Some self PR today as it’s L’s birthday and we’re going for a day of fun times and birthday adventures. Jealous? You should be. So no real blog from me, but instead here are some things I put on the inter web yesterday in audio and visual times. I can’t work out how to embed either on shitty WordPress so just click the links. Enjoy and see you for a proper blog tomorrow:
MY SET ON EUROZONE CRISIS RECORDED AT LOLITICS ON MONDAY
ME ON CBBC’S THE SLAMMER DOING RUBBISH ART
It has dawned on me that this is the 1005th blog that I’ve written since the end of 2008. Quite a number, and more impressive when I realise just how much shit I’ve typed away meaninglessly for free on the inter webs. I doubt any of you have read all 1005, but if you have, well done and I’m sorry for informing you you probably should have had something better to do. For any who’ve consistently read them for many a month or year then well done to you too. I have no idea what I should do to commemorate such a number of entries that all seem to amount to nothing but if any of you have any ideas then please let me know. Maybe I’ll make a special entry combining all my favourite words over the last 3 years. Or not. Anyway continuing the theme that started way back when, here’s two things I need to get off my chest. They aren’t literally on my chest or I’d find it hard to breathe somewhat and probably wouldn’t be able to type this up. Should any of you want me to celebrate my 1k of blogs by putting things on my chest and typing then again, let me know. Gooooo Blog!
MOMEDY / CUSIC
You know why people are allowed a choice between seeing a comedy night or a music night on a night out? Why venues seem to specify which type of cultural artistic venture they will be holding on their stage? Its because the two don’t mix. Sure you get musical comedians. Sure you get funny musicians. But ultimately, unless its a televised event where people are forced to be quiet for some poor ITV attempt at reviving the days of musical hall, then the two go together like chalk and someone who hates chalk and wants to smash it with a hammer. Its not that people can’t be fans of both, but more that different things are required from audiences depending on what they’re watching. Those watching comedy are needed to be seated, quiet and generally (though not at always the case) up for listening and laughing. Those watching music however, due to the volume and nature of the show, often like standing up and talking to each other throughout. Outside noise isn’t usually a problem unless its a particularly quiet gig, and there is far less than can make a music gig go wrong outside of shit sound equipment. I’m sure musicians would argue the oppose and there is half a ton of stuff I don’t know about but I am merely a stand-up who harbours dreams of rock stardom and thusly has no real clue.
Last night however did very prove the theory that comedy and music do not momedy make. My job was to host an event that featured first a quiz, then an hour of comedy from myself and Phil Nichol, followed by two bands then some DJs. An excellent sounding idea, but when it came to it, post quiz, the audience was very much in a music state of mind. Most of them were not sitting in the few chairs provided, eyes were not focussed on the stage and the chatter was loud enough to deafen a monitor lizard (they don’t have ears fact fans). It took a 5 minute warning from myself, and the two promoters just to get some of them to pay attention before I could go onstage. It wasn’t terrible and I seemed to entertain the 30 people that were watching, but the 100+ that weren’t overshadowed it and I felt like I’d lose my voice if I shouted any louder. Phil then went on and did great despite the odds, but he is a brilliant loud man with more energy than a monitor lizard (I don’t know if they have much energy or not, but I bet Phil has more).
Its nobody’s fault but the audiences. Why people aren’t versatile to sit up and down all evening adapting to the performance I don’t know. I can’t believe they don’t want to cut chat short or stop dancing to listen to someone tell gags, having to pause drinking while the bar is closed when they have planned to go out, and get battered to loud music. How dare they hey? Or you know, maybe, more likely we should stick to telling funnies in the right environment and let the rock stars kick over drum kits without us getting in the way. Momedy is dead. Love live momedy.
