The Life and Times of Jimmny Homunculus

Rock 'N' Rofl Luanch Night, Saturday 16th July, Aunti Annie's Belfast

2011-06-30T17:17:00.002Z

Headlining this new club in Auntie Annie's with support from Gemma Hutton, Cormac O'Donnell, Dannny McCrossan, Johnny McCarthy, and AJ Johnston

Facebook Event here.

Boardwalk Empire Comedy Club Titting About

2011-06-29T18:18:00.020Z

or if you are in Sims land

Pic courtesy of Marcus Keeley who somehow digitally infiltrated the Batcave to render this cgi Lorcan, God help us all.

It's a while since I've frequented the auld blog, painful memories (all available in the archive forever and ever, or until there is no electricity like in a Snake Plissken in an Escape From L.A. stylee.) I've been busy alternating between overseeing a bootleg alcohol operation in 1920s Atlantic City and killing skuttering aliens in a nanosuit, either that or overdosing on Boardwalk Empire and Crysis 2. Recently, however a few nonbleak things happened that I feel compelled to document.

The first was finding all of Preacher graphic novels in a Monaghan charity shop for 1.50 euro a pop, which meant that after a bit of in-my-favor maths from the lady behind the counter and a wink, I got all nine volumes for 12 euro: Ladies in charity shops regularly think I am mentally challenged for buying 'funny books' from the children's section at the age of 35 and give me discounts out of pity, but I think we all know who the real winner is. Ironically they were in the religion section beside George W. Bush's 'Decision Points', (presumably the 'decision point' for Bush was seeing the advance and accepting one last chance to get a huge amount of money for selling bullshit to shitmunchers)

There they are now, all the lads together.

Rereading it all in one go was an amazing experience, especially liked the cameo from Bill Hicks, put it up on Lorcranium here and here and it reminded me of a more innocent time when references to strap on dildos and sexual perversions evoked illicit thrills rather than mundane jaded tuts of recognition. It would have made a great HBO (home bosum ogling) series.

The second great thing was fulfilling a comedy ambition of playing The Empire Comedy Club. I did an open spot with Sean Hegarty supporting and Simon Evans headlining, all MCed by Jake O'Kane. Comedic brother in arms Marcus Keeley kindly recorded and uploaded it, he says it's good, but all I can hear is some Monaghan mook going "eh" all the time while his gut strains behind a Primark cardigan that looks well the first time you wear it but is gets more embarrassing each time you wash it. Check out the rest of his great videos here. Think it went well though, got asked back in September.

Last but by no means least, and I would say this was an unfulfilled comedy ambition as I didn't even think it was possible, but I supported Kevin Eldon at his first (sold out!) show in Belfast organised by the Black Box and Big Laughs Belfast. He has one of the most impressive comedy cvs of any actor in the contemporary British comedy world. I did a wee youtube tribute to Eldon over on the Tumblr, and Peter "Hotrod" McCaughan's review of the night can be found here.

I don't need to offer my tuppenny bits worth on how good Eldon's show 'Titting About' is, the Paul Hamilton opening section expertly gets the audience in the mood for the sort of actorly character sections that will prevail and the quickfire nature of the show generally leaves little room for an audience to either stop laughing or get bored or agitated. I love the George Martin/Hitler section, the roots of which can be seen here:

Upon meeting him, I had to suppress the fanboy urges to divulge favorite Eldon moments or reveal that whenever I apply for a job I am far too old for I always think of the office assistant/ear severing sketch in Big Train. I also resisted the urge to ask who ended up keeping the Kevin Eldon/Chairman Mao painting from the Big Train Virginia Plain sketch, it must be in someone's living room:

Anyway, in the tradition of the Internet, pics or it didn't happen

(p.s. I'm pretty sure the ice age happened and there are no pics of that)

In the manner of a comedy blog, as mentioned by the mysterious Comedy Guru...here are some gigs/my fleeting roster of self worth:

Monday July 4, 2011, Morgan Hearst's 'Manic Mondays', the Pavillion, Belfast, headlining: Facebook event here

Saturday, July 9, 2011, Millenium Forum Derry, headlining: Facebook event here

Saturday, July 16, 2011, Rock N' ROFL, Auntie Annies, Belfast, headlining: Facebook event here.

Friday July 29, 2011, Courthouse Comedy Club, support.

other appearances include in the gutter and in the bushes outside your window.

Some flyers for Geekdom, April 6th.

2011-04-05T18:21:00.009Z

Some flyers for Geekdom, April 6th at the Black Box.

I was interview by AU Magazine in Belfast:

2011-04-05T16:38:00.003Z

Ahead of my one man show 'Geekdom' at the Black Box, Belfast, April 6, Andrew Johnson, of Belfast punk act the Dangerfields fame did a nice we interview with me in AU Magazine.

I was 'Buried' for '127 Hours' and then I got 'Wrecked'

2010-10-14T15:50:00.004Z

Buried trailer.

127 Hours trailer.

Wrecked trailer.

I presume 'Wrecked' isn't about going out and getting blocked which is what the name would suggest in Irish markets. Maybe it's the scripts that make the rounds in Hollywood, does this constitute a genre? What would you call it 'Mantrap movies?' 'Restriction cinema'. In any event I smell film studies thesis material for someone in the future: 'Trapped White Masculinity' and blah blah blah etc.

V for Vagina

2010-10-08T02:51:00.001Z

Inspired by the io9.com story: The weirdest, wrongest and sexiest new costumes for 2010

What was Udo's Choice in the end?....

2010-10-07T23:49:00.007Z

Udo's choice which I presume would be different to....

Odo's choice, which would be to change into a desklight and whine about things

So my guttywuts are tying to kill me, although in thinking about it I started the war, and the "gut fire" to paraphrase William "Billy" Joel. I have acid reflux and various gut-related things through years of stress and misuse and also from going from PhD to stand up comedy, two fields synonymous with stress, cigarettes and bad diet. I am also back in Ireland where coleslaw and cheese counts as "salad", chips are vegetables and thus one of the "five a day", and Guinness and Baileys are the "health drinks" you have when you are not meant to be drinking. Plus I am 34, when in evolutionary terms I should be fathering and minding children rather than worrying about when I can get the time to really play Halo:Reach properly, although as Scottish comedian Gary Croft pointed out the other day, having kids normally makes you want to drink and smoke more.

