"Pound as in the pounding of these zammoths' feet?"
"What zammoths? The ones to our right?"
"The ones I'm pointing at. Well, yeah, those ones, okay. God. So I wasn't exactly pointing at them. But yeah. God."
"No. Pounds as in insert-national-currency-here. The future has no regulated currency."
"Oh, and air?"
"No. And no zammoths. They're hallucinations. This planet's atmosphere is too thin. We're dying of radiation sickness."
"Speak for yourself. My body's packing in because it doesn't know how to function on a planet that has only a third of Earth's gravity. Hey, where are those guys going?"
For the past couple of years, every time I've finished a book I've taken a photograph of it, maybe hoping that this will make me read
more. I took six photographs of books in January I see, and one in February. And none in March. Here's Holland Park. I'd get wheeled around here when I was one, so I've been told. I don't remember. Now it's just up the road.
Photographing Kensington was one thing I managed to keep up in February. Was I doing it hoping to feel more like a resident, or like a tourist? Did I want to feel more at home or the opposite? I still stayed sociable, although I stopped going to the BFI as much, another fad of January. But I still had spending money from my first two commercials shot at the end of 2021. I still met friends, and if I was twenty years younger maybe there'd be photogaphs of that too. Here's a concert I was invited to in February. I couldn't remember why I'd photographed it, until I looked closer and saw everyone's masks. Click to enlarge.
I met Gemma Brockis a lot. I could afford to go out for coffee. We'd knock ideas about, her teaching and seeking meetings, me working a couple of days a week at the Crystal Maze and meandering. She told me how as an immersive theatre veteran she'd also occasionally get approached by Virtual Reality Engines to participate in Research and Development. Intimacy was what they were after now. "Virtual Intimacy" was VR's philopospher's stone.
What does "intimacy" actually literally mean though, I asked? We talked about that a bit – Chris Goode used to ask it back when he still did the blog, and was alive – then I decided to just look it up on my phone. We all have an idea. What do you think it means? As far as I could work out, "intimacy" just means the opposite of loneliness. That doesn't seem to have much to do with Virtual Reality. I didn't think they were going to find it, and I made a note of that on my phone. That phone broke, but I remembered.
Yesterday was fun, and crammed, and with Serena and Tom on the chocolate coin exchange and Hannah checking bags (but not opening them –"Very nice, Italian?") a slight shunt reunion, happily. Thank you to Coney for organising The Golden Key, and to Gemma for having me, and to you if you came, and sorry if we were full. When we were trying to find a mood for the bar outside our snug and kennels, I don't think we anticipated how much time would be spent simply queueing, but that's the thing about unknowns. Choas inside the kennels was a lot more welcome, and I was very lucky to be teamed with clowns as kind as my fellow accountants Sachi Kimura and Julia Masli (the word "accountant" has a nicely ecclesiastical ring to it, once you don a robe). It couldn't all be unknowns though, so I wrote a little text for us to say and here it is.
Counting the grains of rice:
This is a new idea.
Each of these is a promise. Not a big promise. Not a particularly
important promise. Still, probably more promises than it’s fair to
expect any single person to be able to keep. Which is why they’re kept here.
Originally, a promise was much bigger, and most people would be
unlikely to keep even one. They were about the size of this table, and made of
something dangerous like limestone or cows. But one night, there was a storm. And a promise sank to the bottom of
the sea – so it wasn’t lost, as the joke goes, it was at the bottom of
the sea – and all the islanders had to decide whether or not to still
count that as a promise kept. Which they did.
Maybe that’s why we’re underground.
Eating a grain:
This won’t be missed. Something will be missed. But no-one will know it was this.
Taking another grain:
And what’s the smallest thing you can promise? What’s worth this?
Proving I'd licked a duck by sticking a grain of rice to it was a lot more fun though.
"Wow!" indeed, thumbnail. Vic Stefanu takes us on a brief tour of the Micronesian Bankvaults of Yap, whose ancient limestone currency – (is "ancient currency" an oxyoron?) –gets referenced in Extra Credits' history of paper money, which we've all watched in preparation for The City of London's Golden Keywhich takes place tomorrow, Saturday.