CATS
Today is Black Cat Awareness Day. I know. I thought it was someone having me on on Twitter, but no, its really true. Have a look:
It seems people are lessing willing to adopt black cats than any other type, as though its some sort of terrible feline racial segregation. I honestly can’t believe its to do with superstition, is it? I mean, does anyone worry about that sort of thing anymore? Even if they do, they haven’t researched properly as in the UK and Ireland, black cats are meant to be good luck and in fact in Japan its believed that any woman who owns one is meant to get many suitors. So any of you lovely ladies out there, grab yourself a black cat and get ready I say. Pretty much every folklore about black cats is good with only pirates saying that if one walks towards you, its bad luck. But if they walk away from you, it was good luck. I suggest you still get a black cat if these things worry you and just constantly keep it on a travelator facing away from you. You’ll be rich in days.
I had a black Persian cat as a kid. Her name was Claws and she was one year older than me living to the grand old age of 19 human years. A beautiful cat she also very much played the part of being tolerant to kids. I would walk her round by her tail, I’d sit on her as a sofa cushion, use her as a ‘living island’ for my He-Man toys to play on and cover her in playing cards. She would lie there all content, purring away while such abuse continued. Every time we returned from holiday she would have about 18 rats lying side by side in the garden, their severed heads lying next to them as she stood proud as if to say ‘present for you!’ My dad would then sigh as all his relaxed post holiday demeanour disappeared as he had to bury another load of rat skeletons in the garden.
So yeah. Get a black cat. If nothing else every time someone you don’t like goes to your door you can throw catnip at them and watch as your cat walks towards them instantly giving them bad luck. Win.
In addendum, here’s some silly things I’ve done:
SOUNDS OF THE 70s – 3 (Radio 2 voice by @GirlCalledLeila)
and
Less a blog today, more a small collection of things of which I wish to inform you. Serious one first:
NHS REFORM BILL
The NHS reform bill is currently being debated by the House of Lords and with the assumption that it will get passed in some format whether we like it or not, this is the last chance to at least try and make changes to it and assure that it is vigourously checked through by experts to stop the most damaging aspects come to fruition.
What can we do? Well you can take 2 minutes to do this:
NHS MESSAGE TO THE LORDS PETITION
You really have no excuse not to.
ALTERNATIVE REALITY TOUR
Yesterday I took part in Josie Long’s Alternative Reality Tour in Bedford. Its a brilliant brilliant idea whereby she puts on a show, for free, somewhere in the centre of a supposedly ‘run down’ town and comedians and musicians all entertain whilst saying how much they hate the government. A truly lovely thing. Last night’s was outdoors under the castle mound by the Embankment and (probably because it was a monday) a small but lovely group gathered to hear Josie, Nat Tapley, Simon Munnery, Grace Petrie and me say and sing our thoughts. I’ve never performed in the outdoors by a castle mound before so it was a first to me, and even though my blood sugars had gone low ten minutes before and I felt I garbled out my set, it was a brilliant night. The evening was made for me by two teenagers who’d heard some noise and arrived to investigate. They stuck around for about 3 acts then left saying ‘That was the most random thing ever’, ‘Yeah but it was funny though’. That, as far as I’m concerned, is a win. There’s only two more shows this week, in Gloucester then Devon, but it should become a regular venture of Josie’s soon. Check out the website here:
Let’s hope this is just the beginning of more comedy returning to being a raconteurs game where laughter can actually change people’s opinions rather than just entertain the drunk.
SOUNDS OF THE 70′s
Sometimes I get very bored and make silly things. Yesterday (with help from L) I made these two:
I will make more. I’m not sure why.
BLOCK THE BILL, BLOCK THE BRIDGE
The video I posted up the other day of my set at the protest on Westminster Bridge has been outdone by a superior recording. Many thanks to Miggiuk for posting it:
TIERNAN DOUIEB – WESTMINSTER BRIDGE
POLITICAL FOOTBALL
Do you ever find out about something that’s truly exciting? Speaking to very nice journalist man Dan Hancox after the ARTour, he told me of an anarchist football team that recently played a Leninist football team. This concept blew me away. How can anarchists have a football team? How do they work out formation and tactics? Does everyone just do what they want, scoring goals by carrying the ball there, carrying the goalposts elsewhere or just destroying the pitch entirely? And do the Leninists have the opposing team killed if they lose? Or win? So many questions. And the most important of these is: Are there other political or conceptual football teams? A Marxist team where everyone must play all the positions? A capitalist team where everyone is merely out for their own reward? I’d very much like to see a Nihilist team who refuse to play as there is no point or perhaps a surrealist team who has one player standing on top of the goal, one several miles away from the stadium and one dressed as a carrot? If these don’t exist, I feel we should invent them and get a league going. If nothing else, it’d be a damn sight more exciting than most other sports.