I recently had a Esophagogastroduodenoscopy (EGD) with biopsy or 'gut scope' as it is more scientifically known. The nurse said not to worry as the camera was 'only the size of a chip', my geek mind went into overdrive and explained to me internally that while the camera end may have roughly the diameter of a chip, chips normally aren't 2 foot long with a plug hanging out the back and get washed in wee sinks like the tail end of an 'Alien' space hugger. I got sedated which was awesome, some people I knew went, 'don't bother with sedation, you'll feel drunk all day', yes, but what if you want to feel drunk all day. They accidentally wrote "colonoscopy" on my paperwork but I didn't need one, which was a shame as I had lubed myself up as precaution, as one does in any situation where women are approaching you with rubber gloves on. People think the dentist is expensive but you can pay a lot more for having two women approach you with vibrating equipment.

Only joking I was a bit worried for two reasons:

1. I had not prepared and had not drunk the four liters of licorice flavored 'shit yourself juice' or 'laxative' as I believed it is called, and..

2. Stewart Lee has already done pretty much the definitive 'comedian gets a colonoscopy' routine and it would be churlish of me, with the best will in the world, to claim that the last ten years or so of bad diet was an elaborate tribute act.

So now I have to start eating healthily, I thought I'd start slowly by going to the health shop and asking for the unhealthiest thing in it, turns out it was the proprietor (haha sorry). I now have a fondness for Nairns oatcakes, Whole Food's 'Wake Up' coffee alternative, which is thankfully made with guarana and not guano as I had originally thought upon reading the label, and rice cakes. And the afore mentioned Udo's Choice which seems to me to be like a bad sci-fi movie, like he has to choose between a sexy alien and sexy cyborg but he loves them both! what will "Udo's Choice" be....

It was a shame as I had my vice equilibrium finely tuned:

and now look at it!

It's alright though as I now fantasize about an huge meteor coming to destroy earth ala the great Canadian film Last Night or Mick Farren's great short story 'Fun in the Final Days' when I can smoke and drink with abandon, either that or whenever I have sex again, although, it will probably be the meteor thing first. In the meantime, that'll be me crying and jamming rice cakes into my face and masturbating outside the window of your local fast food joint....

Spot the difference...

2010-06-28T03:03:00.002Z

Chatterbox (1977)

Chatterbox (2010)

don't know which is worse

BBC Radio Ulster/BBC Radio 1, Voicebox and Sunday Strip Club

2010-05-05T23:49:00.010Z

It's go at Lorcy central or 'Lorcom' as I refer to it, in my head. Last night was on Hotrod McCaughan's Hot Rod of Comedy, a regular segment on BBC Introducing in Northern Ireland with Rory McConnell.

Which you can listen to here, it's about one hour and 25 minutes in.

Myself and Hotrod at Palookaville at the Oh Yeah Music Centre

Telephone interviews are always a bit weird because you don't know if you are going on too long or not enough, I end up pulling Tim and Eric style faces to myself after each sentence....

I also always immediately think feck I should of said this that or the other. Will be doing some new character madness at the Voicebox Comedy on Friday, at the awesome Safehouse Gallery which I can't wait for, Marcus Keeley's Voicebox nights have been growing steadily in popularity month after month, this one I think is the biggest line up yet, with about 20 acts with 5 minutes each, and us regulars will be doing character bits/sketches and videos in between, I made and overelaborate photoshop thing for it

One of Marcus' most recent videos from his youtube channel

With great outtakes.

and I'm doing a best of powerpoint things: "Sex and Superheroes and The Story of Poor Auld Jesus: The Highlights" at The Sunday Strip Club at the Pavilion on Sunday 9th May

The Revelation of St. Christopher of TooKee...

2010-04-17T02:32:00.004Z

If you are a resident of the UK and Ireland you will no doubt be aware of the Daily Mail, now available in Ireland..kinda. For non-UK and Ireland readers, if you can image Fox News as a film of putrid bile thinly spread over newsprint you get the gist. Now the Daily Mail is an easy target, like a BNP graphic design* shaped fish in a barrel of boke. I don't want to slag it off per se, it's clever in what in does. What it does however, is waffle on until you almost fall asleep and then sticks the boot in with a sexist, homophobic, or racist phrase that gives you a feeling of peering into a parallel dimension, thinking, 'wait? did I just read that'. It's become a veritable sport among comedians to make fun of it. The best is the Daily Mail list of Things that give you Cancer.

But I digress, fundamentally, ~~their film critic~~ ~~Christopher Tookey does not like films~~

Update: see comment below, he does like films:

Check out Tookey's Tops

verus

Tookey's Turkeys

"I have awarded marks of 6/10 or more to 2910 films so far, out of a total of 8,550 movies I have reviewed"

Now, lots of critics from Alexander Walker to Mark Kermode to Charlie Brooker , all don't like some films or tv shows, that's their job, to critically assess things in the context of their culture, but fundamentally they love the medium they write about, and arguably Brooker has actually made more TV shows, and extremely good ones, despite what this mook has to say, than most film critics have made films.

Similar to the fact that most comedians rag on the Mail, and rightly so, for easy laughs, there was a almost urban legend that Kick Ass was going to cause a Daily Mail fuss when released. This is almost nostalgia for our generation brought up on Video Nasties and seeing it's pale mirroring in the 'Crash debate', the anticipation of another tussle of censorship and moral outrage like wot we know and love, of course nothing of the sort happened. As Kermode pointed out, the BBFC certificate had a sense of the humor and irony involved...

Unlike Mr. Tookey,

Don't be fooled by the hype: This crime against cinema is twisted, cynical, and revels in the abuse of childhood

with one of the most hilarious film ratings in the world

Verdict: Evil

Rating:

how can a film be "evil", the majority of those killed are bad guys and drug dealers, by vigilantes no less, surely that's a demographic the daily mail can get behind when it suits them? Evil is such a metaphysical concept, it's a word created by people who don't want to comprehend the horrific capacities of humanity. Kick Ass, in contrast, is an amazing smart funny movie. It would be churlish not to admit that I only went near the mail site because I knew it would slate Kick Ass but the amount of one star reviews yer man dishes out is unbelievable, Nanny McPhee is the only recent film that has has a positive review, god help us all surviving in this world where fictional characters some how want (need!?) to destroy our very souls. Quantum of Solace get's two stars, Law-Abiding Citizen get's three?