Come along during the day if you can. Its all free, and I've finally found out which route we're at the end of: "Share Mile", details here. I'll be in kennels with the brilliant Julia "Legs" Masli and Sachi "Bums" Kimura, so I'll definitely be having fun and yes, apparently the counting rooms were called kennels.
Speaking of fun...
I don't know, I didn't want to let his passing go unremarked on here, but can any clip truly contain Robbie Coltrane? I barely had a moment to enjoy Kwasi Kwarteng getting fired before I heard the news. Every time I see him closing that plane door as an unpseaking extra in Flash Gordon I think, and then you go on to do everything. A giant Yappian coin of the acting world. Bye bye, big man.
Ah,
Summer... And then August and September happened and now we're here.
And Money's still running which is good because, as I said, not enough
people have seen it. But I should be writing. Hey, I nearly wrote a blog
at the beginning of this month but that definitely didn't count as
writing. And hey, it went thus:
"Well yes, quite.
Apologies
for my absence. I haven't been in Edinburgh or anything like that -
although there has been a Fringe in Camden, so a bit like that... And
now I think of it I have been quite consciously favouring Irn Bru when
popping into newsagents for a change of scene, thereby the August
rituals are kept alive. But what might I have posted about? Well,
following the here-hinted-at cancellation of Money a month ago I had
about a week on Murun Buchstansagerish, squalid auto-pilot, cooped up in
my stuffy, smelly crack -
- when suddenly the money from Garnier arrived (so that IS my voice)
and the Camden Fringe fortuitously coincided with my freed-up evenings,
finally letting me see what everyone else had been making. And that was
joyous. Partly it was joyous just to catch up with friends from the
London Dungeon (where I'm back, obviously) but the chief joy came from
simply being able to sit in an audience again, and from being impressed
and addressed and surprised by these friends. And being proud, and to be
feeling part of something other than Shunt. 'That Mitchell and Webb
Look' was happening as well, I know, but - maybe because I haven't
written a single minute of comedy this year - I didn't really feel a
part of that any more (God knows I tried, watching and re-watching every
'Prayer and a Pint' posted on youtube and relishing David's phrasing
and Stuart Scudamore as the Iranian extra proving there are no small
roles, only small actors - He is for me this season's giant robot
scorpion -
all this while still having no real idea what I thought I was
doing... HamerD's comment probably sums it up best: 'It's not supposed
to be a classy sketch.')
"What else do I feel a part of? Well,
the recession obviously. I have three jobs now, and there are four
people living here in Morgan's now, not two. (Yesterday's Evening
Standard proudly proclaimed George Osborne 'leads the way and sacks 350'
so it's good to know we're all doing our bit.) Job one's the Dungeons.
Job two's the Ghost Bus Tours, started up by an old Dungeon friend Ben
Whitehead and doing very nicely it seems. I jump on and off in the
evenings. I sweat and get possessed. The city is our stage I suppose,
and that's a bit like Edinburgh.
"And job Three's 'Money' by
Shunt. Which is running again. Four shows a week now. This must be good
news because it's an outstanding show, and it shows just how huge an
amount of work is going into its survival. But on our first night back I
did realise that I hadn't missed it at all. I suppose there's a lot of
anger tied up in that place (and anger's a hard barb to shift, as
obviously poisonous as it is, because it's righteous). But let's turn up
and do the show, let's see if we can get the bar going. But also let's
find another focus. It's September. I need to write. Actually that's not
the problem, I need to write loads: half-hours, hours,
three-dimensional people who interact with each other over a period of
time and make sense and don't make sense, that's the block. Apologies.
Here meanwhile, as promised, and as no kind of spur, is the state of
Douglas Adams' grave."
And that was the end of what I nearly posted. And still I haven't been writing.
The
only thing to add is that ever since we've thrown open the fire doors
and chalked up "Bar Open", Shunt's been feeling a good deal more Shunty.
And it's nice to sit on the door at a free entrance. On Thursday night I
chalked up "Bag Search in Operation" and sat on a deckchair rifling
through my satchel, loving my joke. "Always on", exactly.
