Fire Zombies

I don’t have to do a thing today. I’m trying my best efforts not to leave the house unless absolutely necessary. Necessary means things like ‘if the house was filled with zombies’, ‘if the house was on fire’ or ‘if the house was filled with fire zombies’, so chances are high I’m going nowhere. The weather, accordingly, is looking shit and so there is little guilt to be had about me sitting on our sofa in my onesi watching films and spending far too much time on the Xbox. Yes, after a long hiatus from Xbox action since May, I am now addicted to a computer game again after having purchased Batman: Arkham City. I had temporarily pretended that I no longer had a need for computer games and that somehow, I’d accidentally grown up. Turns out though, its just that I was too poor to get good games and whilst on the one hand I used to think that playing computer games had no viable achievement in the real world, I now feel like every time I turn the console off, the citizens of Gotham are feeling my absence. I know they’re only virtual, but I’m a righteous guy and real or not, they need me to be glued to the TV screen like a penguin with a torchlight (yes I know I keep referencing penguins with torchlights, blame Frozen Planet) to stop them from suffering.

Once again, after having missed blogging yesterday – which in turn means you missed me gushing about the brilliance of DJ Shadow for four paragraphs, which I think would be trying on even the most stoic of readers – here’s a collection of things that have been gently dancing on the Tiernan brain for the past two days:

Christmas Markets – The name of such an event fills my heart with small bouncing baubles of joy. I know baubles don’t bounce, they just smash, unremittingly, on the living room floor in a symbol that says ‘Christmas is dead’ more than anything else. I’ve spent one Xmas in my life with pet kittens. I know how it works. I chose baubles as after hearing that my local area had a Christmas Market yesterday, me and L leapt into action, stomping up the hill expecting free mince pies, mulled wine galore and much festive fun. Instead, the shattered reality of Christmas as an adult showed itself as a series of tables with very bored people sat at them, all trying to sell real tat such as candles and knitted things, in a recession. No one wants these things at the best of times, and even though our area is filled with some wealthy residents, its not what’s needed now. I can’t help but feel if they’d just sold tinned goods and firewood, they’d have made far more of a profit.

Euro Veto – According to popularity polls, Cameron has gone up in opinions as PM after him making us the lone contender in Europe. Newspapers compared him to Churchill, failing to point out that Churchill’s ‘fuck you’ was during a war and towards the destruction of our country and the tirade of a very evil dictator. Cameron’s was to a contingency that has left us with a single market of 60 million rather than a possible market of 500 million. Something I really don’t think is very clever in this constant ‘recession’ we are being told about. Clegg has expressed his disdain and even though I’m not a fan of the turncoat either, I very much hope that the Conservatives decision to Veto the Eurozone treaty will turn the pro-Europe Lib Dems fully against them, losing the Conservatives the majority in parliament and royally screwing them as a party even more. I just pray the UK public don’t keep praising the PM for what I’m fairly sure will reveal itself to be a huge error for years to come, and end up voting the Tories in with a majority next time round, allowing them to get away with destroying this country in a fashion Godzilla would have felt harsh.

Komedia Brighton – I really wish the Komedia Brighton would run courses for other gig promoters in how a gig should be run. I honestly believe that across the UK you will only find a handful of places (the Stand and Get Stuffed in Tring to name but two) that care for the comics so well and run a gig with such efficiency and dedication. Well done them, a bloody joy to play it really is.

