Thursday, April 23, 2009

I'm not 'Mr. Bean', I'm Peter Parker if anything


During my first few days subbing some wags in second year decided that my name was 'Mr. Bean', Why? god knows, I suppose it's suffciently close to Mr. McGrane. I thought, ' jeez is how it starts? An off the top of the head comment from one wee mook and you could end up being called 'Mr. Bean' for like 30 years or something. Luckily, a new nickname was developed over the weeks: 'Peter Parker', which I can more wholeheartedly endorse. As we can see from the below uncanny representation of yours truly:

Spider Man=>Peter Parker=>Mr. McGrane



Below: This is from a class of mostly loads of screaming girls and one poor wee fella who just minds his own business they have apparently drawn me in the manner of some haunted French porcelain doll


I thought this would be a fun exercise for first years, "Design your own Superhero". After finally settling this wee loon knocked out the below opus in about five minutes.

My Superhero is called: "Someone" which he's crossed out and added "Alien Head"
His/Her Powers: "Is Killing people"

Bizarrely his drawing isn't far off some actual alien 'eyewitness' drawings, I've scanned in loads of them and they are hilarious


Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Well Hello There....

It's been a while, a lot has happened but it's a head-wrecking non-blogworthy nature* so I won't bore yous. Cut a long story short have moved back to Ireland and am curently doing a combination of freelance writing and substitute teaching and stand up, so kinda the same thing different location, but with wee school kids shouting 'howya sir!' from chip shops while I'm singing along with Dr. Horrible's Sing-A-Long-Blog thing and the Commentary! on my wee ipod.

and the Tron soundtrack by Wendy Carlos. There has been some good times, have been seeing more of family, Badbrute and the Brugoes and some great stand up gigs in the company of Marcus Keeley**

See above me all tuxed up for the Monaghan Person of the Year Award black tie

Check it out, there's nothing better than being formally dressed while drawing cartoons of Batman with his wee lad out and Superman pissing himself... these were the pencils I was doing for these redoes of a stand up bit for scanning:


*It depends what kind of blog you like, these days even writing a 'blog' seems quaint, all the hip kids are Lady GaGaing their plurks until they tweet all over the place....the little dayglo feckers well 'I'm staying, I'm finishing my coffee...'
**check out his It was dark and I was drunk blog who is going true similar travails as ole Jimmny H since we both exiled ourselves from Nrrwich and has a great theory about Zac Efron:

A friend and I have a theory that whenever Zac Efron has his period, a Kinder Egg comes out, and the plastic capsule has a piece of paper inside with a list of names of people he has to save in the next 24 hours, otherwise they die.

In further Norwich nostalgia, Marcus and I went to a comedy gig he reviewed it and I photograped-well I held up a wee sliver box in the vague vicinity of people and pressed the bright eye blink button-at the Nowich Arts Centre:

As a performance poet/comedian, it’s rare for me to watch a local live stand-up comedy show in its entirety. Regardless of whether or not I’m on the bill, I’m more likely to be found outside smoking and looking anti-social, politely ignoring my contemporaries’ sets because I have seen and discussed them ad nauseam, or in a small, dark room, blowing raspberries into an empty bucket in anticipation of my curtain call. However, Dan McKee's Saltbox Comedy Club at Norwich Arts Centre was a different affair. Upon given the opportunity to review the gig, myself and fellow comedian superstar Lorcan McGrane threw on our standard-issue Irish malaise, haggard faces and nicotine-saturated charm and made our way to the venue.

Ah happy days, although thinking of them they were pretty horrific days of Marcus and I wandering around a cold Norwich in the rain trying to figure out where to stay....