bye Arthur C. Clarke...

The Sentinel, the short story that 2001 was based on was one of the first proper science fiction stories I read, and Arthur C. Clarke was one of the best creators of believable science fiction worlds. I always loved his three laws, especially the third one:

1. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.

2. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.

3. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.



I also love: "The truth, as always, will be far stranger."



Although for laugh out loud hialarity you can't beat his diary while working with Kubrick:



May 31. One hilarious idea we won't use. Seventeen alien, featureless black pyramids riding in open cars down Fifth Avenue, surrounded by Irish cops.



July 9. Spent much of afternoon teaching Stanley how to use the slide rule -- he's fascinated.

July 11. Joined Stanley to discuss plot development, but spent almost all the time arguing about Cantor's Theory of Transfinite Groups. Stanley tries to refute the "part equals the whole" paradox by arguing that a perfect square is not necessarily identical with the integer of the same value. I decide that he is a latent mathematical genius.


July 12. Now have everything -- except the plot.



October 17. Stanley has invented the wild idea of slightly fag robots who create a Victonan environment to put our heroes at their ease.



December l0. Stanley calls after screening H. G. Wells' Things to Come, and says he'll never see another movie I recommend.

The John Kerwin Show - Elliott Gould interview

just caught the end of Who? on TV Eliot Gould since seeing The Long Goodbye at college, good interview, once heard he got some sort of mental health problem rap in the 1970s I thought jeez you might as well hand out speeding tickets at la mans

Whoa, Robert Loggia!

BANNED Pres. Bush Interview

i love this so much

Luke Kelly - Raglan Road - 1979

Ian Paisley Heckles the Pope (1988)

Bye Ian! you'll be sorely missed, if only for comedy value...

Yer Having a Laf Final, tomorrow at the Golden Star 9pm

Howdy just a note to say that I'll be performing the final of the Outline/Golden Star's Yer Having a Laf Final tomorrow at 9pm some details below, the monthly heats were good craic.

Here's soemthing that always makes me laugh a screen grab I did from Dominion: Prequel to The Exorcist, where the priest comes across a subterrean chapel....that looks a bit like a bosum...hehe sorry, it was in my pics file for years and never got to use it...

Youtube Hecklefest II

A while back, before I had been doing stand up long I just used to type in 'heckle' onto YouTube just to see when, how and where other comics got heckled, like a sort of an inoculation for being heckled just to see where people went wrong and did a post on it here. I still do it now before every gig when I feel like I'm going to puke, like a sorta ritual. When I looked up wikipedia for the same term I got this quote for getting rid of hecklers...supposedly, from Dane Cook

Comedian Dane Cook was heckled on his album "Retaliation", in the middle of a joke about Burger King, where the heckler yelled, "Make it happen, man! Make it happen!" Dane replied, "Shut up! You're ruining the show for everyone around you. Don't do that." The heckler kept going, and Dane replied, "Shut the fuck up, or I'll have you kicked out of here!"

What wacky comedy fun folks...here's some more


I haven't been heckled so far, but I feel, looking at these clips, heckling normally happens when someone is extremely arrogant and they cannot conceive that someone might think they were shite, it's like in their bizarre brain parallel dimension, no could ever conceive of them not being funny, while everyone in the world is going 'please! for the love of god stop now!' I have some examples:


Ian Paisley Heckles the Pope.....I know it's not stand up comedy per se, but it is comedy, he told them he was going heckle! and he had loads of posters in his pocket...and then he claimed they attacked him, ah poor auld popey, and you've left us with the that nazi guy from toy story....

You Insufferable Arsehole...I couldn't resist (thank you very much ) the best heckle ever, but you have to understand ...who Pat Kenny is, learn from here and here and here and here....and here...

Craig McLachlan's stand up, phew....this is tough to watch, first up he's trying to stand up to a football tv show crowd before ever doing it before with jokes that are all based on his previous neighbours success, but god, this is funny for all the wrong reasons....