This will be a quick blog as I’m just back from doing the Three Weeks podcast with Tim Fitzhigham. I had no idea what it was all about, and merely received a call to arms text at 10.45 this morning asking all comedians that were awake to join him in the studio. There was a good 10 minutes of mad banter before we had to end as due to Tim, the whole show overran by 20 minutes. I have grown to love this aspect of Tim. Everyday at Adventurer’s Club there is another mini-crisis as he wanders off just before we start the show to start a conversation with someone he hasn’t seen for 15 years, or decides that to do the ‘doors open’ announcement he has to stand atop of the most unsteady sandwich board in the Pleasance, an accident just looming over him like a petty Final Destination shot. I never have any clue how our show will pan out and where it will go, but to be honest, its immense fun, so I assume this morning will be similar. So before I race off to do my show, here are some quick things:
BERNARD
We have a small mouse in our flat. Correction: there is a fat mouse in our flat. Its really fat and yet somehow quite capable of squeezing itself under the gap in our toilet door so it can scare the crap out of me at 4am in the morning when I’m on the loo. I’m not scared of mice by any means, but if you’re bleary eyed and in the most vulnerable of positions seeing a grey blur race at your feet is never calming. Now having seen Bernard a few times I’m a bit more happy about his existence though more cautious when using the loo. I’ve taken to leaving him a few cornflakes by the fridge – under which is where he lives – and seeing if he eats them all and despite Nat doing the stereotypical thing of jumping on top of a stool on first sight of him, we’ve taken to seeing him as part of the flat. Although if he doesn’t start buying in loo roll and more cornflakes soon I will start to plan how to trap him and send him up Arthur’s Seat.
FESTMAG REVIEW
I got this review yesterday:
FESTMAG – TIERNAN DOUIEB VS THE WORLD
And that makes me very happy. Especially the term ‘ursine jester’ which I may have to use as a show title in future years.
SOUNDCLOUD
My cough has developed into a hack so bad I’ve pulled a muscle in my side. If there was ever an indicator for my body starting to fail itself, its this. Anyway, I talk about it here. Note: It contains some things I wrote about in yesterdays blog. Sorry:
And the aforementioned Three Weeks podcast should be up this afternoon so keep your ears peeled for that. Proper blog tomorrow!
I really want tea. Thing is, to get tea, it means I have to leave bed. Bed is pretty damn good. Bed provides horizontal enjoyment of many a kind and promotes not having to indulge that in that most evil of activities ie activity. Tea however, is also pretty damn good. It is warm. It’s in a cup. It is that pleasing brown colour if its been made right, and it tastes a bit like if a scientist decided they needed to find the taste of ‘pleasing’ and managed to do it. Anyone who doesn’t like tea automatically goes down in my estimation of being a human being and until they just give in and realise tea is as needed for the body as water is, then we shall not be friends. I would say the same about people who don’t like bed, but I’m yet to meet one of them. They surely can’t exist right?
So here’s my dilemma. I want tea, because tea is brilliant. But I want to stay in bed because bed is brilliant. Sure I can get up, make tea, then bring it back to bed, but by that point my bond with bed has been severed and betrayed and returning to it feels like I’m succumbing to my lazy side. However if I have never left bed in the first place then I have simply not gotten up yet and my day is yet to begin so I can stay here as long as I want.
Yes I know its 3.45pm as I type this. Yes I know you may not know that as you will aren’t reading this live due to technology not being quite there yet and me enjoying the only element of my life that isn’t instantly judged by others (no thank you Twitter and Live Performance). Yes I know that ultimately it seems as though I am merely having a crisis brought on only by severe laziness and others should be so lucky. However, I do have to work tonight which means at some point I will have to brave this mockery of summer weather – never has a drought warning been so aptly timed as to seem a complete send up of the government’s environmental department – and I choose not to do that until I 100% have to.