Clash of the Titans: Back to Argos, the whole lot of you

Verdict: A horrible myth-take

Rating:

Steer clear, unless your a teenage girl

Verdict: Forgettable and regrettable

Rating:

RACE TO WITCH MOUNTAIN and DRAGONBALL EVOLUTION: These two should be burned at the stake

Obviously he love's Gran Torino...

* I have a theory that right-wing Christians and political Web sites see graphic designers as a heathen band of homosexuals, atheists, and general reprobates so they deliberately make all there Web sites look like shit.

Don't believe me?

Jesus, Dinosaurs and More (gee I hope the 'more' is reasoned evidence based on physical reality)

John Hicklenton (8 May 1967 – 19 March 2010)

2010-04-08T22:40:00.007Z

I have foresworn twitter, and only found out today via a comment on Facebook by the great Liam Sharp of the sad passing of one my favorite 2000ad artists, John Hicklenton. In my mind, it's the kind of news that should have been on ITN, BBC, and Sky all at once instead of something about Lindsay Lohan going on a holiday to find out that bad things happen in the world:

From the 2000 ad forums

"We have just been informed by Pat Mills that John Hicklenton has sadly passed away.

Here are a few words from Pat:

John Hicklenton passed away peacefully last week. His ending was an expected one and he saw it as a triumph over his illness MS. Amongst his final words to me were "MS - you have a week to live, you've met someone you shouldn't have f***** with". A great artist and a true hero.

Pat Mills"

There was always a weirdness creeping around the edges of 2000ad, and once you got used to its standard of amazing art and writing, even more weirdness crept in. Like when you got used to Ron Smith and Carlos Ezquerra every week, and then out of nowhere BAM! there was a couple of Brian Bollands. I think every 2000ad reader has their 'golden age', a period of unrivaled quality and unbroken consumption of the comic. For me it was around 1988 to the early 1990s, not surprisingly coinciding with a rural Irish lonely adolescent geekdom. (compared with a lonely geek adulthood). I got to do Media Studies at the University of Ulster at Coleraine and wrote a thesis on Dredd in 1996(! shite that's ages ago), with a Hicklenton depiction of Dredd on the front cover, called:

"Fascism, Fetishism and Fandom: Political and Psychoanalytical aspects of Judge Dredd".

with a description of his depiction of Dredd,

Figure II: Dredd as Phallus - John Hicklenton, from ‘Heavy Metal Dredd’, in Judge Dredd the Megazine, 23/1/93 - 5/2/93. Hickleton appears to be an artist very much aware of Dredd’s fetishist like appearance and plays it up more than other more conventional artists.

"It was a time of Watchmen and Dark Knight Returns", I suppose, would be a pop culture shorthand "when comics grew up" to use another cliche. There was an attempt to try something new when the likes of Brendan McCarthy, Brett Ewins, Shaky Kane, and Rian Hughes expanded from 2000ad to'adult' titles in the anthology boom : Crisis, Revolver, Deadline and many others (Heartbreak Hotel, Overkill, Expresso, Strip, Meltdown.) Not to mention Grant Morrison, Garth Ennis, Warren Ellis, Mark Millar, whose intelligent subversion you may no doubt be aware of.

For someone reading comics in Monaghan in the late 1980s and early 1990s this world, this was my equivalent of being invited into a trendy punk rock scene. One could imagine the above hanging out at some cool SoHo haunt with Jonathon Ross, Neil Gaiman, and Lenny Henry, and Paul Gambaccini, and Tank Girl, Transvision Vamp, and Fuzzbox (believe it or not this would have been a cool scene) and Zenith probably or something, but who was that dark shadow in the background....

John Hicklenton was always a mysterious figure to place among this first wave of "comics are for adults and cool now" blah blah chatter. A Hicklenton story in 2000ad was a jolt of darkness and eroticism that was very other from the more popular strips. My teenage mind always wondered why they were so rare, and so odd and beautiful and unforgettable when they did appear. Why was he not in the comic more? did they have to go to a different dimension to get the artwork?

His bio pic, and it's 'sisters of mercy' makeover version appearing on the back of the Nemesis Titan editions, such as Book 9, (you'd only need to go up to a 2000ad fan at the time and go 'Nemesis Book 9?!?' to get a knowing response), didn't help to dispell the myth. And yet his work was both intrinsically comic book and realistic Nemesis the Warlock is within the ranks of those comic characters that just work perfectly in comics yet seem ridiculous in 'real life' (how does he speak? what does he sound like?in what way does he float?) as a few Nemesis photo stories attested.

Hicklenton brought and unsettling and beautiful realism to Nemesis you could imagine this thing existing, especially transposed onto the V for Vendetta-like fascistic background of the reapers and oi oi boys. It was only later that Hicklenton's battle with MS was more widely known, through the great documentary Here's Johnny . There has seldom been such a heartbreaking yet grimly humorous depiction of the battle between the creation of art and the body that produces it. I'm reminded of Rorscharch's line 'None of you seem to understand. I'm not locked in here with you. You're locked in here with me!' with any disease that would attack Hicklenton. The quotes from him on the transcendent nature of art are inspiring:

"Drawing is my walking now, I run with it, I fly with it. It's keeping me alive. I have a thing with it. I can't wait to get a piece of paper with a pen because it's what I can control.

"I haven't got MS when I'm looking at my pictures and I haven't got it when I'm drawing them either. It gives me an ability to express that fear."