Money here
Ghost Bus Tours here
And what is now excellently going on across the landing from our bathroom here
After
last night's show Tom and I were sitting with our bottles of Super Bok
in a corrugated iron shelter, looking out in silence at the evening
drizzle and the festoons and the sold and the unsold chairs, when a man
in glasses turned up and asked "Aw man, do you know if there's a late
show?" He wore a matching short-sleeved shirt and a blue trilby to
shield him from the rain and said he was from Canada. "I'm here to see
forty-five shows in twenty-four days" he explained. There wasn't a late
show Tom and I apologized. The man said there was nothing like British
Theatre in his opinion, and that he'd heard our show was quite like
Cirque de Soleil only scary. I said Tom was quite like Cirque de Soleil
only scary. Tom said he didn't have the skills. I said not falling off
was a skill. Then we asked him what, twenty-nine shows into his mission,
he'd liked the most. He said something called "Blind Spot" which I
think from his description was about the mythical blind seer Tiresias
("Seer?! HARDLY!" Laurence and Gus) but there had been two plays about
Tiresias that week and now he couldn't quite unpick them in his mind.
Anyway he hoped to catch our show on Saturday instead, after seeing
"Rope". We asked if it was the old "Rope", and did he know how long it
was. He didn't but I hope he can make it over. His name was John Tracey.
It's on the list.
Oh
Heavens! I had wanted to post - for quite a while now - something about General Motors' Futurama, the centre-piece of the 1939 New York World's Fair that I first saw mentioned in Michael
Chabon's superb book "The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay". Quite a bit of the research behind "Money" concerned expositions in which businesses invite citizens to
queue up and have their future dictated to them - perhaps
partly because of the structural similarity of a theme park ride to a lot of Shunt's work - and it seemed to me that the 1939's
World Fair, and the Futurama specifically, had really set the trend for this kind of experience: it was Disney's work there that led to the spawning of Disneyland, Disney World and the
Experimental Prototype Community Of Tomorrow EPCOT (and it's very probably why Tony Stark's dad in
Iron Man 2 has that moustache). However when I finally came to research the Fair properly to write this post (and by research I mean of course "surf youtube") I
re-read the Chabon only to find out that the
exhibit into whose remains Clay and Bacon sneak was not actually the Futurama at all,
but its companion piece "Democracity", and looking up footage of that I came across this typically arresting and
gigantic accompanying narrative from Adam Curtis about the attraction's creator Edward Bernays
(particularly fascinating for me as the similarly arresting and gigantic
sci-fi sitcom pilot that I am currently putting off is inspired by this exact same link between Futurism and Shadowy Figures Of Influence... or
might as well be... I dunno, haven't written it yet...)
And THAT in turn led me to Adam Curtis' equally arresting take on interviewing the Goldsmiths here.
So what I'm saying is I got a bit distracted.
But
let's plough on. Here are stills of the 1939 Futurama taken from a
contemporary home movie. It's not simply the scale of the ride that
knocks me out - far, far larger than I expected - but the accuracy. Look at
it! No steam-powered rain-shields or helicopter-bussles here, this is
pretty much how 1960 turned out, isn't it? It's like General Motors said "This
is the Future", and the world said "Oh, okay." Keep your hands in the
machine please...
Those
are moving cars by the way, driven by a clockwork mechanism. The effect
is startlingly realistic in some footage. Anyway, into the night...
See? BIG!
No but REALLY BIG!
"Residential,
commercial and industrial areas all have been separated for greater
efficiency, and greater convenience," says the narrator. It is that
sinister.
"Here is an American City re-planned around a highly developed modern traffic system..." he goes on.
"On all express city thoroughfares the rights of way have been so
routed as to displace outmoded business sections and undesirable slum
areas whenever possible..."
"Man continually strives to replace the Old with the New. Rich in sunshine is the City of 1960."
Sigh.
The full promotional film, complete with spooky organ music, is here.
And the home movie from which these images were taken is here, I think. I lost the link. It's spectacular whatever it is.
Oh and of course Money's still on here.
So hey! As you may have seen, we finally finished making that Money trailer. And into our fourth run the houses are full once again. COINCIDENCE?!?!?!?!? We're well past
the three-hundredth show, and it's still fun to perform, more fun than
when we started in fact, because all the niggling ideas of the other
shows this might have been have long since faded now, and we can just get
on with it. BUT... now, yes... the bad news is – here we go – Shunt's
newly desperate straights have forced them to serve us two and half
weeks' notice on the show! I KNOW! So, ignore the trailer. Stupid old
trailer. We're running until August 7th now, NOT the end of September.
