Phones, Time Lords and Witches

I’m going to go visit the newly refurbished The Compass today to see if there is a future for Fat Tuesday. I’m slightly scared that its going to be all wrong and I’ll have a bit of panic. They have already rung me today and said the first gig that they said could go ahead might not be able to go ahead. Not good. I’m scared this will escalate into the next 5 gigs all can’t go ahead and then nothing can ever go ahead ever and all comedy must be destroyed. Obviously that would be the extreme but you can never discount these possibilities. It always starts small. I’ve read Dr.Seuss’s non-fiction ‘It Was All Because A Bug Went Katchoo’ and everyone knows that lead to the Chernobyl incident. Hopefully the 26th will still go ahead and so will all the other gigs because frankly I have a little too much on at the moment to be sorting it all out. Today is filled with many an appointment, the most important one being the arrival of my new phone. That’s right after my debacle where I drunkenly, threw my own phone on the floor and broke it, O2 have taken pity on the stupid drunk man, and are sending me a brand new i-phone today. The news of that makes me do a jig everytime I say it. I have to stop saying it as its becoming very hard to type while jigging. I don’t know how Morris dancers ever type anything for they are constantly in a perpetual jig aren’t they? I hear they only live for a few weeks as all the dancing wears the body out in super quick time. So they emerge from a cocoon after 3 months, and become a fully grown Morris dancer, only to dance the night away every night and day for three weeks, before spreading their seed and dropping dead on May day. Its all so very sad yet beautiful at the same time. Sigh. Nature’s little wonders eh?

Getting an i-phone could be dangerous on two accounts. I think it will take up more time than I have. It doesn’t have to but I know I’ll want to fiddle with all the features and download the thing that makes lightsaber noises and wave it at the cats. The other reason is that I currently do some material on how i-phones make people wankers. This material might have to be adjusted. Of course I could just lie for the sake of comedy, but I am an honest governor and, more importantly very bad at lying. I do odd things when trying to lie, like yawn and burst into laughter. Basically my Pinocchio’s nose is appearing like a maniacal narcoleptic. Despite these though I’m still excited as I have been using my old phone which seems like alien technology to me. I can’t text with it and it has none of my numbers on, so everytime someone calls me its a surprise. That bit is both nice and bad. I have certain people’s numbers on my phone so I know not to pick it up. Guaranteed they will all call me in the next day or so. Maybe I shouldn’t answer any calls whatsoever.

Yesterday was a day of some greatness and some badness. There was also a high amount of oddness which added to both areas. One of the odd things was as I was parking near my gig last night. It was in the West End of London which is like a public warzone at the best of times. I saw a space and headed straight for it. As I did, some arse in a smart car pulled up right beside me, looked at me and tutted while waving his finger at me. It was irritating and a little bit creepy. It was a one way street and I was infront of him carwise, so the space was mine. But he looked so angry and then rather than shouting he told me off like a teacher would. Shouting I would have been prepared for but finger wagging threw me off a bit. I thought nothing of it until I reached the gig, then I started wondering was it a curse or a warning? I paced back and forth and suddenly felt that I should run back to the car. Sure enough I had a parking ticket and I had left the door unlocked. The man must’ve been that woman in bewitched. Its the only explanation.

The other weird thing was noticing a man at the gig who looked exactly how I assume I will look in about 20 years time. I hadn’t noticed him until I walked onstage and there he was. Little grey goatee, short grey hair, slightly rounded face, a bit tubby and not very tall. It was uncanny. He had left to go to the loo as I had walked onstage. I told everyone and Richard was concerned that he had been sent back from the future to prevent past me from making a ‘terrible mistake’. When he returned we all gave him suspicious looks then I shook his hand to see if a vortex was created or if time and space exploded. It didn’t. I still don’t trust him though. He tried to say he was my dad. I bet thats the story Sarah O’Conner had told him would work.

Richard’s gig The Perfect Movie is a truly great night. Like Mark Olver’s Oppo gig the other week, it felt like stumbling into someone’s special private club and being allowed to join in. All material is movie based, and Richard’s MCing all relates to film facts. He knows far too many film facts. It can be a little scary just how much he knows. I realised I don’t know anything as in depth as that. There was a time when I knew a lot about Marvel comics and then about DJ Shadow, but those times have past and now I know a lot about good ways to waste time but I don’t think I could run a club on that basis. Or I could try but every attempt at preparing for it would be spent doing other things. So I really enjoyed the show and I was lucky enough to do the section at the end where I just had a chat with Richard and then we re-enact five of my favourite movies scenes. I managed to ruin Raiders of The Lost Ark, Duck Soup, Transformers the Movie (the animated proper one), Psycho and Pulp Fiction. The scene from Pulp where Jules recites Ezekial 25:17 was my favourite. I think I’ve finally realised that when I grow up I want to be Samuel L.Jackson. It may take some work but if you’re determined enough anything can happen. Of course it will mean Samuel L.Jackson will have to do something else but he can be me if he wants. I’m sure he’d love that. My stand-up wouldn’t necessarily get better but it would all sound that bit more cool and dramatic.

Some of the good things that happened yesterday were all Twitter Comedy Club related. It is getting even more nuts every day, and now there some great press coverage. Here’s a bit from the Times Online. Possibly the first, and last time I will ever be mentioned in the Times I’m sure:

http://timesonline.typepad.com/technology/2009/05/twitter-comedy-show-oneliners-compulsory.html

And then a bit from the Sun Online. They didn’t even ask us to go topless or anything!

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article2439075.ece