Biceps: we have to include this mook, he cannot believe his homophobic views might get challenged by an audience member and his arms are meant to be some sort of hilarious comeback...and lest we forget very close to Richard Pryor's getting beaten up by the folks bits....'look at my biceps you think i can't meet a girl...' yeah you could meet a girl but she may want to kill you...meet doesn't really have the same meaning you think it does.

Lest see the heckler beater's shall we

You can't beat Mitch Hedberg

or Arg Barker

Meskie! Polish tobacco review....

One of the pleasures of being in Poland is being able to smoke inside (plus all the warnings are in Polish...they might say something nice) , also the fact that nearly everyone you meet smokes too, my cohorts Nathan and Owen took the sensible route of buying huge amounts of things like Camel and Davidoff cigarettes, I stupidly, tried to buy the cheapest. When a tobacconist in Krakow makes a concerned face when you ask for 'Meskie' and says 'Strong?!' you'd best listen, I did not, and thought it would be fun to do a budget polish cigarette review by taking various webcam pics acouple of nights ago ...it wasn't, observe:

*shudder*

First up, it's Casablanca, tips for visitors to Poland 1. don't buy tobacco based on liking the film, obviously the creator of these badboys doesn't remember what Humphrey Bogart died of and 2. don't buy them because the are 7.40 złoty which is about 2 pounds. They taste like bark that is on fire and are now hidden away in a shelf for dire emergencies, or whenever I want to look at the packet.

Second worst, Meskie....Meskie...ah dear, they are stubby wee cigarettes because, you can't actually finish one, they aren't cigarettes that'll kill you, yeah, they will, but they also immediately make you feel like you want to be dead...

ahh eck!....

oh dear, that's about as much as I can handle

Next up Rockets, ah Rockets, these were Okay, but only after Cascablanca and Meskie! these were about 1 pound a pack and alright. I dropped my pack somewhere while gigging, if anyone finds them, they can keep 'em...

Next up Domingo, I have actually finished this pack, they were probably as bad as Casablanca, but they were vanilla flavoured, would probably be best used in Shishas but it was alright

In conclusion Rockets and Domingo were joint winners, but they were all pretty horrible....

bye....

Jon Brittain - Chortle Student Comedy Awards 2008

Laugh out Loud stalwart and my cohort in the current Norfolk comedy tour trenches Jon Brittain wows them at the Sheffield heat of the Chortle student comedy comedpetition

comedy bio

honking on a smoke pipe in Krakow, more pics and laffs to follow:

Had to write a comedy bio for the current tour, don't know if this will do, any suggestions welcome, does this cover it?





Lorcan McGrane is an Irish comedian based in the UK. He came from the rural Irish village of Rockcorry, Co. Monaghan to Norwich to write a PhD called “Superheroic Bodies: the Corporealities of Contemporary Film Superheroes”, along the way he has worked as a barman, kitchen porter and chef. Stand up allowed him to combine the geeky knowledge of academia and the humour of bar and kitchen work. Tales of his trials, tribulations and unhealthy obsessions with fictional Amazonian superhero ladies can be found at The Life and Times of Jimmny Homunculus (jhomunculus.blogspot.com). Beginning stand up in 2006, he has foisted his perversions and peccadilloes on an unsuspecting public with surprising success. Lorcan’s stand up is a mixture of bizarre stories of his times in rural Ireland, Belfast, Dublin and Norwich and his ongoing obsessions with sci-fi, relationships, porn and comics and the surprising connections between them all. He is usually to be found pottering around second-hand bookshops, comic shops, charity shops and dodgy bookshops (or would do if Norwich had any decent ones). He has been hailed as a chronic masturbator, but he is actually really good at it. Lorcan has performed in most of the clubs in the burgeoning Norfolk comedy scene, including Laugh out Loud, Earlham’s Dirty Little Secret, The Salt Box Comedy Club, Smoking Mic Comedy Club and the Outline/Yer Having a Laff competition, (in which he was a 2007 finalist, forthcoming final: March 13, 2008). He has also performed at the famous Battle of the Axe night at the Ha Penny Bridge Inn, Dublin.