Bye Charlton, the world finally did it, they you blew up...damn it all to hell

Young Heston enjoying a few of his favorite things, loincloths, guns and women who can't speak.

He also lurrves the monkey love...

See below a bit of a Heston youtube fest to mark the madman's passing. I first came across Planet of the Apes while channel surfing (well changing channels as it was known when there was only 4 stations) while quite young during a episode of Perfect Strangers which instilled in me an odd feeling of the links between dire 1980s Odd Couple ripoffs and the end of the world.
Although an older generation would see him as Moses or God and other fictional creations, I would see him as the last man standing in some dystopian nightmare, where are we going to get our edible people, talking monkeys and blaxploitation sidekicks now Heston? My favorite Heston moments include him smoking a cigar inside a spaceship in Planet of the Apes and claiming Woodstock is 'the best goddamn movie ever' in The Omega Man, straining credulity even in a film about pasty face vampire types in robes.


Bye Charlton, what will the Wheelies do without ya.

Soylent green trailer

Planet of the Apes (Franklin J. Schaffner, 1968)

bye yon Heston, bonkers as hell, but made sci-fi his own in the 1970s...making a lot of damn dirty geeks very happy

The Omega Man - Sunglasses at Night

Omega Man - Charlton Heston watching Woodstock Movie

Charlton Heston on the Origin of Man Part 1

Upcoming Stand Up Dates...

Check it out, my first professional press pics from Smoking Mic here's my current date line ups...


April 2nd, Cabaret at the Birdcage, 8.30 £1:
Weds 2nd April 9pm £1 Founders Scissors Paper Stone host a candlit evening of mischeif and melody.Music: Dick York, Tom ParkesComedy: Lorcan McGranePLUS Competition time

April 4th, Laugh Out Loud at Ambar at the Odeon, 9.00, £2.50
Will be MCing for the first time, looking forward to this will be a really great night

April 10th, Smoking Mic, York Tavern, Norwich 8:30, £5

April 17th, Saltbox at the Horse and Drey £5.00

April 18th, Smoking Mic, Swan, Loddon 8:30 £5

April 19th Smoking Mic, Fisher Theatre, Bungay Special Improv Night 7.30, £6.50

April 21st, Laugh Out Loud at The Rose, 8.30 £2.50

April 24th, Smoking Mic, Kings Head, Dereham 8:30 £5

April 30th Comedy Cafe, my London debut!!

May 2nd, Smoking Mic, London Tavern, Attleborough 8:30 £5

May 4th Laugh Out Loud at the UEA drama studio, special Fundraiser for out Edinburgh gig!, 8.00, £4

May 9th, Smoking Mic, White Horse, Trowse 8:30 £5

May 15th Laugh Out Loud at the Queen Charlotte, 8.30, £2.50

May 16th, Smoking Mic, Silver Fox Taverham 8:30 £5

May 22, Downstairs at the King's Head, Crouch End, Open Mic night

May 31st, Smoking Mic, Queens Head, Wymondham 8:30 £5

June 2nd, Laugh Out Loud, The Rose, Norwich 8.00 £2.50
There will be tears!, a LOL farewell gig in a way before our Edinburgh show.

June 4th, Smoking Mic, Fisher Theatre, Bungay 8:30 £5

The Life and Times of a Stand Up Comedian

Apologies to all Irish people ever, I was away from home, they made me do it etc...

wha?

Tom Moran and Myself

A St. Patrick's Nun....

Or 'I hope that fucking Irish cunt doesn't come back on' as some lovely man said in Swaffham.



‘In terms of labor relations, the basic problem with living your life is that it’s on-the-job training and by the time you get some skill at it, you are permanently laid off’ Harlan Ellison


Do stand up comics sleep every day until 4pm and stay up until about 5am every night because they are stand up comedians or do they become stand up comedians because this is what they do anyway. Near the start of my act I normally start like this:

Hello there, thank you, it’s great to be here, I’m a lonely comic book geek, so it’s just nice for me to be out of my room
Where myself and an executive committee of action figure make very many important
Decisions like telling google not to filter my image search results
If I type in ebony I don’t want to buy a coffee table

In Dereham one women when ‘what’s Google’

And there’s some other bits, can’t repeat here, but I worked it into the act and go, 'I can only assume Dereham's top mathematian and for her Googol is synonmous with the number that's a 1 with a 100 zeroes after it'

But I have started adding in : ‘I know I’m a stand up comedian now, I smoke too much, wank too much, drink too much and sleep every day until 4pm….mind you I did all these things before hand but now it’s called research’

It’s been bit insane since I got back from Krakow I have been either teaching or gigging or working in the bar/kitchen. It’s been surreal and great and horrible in equal amounts it’s strange the thrill of the gigs go well and back to the same lonely room with about 2-3 of elation to deal with. Most of the easter time has been spent watching Firefly, which I first discovered one Christmas and now feel the urge to watch it at Christmas and Easter, it’s all too short when you watch it in 1-2 major crazy sessions.

