:(

(originally posted on myspace here)

Could you step into my office?

Thanks. Okay pull up a chair, great... So listen, no news is good news but if you want to see Money it would be incredibly useful if you came this month. That's tonight or Saturday. Just saying. Really, really useful for all concerned. Sorry to go on about it. But that's it really, I just wanted to let you know that. Okay? Not at all, thanks for popping in. See you tomorrow maybe, o-hokay. Buy.

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)

The First Futurama (ADAM CURTIS SAYS "WATCH IT")

 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.

(originally posted on myspace)

Lounge Flashback: November 18 2008

 I've just come across this old post from 2008 and been struck by how much of what's been knocking around in my mind following the closure of the Lounge turns out to be quoting from it verbatim, so here's a link. Clearly I think in recycled soundbites.
  Reading through these old posts it also occurred to me that I might continue to write about the Lounge by just making stuff up. Keep it alive here if nowhere else. Last Thursday I saw an aerialist made out of bicycle called "Lady Ganymede" whose owner used to source ring tones for the Vatican, something like that...

Show 317 (... Always Be Closing, cont.)

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.

Hey Nick... NICK! (Just catching up)

(originally posted on myspace here)

How are you finding it over there?