Dermot – I like Dermot O’Leary on the Radio. I’m not sure what happens to him once he leaves the BBC Radio studios and heads towards X-Factor but its as though his personality, inquisitive nature and joy for actual music dies, half his brain switches off and he just goes to auto-pilot. Fair play to him for being able to do this, and I like that his Saturday afternoon show proves he is a human being of sorts. I was listening to him yesterday though when something strange happened. He was interviewing James Blake, a man who as of recent times, I have become as geeky about his music as I have DJ Shadow’s and have been known to purchase the Blake’s music the second it arrives on iTunes. I still don’t know how to class his music but unlike Dermot, I wouldn’t have used the word ‘weird’. Yep. After a beautiful live version of ‘Lindesfarne’, Dermot said to Blake ‘that was great and weird’. No. What happened to Dermot? It’s as though someone had accidentally put the X-Factor him on the radio instead and this ignorant and tactless man incapable of being able to vocalise how he feels about a type of very original music from a guest he had invited on appeared and demeaned all of his efforts in seconds. Whatever you may think of James Blake, if he was sitting there, you wouldn’t say his music was weird. At least go for ‘interesting’ which we all know means ‘not for me, but hey ho’, or original which means ‘not for me, but hey ho’. Not weird, which out and out means ‘not for me, and really fucking weird’. Bring back old Dermot who was excited about hearing new and original music. With the demise of Giles Peterson’s radio show on 1, and Mark Lamarr leaving Radio 2, there’s so few DJs that actually give a window to new and interesting musicians who don’t just churn out the same manufactured shit as everyone else. It’s like the whole world is becoming a shambolic Christmas market. So much promise yet only the delivery of bland things no one really wants.

DJ Shadow – was fucking amazing.

Think ‘pon that world. Think ‘pon that.

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Euros, Set-Up Tips & Hip Hop Facts

Lots of things to say today after a missed blog yesterday due to having lunch with a friend that lasted about an hour and a half longer than expected. Not a bad thing and much fun chat, evil plans and sausage sandwiches were had, but upon leaving I bought myself Arkham City for the Xbox and the rest of the day was a write off. So instead, I’ve bottled up all thoughts and shall splurge them out into a succinct but weighty blog. Go sucky weights!

EURO BLOCKING

Some people are saying that Cameron has saved us from being in further trouble from the Eurozone crisis by veto-ing a Euro wide treaty change and effectively removing us from the EU altogether. Yes, I can see why Brits may be happy about this. We’ve never really like the Europeans, no matter how much we pretend we are xenophobic anymore, but fact is their lovely lifestyles, healthier living and sunny weather makes us all a bit upset. Then there is the more important issue of how much more debt we’ll gain if we continue to bail out countries who’ve borrowed more than they can pay back. But what no one seems to be worried about is how Cameron only wanted protection for the City of London, not the UK, citing unacceptable demands that would make the mini-tax haven in the centre of the capital exempt from rules that would affect the rest of Europe so corporations could continue paying their execs 49% pay rises without paying back into the country. What no one seems concerned about is that despite our banks being some of the strongest in the world and our credit rating still being a AAA rated one, if we were to ever slip into trouble (or at least more trouble than the government pretends we are in) then we would no longer have Europe’s backing to bail us out. Cameron is severing bonds that have been strong post World War 2, and aside from allowing those who fund the Tories and keep them wealthy to thrive in their corrupt system, I really don’t think this will benefit the rest of the country in anyway.

Cameron says that going along with the treaty would have meant giving up more of our national sovereignty. This is a national sovereignty that he has already allowed to turn to ruin under his and Osborne’s continuing efforts to keep us in recession. The treaty wouldn’t have affected our sovereignty anywhere near as much as the rising unemployment rate will or the destruction of businesses and industry. We also have to remember that this crisis isn’t just the Eurozone, nor is it caused just by Greece or Italy or any other nation the news likes to highlight as a main culprit. It is a global crisis that is a fallout of the global crisis in 2008 and is effecting the entirety of the Western world. Now, what Cameron has done, is made sure that we, as a nation, are even more alone in dealing with it.

