Oz

Following some advice, I have started watching the first series of Oz to try to fill the void that finishing The Wire has left in my life. I hadn't realised that it was made in 1997, and it's kind of weird watching it, as it's sort of like a de-evolved Wire. I think if there had been no Oz, there would be no Wire, but I've still done things the wrong way round.

Although I am mainly enjoying it, it's not as pacey or gripping as The Wire (which is hardly fair as it was made 12 years before - or the bit I am watching was) but after The Wire, I kind of can't watch it without thinking, "Well I've just seen real criminals in The Wire. You people are a bunch of actors trying to look tough. It's just not as realistic as the mean streets of Baltimore, which I have never visited."

Although it does actually seem to use a lot of the same actors. It's quite fun playing spot the HBO actor, except this does mean that I've become one of those people who interrupts the viewing of others with the sentence, 'Hey look, it's him. Remember him? He's good, isn't he? I liked him in that other program. Doesn't he look young here?' And so on and so forth. Until I am told to be quiet and the DVD gets re-wound to watch the bit that was missed due to my deductions.

I'm only about 4 episodes in, but am getting really annoyed with the narrator, (who I recognized from Lost). (He looks younger in this). (I liked him in Lost). But I do not like him in this. He spins around when he is talking or dispensing his wisdom, and his wisdom isn't even wisdom, it's vacuous conjecture about prison life which doesn't really add anything to the plot or the feel of things. Plus he's just a bit too enthusiastic or impassioned or something, and really irritating. Kind of like Jar Jar Binks. I wouldn't be surprised if he is not in the next series as much. Kind of like Jar Jar Binks. When they realised.

Camden vs The Bush

I have decided it's time to evaluate living in Shepherds Bush as compared to Camden. (Obviously in a pointless and juvenile way). This wont be of any use to anyone thinking of moving from one to the other. But if you have small children they might be interested. That's my level.

Pro's for Camden: It has the best chips in London near the tube station; most of the kebab places are open till 3 am; you can walk in and out of central London from there; all the nothern line trains go there, you don't have to worry about which branch you are on.

Pro's for Shepherds Bush: There are two tube lines to chose from. It's near the Westfield Shopping centre. It's near a swimming pool. There's lots of Nando's; Sometimes outside the central line tube station promotional people are giving away free stuff and I got a free chocolate bar.

Cons for Camden: No free stuff outside tube stations. They kept closing the tube station. No Nando's. No massive shopping centre on the doorstep. No swimming pool on the doorstep.

Cons for Shepherds Bush: No best chips in London. Sometimes there are also promotional religious nut-cases outside the central line tube station, and they don't give you free chocolate, they just threaten you with hell for not being as big a fan of Jesus as they are. You can't walk to central London from there in 40 minutes.

But all in all I am loving Shepherds Bush. The free chocolate cancels out the free religious nut cases as far as I am concerned.

In fact, free chocolate cancels out just about all the worlds ills. Gordon Brown can still win this election if he utilizes this as a campaign strategy...

The Jerk

So I finally got around to watching The Jerk. My love affair with Steve Martin continues. Admittedly it's not so much an affair, as a one-sided admiring of his brilliant comedy. Which if anything, just makes it more pure.

Anyway, I loved The Jerk. It is totally brilliant and funny. It's all brilliant, so it's pointless to go through it and pick favourite bits. But (I am pointless) and I did particularly like the bit when they were in the posh restaurant and Steve Martin complains about having a snail on his girlfriends plate, telling her not to look at it, and to look up, until the plate is taken away. She is terrified and squeaks in fear. Steve laments it is meant to be a classy place but if they can't even keep the snails off the food, what else might be wrong.

I also like the bit where he and his wife are by their tennis courts talking about how their lives are different now they're rich, and Steve helps himself to a cup of wine from a giant water dispenser that has been set up to be full of red and white wine, saying, 'we've become very sophisticated in a very short space of time. Not everyone would be able to become as classy as we have so quickly.'

Oh it's beautiful.

All hail Steve Martin.

there's a world of aps out there

I have finally got to grips with my i phone. Kind of. What I have actually done is discovered loads of applications. I went to my friend Cara's house and was inspired slash decided to copy loads of the applications she has.

I got one that you can draw doodles on, and promply drew this groovy cock, which you can then email to people. Why wouldn't anyone want that?

Then I got one called voucher cloud, which is brilliant. it knows where you are and tells you every comercial outlet near you (and farther away) that has special offers on. I am hoping to use it to get 50% off my next hair appointment, and a '2 mains for £10' at Zizzi's. How good is that?

Then (as those were free) I splashed out and spent 59p on one called 'Talking Carl'. You talk or sing at it and it repeats what you've said in a really high pitched voice. If you tickle him he laughs and if you poke him in the eye he says 'ow' and 'oh come on' he is brilliant. Cara and I spent a good little while talking at him and laughing out heads off. I particularly enjoyed making him say 'piss flaps'. Plus if you laugh, he copies your laugh, and then that makes you laugh again, and then the fun literally never ends. This may sound juvenile to the uninitiated, but really, if you continued reading this when there's a giant spunking cock at the top, you have only yourself to blame.

cheerio old friend

It's the end of an era. Something has changed on the internet, something that has effected my blog and link list directly, and things will never be the same again.

You can't go backwards. (Unless you are Michael J Fox). And I'm not him.

That's right, my dear friend Christina has taken down her myspace page.

I begged her not to do it, but my pleas fell on deaf ears. (Also, by the time I replied to her email, she'd already done it).

