Simon Kane, A Celebration

 Who is this motley madcap harlequin with the differently coloured gloves? Why, it's the Happy Birthday Singer!

 And apparently my friends have asked him to get his shit together and have another stab at this. Well I must say, he's nailed it!

 He says I look so young! And wait, who's this? Is it -? It can't be... It is! It's Woosh!

 

 

 He's travelled miles specifically for me, from Mars no less! I take back everything I said about human destiny possibly not being a weird colonial model which pays no attention to distance, gravity or the absence of a compatible ecosystem. This is the best party ever!

 

 Honestly I have never felt more loved!

 Well since you're all here, let's take a look at the showreel which earnt me that love, and changed my life for ever: Hollywood. The Big Ticket. Winning an Oscar for Best TV Presenter and then binning it, bowling on my own at 2 o'clock in the morning, purchasing and consuming street food, not throwing myself off the roof of a hotel... The stuff dreams are mad on or of, I can't remember:

 Oh wait no, not that one. Sorry, I had to re-edit it, there were a few problems with the sound, and I didn't mention crucifictions in a surprising hat. This one, I meant:

 Thank you, everyone, for your birthday kindnesses. It's been a very good day. And if you ever need a Happy Birthday Singer, or Woosh, or some repulsive clubbers from the Nth dimension to wish a happy birthday to a differently named friend of yours I'm sure that's findable too.

A scene from the Coens (Fleeting Canadian Cameo)

(originally posted on myspace 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.

Money's still on here.

Time for a hymn

 Just some plugging, then I'll let you get on. I wrote a hymn, a second if you count Jonah Non Grata's "Spanky Ax" and actually hell yeah let's count "Spanky Ax". You can hear this hymn - the other hymn - on this week's TuMAhWoL over at iplayer being sung by David Mitchell within hearing of a Japanese actor called upon to do little but go yes and nod, which seemed a lot less racist in my head. Sorry Togo Igawa. I see from your IMDB you appeared in an episode of Never The Twain back in 1988 as "Japanese Tourist"; I hope you didn't suffer flashbacks. From going yes and nodding I mean, not from being in something my dad might have written. (Look, actual footage of a Japanese inventor going yes and nodding can be found here like that's going to help my case. I did research! Brackets: And this is my first ever recurring character in a sketch show. Christ! I think he goes to Tehran next week, close brackets.)

Tache? Check. Milk? Check. Cultural WTF? Check.

You will also see Robert Webb fulfill a long held wish of mine to see Daniel Day-Lewis get into a fight with his own facial hair. (Is it in fact possible to be TOO cutting edge?) And you will see a line which I simply intended to signify the sucking of a pipe ("Pp- Ppah-") misinterpreted as an attempt to blow a mustache off one's own face with consequences far more hilarious than I can claim responsibility for. It is a GOOD sketch, and makes me feel a bit like I've won Jim'll Fix It (and thanks once again to whoever's already uploaded these sketches onto youtube so I can put them on my homepage. Cheers, pirates.)

AND! On Friday you can see my sister triumph as a porn's answer to DeForrest Kelley on "The IT Crowd"- What am I saying, "Friday"? You can see it NOW!

&! Once it is uploaded I shall post a charming and moving photograph of Douglas Adams' grave discovered yesterday in Highgate Cemetery by me and my baby (who from now on I might call Keeps, I dunno about this whole "my baby" thing.) Jeremy Beadle's buried there as well it turns out. His epitaph is "Ask My Friends", which now I think about it actually makes perfect sense.

Right, off you go- Oh wait yes! Bonus hymn:

(Thanks as ever, videogum)

"DIGNITY... ALWAYS DIGNITY" starring ANDY DEVINE

(originally posted on myspace here)

(Image courtesy of the ever NSFW win and tonic, ironic as she Ws at our box office. And turned Russell Brown down. Thrice. Because she'd miss the tube.)

Anyway, given that the promulgation propagation what the fuck promulgation of stuff like this is EXACTLY why youtube was invented, it is unforgivable that the following episode of Andy Devine's counter-cultural, Pop Art nightmare-factory "Andy's Gang" has only received 612 views thus far. So see how far YOU can get through it (but maybe post any sharp objects you have lying around to yourself before settling down):

Kudos to Vitto Scotti. No reason, I just like saying it. And thanks to Pier and Johnny at Big Red Button for pointing me towards it. It only occurs to me now that Pablo the drug mule must have been a real, dead dog, so stare too long into the Abyss of Andy's Gang and clearly the Abyss stares back... Hey everyone! Let's stare too long into the Abyss of Andy's Gang! This received only 166 views. Quick, before the postie turns up with your blades!