Have a read of this for a better, more informed explanation:

Let Them Eat π

Right. Next subject:

 

BEVAN’S RUN

These people are awesome. Please like their FB page and spread the word:

BEVAN’S RUN

 

THE SET-UP

For the first time in a long time, this month has been privy to me turning up to gigs that just aren’t set-up properly. The sound was bad or lighting wasn’t right, chairs were facing the wrong way or everything was on fire or it was on top of a mountain or something. Just something. It hasn’t happened to me in ages and whilst I very much assumed these sorts of things would happen when I was a happy-go-lucky open spot, you assume that in the world of the properly paying gigs that this just doesn’t exist anymore. Sadly, it appears that people won’t even take two minutes of a their time to work out how to make a gig work. Speaking to my friend yesterday who works as a music type in the music industry, he says its the same for so many music venues, that speakers don’t work or they don’t have enough monitors etc. So here are some quick tips for making a gig work if you are a budding promoter or just a shit one:

- Lights. We need a light on the performer. That really helps. If the audience can’t see us, something is taken away from going to see live comedy, like facial expressions, mannerisms and gestures. The exceptions to this rule are ‘Comedy In The Dark’ which is a special gig, and anyone who’s blind who likes comedy. And audio comedy stuff. Look, there’s always exceptions, but trust me, we need to be lit, and its not just because I like life in the spotlight. Conversely, audiences shouldn’t be lit. Maybe a tiny bit so we can see the first few rows, but the darker a room is, the more likely people will laugh without inhibitions. Otherwise who wants everyone else to know they can’t stop giggling at that gag about (insert your own nasty gag here possibly involving such subjects as paedophilia, the holocaust or whatever else newer acts are doing at the moment). So yeah, just sort the lights out. Its really not very difficult even if it just means to tape 12 torches to a penguins head so he keeps looking up at the act every time the light shines on him, and turn all the other lights out. Don’t do that though.

Sound – You know how comedy is all about people hearing the jokes then laughing at the jokes? Well the entire premise of this type of entertainment is ruined if we sound like we’re trapped in a well/surrounded by bees/ a mute. Why not just get a good mic and some decent speakers so the very basic need for comedy to work is seen to?

Seating arrangements – No we don’t like looking at your backs. Or your profile. Face forward like your angry headmistress would say in assembly, and at least give the audience the chance to pretend they are focussed at bit. Don’t stick people behind pillars, they don’t like it. Rowed seating stops it feeling like its a boardroom conference or that people are in their own pub quiz teams.

That’s pretty much it, though it also helps if the people running the gig give a shit and don’t heckle the acts throughout. Let’s all just care a bit more eh? Thanks. Now I’m off to implement my penguin torch idea.

 

DJ SHADOW

I’m going to see DJ Shadow tonight at the Kentish Town Forum. I’m a bit bloody excited as I haven’t been to see him live since he upset me with The Outsider album. Well apart from seeing him at the O2 Festival last year and Glastonbury this year. Apart from that. Anyway, he’s hella awesome, so in honour, here’s some hip hop facts I wrote the other day and didn’t get to use cos the gig was rubbish:

- Scientists have discovered that contrary to belief, Jurassic 5 are actually from the cretaceous period.

- B Real isn’t. He’s actually a figment of Sen Dog’s imagination.

- 50 Cent suffers from short term memory loss. Hence telling Shorty its their birthday then telling Shorty to party like its their birthday.

- Big Pun only ever made one pun in his life & it was by accident when he said ‘who’s ready for Pun times?’ in 1998.

- Conspiracy Theorists say there are several clues that say the Real Slim Shady actually died in 1984.

- Method Man is only allowed to rap once Hypothesis Man raps first.

- Ghostface Killah’s lacksadasical ghostbusting methods are the cause of all headless spectre sightings.

- NWA were straight outta Compton. But inside Compton, they were all gay.

- Fugee-la is the note that follows Fugee-so.

- Will.I.Am likes to be referred to by other people as Will.You.Are.

- Pete Rock is a trick question in the game ‘Animal, Vegetable or Mineral.’

- Snoop Dogg’s favourite type of cake is a lemon drizzle.

More soon fact fans.

