Isabella Rossellini Discombobulates a Duck's Phallus

• (originally posted on myspace here) 

   

  That's what SHE said. Ha! Oh.

   

   
  This is research by the way, for the sci-fi sitcom I am now literally writing for a read-through in Mid-November. And working on the floor of the London Dungeons has turned out to be a surprisingly fertile writing location: you're physically active, you're uninhibitedly improvising, and it's dark. Your mind is absolutely primed, it's perfect, except there's just nothing to write with. Here I realised that extra-terrestrial life's attitude towards sex would probably resemble "green porno" a lot more than the icy butlers and headmistresses we're normally shown. Ah, it's so good to see she's still making these.

American English Class Projects based on Kurt Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse 5"...

(originally posted on myspace here)

... are the second best - I suppose because the book's so much better known than Cat's Cradle, and it's been foisted upon so many more students who just couldn't give a monkey's or just plain haven't read it. (Anti-war movies! You might as well make an anti-glacier movie, amirite?) Casting my net wider for school-produced Vonnegut gems has therefore proved a bit of a trawl. I don't know, are these gems?

Well, aging make-up always looks fake. So, excellent work. "And why would he laugh?" - It's interesting seeing which lines each project picks up on. I really love the pan upwards to the abducting craft, a nice simple cheat. Likewise I love the abduction effects on this next film, and the typewriter/Meerschaum combo (it would be easier to "Forget Donnie Darko" though if they hadn't played "Mad World" over most of it. But this is a niggle. You put a pan on a kid in a cart on some rails. You get an A...)

 It had to be a failure since it was written by a pillar of salt". And in what follows I'm pretty sure we see what it actually feels like to get shot at more accurately than anything heretofore managed on the screen. I know. I've been paint-balling.  

The dog joining in! Was that on purpose? The sudden change in aspect ratio before the shot! was that on purpose? Because it WORKS! Yet it's the following film that has to take the prize. (There is no prize). It may boast neither the commitment nor the ingenuity we've seen elsewhere, but it was this film that set me upon the whole kids-do-Vonnegut quest-ette, so enjoy...

"You're going to Dresden! Come on! Now! Get going!" Is it scripted? Isn't it scripted? Too many questions.

In other news, Diary of a Nobody tickets are selling fast. (Looks like I'm keeping the beard.)

And Money closes on November 25th...

American English Projects based on Kurt Vonnegut's "Cat Cradle"...

(originally posted on myspace here)

... are the best! Consider the evidence:

Which brings us neatly to the end of the world, or would have neatly if this post had anything to do with that, which it does not but was meant to. I saw "Collapse" last night and had just watched Milligan interviewed back in '67 before that, but! Then somebody in the pub this evening, maybe me, said "Love is not a duty but it is a discipline..." which I thought worth recording and got side-tracked looking for something to prove this, or at least pad it out, and I typed "love" and "discipline" into youtube, and was presented with Robert Palmer in Japan, and fled, and ended up here among these brilliant little school projects instead. There is no lasting happiness of any kind without discipline, probably. But let these treats serve for this evening. (Keeps has just texted me. It's been a year. Here's to plastifungus and a happy and habitable planet then. Here's to us! And OweMGee, youtube is also a hundred years old I've just realised! Here's to it!

See how easy it is to get distracted? Oh but have I mentioned the read-through for John Finnemore's new panto that took place yesterday? No. So see how focused I am. Okay, here's your homework.)

Always On

 

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

:(

(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)