It seems a bit silly to me that I can be so nostalgic for my friends myspace page, (of all the things to get attached to in this workaday world, myspace is normally the first example of a lack of real feelings) but Christina was one of the first people I met properly when I started doing comedy, and I partly made a myspace page myself back in 05 or 06 because I was copying her. (You often hear old comics talk nostalgically of their first gigs. Well I am nostalgic for my first myspace friend - it's the same principal).

All our myspace banter and comments over the years - just wiped out as if they never were. Oh cruel fate, how you mock me.

I mean, I can understand partly why she's done it. Keeping up with online nonsense can eat up a lot of time. And apparently it can even be bad for you - as this article she pointed out to me suggests. But sure having more time for your friends and being normal and sociable with real people LOOKS like a good idea - but is it? Is it really?

Only time will tell. Only time and psychologists. But only them. Well, all right research teams who publish stuff in The Guardian, time and psychologists. And that's it.

But even if there is too much guff on the internet, we need less guff, not less good stuff. I said to Christina, I said "There's no internet baron that judges and evaluates what everyone is doing online. (Unless you're religious, and even then he's called god, not the internet baron) And even if there was, the porn addicts would be first up against the wall when the revolution comes... not the great people providing comic relief from the tyranny of existence." That is honestly what I said. I copy pasted it from my email.

Christina said she liked the phrase 'comic relief from the tyranny of existence'

Luckily for me Christina is still blogging on this site and is on twitter. So I can still get the free entertainment of her thoughts written down elsewhere.

Anyway, rest in peace Christina's myspace page. You meant a lot. You are gone but not forgotten.

Sleep Quandries

I dreamed a dream inside a dream. And not in a good way.

In the first dream bit (dream phase 1) I was accidentally really amusing at a party, and told an anecdote that made loads of people laugh, much to my surprise in the dream.

Then in dream phase 2, I told my boyfriend about it and he didn't find it funny at all. So I was back to square one with my ego and thinking that I could be funny. (In the dream)

(Though this dream may be a thinly veiled metaphor, as I spent a lot of time yesterday emailing strangers who are pre-disposed to mistrust me about gigs).

Plus, on waking, the anecdote wasn't that funny anyway. Kind of like my Richard Madeley sitcom all over again. My dream-boyfriend was right not to laugh.

It was something like I was ignoring some guy at a party, as a group of us stood round the kitchen table, joshing, and getting food out of the fridge. I was in a strop, and didn't want to be at the party, so instead of listening to what the guy was saying, I was trying to read the cup he was holding. Eventually someone noticed and asked why I was staring at his jumper instead of listening to him. I explained I was reading his cup. Someone suggested I found him boring, and that's why I was preferring to read his cup. [this my dream boyfriend found funny in dream phase 2] Then I said a killer line, quite sarcastically, which had them all rolling in Isles, and patting me on the back for five minutes. Which was:

'Yeah, he's one of life's listeners,'

I know.

But I honestly think it was funny in the dream because he was talking, and I was saying he's better at listening and thus I was disrespecting him.

There is a weird logic to my dream joke-writing ability. I sort of like it. But it's weird that that came out of my head somewhere, but I didn't write it. Or did I? Do I really write any of my other jokes? Just because I am conscious...they still come from 'somewhere'... ooh spooky. Or not.

I am still going on about Steve Martin

I have even been inspired to buy The Jerk on amazon, so you have me going on about that to look forward to soon as well.

But I just loved it. It was like having a breakthrough in group. I imagine. I don’t have a group. It was a bit like when I danced as a clown, which is my next nearest break-through in group experience. It is everything that is good in the world.

These are some of my favourite moments and bit’s of material:

- Steve’s material where he gets down into into the audience, saying ‘I just want to come down into the audience with my people…DON’T TOUCH ME!’

- ‘Well, we’ve had a good time tonight considering we’re all going to die someday.’

- ‘I have decided to give the greatest performance of my life! Oh, wait, sorry, that’s tomorrow night.’

- ‘I just found out I’m vain. I thought that song was about me’

- The bit when Steve was starting to get famous and had to be escorted to his car after gigs. He said to the people escorting him, ‘stand close, I’ll sign a few autographs, but we should keep moving toward the car’ then he opened the door and there was nobody there, and the two student escorts looked at him in disgust.

- The bit where he took the audience off stage and bumped into Larry the friendly doorman, carrying his dry-cleaning, and said, ‘Oh, it’s cleanpants. Mr Cleanpants. You think your pants are so CLEAN. Well CLEANPANTS, we don’t need your type around here….WAIT, CLEANPANTS….where ya going? You think you don’t need us because your PANTS ARE SO CLEAN?’

- The bit on drugs, delivered in a secretive, low whisper: ‘I’m on drugs….You know what I’m talking about…I like to get small….It’s very dangerous for kids, because they get realllly small…I know I shouldn’t get small when I’m driving, but I was drivin’ around the other day and a cop pulls me over….says, “Hey, are you small?” I say, “No, I’m tall, I’m tall!” He says, “I’m gonna have to measure you.” They give you a little test with a balloon. If you can get inside it, they know you’re small…and they can’t put you in a regular cell, either, ‘cause you walk right out.’

- The bit where a woman came up to him after the premiere screening of The Jerk and said, ‘I loved this movie. And my husband loved it, and he hates you!’ (Steve calls this a ‘left-handed compliment of juicy perfection’)

- The bit where when asked by his friends what Steve’s dad thought of the movie, The Jerk, he replied, ‘Well, he’s no Charlie Chaplin.’

All hail Steve Martin.