 

Ranty Rant Rant

I’m a whole bundle of vexed this morning. Not sure what a bundle of vexed would be like but I suspect it to be like the creature in Brett Easton Ellis’ Lunar Park. If haven’t read that, imagine Gnasher trying to eat himself. That’s probably about right. Why such rage oh Tiernan? Well blogees, let me tell you. Are you sitting uncomfortably? Good, that makes me feel slightly happier. So let’s start with selfish reasons to be a mini Zack De La Rocha:

Last night I had a mediocre gig. Yes, this could well be my fault. There have been several occurrences where my own incompetence or lack of experience has meant I’ve delivered a less than perfect show, and last night my slightly muggy head didn’t put me in as competitor for the best Friday night comedian awards. However, the main reason things weren’t stupendous and brilliant was because the room I was in was not at all suitable for comedy. There’s very little you need to get comedy right and while the audience may have had the things they need – good viewpoints, ability to hear – the comedians didn’t. From the stage it was impossible to hear anything the audience said due to acoustics, meaning as a compere I struggled to hear any responses often giving retorts that were way off the mark and a total inability to deal with heckles. On top of this, the lighting was so bright I could only see the front row, and every time I spoke I could hear my own voice echoed back at me three times. Essentially this gig was an ambush trap for MCs. The only way to play it was to do material out to the crowd completely ignoring them and making the whole event feel like we were just reading scripts out to a brick wall, as the laughter dissipated around the audience and not at all back to the acts. Yet this place runs comedy every Friday and Saturday night, knowing full well it should never have comedy in it. If you want comedians to give a good show, you have to at least let them have the tools they need to do that, rather than let them play with a handicap. I’ve got to compere again tonight, which is a shame. At least this time I’ll know not to give a shit, plough through and get off, feeling sorry for the audience that has to endure that.

Right, anger making thing number 2. Slightly less selfish this one:

Cameron and Osborne today have stated that the Eurozone crisis will affect the UK, warning that cuts will get harder. This is, once again, a huge bullshit tactic to make everyone accept another series of awful ‘money saving’ strategies that the government wouldn’t be able to get away with without an excuse. The Eurozone crisis won’t affect the UK in a way that will need to take cuts from the public sector. The UK is donating £40bn which it has from a reserve and has made concessions for as part of its overall cuts plan. Aside from that we still have to remember that while some countries in Europe are suffering that the UK still has its triple A credit rating, something even the US doesn’t have, as our debt is still far less than most Western countries. In fact investors are still very keen on pouring money into the UK, not least because of our tax avoidance system. The trouble is that the government don’t want to make that clear otherwise they would receive a much larger objection to their destruction of the welfare system, British education and public sector jobs, nor would they be able to allow the private sector to barge in and fill their pockets in quite the same way.

We have had, in one week, news stories about cuts to the army, William Hague receiving money from an oil company to bribe investment in Libya, MP’s telling the workers they can have a ‘token 15 minute strike’ – which is the most patronising thing I’ve ever heard, like telling a child they can have a sweet if they just calm down, an NHS hospital being privatised (which it appears, was actually introduced by Labour under Blair, and has been carried on by this government, proving that all the parties have the same selfish interests at heart) at the same time as we’re being told NHS patient treatment is poor. At no point are we told that the NHS would have better treatment if it was given better funding and care, and staff workers weren’t so overloaded with patients. At no point is the direction of the news in defence of our healthcare system. It’s just getting very tiresome hearing again and again why we should tolerate all these actions and yet the excuses and reasons are holding less and less water. I hope on November 30th all the union workers strike all day and damage our not as bad as you’d think economy as much as they can to make a mark.

 

Steam released. There will be jokes again tomorrow. Unless tonight’s gig sucks them from my soul.

Squalid Existance

I’ve stared blankly at today’s wordpress blog page for about 10-15 minutes now and the conclusion I’ve come to is that I should probably start typing otherwise nothing will happen. Its a day where lots of writing needs to occur and yet neither fingers nor brain are colluding together to allow such happenings. The fingers are going rogue, hitting off keys or finding other things around my desk to move or tidy, while the brain insists of thinking of tracks I should listen to while I blog or what I can concoct out of the random ingredients left in our rather desolate and upset fridge. So far the best seems to be some sort of pesto marscapone lettuce, with frozen peas covered in McDonalds curry sauce as a side dish. I’m not sure how this is all we have. Everyone in the flat has been overly busy and barely at home for days now, so the flat has taken a huge hit with grime and dust collecting like its going out of fashion. Not that dust was ever in fashion. Unless you count Dusty Springfield as part of that team, in which case people liked her in the 70s. We don’t have Dusty Springfield collecting in our living room though.