ALLEZ therefore! VITE already!
There
is a slim chance, after the 7th, that we'll be running the show part-time,
rather than killing the old girl off entirely. but you know, who knows? I
hope she lives, of course, because this job has been a life-saver: it
was there to take care of me from the moment I came out of hospital to a
life of homelessness and burnt goods back in March 2009, and it paid
for that flat-share with Mossad, and the pool and sauna that helped me
catch my breath while I fell in love.
And
it's been my creative focus for over a year now, something I've been
able to work upon, and within, alongside people whose company over a
complimentary bottle of whatever's-nearest, in a car park full of chairs
come dusk, cannot be matched. And it's offered us complete artistic
freedom (and no artistic control, but that's the deal in any system,
isn't it, freedom or control... but, now I think of it, that's probably
why I made this trailer, to snatch a little measure of control). But
most importantly, it is quite simply a very exciting show, and not enough
people have seen it. No, I'll be gutted if she gets killed off. Chugging
away there... Well I sent an invitation to Terry Gilliam yesterday,
anyway. Priorities, exactly.
ReTweet @antimega "It's the London Dungeon for cultured adults. That's not a bad thing." I liked that.
"Yeah
but hang on, Simon, eff off! You can't just disappear for a month then
swan back online with 'The Public Reaction' like nothing's happ- Oo!
Footage!"
Haha! Yet again I deflect your fictional carping, my shit-giving
mental construct... And now, look, if you didn't know by now, dear
actual reader, regarding our show "Money" the press were good to us,
very good. They said this ("cool"! four stars) and this ("teasing"! four stars) and this ("DISCERNIBLE"! four stars). There was also a not basically accurate reference to Shunt's own finances here ("Oo yeah let's read that!" four belms)... which, which, which...which is as good a place as any to mention that the Lounge will now finally be closing its doors
at the end of next week. The fourteenth. Moving off. Sharded. So get
your skates on. (Shit. Money's staying where it is though. That's safe.
And sold out. Go Tweaks!) Various new locations have been considered.
I'll show you one of them in the next post, and that will lead me on to
other relocations I must fill you in on, which will in turn - basically
it's alright, this blog is now sorted. Let's celebrate...
Whee.
Right
I have to head off now. I'm using the Lounge's internet and everyone's
gone. Nigel promised me a giant Nosferatu head left over from Halloween
if I came round, then he shouted at me because I was on the computer all
the time and wouldn't go with him on the boat in the tunnel of balloons
George had made to look like the Super K Subterranean Neutrino Observatory after it had shut so I did. And it was good. Get your skates on.
And
speaking of tweaks, you see that guy on the left in this video? That's
us, in rehearsals. Okay, mainly me... Who's the guy on the right? No
idea.
Let's see if we can't squeeze another one of these posts in before
Newsnight Review shows up tonight (pray God they respect to the Code of
the Preview, that is all I ask...) Now - ah - I'm writing this on the
office's IBM ThinkPad and there's odd little buttony growths all over
it, what do they all do?!... Um, so anyway last night saw more cuts to
the show: no more giant table cloth, and no more opportunity to sing
along to this unparalleled two-minute ode to joy WHAT?! NO!
I do hop s ee its rurn. Oh how did the cursor get over there! I'm
using my thumb to move and my forefinger to click, thi sis nonsense¬!
LISTEN - no, bad caps lock! - listen, let's all just take a moment to be
the water shall we? Let's fill the cup. Fill the bottle... That's
better. Alan?
I mean, it's fine. I recognise the preview period will be intense
and that changes need to be made. I recognize that the Simon Smith
Karaoke segment wasn't working in context inasmuch as it was unbearable
and stopped time itself Howard Campbell-like
in its tracks, and I recognise that perfect as the song is we must pay
attention to the doughnut, not the hole, and speed our plough over the
bones of the dead. Of the dead bear. Of the dead child and his amazing
dead dancing dead bear. That is fine. Huhhh... huhhhhh, huh huhhhhh.... I
had a good conversation with Lizzie last night. She's the designer.