Do you hate me now? I hate me. By the way, don't whatever you do ever click on anything that looks like this:

I mean, they will literally turn you into a cartoon. LOOK AT THEM!

Settled by Bleeps (a brief introduction to oMMM)

(originally posted on myspace here)

Well they aired it. Did you hear? Did you like it? Did you like the way it went straight into the News? Did you think, oh all those electronic boops and bleeps are a bit unsettling? Well this man was not responsible.

He is Edmund Davie, a wonderful, wobbly electronic musician who founded the bedcore movement and lived in our kitchen. Possibly taking with him my copy of "Moominland Midwinter" which Will Self recommended as the most depressive book ever written he moved out on Tuesday, and deserves a post of his own and here it is. Look at this video he made back in 2005! It's ever so catchy and includes a MacDonalds commercial he was in. Here's to him getting another one soon. Cheers. Bye, Ed. Bed. It's okay, we found where you put the cups. I el-oh-uv this:

Links:
Ed's site
Ed's sounds
Ed in the kitchen

Ah! Oops! (Persona Non Grata week 1: "I have been singed?")

... That last strip spent some time in Limbo. I was having problems with my mum's computer. Anyway I'm still in France but have this to hand, so here's where the story really starts. It appeared in the University paper back in 1996: I only had the one character, and he was always going to be called Jaundis - I'd decided that back when I was thirteen, imagining him as some kind of futuristic bounty-hunter - but I never got round to that strip ("Urban Vulture"). Then at eighteen I did get round to "My Quiff", but none of the independent titles rife at the time were willing to print anything so irredeemably wet. And then, then, I was finally approached to create a strip for Varsity at the age of twenty-one and had one more crack, which is this, and which, as I head home tomorrow, should hopefully take us up to the new year:

What is privacy for?

(originally posted on myspace here)

It's an odd thing but sitting in a spotlight in the dark you're constantly glimpsing bits of your own face in the peripheries. This happened as I watched Mel perform Iris Brunette sitting beside us one by one, assigning characters and engaging us in coversation. I was there as a member of the audience but also (like quite a few others there) as somebody who knew her and somebody used to performing off the cuff, so when it came time for her to address me it was difficult to know quite how to play it: She was being brilliant, should I shut up? Was I having to pretend to be a member of the audience even though I was one? I watched silently for as long as was polite. Then I was asked my name, which I guess was a question anybody could answer, so I answered that. Then I was asked what made my heart race? I said "noise" which was dumb - I was very conscious of my heart racing right then in fact as both she and the spotlight stayed on me. But what I wish I'd said was "hiding."

And I think I got an idea of how to end "Iago's Little Book of Calm" (the radio adaptation of something sweary I wrote for the stage five years ago which ends with the central character noticing the audience, a much harder trick to pull off if they're not there). I think the solution might have something to do with talking to yourself. So thanks for that, Mel. Her shows often give me ideas, not directly as such, they're just good places to think.

The same can be true of Chris Goode's blogging. Laid up with this cold I finally got round to looking at his rehearsal diary for Hey Mathew this afternoon (upon which Jamie opposite is currently employed). It's an eloquent, passionate, generous and witty account of a type of rehearsal process I instinctively distrust (perhaps, as Chris suggests, because it's not a process of rehearsal towards a show as such but a process of investigation that should - and on this evidence, justifiably does - exist for its own sake). It was here I saw posted: "Can anyone help me out with thinking about this thing about stripping away the privacy from intimacy? And -- if you fancy it -- what exactly are you using your privacy to do?"... and I tried to post the following in response. The capchta was sletedso:

