Sunday, August 8, 2010

Exhaustion Junction

I've hit a wall...an actual wall. And I've been arrested on charges of assault and battery. Despite the fact that I run off the mains. Ouch. Christ, that even hurt me. I'm sorry.

I really wanted to not blog about Edinburgh today - on the assumption that for every fan of comedians and blogs that isn't here it must be really awful to have 3 long weeks of blogs ahead of you that will make limited sense. But, as it was the first day of Quiz In My Pants (my show) today, I feel we ought to do it justice...

It went well. But it's going to get better. I can feel it in my bones. We had some fantastic guests in the form of the excellent Jar Foreman and the competent Tiernan Douieb. That's 100% comedic competence and 99% life fail incidently. Jay brought a very lovely sense of quizzical banter to the show, with an eccentric poem in the middle that bodes very well for his solo show. Tiernan is a master stand-up with a really cheeky input into a performance, I'd thoroughly recommend catching his show at The Caves throughout Edinburgh. We've hit the jackpot on guests for our little Quiz corner and it was awesome to have a big old audience in to appreciate it.

Flyering was a little weird, I must say. I managed to punch a man full in the face by accident. His response was just to chastise me for alienating my target audience, which I felt was very aimiable considering I could have done him some real damage. I should be much more careful. The difficulty is that I have massive hands and very long arms. My arms are actually the same length as my legs, a little like a monkey. And I have the biggest hands in comparison to the rest of my body. So I should be very careful and treat them like dangerous weapons, but there I was on the Mile flailing like a drunken stick insect on stilletos and punching random family men. My sincerest apologies go out to him.

The trouble with having a show called Quiz In My Pants is that it encourages a lot of people to ask about my pants. Sort of along the lines of 'Ooh er, do we get to see your pants?' and 'I'd like to quiz in your pants'...which is both witty and charming. Can't for the life of me think why I didn't immediately drop the aforementioned pants and just admit defeat. Flirting is a weird medium. Banter I can deal with - flirting, nu uh, Never. I'm just not a very sexy person so the second someone gets suggestive about my pants I instantly feel it's only appropriate to tell them my pants are probably bigger than theirs and have some sort of farm animal cartoon on them. Le sigh.

But after my flyering disaster the show went very well. So brilliant. Long may it continue with tweakage and happy days to come... Lovely.

I had every intention of curling up early doors tonight with a documentary and some sleepy time. What with the invention of 'nappage is slappage' in Lapland, I'm rather sleep deprived at the moment and really need some shut eye in the night. But then the Fringe wind picks up and sort of seeps into your blood and you feel compelled to go and have 'just one drink'...

The atmosphere at the festival is electric, is hard to describe how the entire city is functioning on excitement and an eagerness to experience something new. It's like it's in the bulldings and the streets and the people have no idea why their bodies are as charged as they are...or maybe it's just me. But either way, my early night has now turned into still being awake at a moderate 2am, blogging random shite about how Disney happy I am. At the risk of going all gushy muchy and admitting that there's more in my spacious head than jokes and the desire to be centre of attention, the festival really hammers home how much this is everything I ever want to do. The buzz of being involved in something so huge and happiness inspiring is amazing. Long may the arts continue. But not the shit pretentious ones where people with white face paint give you flyers for a modern version of something that needed moderninsing because no one wanted to see the original. Fuck those people are annoying. I've tried to be really good with 'Flier karma' so far because it's a soul destroying job when people are arseholes about it (see my blog on www.popweasel.com) but there's only so many times a zombie girl in a corset can try and make you believe Clockwork Orange is going to be particularly groundbreaking because they've done it with physical theatah and a banana instead. Go away. Write a new play.

That's the difficulty with doing stand-up. It's turned me into a bit of a snob about the difficulties it comes with. People assume it's just talking, how hard can that be? But they don't really appreciate that it's a very difficult thing to do. You can't just pick up an old Eddie Izzard show and do it in a post modern way like a theatre company could do, and you can't do the same set for 20 years like a band can. There's constantly the pressure for new material and new ideas. Which is great - and why we're drawn to it I suppose. But it does make me want to punch people on the mile. And that is all the logic I have for this weird mini rant.

Er, I suppose I should sleep. And tomorrow will be an Edinburgh free blog for those of you who are just like 'IT'S JUST AUGUST YOU SELF OBSESSED COMEDY TYPES WHO THINK 'EDINBURGH' IS ACTUALLY THE NAME OF A MONTH'.

Night all xxx

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