It's good to talk to her because I think her priorities are spot on -
how do you work on an audience's imagination without asking them to
suspend their disbelief? That seems to me the - OH IT'S NO GOOD! ALAN
PRICE! ALAN PRICE WHER ARE YOU?
At
nine o'clock it was still light in Battersea Park, and I'm trying to
put my finger on what it is that's missing, and why I feel I'm wasting
my time here. I mean, look at it. Where else would I rather be? Just
behind me is the vicarage I lodged in when I left school, attached to a
round church with a photograph of the planet Earth where Jesus would
normally be, or at least that's what was there back in 1993, when I
first left home. And it's becoming difficult to maintain that enthusiasm
for independence now I'm 34. London has never looked more beautiful,
and I'm limping to keep up. Battersea Park is practically deserted and
there are party-boats on the the Thames but this doesn't feel like home
tonight. It feels like a very well-appointed waiting room.
I don't know what's missing.
Maybe
this is because of the fire, because my home has gone but I'm only now
getting ready to entertain. Maybe it's because of the pain in the right
leg. Maybe it's because I should be writing. I've had another week off
and done... not nothing I suppose, no, on Tuesday I went to the hospital
to blow into a robot and receive a clean bill of health, good, and on
Friday I went to "The Hospital" to eat Eggs Benedict and discuss a
script about a hitman - but it's not much. I mean, Gemma went over to
California for the week and still managed fit in research for the show
(from a book about Manet... and there's a mur-mermuh-mermuh programme about him on iplayer right now in fact). It's all good stuff she's found. Here's some:
"This is a quote from the charge d'affaires at the British Embassy in Paris in 1869.
'The second empire has goneoff the rails. It is no longer being guided it is hurling itself at an accelerating speed towards the abyss'...
"The
1867 expo opened late. On the opening ceremony, they were surrounded by
builders. because of bad weather, barely half the exhibits were there.
Of those that had arrived, only a fifth had been unpacked. The opening
ceremony, conducted by Emperor Napoleon was on 'a muddy fairground amid
packing cases, tarpaulin-shrouded exhibits and crews of frantic workmen'
one observed described it as 'a sickly child that was bound to die',
so. That became the biggest show in Europe. It's all ok...
"London in 1867 had a heatwave. They drank cold tea and gentlemen wore wet cabbage leaves inside their top hats...
"Abolishment of arbitrary arrest and obligation of workers to carry identity cards...
"Napoleon
went to war in Alsace Lorraine with bladder stones. In a lot of pain,
he rouged himself, and tried to die in battle but failed. He lamented he
was 'not even able to get himself killed.'...
"During
the seige, they killed all the animals in the zoo to eat. The richer
Parisians therefore dined on all sorts of curiosities. Castor and
Pollux, the two elephants in the Jardin de Plantes, had been cruelly and
bunglingly dispatched with a chassepot firing steel tipped.33 calibre
bullets. Elephants had long been the most esteemed and well loved
residents at the zoo. They were fed honey cakes and were said to enjoy
the singing of patriotic songs. Their keeper, M. Devisme, had protested
at the execution (which was watched by several big-game hunters and
other Parisians) and afterwards fell sobbing in the snow, huggling the
trunk of one of his dead charges. Elephant steak promptly found its way
onto the plate of Victor Hugo who was further satisfying his gastronomic
curiosity by tucking into bear and antelope. (Horse meat gave him
indigestion. Wealthy Parisians were able to choose from zebra, reindeer,
yak and kangaroo)"
The
night before Gemma mailed that, I had a dream about dying elephants in
the Shunt Lounge, a whole pile of them at the foot of a low ramp being
gored by elephants that had failed to make the jump and goring the next
ones in turn. It was a mess. Maybe I need a desk. There are four
canvasses stuck to the wall of the room I now occupy. They're stuck
there with blue tak. Two are blank. The other two bear this picture:
But as long as this isn't my home that's not my problem.
So
we all had a week off to take stock. Item: one work of genius, our new
home, this, "The Machine", with carpeting, crawl-space, trap-doors,
glass floors and lots and lots of banging. Item: another work of genius,
"Money" by Emil Zola, documenting the Paris Bourse Crash of 1882, and
settled on as a starting point for Shunt's new show all the way back in
June 2008, before any of those little caveats gabbled softly in the
closing seconds of a commercial came to pass and it all went down as
well as up. Item: one beekeeper's costume, three black hats. Item:
"frenetic activity", presumably to be specified at a later date and
possibly involving potted plants but ultimately, I mean, who knows...