I'm sure many teenagers of the period annoyed many an art teacher, mine included, with endless 2000ad and sci-fi inspired opuses, many of which would probably get us sent to school psychologists in these current times, but we didn't have those then so we got to draw. I distinctly remember one project where there was some quote about a circus and something behind a curtain and I more or less drew the below, from a Megazine story called the Black Widow, with an almost unrecognizable curtain as a border around it.

one last bit, for what it's worth, it might sound like wank, but just a way of saying how an artists work can affect a comic fan:

When I'm wandering around with my ipod (or walkman as it was back then, still a lot of the same tunes, mostly Frank Black's Teenager of the Year) I am usually thinking of really great potential 2000ad movies, like if they'd ever make a kick ass Judge Anderson movie or Judgement on Gotham. Anyway I always imagined a Necropolis film would be amazing if combined with Judgement Day's Magnificent Seven aspect of having all the judges from around the world (in my mind I was just trying to jam Judge Joyce in there) involved. Before they are dropped into a screaming mad cesspit of zombie violence though there would be a Q type character (cameo by Hicklenton)

"Sorry lads, you can't go down there unless you're wearing "Hickle-Suits"

And on saying this pressing a button with insane Mech-versions of his characteristic designs specific to each international Judge. For me Hicklenton's Dredd designs would have been the hardest to replicate in any film version, the scaled down versions in the Stallone film (both in terms of costumes and the so-called perps/ random people in eye make-up) attest to how difficult bringing the true madness of Mega City One to the screen is.

I am genuinely shaken and sad at Hicklenton's death and my thoughts go out to those who knew him beyond his amazing body of work, which truly affected the history of British comics. It even inspired some goon to stick flower pots on his head to get the requisite 'highness' to attempt to replicate a Hicklenton-style Dredd luck

some articles:

Comic Book artist ends life at suicide clinic after battle with ms, The Telegraph

BBC news

John Hicklenton passes away Forbidden Planet

Ode to a Magnum 6D....

2010-03-09T19:41:00.006Z

...as opposed of course to the disposable lighter-esque Magnum 6G Personal Defense Weapon System, or god forbid the plasma pistol, the 5 for a pound neon plastic purple disposable lighter of the Halo world.

To help escape the horrible winter that has only recently seemed to let go its grasp, I finally got an Xbox 360 after much hmming haaaing and played Halo 3 on legendary. During Halo: Combat Evolved on legendary there is much walking about looking for ammo and I developed a Sledge Hammer! like fondness for the M6D and it was one of the surprises that this lowly weapon became the weapon of choice and was a nice friend to talk to and say things like 'yeah you better run' and 'you better wait right there I'll be back in like an hour with some sniper ammo'. Which reminded me that first post I ever wrote on here was about Halo, 'Needler Dreams'

During Halo 3 when waves of feckers were coming at me, was to say in a very quiet voice..'well, that was quite the inconvenience'. It's strange the way 'realism' gets bandied about as a term. I would deem Halo 3 as realistic in that things feel real within the universe they have created, holding two weapons at a time and four grenades and health reviving etc. It's when you have to score points to buy abilities and such it gets to be a bit of a nightmare.

Like the other day, I started Fallout 3, where you have to choose important things like your sex, race and bad haircut etc about six seconds after your born. Now, I was balancing up options whether a heavy set black man would be able to survive the harsh post-apocalyptic more than a hot Asian lady, who might either bamboozle the mutants with sexual wiles or get killed easily. Then I thought I was over-thinking the game and chose a generic Caucasian goon. Plus, my name in the game is ‘Cuntybollix’, only because I wanted Liam Neeson playing my da to say it. He did say it was a lovely name though and I look forward to the day when the dread king Cuntybollix rules the postapocalyptic wasteland with and iron mutoid claw. I gave up and am still wandering around the vault looking for fucking bobby pins to open a door and getting pummelled because you have to pull up a computerized system and click loads of options to get a gun to fire and then you end up in your pants for no reason (mmm achieving nothing and ending up in my pants for no reason, maybe Fallout 3 is like real life.)

Where to start with Bayonetta! As per usual Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw of Zero Puncuation gets it right:

See I really was more first person shooter kind guy, it had that lovely fluid quality and movement compared to watching the arse of some thick soilders are they give each other high fives and blow up terrorists (I'm looking at you Army of Two, idiots). But Bayonetta is like 8 foot tall and has guns attached to her high heels! If I am to play a third person game, at least make it something interesting to watch.

I had not really experienced quick time events before, it's like you're watching a cut scene that you can get killed in repeatedly for no reason. Again there are certain 'realism' rules, you fight flying upsidedown angel things, some shaped like ships! some just a big weel on fire or a gigantic pixalated planet with a red fiery ball inside it but when you get a pair of haunted ice skates you can only wear them on your feet, I mean I can already fly a bit and turn into a panther and my body hair comes off and turns into a parrot the size of a double decker bus to eat some angel gobshite why can't I wear haunted ice skates on my hand if I want to? Check out the madness:

Some special puddings...the artwork of Gentlemen Broncos

2010-03-04T23:52:00.019Z

For those of a geeky sensibility Jared Hess's Gentlemen Broncos is a cult treat with a similar timeless setting and awkwardness to Napoleon Dynamite. For some odd reason, it has taken a critical fecking and been accused of 'bully porn', but I feel it is full of sympathy for the outsider geeks that inhabit it. Similarly to Art School Confidential, though I felt it could have reveled in and spoofed its milieu even more. As Darkplace shows in comedy, and Shaun Hutson shows in reality there is endless comedy to be had in the character of a totally unself-aware writer who feels that his mind-bending visions are almost to much for the human mind to comprehend.

A highlight is the great sci-fi book covers 'In the Year 2525' title sequence. One of my favorite books growing up was David Kyle's A Pictorial History of Science Fiction and I noticed some of the covers straight away but presumed some were mocked specifically for the film.

Anyway, I thought it would be cool to reproduce them here just as covers with the originals I could find, which were a lot less than anticipated.

Frank Kelly Freas

This one was a surprise, an uncanny likeness of Sam Rockwell, not created specifically for the film but by David Lee Anderson :

"This was the first science fiction painting that I used myself as a model, painted in 1989. The background is taken from a shopping mall in Dallas called The Galleria. It had a nice perspective, which had become one of my specialties, and I developed the shuttle-like craft as if they were in a large hangar."

Dentistry and Doofuses

2010-02-25T00:01:00.007Z

"ooo look at me with some fat people, I'll knock them into shape with my pie regime.."

"bit more suction here please..."

Not one to be adverse to having two ladies approach one of my orifices with vibrating equipment, it was an interesting experience going to the dentist today to get a filling, although the most painful part was the fact that Gerry Ryan was on in the background, not to be confused with this Jeri Ryan, God no. Admittedly my notions of dentistry, as with most of my life's experiences come from movies and science fiction:

When most people think of famous dentists I always think of Judge Death's da.

