Gig 32. Brighton.

Top Banana on 16.7.09. To save £4, I opted to walk to the train station from the Cafe Sanctuary (which hosts Top Banana) and got caught in a torrential downpour. It was warm and I was wearing sandals so it wasn’t a huge problem. After two months of enforced solitary confinement, it felt good to be able to enjoy the night air. Had a burger and fries instead of the usual fried chicken. I just felt like a change.

I felt at peace with myself.

Top Banana is run by a nice Sri Lankan guy called Romesh. It was a low key night, enough gaps in the audience to resemble a mouth full of missing teeth but they were warm and receptive. I tried out my first political gag (have since come up with another) but basically just went through my standard routine. Got some laughs. I have to say that Romesh seems to be mining the same shtick as Don Biswas but coming from it at a slightly different angle. He’s good and I can see a future for him if he keeps at it. I did OK and I’m content with that. I wasn’t feeling 100% and had insufficient time to prepare but did not want to make excuses for not doing the gig.

This may well be the last blog posting I do on this website. One of the things that has really fascinated me is the possibility of making a living, in part, out of blogging. I have some ideas and I also want to stretch myself creatively. The problem with wordpress is that you can’t sell stuff on it or allow advertising. Their house. Their rules. I respect that and it’s been great but I want to take it to another level but this isn’t the place for it.

So thank you WordPress, this website has been great but I’ll be moving on.

World’s Greatest Workout Routine has had to be abandoned…

Only way to guarantee to be able to do it was in the mornings, when I am at my sharpest and I need that time for other things. But am refining my current work-out routine. It’s getting shorter but I think more effective. I cut the runs down to 25 minutes when I do run. I would prefer to run between 30 – 40 minutes but the truth is, it makes the lunch breaks too fraught and I think stressing myself out in this way is counter-productive.

Have changed the weight training sessions as well. I cut the number of exercises from 6 to 4 but will shortly be increasing it to 5 and have cut the warm-up run to 10 minutes. The goal is to workout between 2 and 5 times a week during the working week. I’ve noticed that my posture has improved and I have put on some muscle. I’m never going to beat Schwarzenegger but that’s OK. My focus is on stand-up comedy and I’m happy to just maintain a basic level of fitness. Working out is a means to an end as opposed to an end in itself. It will have to be tailored to what time I can realistically set aside.

Doing Brighton tomorrow and picked up a copy of Bill Hicks biography.

Back on the horse tomorrow. Have a spot at Top Banana, had to email the promoter to explain that I would be running late as I was driving down from London. Looking forward to it. Also bought a copy of a biography of Bill Hicks, bona fide comedy genius, all round good guy, and probably in the top two or three of my creative heroes (James Ellroy, the crime writer, being the other nailed on God for me).

Started reading the Bill Hicks book. I started laughing out loud almost from the first page. A true great. Tine to start immersing myself back in the circuit.

Sent a note to PeteG on Facebook when I realised that one of my jokes that I’m reworking ends up looking suspiciously like one of his.

Bride’s bouquet brings down plane

From the article:

Isidoro Pensieri, 44, was today recovering at a hospital in Pisa from serious facial and head injuries and two broken legs, sustained when the ultra-light aircraft in which he was travelling crashed near a restaurant at which a wedding reception was being held. Pensieri was entrusted with the bouquet so that he could cast it dashingly into the outstretched arms of the unmarried female guests as the plane swooped by. According to Italian news agency reports, however, the flowers disappeared into the tail rotor, causing an explosion in the motor and pitching the ultra-light into a dive. After just missing a hostel in which some 50 young people were gathered, the aircraft plunged to earth in a wood.

Another reason to not get married. You may not survive the reception.

Not going to buy another stackable crate.

The really hard bit is underway: sifting through the paperwork. I have always put it off as it.s just been too flipping hard. This is the stage where I have always stalled in the past. I’m going to have to keep on going. I need to leave the past behind and that means excavating the good bits and dumping the rest. The thing to remember is to take tiny steps, one at a time. I am going to have to winnow the papers more than once until I finish up having retained just the absolutely essential papers. No more stackable crates, just stuff to shred, shred, shred, and shred. It feels cathartic.

Friend or Foe? Green or Yellow? Up or Down?

The biggest problem I’m having right now in THE GREAT CULL™ is to how classify items. The more classifications I have and the more detailed they are, the more I get bogged down. When I sat down and thought about it, I realised that what I needed was a simple classification system, which combined with tossing stuff I did not absolutely need, would enable me to know what I owned and where it was. Anything else verges on OCD. For me anyway.

Tossed a manky pair of socks into the bin this morning. There is no let-up, I am relentless.

Taekwondo athlete opens escort agency to fund Olympic challenge

As a headline, pretty tough to beat or possibly high kick.

‘A New Zealand taekwondo athlete has opened an escort agency to help fund his bid to compete at the 2012 London Olympic Games. Logan Campbell told local press he hoped his Auckland “gentleman’s club,” which provides escort services, would help him raise about £120,000 toward his London Games campaign.’

For more of the good stuff…

Objets D’art.

There is something really satisfying about letting my inner geek nerd run free. I’m onto the second stage of the GREAT CULL, which involves going through the plastic crates in my room and winnowing out the rubbish, sorting out stuff to give away, sell on eBay, etc, when I came across several unused condoms in pristine condition. Given how long it’s been since I’ve been intimate with a woman and how long this drought is likely to continue, I’ve decided to classify them as ‘Objets D’art’ under my reference system. Top that Marcel Duchamp! Not that he’s likely to anytime soon as he’s dead.

Workouts.

Reverting to workouts at lunchtime for the moment. There are just too many things for me to deal with and the morning before I go to work is the best time to do them.

Race and Comedy.

Reading Shazia Mirza’s column about stand-up comedy in the Graun really made me reflect on just on how complex race relations are in this country. I’ve been heckled by a fat white lesbian in Earl’s Court, cheered to the rafters by a bunch of chavs in the Black country and have seriously pissed all the black people in the audience in Camden. It’s a subject I’d like to blog about in greater detail at some stage.