Its Bank Holiday Monday. According to Wikipedia on May 25th in 1977 Star Wars was released at cinemas. To think of the unknown brilliance thousands, nay millions, were about to embark on heading to the cinema that day. None of them had even the merest glimpse of thought that in 25 years time Lucas would take everything great that he’d done and shit all over it like a diarrhetic dog. Today, 32 years later, I’ve had garlic mushrooms on toast for breakfast. Its obviously a day for exciting ventures. I like it when I wake up and decide to eat something for breakfast that is a bit spur of the moment, new and exciting. And like those soon to be Star Wars fans, I had no idea it would make my breath stink quite so much, or that burning a little bit of garlic would continuously set our smoke alarm off for a twenty minute period. Our smoke alarm is a bit of a jobsworth. It goes off at the slightest sign of anything remotely smokey. Some of you might suggest that thats brilliant as were there ever to be a fire we would get a very early alert and be up and out to safety before you could even say ‘Oh Jesus my arm’s on fire, its bloody well on fire!’ Yes, that is a bonus, because I don’t like being on fire much. I once caught my dressing gown sleeve on fire and I didn’t like it. I was well aware that my arm was on fire, which helped me to put it out and I do suppose that had I been asleep I wouldnt have noticed as much, so I can see the benefits of the alarm. But the problem is it goes at every given opportunity. Every single sign of smoke. A little bit of burning food it goes off. Someone lights a match, it goes off. I listen to Smokey Robinson, it goes off. I wonder if I need to give it a real fire to see if its just crying wolf/fire unnecessarily. Will it actually go off if the whole building is in flames? Thats the question that may need to be answered today.
Last night’s show was a brilliant, as shows at Downstairs at the Kings Head always are. There are so many reasons why that gig is great, including the room, the fact that Pete Grahame who runs it actually cares about it, and that the crowd is nearly always friendly. Above all these is that its a 10 minute drive from my house or, er, a longer walk. I havent walked it in years due to laziness and a big hill in the way. Big hills ruin walks for lazy people. I would happily walk along non-hills to get there, but the steep incline means a big no no for me. I mean why should I exert that bit of extra force when I can save it and use it for later when I run around setting fire to stuff? Have to keep that energy for important things.
The warm weather counter-acted the Bank Holidayness last night and so there was a reasonable but not massive crowd number-wise. I would only have meant number wise as the warm weather and Bank Holidayness would not have affected their general build and weight mass. Unless the warm weather had meant they sweated lots off, and the Bank Holidayness had meant they’d eaten loads to put it all back on again. But until now, I hadnt thought of that. Despite the small numbers and mixed ratio of heights and weight they were, as always, a great crowd. The front row alone was composed of a man who decided to tell me outright that had a ‘dirty stop out’ the night before, and then wondered why I started asking him questions about it. I wouldnt have done, but he didn’t understand that by telling the whole room about it, questions had to be asked. There was also a policeman who’s surname was Johnson which I equated to being a euphemism for dick. I then berated him about the G20 riots, as he was on the squad in town that day. He didnt hit me and he was actually fairly good natured about it. In the second section an audience member was missing so I told him to investigate why and when he failed to do so, I asked him how much trouble someone would get into if they insulted a policeman off duty. He said it depended on whether or not the person who threw the insult knew they were off duty. I told him I knew he was a copper, and then called him a prick, offering him the chance to lay down the law and arrest me, but ruin the gig for everyone, or leave me alone and fail in his work. He was nice and he failed. Which, in hindsight, I am pleased about, as I dont fancy jail. Even if others in jail might fancy me. Urgh.
The last couple on the front row were very nice too and the man, Richard was a poet and tour guide. He very kindly gave us a great limerick about a man from Putney and then told us how he holds misguided tours of areas. Next week he is doing a misguided tour of Crouch End. This is a genius idea where people pay him money and he takes them around Crouch End telling them massive lies about its history. As we pay politicians money to lie all the time anyway, this is a lovely way to pay for lies that are funny. I think more tours should be filled with lies as telling us the throne room in Buckingham Palace is the secret entrance to the Batcave is far more exciting than saying its where our emotionless cold facially dead queen sits sometimes and pretends to be important. I managed to find his tour on Facebook so based on last night, would highly recommend you go. I wont be going, but thats not because I don’t want to, but because on that date I will, er, be doing other stuff. Like fixing my burnt down house.
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=82282481465
Quick other plug for someone who doesn’t plug their own stuff enough. I bought this book off of very very funny comic Dan Evans last night. I’ve only read about 15 pages and its made me snorty laugh 6 times which is a lot and very embarrassing when around other people.
http://bit.ly/8K0Qu
Lastly on the agenda for today’s blog, @misswiz on Twitter last night told me that her friend thinks I have PR that write this blog for me. Its a nice belief but I cant work out in what way talking about cats shitting on my laptop is self promotion. I would fire a PR that did that. If I could afford one to write my blog in the first place. Even if I could, if I tried to fire them, my smoke alarm would go off. Then again maybe its some clever form of anti-PR, whereby making people be so uninterested in me, that interest is somehow aroused. Im not sure how this would work, but I might sell the idea to someone. They wont be interested at first, but they’ll come round and see its genius.
Must go. Have to head off to buy lighter fluid.