But to have Gerry Ryan warbling on about a lady caller's bed bugs and saying "and I suppos' they creep up your thighs and emmm into your 'how's your father'' made me a 100 times more uneasy than when the drilling started. For those of you who don't know who he is, this is his Uncyclopedia entry, which I can't stop laughing at.

So who is Gerry Ryan? Well we all know RTE, Ireland's major state-and-advertising-and-your-money funded broadcaster has a sense of humour, listen closely to the poor fella saying 'oh shit!' at the end of the below 'news' report. I would say something like, 'oh, swearing, the priests won't like that', but they have recently lost all claim to moral authority by fucking kids. In your face Popey! You've got a celibate workforce of deluded oddballs in a hierarchical system that favors secrecy who think they can 'absolve' sins that are in constant contact with vulnerable children! What's the worst that can happen? Oh yeah, what did.

Anyway, to add insult to injury, RTE have a show called Operation Transformation where a fat rich person tells fat poor people how they are going wrong in not being fat. When I saw it first in the listings, I thought it might have been something fun like this but no, it's like The Biggest Loser. You see, RTE's R&D department is like a simple child with a crayon and notebook looking at other TV shows like they're toy ads and RTE commissioners are like their mammy and daddy and when the R&D kid sees something it likes it goes "mammy! daddy! can I have one of those?" and the parents reply, "yes, but we can only afford a really cheap shit knock off version will that do", and the kid laps it up and goes "yep I'm delighted and excited"

Now I don't want to criticise RTE too much, for the size of our country they do a great job with news, documentaries and arts programs but when they attempt reality shows, light entertainment and comedy the results are sometimes excruciating. As a small country we don't really have celebrities, so anyone on RTE claiming to be a celebrity is clinically insane, also as everyone knows each other and they don't want to piss off the main broadcaster there is no genuinely satirical comedy although this one tries but there is nothing genuinely critical, so all the chat shows exist in this odd feaful vacuum, worrying in case someone has a negative opinion on the broadcaster, admittedly some, hilariously break through...

Gerry Ryan seems to have some sort of blackmail-like hold on RTE as they keep giving him shows that no one likes and pay him astronomical amounts of money for doing so. We had (eight seasons of!) Ryan Confidential, where he came across as more of a dick than Gordan Ramsey, in a horrible moment of television, captured forever, below:

He got to interview Conan O'Brien and failed to get any of the comedy master's jokes, it was like watching a master archer hit wee hilarious darts into a bemused zeppelin.

In Operation Transformation, this overweight, overpaid imbecile gets to judge other poorer people's attempts to lose weight, its like people who can't sing judging singing competitions, or people with no discernible talent judging talent shows...oh wait we have that too...

Lorcranium...

2010-02-24T23:32:00.005Z

I started a Tumblr called Lorcranium, a name inspired by the likes of "Magic" George Quinn who occasionally calls me Lorcan McGranium or some such, which I am really enjoying. Had a twitter account but deleted it as it all looked like random syllables and bits of punctuation dipped in hero worship and reminded me of the line in Idiocracy

Pvt. Joe Bowers: Why me? Every time Metsler says, "Lead, follow, or get out of the way," I get out of the way.
Sgt. Keller: Yeah, when he says that, you're not supposed to choose "get out of the way." It's supposed to embarrass you into leading - or at least following.
Pvt. Joe Bowers: That doesn't embarrass me

Plus twitter seems to have been invented by lazy journalists so they can just repeat celebs' and politicians tweets' as research...

In other online news Scott Calonico the Plerplexin' Texan of Scott and Stacey fame has been hard at work sorting out the NI Comedy Web site with all the details of wicked upcoming events at places like Marcus Keeley's Voicebox at the Safehouse, The Pavillion, Lavery's, and now The Black Box, which I am very interested in entering as you can imagine.

Boregasm!!

2010-02-05T00:12:00.007Z

Ah, I don't want to be down on Irish movies, and like, look at the above mooks, it's not like others can portray Irishness any better, but whenever I go to Tescos, there's all the normal films sitting there in their fun boxes and spaceships and that and then a separate sort of quarantined section for Irish ones that form a bleak wall of worthy depression, Catholicism, 'the laaaand', politics, historical period dramas, gangsters, and of course abuse.

I've got very specific criticisms of certain Irish films, like did Stephen Rea really not know what sort of a pub he was in in The Crying Game, did his reaction not paint Irish fellas abroad as sexually naive, insensitive idiots? Sure a fella's head is all messed up with the troubles, he don't know what way is up...look out for the 'hilarious' twist etc.

I remember thinking How to Cheat in the Leaving Cert would be good, a heist movie to steal exam papers, but inevitably the plot was that one of their classmates had committed suicide because of exam pressure and that's why they were doing it. It had to be some worthy reason rather than a fun heist. I recently saw Middletown (both the town and the film, both equally bleak), viddy the trailer all shouting and classical strings and religious hypocrisy...we know, we get it! This imagined 1950s borderland bleakness must have been terrible. When Brendan Met Trudy inched Irish films into the rom com market but the trailer implies FEMINIST TERRORISTS!...jaysus lads could you be up to it at all...

There's a lot of funny people, smart people, intelligent people in Ireland but once a film project goes through the government sponsored route where half the running time is logos of cross border initiative and EU funding gubbins they get ground down in lengthy boregasms of identity and current issues.

One of my favorite Irish films ever is The Eliminator, an unashamed Peter Jackson/Sam Raimi type low budget horror that's very funny. The only picture I could find was a postage stamp sized scan of a Film Ireland cover, does anyone have any pics/clips of this gem? Surely even the a brief synopsis would pique interest

"Set in Northern Ireland of the future, Computer genius O'Brien is working hard to build the VIPER, a military supercar..."

Which brings me to 8.5 Hours.

When I saw the trailer first (yesterday) I was much more bitter, like this is an affront to sense and intelligence, and movie literacy, but then I thought well, I haven't made a film and my film studies knowledge attests that for any film that even gets made, there are probably 20-30 worse ones that didn't. So for that we should be thankful for 8.5 hours, not its actual running time, this isn't Fanny and Alexander, chance would be a fine thing. Instead I made up a dialogue between the director and the trailer guy:....

Director: We want something classy..

Trailer guy: classy or classs-i-cal?

Director: It's set in Dublin...

