Six Dinner Sid

It's almost as though my attention span was bought cheap on eBay, second hand from a goldfish who was getting pissed off with it's lack of reliability. I've spent this morning trying to put a new chapter into the writing I'm doing and I've so far been distracted by the following things:

1. The "It Gets Better" campaign on YouTube
2. Fashioning a Virgin Mary style head dress out of the pink and purple monkey blanket on my bed.
3. Facebook
4. Twitter
5. Twitter again because it's ridiculous.
6. All the Pixar shorts (inspiration from the "It Gets Better" campaign)
7. Trying to make my bed socks stick on my ears.
8. The music of The Baseballs.
9. Seeing how many slices of toast I can toast at one time using a grill and toaster combo
10. Clenching my bum cheeks in time to the music of The Baseballs and the sobbing to the "It Gets Better" campaign.
11. Twitter. Screw you Twitter.

Without deadlines and daily structure I find it literally impossible to make myself do anything without being continually called away by the nearest shiny thing. If Twitter was diamond themed I think I'd be comparable to a meth head, except people would have less sympathy for me and my penchant for hideous puns. Just how much pain can you cram into 140 characters? A fucktonne. That's how much.

Luckily, I've managed to fill my gap in gigs this week with various dinners so that I at least have a cap on the end of the day to make me get on with something before 5pm. Tonight I'm being taken to a Greek restaurant - if there is no plate smashing and rioting I am going to be literally furious. I've written to HMRC to find out if the cost of my meal tonight can be counted as a tax deductable charitable contribution. I'm confident on the outcome of that one.

Last night I disappeared into the depths of South West London for a lovely catch up meal with my best girls from University. Thankfully, I have the sort of group of best girl friends who abhor squealing and hugging as much as I do so we had a very civilised meal. It's very comforting to be in the company of people who already know all of your biggest mistakes, and they can remember the surnames of those mistakes more accurately than you can. There's a lot to be said for old friends. In two weeks I'll be sloping back to the Shire for a good knees up with all the folks I schooled with... I don't care what your religious beliefs are, there has to be a space in the human calendar for this kind of behaviour.

Tuesday night saw me at a Burlesque club with one of my newer friends. Now, anyone who's been bored enough to bother reading this blog with something resembling regularity over the last few years will know that Burlesque seems to be a reoccurring nightmare in my life. I somehow seem to end up in these establishments more than I feel I should, and I have to say it's growing on me. Not that I would ever want to try it out, I'm not sure potato knees and stretch marks are exactly top order when you're bending yourself round a microphone stand, but I have lost my inhibitions in going to watch and admiring it for what it is. I mean, essentially what it is is a lot of tassles and a bit more teasing. With some fire, sometimes there's fire.

The thing that stuck out for me that night was the way they worked the audience. There were only three tables in the audience and our table was the only all girl group. This meant that, when the acts were coming out to talk to the audience, not a single one of them bothered to speak to our group because there were no men to interact with. Despite the fact we were enjoying the show, we felt excluded from the performance because we were not invited in by the acts.

It got me thinking about whether I ever do this subconsciously during stand up comedy performances. There's an inner monologue that kicks off during a gig where you're constantly analysing the way the audience is reacting to you and judging tables for their reactions. It hadn't occurred to me, until Tuesday, that sometimes the audience are just as nervously wanting to be accepted as the act is. Especially in a small room, some audience members are just quiet laughers or introverted but it doesn't necessarily mean they dislike your act and should therefore have less attention. Obviously, if they're throwing things that's another matter.

Now, where was I? See, I try and sit down to write some meaningless babble about getting distracted and I end up on such a tangent that I've actually written an on topic blog. Typical.