stage and just pretend like we originally wrote it that way.
I find rehearsing so mind numbingly tedious. Given that we've got another month and a half of rehearsals ahead of us I'm super excited for all the fun I'm going to be having in February. It's a weird thing, you write it and you're proud of it, but the learning sucks. After you've actually performed it you get this sense that it was all worthwhile and you can't wait to start working on the next show... that's why I'm writing about it now - I want to remember what it's really like.
So, on a different topic, I was pretty surprised when I found out that the comedy industry pretty much shuts down over Christmas in Australia. I'm used to the UK when comedians make half of their yearly earnings in the month of December. So when I found out that for a month from the middle of December I wouldn't be working, I was understandably quite confused.
You see, the British love to drink. Christmas is a time to celebrate and a fantastic excuse for a drink. So since comedy clubs serve alcohol, the British love going to comedy clubs in December. Comedians, of course, hate doing gigs in December because the audiences are drunk twats. But the money goes up in December and there are more gigs so we do as many of them as we can in the hope that we can pay off the debt we accrued in August at the Edinburgh Festival.
This December I hardly did any gigs. It seems that in Australia Christmas is a time to spend with your family. I can only assume that this forced time with your family causes many to drink. They could be doing that drinking in a comedy club and I could be earning some actual money.
Now we're approaching the middle of January and the comedy clubs are starting to open back up again. I'm doing a gig this week, I'm MCing actually, and the audience will expect us to be at the top of our game. Lofty expectations given that the entire bill won't have gigged for at least 3 weeks. It'll be a gig of mistakes and missed punchlines. That's not to say it won't be a lot of fun, but it certainly won't be slick.
I spent half an hour this evening trying to relearn my own jokes. That's a weird time for a comic. Once you learn a joke you kind of take it for granted that you know it. But after a bit of a break it becomes something you need to think about. I get jittery when I haven't done a gig for a week, having not done a gig for a month is a very strange sensation indeed.
The other option of course would be to just assume you know the jokes and then work out you actually don't know it when you're on stage and halfway through the joke you can't remember the punchline to... I've done that before.
To recap, I'm currently learning jokes that I should already know and, simultaneously, I'm learning jokes that I wrote with my wife about our marriage. But tonight I'm writing about learning stuff that I should really be spending time learning. When will I ever learn...
The rehearsals are going well. We've pretty much written it all now, although some minor editing is going on with every rehearsal. I'm not sure I'll remember all of the changes so there will be bits that we just have to wing. You don't get to do that when you're an actor performing someone else's work. But since we wrote it in the first place I guess we can screw it up as much as we like on stage and just pretend like we originally wrote it that way.
I find rehearsing so mind numbingly tedious. Given that we've got another month and a half of rehearsals ahead of us I'm super excited for all the fun I'm going to be having in February. It's a weird thing, you write it and you're proud of it, but the learning sucks. After you've actually performed it you get this sense that it was all worthwhile and you can't wait to start working on the next show... that's why I'm writing about it now - I want to remember what it's really like.
So, on a different topic, I was pretty surprised when I found out that the comedy industry pretty much shuts down over Christmas in Australia. I'm used to the UK when comedians make half of their yearly earnings in the month of December. So when I found out that for a month from the middle of December I wouldn't be working, I was understandably quite confused.
You see, the British love to drink. Christmas is a time to celebrate and a fantastic excuse for a drink. So since comedy clubs serve alcohol, the British love going to comedy clubs in December. Comedians, of course, hate doing gigs in December because the audiences are drunk twats. But the money goes up in December and there are more gigs so we do as many of them as we can in the hope that we can pay off the debt we accrued in August at the Edinburgh Festival.
This December I hardly did any gigs. It seems that in Australia Christmas is a time to spend with your family. I can only assume that this forced time with your family causes many to drink. They could be doing that drinking in a comedy club and I could be earning some actual money.
Now we're approaching the middle of January and the comedy clubs are starting to open back up again. I'm doing a gig this week, I'm MCing actually, and the audience will expect us to be at the top of our game. Lofty expectations given that the entire bill won't have gigged for at least 3 weeks. It'll be a gig of mistakes and missed punchlines. That's not to say it won't be a lot of fun, but it certainly won't be slick.
I spent half an hour this evening trying to relearn my own jokes. That's a weird time for a comic. Once you learn a joke you kind of take it for granted that you know it. But after a bit of a break it becomes something you need to think about. I get jittery when I haven't done a gig for a week, having not done a gig for a month is a very strange sensation indeed.
The other option of course would be to just assume you know the jokes and then work out you actually don't know it when you're on stage and halfway through the joke you can't remember the punchline to... I've done that before.
To recap, I'm currently learning jokes that I should already know and, simultaneously, I'm learning jokes that I wrote with my wife about our marriage. But tonight I'm writing about learning stuff that I should really be spending time learning. When will I ever learn...
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