Trailer guy: Perfect, shot of Dublin then...

Director: it's about..

Trailer guy: I know, the end of the boom years, when was that? wendesday 4pm wasn't it? everyone's sad, even though some of them are getting the ride, what's that great line in it?...'oh fuck me that was good', perfect, we'll put that in, everyone says things like this during sex...

Director: It's about four working lives...

Trailer Guy: yeah! working alright! Working at the sex and drugs and bisexuality, and that, hohup! jaysus, so yeah they work at an office? I'll show the clock ticking, like Clockwatchers... hey! maybe they'll smash office equipment up like in Office Space...

Director: I wanted to deal with contemporary issues like the property collapse and immigration...

Trailer Guy: Yeah! I know, like a shady Eastern European guy/pimp maybe, he's the reason Ireland's lost its moral soul...plus we get to show ladies in corsets! high five! no, sorry, yeah, it's about the issues.

Director: It's about the emptiness of meaningless sex...

Trailer Guy: Hey! I just saw the trailer to A Serious Man, maybe a bit of headboard banging and an actress looking uncomfortable...perhaps a tough guy, or an office guy who thinks he's tough, with a cool catch phrase like ...'shooting...fish...in...a...barreeeell..."like that cool movie Shooting Fish, with the speech rhythms of genius Maaaat Beerry

Director: It's about sexual emptiness in Catholic Ireland...

Trailer Guy: Fuck yeah! I forgot about the church, a scene in a church where someone gets accused of having sex with a 19-year-old, implies the abuse scandal but won't get us into trouble...genius director dude ..oh yeah and drugs!

Director: It's about four lives that start to unravel....

Trailer guy: Hey, we'll get one of the characters to speak directly to the camera like in the trailer for Magnolia...awesome...hey wasn't there some gayness involved, better include that too as a sign of decadent times...and then we'll end with uplifting strings and people understanding each other...and...bam!! see ya at the Oscars dude! ...I'll be out the back offering my 'services'

Director: ahh thanks, I guess...

CF: Ken Korda's Speeding on the Needle Bliss

and of course...The Room

Congrats everone, we made it through January....

2010-02-01T23:55:00.007Z

Officially, the most bastardingly shite of months ever, hence the lack of blogging as trying to articulate the horror would only increase it. I made it through, but only just, using the time honored Irish way of hot whiskeys and copious TV shows and films. Mostly my Laurel and Hardy box set, a thing of immense beauty, the great Fringe, Dollhouse and still amazing The Twilight Zone

Speaking of the Twilight Zone and feeling like you're living in it, I've also been being blasphemous about 30 times every day, and at 25,000 euro a pop that doesn't come cheap...p.s. God doesn't exist...and is a cunt...fact! sorry for the language, but he made me say that for the laugh. Full listing of Ireland's new blasphemy law here, I suppose you could read it along with the Murphy or Ryan reports and decide what is truly blasphemous.

Wording here:

	35.— The common law offences of defamatory libel, seditious libel and obscene libel are abolished.
		36.— (1) A person who publishes or utters blasphemous matter shall be guilty of an offence and shall be liable upon conviction on indictment to a fine not exceeding €25,000.
		(2) For the purposes of this section, a person publishes or utters blasphemous matter if—
		(a) he or she publishes or utters matter that is grossly abusive or insulting in relation to matters held sacred by any religion, thereby causing outrage among a substantial number of the adherents of that religion, and
		(b) he or she intends, by the publication or utterance of the matter concerned, to cause such outrage.
		(3) It shall be a defence to proceedings for an offence under this section for the defendant to prove that a reasonable person would find genuine literary, artistic, political, scientific, or academic value in the matter to which the offence relates.
		(4) In this section “ religion ” does not include an organisation or cult—
		(a) the principal object of which is the making of profit, or
		(b) that employs oppressive psychological manipulation—
		(i) of its followers, or
		(ii) for the purpose of gaining new followers.

Mmm, "employs oppressive psychological manipulation" not the Catholics then, oh no.

Anyways, mark your diary or scrap of paper that you lose for Voicebox on February 5th, it's going to be great with Enda Muldoon, Marcus Keeley, Scott Calonico & Stacey Mead, Hotrod McCaughan, Aaron Marshall Anne-Marie Mullan, Ed Goodall, and Robert Best, with Ruaidri Ward MCing. I can't wait.

Facebook Event page

Safehouse site event

Stand up bit that includes my blasphemy routine, which I would not have written were it not for this ridiculous law, so will they fine themselves?

Three more days to Halloween...

2009-10-28T01:48:00.003Z

I do love Halloween and I also love horror films, but Halloween also seems like the season where imbeciles who have never seen any film at the cinema recently go and see a horror film and bore all us year-round rather than fair-weather horror fans to death about the scary film 'that actually happened'. When teaching once I had to do so much to explain that the Blair Witch was not real, it was just designed to look real, like this year's offering in the OMG! stakes:

It's also a sign of my getting older that an actual vampire, zombie, or Frankenstein's monster would scare me less if they turned up at the door and three actual kids. I would have something in common with these classic movie monsters rather than this actual apathetic grunting violent creatures that would probably hold up a wee phone and terrorize me with shit drum and bass music coming from tiny wee speakers and then stab me in the neck for giving them sweets instead of crack.

I can chart the evolution of my geekdom thusly, loving dinosaurs begat loving dinosaur movies that begat loving science fiction movies and horror films and comics that begat a lonely life, the true actual real world horror. My major teen period of comic buying mid to late 1980s to early 1990s was also my major horror period, but the movies I remember actually watching on Halloween were always a bit apart from my regular Horror film watching: Dracula (1958), Cat's Eye (1985), and Misery (1990) are all films I associate with Halloween purely because of a memory rather than they were 'scary'. I loved Hammer Horror films and was always amazed that my father had actually seen them in the cinema, the Hammer Dracula series was lovingly recorded on VHS and made into makeshift video box sets before could buy amazing artifacts like this.

To an extent one always grows out of horror films, I don't mean their technique or any aspersions on the genre, but the idea of a film being 'scary' is a malleable one. Like Kermode when he used to on about 'extreme' cinema, I would always paraphrase him like 'the film you are about to see is so extreme it'll burn your eyeballs out of your head!'. Once you're and adult and can watch want you want, the teenager idea of sitting through a terrible 18 cert horror film just because it that might have some bosums in it goes out out the window.