So somehow instead to get past this overly luxurious hurdle, I either need to learn to make tea using the force, somehow convince myself I’ve had tea, go back to sleep and dream of having tea or just give in, make tea and feel like the tea has won. My life is too hard sometimes.
Oh no wait. L has brought me a cup of tea in bed. Win. Total win.
TAKES QUESTIONS
On another note. I’ve figured this out now. Should any of you want to ask me any questions about absolutely anything ever, why not just ask me via this and I shall use my sage* like wisdom to answer you.
* I mean the herb
SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM
I am and probably forever will be, completely intrigued by spam emails. I understand that the point of such things is to encourage people to click on incorrect links or email bank details somewhere they shouldn’t, but the bit that confuses me is how they aim to do such things using nonsensical babble. The more satirical of you may suggest that all advertising is incoherent babble, but I would say that if an advert says its about say, Pepsi, and how great Pepsi tastes, then I have a possible reason to go buy Pepsi. If however an advert says ‘fish sticks get in my eyes, ten times the nausea. 100% guarentee. earn millions online by clicking here’ then I am left in a state of confusion. I like to believe that somewhere a series of Beckettian servants are mimicking Lucky’s brain splurge in tribute, hoping that only the most intellectual will click upon the services offered to discover something that is meant only for the elite. Either that or this is all a test practice for those infinite amounts of monkeys on all those typewriters and they are merely building up to all of Shakespeare’s works, or Planet of the Apes. The latter may take a lot longer.
Its almost definitely none of those things, which then begs the question, why has someone programmed something to be quite so hugely shit at what its meant to do. Last night my gmail was hacked. Again those satirists staring at this through their LED’s are probably smirking saying ‘most of what you email is hack to begin with so that was merely karma.’ I hate you satirists. You all suck. Anyway, the email that was nearly sent out if it wasn’t for google’s incredible security powers, would have been this:
I was starting to crack under pressure I wanted to amount to something
theres nothing else that compares with this!!
DODGY LINK WAS HERE
a weight is lifted off my shoulders consider trying it for yourself
did you know there was internet money like this?
Ok, so er what? Obviously it didn’t say the ‘DODGY LINK’ bit but I removed it incase any of you avid Beckettian’s were going to try and to prove a point. But other than that bit, its properly shit. It would have been sent to the last 12 people I’d emailed, all of whom know me well enough to know that a) I’m unlikely to have a breakdown at all. I’m more mentally stable than a home for brainy horses. Or something. And 2) if I was to have a breakdown it’s unlikely I’d email everyone about it with a link to a dodgy website. Yes III) its highly likely that if I could find a real way of making money without leaving my bedroom then I totally would but F) I wouldn’t tell everyone else about it due to being hugely selfish. Most importantly 56) I always use capital letters as I am grammer king. Prince. Pauper. Either way, I’d totally do that whole email better and if you really wanted to hack into my account and fool people with fake emails, then you should bloody well try harder. To be fair even just doing:
This is fucking funny:
DODGY LINK HERE
hahahaha bellends
Something like that would totally fool at least half of my contacts list. I should totally become a spammer. In fact maybe if I just clicked that DODGY LINK I might be able to find out how.
AUDIO TWEETS
I have become all a bit suckered into my new soundcloud account as it’s much much fun. It helps that I’m on the recommended people to follow list and have subsequently been gaining many followers with names such as DJ Shizzle and DJ LowSelfEsteem and so on and so forth, which gives me no end of joy knowing they are banging out some heavy bass tunes then suddenly being subjected to me talking about Dolmio or whatnot. But above all this, I’ve been trying audio tweeting. I’m not sure if it works yet but I recorded three during my journey to and back from my gig last night and will do some more tonight with Rufus and Maxwell in Bury St Edmunds if I can. Have a listen and let me know your thoughts. Unless they are mean thoughts. Then just keep them to yourself or write them on some paper then burn the paper.