Now our first two paying audiences, having paid and auded, are nursing
their din-weakened teeth and the promise of a free ticket to another
night, a night when we'll have the show that "MONEY" should be ready,
for we are not without honour, while the neat reprieve granted the Lounge - which was to have disbanded this month to make way for the priests and planners of Twinky's Mighty Teepee but
will now be staying open 'til September, hah! - means we're not without
money either. So it's back to the whatever-this-is-we're-doing board
and the plan I think now is - Well actually, I'm not sure how
confidential this is supposed to be... I mean as long as nobody knows
when you're going to open you never really have to. And although an
indefinitely extended rehearsal period may sound a bit like hell, like
actual Hell, like where you go when you die and you've been Hitler, a)
that's Shunt, and b) the good thing is we all have this at least in
common: What We Hate - and I think we pretty much all of us hated what was
performed last week. (When my trousers unexpectedly fell down on the
first night - not down, apart, they'd been torn in half during some
wrestling - I was actually relieved, I stood there relieved, because
this at least was SOMETHING not to react to, as opposed to all of that
NOTHING we'd been meant to be reacting to either side of it).
So
it isn't quite finished yet, no. But as I may have to explain to a few
producers expecting sketches later in the week, say, deadlines are very
well in their way BUT the best monsters are those born of eggs, yeah?
And sometimes an artist will, you know, just have to sit on that egg
until it hatches,
and but no because it's a monster, you know, and who *knows* when
they're going to hatch? (Then comedy producers, you go - That's a very
good point, S Le P, we'd better leave you to finish whatever it is you're doing on f*c*b**k,
oh and thanks for that alien-abduction-mentally-blanking-anal-rape
sketch with the xylopnone song in it by the way, we'll get word to the
Mail, don't you worry, no don't get up, don't move an inch). Bloody
hell, sketches. I'd better run a bath. Here's another machine:
Nice noises. There's more here. Oh, so what's the new plan? Well, finally, thankfully, do everything we can to make the audience the protagonist, Zola Karaoke. Throw everything out. Don't throw
everything out. Wait until it's finished. Stick the tycoons in the hold
and the orphans in the gallery. And turn it down. Monstah!
Well I've added water now so we'll know in forty-eight
hours. I bought it today in South Kensington for... ah, American laptop, it
doesn't have pound signs... two pounds and sixty-five pee. I thought “something for
the room”. It was an odd shop that, painted tin trunks "in the style of
Jaipur lorries", scarves going for a grand and balls of twine for forty
quid, so actually 2.65 for an archaeopteryx was very reasonable I thought. I
took it upstairs to the till but there was no till, just a touch-screen beneath
a tapestry besides which I ostentatiously hovered clutching the purchase and a
fiver while the staff served free Turkish coffee to a troup of
sonorous poshoes instead. But am I not also posh! Am I not sonorous! I may be between
beards, these trainers may be fire-damaged and this belt quite obviously my
sister’s but my fiver is as good as theirs. I very nearly just walked out with
it. Did you, Charles Bukowski! Yes, I nearly did! That would have been great... It
was an excellent day... I glimpsed Jennifer Tilly in the V and A. Better still I
heard her. There is simply no verb for her voice. What both purrs and quacks?
It’s like a sackbut if a sackbut could ask for directions. And I've just learnt she’s fifty!
And the Marx Brothers didn’t start making films until they
were in their forties! But that’s not why I may not be leaving facebook just
yet.
Look
I haven’t been able to find that strand of a hundred insults that I
promised, but looking back over my "wall" here are some of the things I've learnt about
myself since I logged back on:
I am simply the life of the party. Life can get bumpy, but that's okay -- I
won't notice it anyway! (And it’s “Pooh”)
“What kind of lover are you?” I have completed the quiz, and I am in the top 5 %.
"Are you truly eukaryotic?" I have completed the quiz, and I am probably an evilvirus; re-enroll in college-level Biology.
"What Taylor Swift song are you?" I have comleted the quiz, and I am "Tim McGraw".