Anyway this Halloween I will probably stick with The Exorcist or The Shining, not because they are 'scary movies' but because they fucking awesome movies!

Electic Micks signing November 14, 2009.

2009-10-23T10:31:00.002Z

It always nice to have something to look forward to, apart from a cosmic scale apocalypse that will blink all existence in a nanosecond, and once such thing is the signing of the Electic Micks sketchbook at Forbidden Planet, 5-6 Crampton Quay, Dublin from 3-5pm on November 14.

Check out this great collective of Irish comic artists:

Their blog: eclectic micks

Will be great to see the great Bob Byrne currently secluded in Spain, I imagine, in the manner of Ray Winstone in Sexy Beast with the Eclectic Micks calling him back to do 'one last job'.

Will be doing a gig in bankers that day too so it will be a full day of geek madness for the Jimmny.

Some pictures....

2009-10-22T19:01:00.004Z

.... from last night's great show at McKenna's for Alison Curtis on Today FM for the Bulmers Light Platinum Awards. With great band The Dominican Affair, their myspace is here. Thanks to Alison and producer Ed, and technician Brian and of course Seamie McKennas senior and junior! It was a great night and an interesting experience doing my first proper comedy interview.

Hello there, would you like a lick of me cone....

2009-10-20T22:08:00.006Z

Must have a think about my dress sense as I have recently been mistaken as a priest twice in the last few weeks. I suppose I do dress in black, read books, and am celibate, although not by choice. Will be on Today FM... tomorrow and have some other top stand up dates coming up:

Wednesday, October 21, Alison Curtis of Today FM will be broadcasting from McKenna's in Monaghan, home of McKenna's Brew Ha Ha Comedy club between 10 and 12am. Will be doing an interview talking about comedy and club. McKenna's is the Ulster finalist in the Platinum Pub Award 2009.

Friday November 7, Voicebox, Marcus Keeley's night at the Safehouse, Belfast

Saturday November 14, Stand up at The Bankers, Dublin,

Friday November 27, Mr and Miss Soapbox, St. Gregory's Centre of the Arts, Norwich

Saturday November 28, Laugh out Loud at the Rose, Norwich.

In other news:

Jodie Foster is super-pleased to be in a brass band.

...and George Clooney discusses digital stimulation techniques with President Barack Obama.

WATCH THESE MEN (SYTYCV)

2009-10-16T02:32:00.001Z

You know things are bad...

2009-09-25T01:26:00.006Z

....When you watch an episode of Star Trek Voyager on Virgin plus one (insert your own joke here) and think...mmmm this is good I should buy the box set, maybe of just the last series. It's a slippery slope. No offense to the more hardened Trek fan, but when Firefly, Serenity, and Battlestar Galatica have passed through the 'verse, watching Star Trek is like seeing a quaint Edwardian play about morals or something.

I remember living alone in Rathmines and Star Trek was there like emotional crack for the sci-fi fan. I spotted and bought in a Virgin Megastore sale the Data Head box set and the one that was like a transporter with all the episode that had crossovers, especially Relics, that always brings a tear to the eye, and got hooked on Sky One reruns of Star Trek: The Next Generation

I've just finished three weeks of substitute teaching where, bizarrely my nickname is 'Mr.Bean', I don't know why, maybe some kid misheard 'Mr.McGrane' but it stuck. I was covering English and Religion. I was proud of a moment when a pupil asked: 'but aren't priests breaking their pledge when they drink wine on Sunday?', and I replied, 'well, no, because it's technically the blood of Christ when they drink it.' I also had to explain that banshees and the Blair Witch don't exist and dodge the question of whether Lady Gaga 'is a man'*

Anyway, today I was on the verge of genuine tears while watching the Star Trek: Voyager episode 'The Eye of the Needle', will they get home, well as it's only about 8 episodes in to the first series...no.

This guy's has a good take on it:

Although it tries to be all nicey and inclusive, the Star Trek franchise has stuck to a simply, cut-out-and-keep male white chauvanism, which goes thusly:

Star Trek: Male white captain, off to conquer the universe, and ride green women.

Star Trek: The Next Generaton, male white captain, off to conquer the universe in a more uradite way, and drink tea, and kinda ride a red-haired lady, sometimes, I think.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, black captain, he's going nowhere! stick him in a sorta ghetto in space with an Irish man. Oh yeah, and make it roundy, we don't want him in charge of anything phallic.

Star Trek: Voyager, lady captain, she's got lost and whines about getting home for seven seasons. Yeah we'll explore and that, but the main aim is to get home as soon as possible.

Star Trek: Enterprise, 'It's been a long road'...but at least all the minority English/French, African-American and Lady captains are out of the way, so it's back to a male white captain, off to conquer the universe, and something about a dog and not the 'realistic' depiction of space exploration that was touted at the beginning. It doesn't count to just have a cgi clip of a space ship landing on yet another life-supporting planet instead of a cgi teleporter clip. For a franchise that's never 'Out of Gas'.

It's not auld Rodenberry's fault it's just that bad periods of my life have coincided with times were I suddenly got into watching Star Trek regularly and evaded problems with it's simplistic world. The only character I liked really was yer man Barclay because he was a fuck up. He was the only one I could identify with...'Where's ensign McGrane?'...'mmm there was that synthetic whiskey and holodeck Bangkok incident, captain...' and poor ensign McGrane arriving late to the bridge with his uniform all in disarray and having not done his space sums about how to press the wee buttons and that. No one in Star Trek is bad at their jobs or has an untidy room. A little too much time in the holodeck and that's about it with human foibles.

*I can conclusively reveal that Lady Gaga does in fact have a penis, but only occasionally...and in my masturbation fantasies.

P.S. why hasn't Patrick Stewart done a Curb cameo!

I'll leave you with a great triple bill:

Sugar Lumps

2009-08-28T00:27:00.001Z

I know I'm late to the Flight of the Conchords love in but this song never ceases to make me bust my 'cannibals' laughing. I'm not even going to try to talk to ladies any more (plus ça change, plus c'est la même) I'm just going to learn this off and dance around....plink plink...