So my internet went down because I couldn’t pay it, no internet?! It’s like having no right hand, come to think of it actually, It’s like the opposite of that. Will sort it out and be online and active soon. It’s hard to do proper long personal posts these days. These days I’m teaching at the art college doing kitchen bar work and doing stand up on average about 2-3 times a week, sometimes more. The first Smoking Mic tour is technically over but we’re starting a new one on April 10, see the press pics above, not really it's from St. Patrick's day, and tour dates along with all my upcoming dates above.

What the hell has happened to late Night TV

Even with freeview, there’s not much on past the 4am mark, always a turning point for me round about 4-5am whenever puppets start turning up, it’s bad news when it all goes from comedy to education when all that’s left if BBC news 24 which does have some comedy like when archbishops and popes and the like start talking about embryos and stem cell research, when they are wearing glasses and…ahem appearing on television, no science involved there of course. Surely an ex-member of the Nazi youth would be down with lots of experiments involving embryos. Where's the balance? I want a molecular biologist on with his/her opinion on the colour of Jesus's pants.

Other than that there’s Floyd on the Fjords and Taste, the two guilty pleasures of latenight TV. Had a discussion with Rich at work my co-chef and unfortunate listening post to most of insane rants during shifts, I like staying up until 5am and he likes cooking so he did see these shows, but I think he sees them at normal hours not on the 5am repeats. I saw Floyd cooking some goose monstrosity and what looked like a bathtub boiling with lots of pale meats and sausages, that all looked like the ‘baby’ at the end of Alien: Resurrection.

Although Taste has a hot presenter her borderline racism is quite funny, whenever a food expert from an ethnic minority comes on she’s like a lunatic, ‘now this daal isn’t too hot is it?’ etc., as if to assure all concerned that whatever dogs these experts are cooking will be alright for a usual Sky Three audience.

Ah I miss Troma’s Edge TV and the Trip, not to mention Vids and Bits. With No Internet my film watching has gone back to pre-information super-procrastination highway levels. Easter was only made bearable by watching Firefly and Serenity a bit too much and these flicks:

Bug
Like great, old Twilight Zone episodes, 1970s horror, like Bug, which this isn’t a remake of but thought it was before I found out more about it, even things like the David Warner movie Nightwing, that crappy low budget end of horror set in remote motels in the American south or even elements of Psycho along with Phillip K. Dick-like paranoia. Ashley Judd is a revelation and Michael Shannon is a twitchy genius.

Stardust
Alright apart from that unicorn shot that Matthew Vaughan is suitably sheepish about as it's almost identical to Bladerunner's, which Jane Goldman is oblivious to, had to go back to the commentary on that particular bit because I wanted to see what he said, he said as a filmmaker he was embarrassed about it. Bob's a highlight but all I could think about was fucking unicorns and the idiots that like them so it kind of cancelled itself out.

American Gangster
Good but they were a little too anxious to have Crowe and Washington as buddies, Chiwetel Ejiofer as always was great. Was left feeling though that someone who becomes a gangster kingpin couldn’t have been so cuddly surely he did some horrible shit that we’ll never find out about, and as soon as it started I knew ‘Across 110th Street’ would appear on the the sound track and of course it does.

In a Lonely Place
Great always good to take a classical Hollywood breather in amongst contemporary stuff, Bogart and Gloria Grahame are amazing in this and it’s underrated masterpiece.

Aliens
Much as I love the Alien box set the Aliens disc has an awful habit of always going straight into the James Cameron commentry, if I hear the words ‘hey Jim Cameron here, the version of Aliens you are about to see if my favorite’, madness will ensue.


Oh and Grindhouse, I did stay true to my previous rant and did not see Grindhouse until I saw the whole thing properly, and caught the double bill at a late show at the Odeon, where we’re doing a comedy night this Friday. I did like it, Planet Terror more than Death Proof, but the Vanishing Point references and the appearance of the great Zoe Bell made it so worth it. As a crap movie geek, I may have mentioned it, the injokes in Grindhouse are amazing, just to see Michael Biehn and Jeff Fahy (the terrible twins of straight to video crap of the 1980s on one screen as brothers was amazing) As always with anything from Tarantino since Jackie Brown, if you’re a 14-year-old boy, you will probably think this is the best film ever, and definitely one for those that like arses.