Who is Taylor Swift? Who is Tim McGraw? None of this matters. I am Tim McGraw.
"Are you on a boat?" I have completed the quiz, with the result “You're on a boat."
“Femija juaj I pare…cun apo goc???” I have completed the quiz, with the result “Cun..”:
But there are so many more quizzes still to take,so much more i have to learn about myself.
Join me tomorrow then, once I’ve run off these three sketches I hastily
promised Gareth Edwards for tomorrow HAHAHAHANOOoo... with the archaeopteryx
at half mast, and find out what I should get pierced. Or there’s one
called “WHAT IS YOUR PURPOSE IN LIFE?” Maybe I’ll take that.
Okay this formating's going mental. (I haven’t read Charles Bukowski. Is he good?)
In
fact, I think I'm all well. I would go for walks on Hampstead Heath and
check on my hand to see how my body was doing, like I used to in hospital,
then see that it was glowing and have to find a bench, but that was
back in February...
And, well, now, how to get from there to here? Am I just going to write everything? Maybe I should start by making my excuses:
1.
The lease ran out on my photoshop, which is half the fun of these posts
for me (so these images are bigger and duller than I'd like).
2. I *was* of course going to write about my steroid-induced psychotic episode next (so very Christian Bale,
so very topical back in February), but thought better of that until I'd
found somewhere to live... which, now I set it down in print, strikes me
as incredibly paranoid. Or is it? I don't know. Ah. No, but if I were
vetting potential flat-mates I'd probably google them to see if they'd,
say, started any fights in hospital with a club-footed Maori. Then
again, to paraphrase Lenny Bruce, I'd google mud.
Hmm. These paragraphs are more widely spaced than I remember, Yup, big
spaces... Anyway, I moved out of Susy's at the end of March, into a long,
uncarpeted, white-washed room in a large, airy, joss-sticky flat in
Gipsy Hill, and I lasted there a month. The land-lady didn't like my
hours, and who can blame her? The floor-boards creaked, her room was
right outside the bathroom, she slept with her door open so actually yes
I for one can blame her, but a home's a home, and that was hers, and I'm
not even sure I want one right now.
Time passes, shut up! as Dylan Thomas once wrote, and I've found a room now, with a carpet and a coffee table, three storeys up a tower-block in Clapham Junction, with gardens, pool, sauna, jacuzzi, and
loudly wuthering heights. I'm holed up across from the busiest station
in Europe, I've found a "Complete Works of Shakespeare" for a pound, and
Dr. Thompson's incomparable "Great Shark Hunt" for three, I'm pretending
I'm on tour, or a scatty writer assigned to LA, while my stuff – the charred
and the saved – stays in storage until I can face it, and the big
money's been coming in fine from Shunt whose new show's more physical aspects can be seen here under construction.
In
fact, they're still under construction. And with nowhere to work, and the
director up in Scotland, we have this week off. It's okay though, it's
all fine, I'm just in it for the company and the money, that's what I've
got to keep telling myself. I mean, it's great! I'm better! I can do
winch-work and wrestling, and I've got a pool and a sofa! And I've got
work, biggish commissions for both LaurenceandGus' and MitchellandWebb's
new radio shows, and it's work I can actually do (new stuff got laughed
at)! AND the insults Charlotte Hesketh and
I have been throwing back and forth across f*c*b**k for the past month
now number a hundred, so I can finally leave that! And here we are
rehearsing: Hey Spacey, copy THIS!
Whatsamadda,
Kevin Spacey, you chicken?! Oh yeh, you all: "I'm going to get a railway
arch and put art in and shit" and we all: "Let's drop this flowerpot on
the director's head a number of times before he leaves" and you all:
"Good luck with that then" and we all "Ow, uh...." Yes well lots to
catch up on then. Hello again, thanks for sticking around. A post every
other day as promised, once. Join me tomorrow for those hundred insults
then. I'm better. This is easy.
(Oh yeah, 3:10 AM. I remember. Hmm... still big spaces.)
First they closed Woolworths. And I said nothing, for I was not a Woolworths...
Then they closed Zavvi. And I said nothing, for I was not a Zavvi... And now here are the last two strips of 1996. The first I had originally intended to be a huge Dave McKean-type production number, but couldn't get any of the objects to stay on the paper.
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