Our flat is really good at looking like its been neglected. There will about 3-4 clean ups a year that make the place veritably sparkle with Mr Sheen type joy, but housing an actress and two comedians, more often than not it seems to emit a low groan of misery, wondering why there is never enough money collectively to fill up the cupboards or enough time between us to stop the mould from growing on the bath. There is money for that of course but its used for ill thought out bottles of wine from our local shop at 1am when they shouldn’t still be selling it, let alone to us. And there is enough time but I use it to stare at my blog page wondering what I should be typing while my right hand makes a small Kinder Egg mole do a dance. That’s not a euphemism.

I reassure myself on a daily basis that this sort of squalid, Withnail like existence is still better than sitting in an office. Despite having regular money, a social life and evenings and weekends free, I would be close to suicide if I ever had to return. Previous experience of such activities had me sitting at my desk genuinely contemplating how long I’d have to leave my head in the photocopier for before I got brain cancer so I could be let off for the day. Now sitting here, on a Monday, merely trying to write enough jokes about the Eurozone crisis for tonight’s Old Rope, I’m definitely not feeling that sort of suicidal and am far more content sitting amongst the dust. Just a shame I’m more likely to choke to death or die of starvation sometime soon instead.

Cost Of Living

Wow the world’s a mess isn’t it? I’m finding it so interesting watching as day after day another group of economists, traders or world bank institutions start to forecast a complete global economy collapse. I don’t understand it all, but it seems everyone’s now borrowed up to their eyeballs and what with bail outs draining the few remaining steady country’s banks dry, I’m guessing there will just be one day where someone announces there is no money left in the world at all and then we’ll all panic. Or let China take over. I wish I was more clever to really understand the ins and outs, but honestly, what does happen if the economy does just collapse? Will it be like the Soviet Union in the 80′s when people would have to cart a wheelbarrow full of money to buy bread? I never understood why those people didn’t save a lot of hard work and effort and just use their debit card. Or why other people didn’t try and rob them? Though I guess if that much dosh only bought a loaf of bread, then stealing a handful of it would barely get you a penny sweet and therefore be more effort than its worth.

What I’m curious about is that if the global economy did collapse bit by bit, starting with the crumbling of the Euro, then surely we’d all be ok? I mean surely money would cease to be of value at all? How could a shop ask for money to buy something if they themselves don’t have money to buy their stock and so on and so forth? I’m sure its not as simple as that. As the loathsome trader said on the BBC interview yesterday ‘anyone can make money from a crash’ and I guess that someone will always still be rich even when everyone else can barely afford to survive. But what I don’t understand is that if, say, the US economy collapses, the Eurozone collapses, and large parts of the rest of the world owe money to those factions, who will be making money? China and India? Well maybe, but who will buy their exports? Again, this is an overview I have without any clue as to how it actually works, but I am hugely entertaining myself hoping that we can go back to the days before monks invented banks. Or before money was invented.

I almost long for the idea that I could swap three bags of potatoes for a car. I’m not sure where I’d get the potatoes from in the first place, but I’d damn well try. It’d be lovely if all of us had to have something to give to receive. I’d do some jokes for some tomatoes you grow in your garden, someone else can knit a jumper in return for getting their washing machine fixed. It can’t be that difficult can it? Someone who’s good at drawing charts can draw charts that say exactly what everything ever is worth in comparison to every other thing ever, and suddenly we’ll have an exchange rate based on conkers and lentils rather than the US Dollar or the Yen.

Of course it won’t happen. Things will just get worse, public services will suffer as governments continue to lend money they don’t really have to people who are broke because of borrowing money they didn’t have and no one will ever point out that as it doesn’t exist in the first place and really, in comparison the life, the universe and everything, its really insignificant and we should probably just press ‘clear’ and start again. I should so so totally be in charge sometimes.