"Privacy is simply being granted control over the company you keep, isn't it? 'Let's go somewhere private' means 'Let's get rid of the unknowns.' A couple of years ago I was thinking a lot about hiding... about writing a children's book about a boy who loved playing games involving hiding, and then found out that being onstage felt entirely the same (dozens of copies where then made of him, all of whom ended up after an initial polite camaraderie keeping out of each other's way). So yes I was thinking about the joy of hiding (on one's own, rather than in a den, although THAT IS YES THE SAME) and about the stage as a counter-intuitively perfect hiding place. When I turned eight I would spend every school break walking up and down talking to myself, and this continued until I graduated. It was and is simultaneously a completely private yet public activity, and inasmuch as I am taking on different voices while talking to myself and, in a sense improvising dialogue, it is also a performance, even though it is not done for an audience, which is only something that's just occurred to me. I would say you hide on stage because you disappear, but this takes us down needlessly controversial, well-farrowed tracks about the nature of truth in performance, so won't. Maybe I made some notes I'll have a look no I can't find them. What do we use our privacy for? People affect each other - (actually I'd accidentally written "People effect each other" which is a bit more profound) - It is polite to refrain from effecting somebody without their consent. So privacy I think exists in case we're scary. Intimacy, on the other hand, requires company. A person can't be intimate on their own, can they? As an adjective "intimate" almost means "descriptive of an atmosphere requiring privacy" or something you wouldn't do in front of a third party. Except in the case of performance where it really just means somebody's doing their job. Maybe."

So yes I wrote that and then I went and saw Melanie's show. Mental, eh? And it's true about the school breaks. They used to call me "Walkie Talkie". Cough.

DEATH RAY WEEK day 2: You will have been watching...

(originally posted on myspace here)

 

 

 Every show I work on with Shunt they always say they're going to make it rain, but this week someone finally has. I put 10p in the tin after work and helped myself to tea, a biscuit and a bunk. It looked great... But listen I should really go to bed as there's a wedding on tomorrow and I have to get up and wash and shave and generally get my head round that (I have slept already, but I should give it another go now I've taken my coat off) so here meanwhile is today's DEATH RAY which may well contain the finest opening credits to anything ever... I mean: Who ARE all these people? Do THEY even know? (Why can't I use italics on this blog? Block caps are so needy. You're supposed to use asterisks or something, aren't you, I know, but then it just looks - And this bit ideally should be written up the side, next to the address, under the stamp.)

... And its opposite, the Melon of Cheer:

(originally posted on myspace here)

Viva La Vida indeedah! Mark Cousins is currently curating a season at the BFI of... well basically just films he really, really likes that nobody's seen, he's calling it "Levelling the Field" and last night it was the turn of Paul Leduc's 1986 Frida in its ONLY SURVIVING PRINT, mind. If you get the chance to see it again this Tuesday do, really do. This is particularly sage advice for anyone among you who saw and appreciated the following aspects of last year's Ian Curtis biopic Control: That nothing in it feels like a dramatic reconstruction, there's none of this "dialogue moving the action along" balls, not so you'd notice anyway, the talking's always part of the portrait... That the casting is spot on (in the case of Frida, Ofelia Medina) so you never feel you're being shown something, rather the camera's left rolling to pick up a living subject going about its human affairs... That it's surprisingly funny. And that the songs are good.


 

It was towards the end of this bit that I fully regained consciousness - That's one thing, if you do go Tuesday, wrap up warm. I keep forgetting about the BFI's cryogenic air conditioning. I ushered there back in - hell - the twentieth century and have never to this day managed to stay awake for a single screening, which is why I look so well-preserved. It was still a very good film though, and timely. Timely because in my frustrated non-knuckling down to the Secret Agent screenplay, hereafter known as "Fat Adolf", I had completely forgotten what it was I had been hoping to achieve when I started, and "Frida" brought a lot of that back. As the five-year-old note plastered two posts back testifies I had never initially intended to write a pithy thriller, I wanted something where a scene might simply consist of a lost fat man failing to rescue a fly from his tea, something that would take care of the pence and let the pounds take care of themselves, like pretty much everything I've ever really enjoyed writing.

What's the real stumbling block? Dialogue. I love dialogue, but the more a film can say without it the better. Staring at this unwritten screenplay I had forgotten that. I'd groggily assumed this professional sketch-writing gig would inevitably hone my skills as a screenwriter, but that's all nonsense, isn't it, bum maths and a false lead. Instead I'm going to write this screenplay with as little dialogue as I can get away with... There's a lot of important talking in "The Secret Agent" but I have the answer: Birdsong. Like in Big Brother. Not necessarily birdsong, but that same unsynchronized ambience reminiscent of surveillance, and the silent movies. In English-speaking countries wordless performance seems far more embraced by theatre as an option these days than by cinema, which is odd, and bad, because it's so much easier to not be heard on film.

