Slutcracker/Mini-Freeze 29/06/09

Attended another fabulous Invisible Dot event on Monday, which almost reached the infernal heat levels of the Incorporation Party.

This time Mr Basden was otherwise enageged doing a preview for his Edinburgh show at the Hen & Chickens (again) so it wasn't Freeze proper, more a long series of stuff and things from Mr Key with assistance from Fletch. The fun was not curtailed though and the place looked like it was sold out, which was rather nice... although it didn't help the temperature situation. There were poems, short films, trumpet reccittals, chats and all sorts, and at the end Tommy B finally made it to give us a thin slice of the regular Freeze. It were funny, it were.

I go on holiday in just three days, whooooooosh.

Pip pip x

I do have an apple though...

It's that time of day/week again where I waffle on aimlessly for a few minutes to pretend to myself that I'm doing something.

Once I get paid I swear, I SWEAR, I am going to buy a delicious can of fizzy pop. The worst thing about my pockets at the moment is that they do not contain enough money to fulfill this ambition already. Apparently, at some point Someone Who Is In Charge decided that existing in Central London wasn't hateful enough and made things so that 47p (1x 20p, 2x 10p, 3x 2p, 1x 1p) was not enough for a can of lovely carbonated drink. This means reliance on the water cooler and the various teas available in the little kitchen bit.

What the fuck is it about Michael McIntyre that gets him so much work? Having seen him rise in profile from his early radio/tv panel show appearances and spots on stand-up shpwcases as clearly the least funny participant, it is with utter bafflement and incredulity that I behold his smug straddling of the pinnacle of popular comedy.

He has a plummy voice. That's it. He has a plummy voice and that seems to be acceptable as a substitute for decent material. Every single joke he makes in his 'Roadshow' is agonizingly banal, his delivery staggeringly self-satisfied. He also has a face that looks like an 80s animatronic model of a gameshow host. It's a shame that he has some really good stand-ups on the aforementioned Roadshow, it gets very tiresome skipping through his parts on iplayer.

Wow, didn't realise I had that much venom in me. This is a bit like therapy, but free and even more self indulgent.

AAAGGGHHH, staring up from my desk is a picture of Hazel Blears. I hadn't realised this, she must have been staring at me for at least 45 minutes. I am distressed. From now on every time I go into a room I'm going to check for pictures of Hazel Blears, checking again every 25 minutes to make sure none have crept in. I have no idea what I'd do if I found any, probably shriek on horror, like I am now.

Good night (afternoon) and good luck (in avoiding Hazel Blears) x

The Righteous Fury Minute

Is this the worst man in the world or is pond life like him disqualified from polls of human disgrace?

I actually feel quite bad for lumping pond life with the likes of him. A newt has never made me want to fire it into the sun or hit it with a hammer, a tadpole has a useful place in a pond eco-system, waterboatmen scuttle about on the water's surface like little ice skaters, delightful creatures one and all.

Littlejohn is superfluous, a reactionary, bigoted, bullshit merchant. I shit in your face, Richard. Shit in your face.

Catastrophe

Shit, I've broken myself. After a couple of weeks of making the hardest decision of my life and switching to Diet Coke, I've just bought a regular Coke and I think it tastes weird.

What have I done? More importantly, why have I done it?

NO Locke & Key at the Forbidden Planet today, it should be released more regularly, because apart from the peerless Walking Dead it's the best comic around. There's DMZ too, but I need to catch up on the paperbacks and at £10 a pop and 3 or 4 I still need, unless I'm willing to live off berries and seeds I might have to wait until I'm paid.



In a moment of idle thought I came up with the name 'Crab-Shack', imagining it to be like a kind of Pizza Hut that only sells crab... then Google tapped me on the shoulder and told me it already exists. In London, Jersey, Georgia. What?

More driving today with fabulous Fabio. I hope i don;t spend the whole two hours screwing up, like last time.

Adios x

Welcome to Urville

The above is a poster that my friend Emily did, I'm putting up it for no other reason than it looks nice. Like a poster on a wall. There's lots more of her and the Plats kids' stuff here, go there!

Hmmmm, what to write, what to write.... there's nothing, that's always an option. Don't think I'll take it up though, I feel like spending at least a little bit of my lunch hour doing something I don't despise.

It's 2 weeks and 3 days until I go on holiday and I'm finding it difficult to wait. Budapest-Novi Sad-Split, that's the route, with the Exit festival occurring in the middle bit. Hopefully it'll be a lot of fun. I'm traveling alone for most of it, not feeling apprehensive as such, but more curious as to how I'll cope in my own company in strange places. I'm used to it in familiar places, but these ones will be unusual and exotic, what if I get on my nerves more without my home comforts?

Things I'm planning to do: dance all night, something that involves being on a boat, get in the sea, get out of the sea, eat lots of delicious food (involving sea creatures preferably), go to the island of Brac, find things, see unusual countries I never expected to visit (Serbia?!), experience two weeks of sunny days, have a look around Diocletian's Palace.
I just ordered this ^ book from Amazon. Not sure whether to do a good thing and give it to a friend for his birthday or keep it for my greedy self. Gilles Tréhin is an autistic savant who's imagined a city, to the tiniest detail, and drawn it. It's this kind of thing that leaves me spellbound by the capacity of the human mind.

I think that's all I have to say today.

Adieu x

Freeze! 15/06/09

Very brief little review of a (make no bones about it) bloody great evening.

One more triumph for the inimitable, undefinable Invisible Dot. It was my first ever Freeze! tonight and hopefully not the last. The first half comprised of a wonderful mix of poems, sketches, songs and merriment from Messrs Key and Basden. Tough subjects like War and Sir Stephen Redgrave were tackled with aplomb. There was even a commercial interlude to showcase the hot new product 'Woodland Rain', which revealed, intimately, the (almost) full Basden and Key personage(s).

The second half kicked off with a brief biographical insight from Tim Key, which neatly echoed the revelation of Tom Basden's address, phone number and email address from the first half. And continued with the short (24 minute) film 'The One and Only Herb McGwyer Plays Wallis Island'. I can describe this as nothing short of an absolute delight. The perfect balance between levity and pathos. It was inadvertantly accompanied by the sound of a couple of loud yawns, an argument/loud debate outside and the passing wail of a police siren, but not to it's detriment.

I feel I should reveal my vested interest; I was given the role of a kind of town crier before the gig, involving telling everyone it would start in 5 minutes. A small role you might say, but one I am immensely proud of.

Next Monday Tom Basden has a preview of his Edinburgh material at the Hen & Chickens, think I might attend.

Byeeeee x

I like this.



The man himself (Bang-yao Liu) said this: "This is my senior project at Savannah College of Art and Design. Where my idea comes from is that every time when I am busy, I feel that I am not fighting with my works, I am fighting with those post-it notes and deadline. I manipulating the post-it notes to do pixel-like stop motion and there are some interactions between real actor and post-its."