(Mark Cousins introduced Frida with an overwhelmingly infectious generosity. In his notes to this season he writes about "the cultural forgetting whereby not many people have heard of Paradjanov and Diop Mambety" CLEARLY going for the two maddest names he can think of, but still meaning EVERY word of it. His enthusiasm is fearless. Pick up a BFI guide and have a read, it's stirring stuff. I love him.)

(Also found in notebook.)

Dongly things and Dont's

I found the above panorama on my phone when I woke. I have no idea when I took it or why. I was in Ellis' guest nest surrounded by computers, box files and what Douglas Adams called "dongly things". I got to my feet (smelling, I have to say, great) and a small, dark cube on a shelf suddenly went click... and then hummed. My immediate reaction was to freeze, but I trust Ellis implicitly and realized that any cybernetic sequence I may have set off by standing must be there for my own welfare. So I pulled myself together and headed downstairs, to be treated to a plate of tabbouleh followed by a bacon roll.

When I first knew Ellis he wasn't in IT, he was a director from the much under-rated "Do that again, only less shit" school and he passed on two rules to me that I have never forgotten:

1. "Never put on a play you're in love with. Every play has bits that are pants."

2. "If anything in a production is shit and the director says it's not his fault, he's lying."

He is also the most fictionalized man I know. He's just appeared in a novel and back in 2000 there was this (for the broadbanders):

Which is also a pretty fair picture of how he approached theatre. Which I appreciated.

I decided to head home via Abbey Road, which I've never been down before and I'm glad I did. It turns out it's a very long road but also, architecturally, the maddest in London. Take Rowley Way for example: I came across it in a sudden downpour. It comes out of nowhere like a dystopian Hanging Gardens of Babylon (a good thing) offering neither shelter nor, once you're walking down it, any clue as to what might exist outside of Rowley Way. There's no horizon to Rowley Way, just this strangely maternal arrangement into sloping concrete rows and columns of potted palms and security cameras and chrysanthemums and tiny plastic garden features all apparently thriving on neglect. Those inhabitants of Rowley Way who are wearing anything at all wear the usual no-fit gangster fashions. They're supposed to look stupid though, aren't they? These clothes, they're meant to be annoying, yes? Regardless, when the weather cleared up I headed down Regent's Canal into Camden Market and that family-friendly rave emporium "Cyberdog".

I love Cyberdog. They have live dancing on the counter there now. It's better than Hamleys. I didn't go there to buy clothes - obviously... I don't buy clothes, anywhere - I just wanted to slip into that loud, daft, comfy nineties bubble again, with it's wide-of-the-mark utopian vision of twenty-first century living. Actually there was a t-shirt there I quite liked once as well. It had a little red computer display that counted down from 50 to 0 in the chest and I thought, if you're going to have a screen in your chest then that's the one to have. It would make you seem more dangerous... provide a useful air of suspense if you meet someone at a party. They would stick around talking to you at least until your t-shirt reached zero, I'm sure of it, just to see what would happen. But it wasn't in yesterday. Not that I asked. Not sure how I'd wash it anyway.

"Haircut?" "Antlers." (The Book of Names)

Looking up Native American names for a shop sketch about a faulty dream-catcher, I found a rather pleasing (and indeed performable) abstract epic for those of you interested in that kind of thing. It exists accidentally down the right-hand side of lowchensaustralia.com/names/nativeam, where the English translations are listed. Here, for example, are the "A"s:

 

 

Sight-of-day stays at home (stays at home) yellow leaf. Wildcat, keeper of the flame-mouse (spirit) lives in the woods, listener: "Tree... Tree... Large tree... Tree... Blossom!"
He laughs. He fights. (Restless one. One who lives below.) Wings ambush. Fighter looks up: "Elm branch... Grove of cottonwood... Pea?"
Accomplished.
"Valley of flowers... Haircut?"
Antlers.
Spiritual guide independent forest-water. (Rainbow-worker superior another day. Crow Mother Spirit.)

(Repeat dance.)

"Chief! Chief! Flint necklace worthy of trust?"
"Lance where the wind blows down the gap. Child stars?"
"Stomach ache."
"Stay! Large elk? Crow?"
"Boy."
"Sacred child? Holy child?"
"Snake."
He keeps watch... Pitched trees he interrupts. (Wigwam-blacksmith pitched trees, Lean Bear somebody.)

My home, morning:
"Fawn, fawn, little one. Little one. One who follows orders."

 

(Actually, this is quite a hectoring interpretation, possibly because I missed the Shaolin Monks on Clapham Common, possibly because I've been staying up too late watching "The Legend of Hell House"... see?)