Maoamgate

2009-08-27T21:44:00.008Z

The lime kinda likes the eager oral sex orange but it's had enough and is giving the poor wee orange the tap on the head to say, a la Gaff, "You did a man's job sir, it's too bad she didn't come, but then again who does....."

But the Lime loooves the comin cherry....

So yon Badbrute sent me a link via boing boing on the supposedly pornographic nature of the lovely wee Maoam sweets, with the hilarious missive 'Better find some new material Chief' ha ha, not all my material concerns copulating sweets.

I'm a purveyor of highly fizzy and sour sweets that most give up when they get to their early 30s, replacing such e-number madness with a number or e madnesses. I still eat this sort of shit and always laughed at the wrappers. It was included in my powerpoint comedy lecture on sex and superheroes, that the lovely Amy Wragg, Jim 'The Legend' Thompson, and Hannah Jones of the legendary Soapbox crowd in Norwich put up on youtube.

From the SoapBox Arts Festival, June 6th 2009 at Norwich Arts Centre:

Part One

Part Two

This was part of the wider theme of my work pointed out by the Badbrute that my fine art works Which can be seen here have absolutely no subtext. I tie the Moaom stuff into comics and toys etc that can be read in a sexual way, hilarity ensues, but anything that has already been in the Daily Mail has a limited shelf life. I'll have to cut it from the act because I'll do it some time and people will think I was inspired by this shite in the Daily Mail rather than my own geeky loneliness.

As pointed out by Cakehead Loves Evil the Sun picked up on the story (with the hilarious title Get a room you chew) three day's after Miss Cakehead discussed the original letter to the Daily Mail.

Then the plot thickens as computer nerd, poet and damned evil gamer Mr. Stephen Hollywood alerts me to the presence of the below post implying that the whole thing is a publicity stunt. The fact that the complainer is the almost sitcomesque 'Stephen Simpkins' and the fact that, despite his horror at this 'pornography' (has anyone ever jacked/jilled one off to a sweet wrappers?) would lend this some creedence. As I mentioned to Mr. Hollywood, perhaps I could become a Haribo spokesperson, but then I would surely die from a Haribo 'Tangtastic' binge with a sour apple loop stretched around my wee lad while trying to fashion a autoasphyxiation noose out of jelly snakes.

Was Maoam 'carnal' complaint letter a publicity stunt?

Surely the whole tone of this letter was designed to kick up the kerfuffle it has:

"The other day, while doing our weekly shop, I bought for my two children Benjamin and Ofelia, a packet of Haribo Maoam lemon-and-lime confectionery." Benjamin and Ofelia? eating Moaoms? I doubt it. The letter in full is a great piece of fiction:

"The other day, while doing our weekly shop, I bought for my two children Benjamin and Ofelia, a packet of Haribo Maoam lemon-and-lime confectionery. It was only after I was leaving the checkout that I noticed the appalling illustration on the packaging.

This consists of a lemon and lime locked in what appears to be a carnal encounter. The lime, who I assume to be the gentleman in this coupling, has a particularly lurid and distasteful expression on his face.

I demanded to see the shop manager and during a heated exchange my wife became quite distressed and had to sit down in the car park.

I was told to register my complaint with the manufacturer. I'm glad I spotted this before my young children, who are both very sensitive.

My wife and I have always tried to maintain their innocence -- and to think our years of careful parenting could have been wrecked by, of all things, a sweet wrapper makes me livid.

I received a reply from the company saying that the wrapper design had been introduced in Germany in 2002 with a view to making the fruit figures 'more modern and lively' to 'better appeal to the consumer.' It said 'at no point was it intended to create sexual images.' It had been shown to a number of children and adults of different age groups, none of whom has made any comments referring to sexual content.

I consider this response to be less than satisfactory. As a member of our local church, I'm now urging other members of our flock to boycott Haribo products until this illustration is removed.

SIMON SIMPKINS
Pontefract, West Yorkshire"

Nice touch with the boycott ending, so now everyone is at least going to have a second look at these wee chews. Seems to be designed to provoke a Daily Mail readership.

Also interesting that he is from Pontefract, and parent compant Haribo happend to manufacture the Pontefract cake.

As a commenter on the Brand Republic piece says, someone had pointed this out in 2004 anyway:

Justinland: Fruity Snacks

Oscar Krisp: Stand-up Comedian - Audio Diary - 1 of 2

2009-08-27T15:49:00.001Z

Whereas as I vent my spleen by venting my spleen, the great Marcus Keeley channels his bitterness into the character of -deluded stand-up comedian, Oscar Krisp

Oscar Krisp: Stand-up Comedian - Audio Diary - 2 of 2

2009-08-27T15:47:00.001Z

Oscar Krisp, Stand-up Comedian

Fringe Favorites 2009: Go! Go! Go! It's Caroline Mabey's Go Go Go Coffee Show...

2009-08-26T22:44:00.003Z

I first saw Caroline Mabey at Edinburgh last year as part of The GCSE Revision Show, a great three hander along with Miriam Elia, and Seann Walsh. She also filled in a few of the Up the Arts slots that were on after us last year as her alter ego Helen Heels 'the land lady of the stars' of Sandy Hole guest house. As you can imagine one tires of the endless questions and cheap gags of some generic stand ups in ole Edinburgh so it's a great breath of fresh air to see something like Mabey's Go Go Go Coffee Show. Where some acts grumble about their time slot, Mabey has expertly tailored the show for 1.30pm and her enthusiasm really coheres the audience of various ages with animated clips, games, great jokes and silly hats. Who wants to be the harbour master? She has the sort of nervous energy combiend with great delivery and jokes that excellently teeter on the line between faux innocence and deliberately perverse that of course young Jimmny would enjoy. When some shamble around for 40 minutes mumbling guff and deludely call it a 'show', Mabey's is the real deal an hour you want to see again a few times, and if you are in Edinburgh there isn't much time! (it's not an nuclear attack or anything, it's just the festival will be over, the city will not cease to exist as the London press would have it: 'Edinburgh's nearly over!!!'.

Thankfully she is getting some good notices, a mention in the Guardian Guide, Bruce Dessau's Blog ("Imagine the slightly deranged offspring of a menage a trois between between Vic Reeves, Harry Hill and Floella Benjamin and you are getting there". ) Steve Bennett at Chortle. ("It’s unlikely you’ll find a show that mixes the unhinged and the fun in quite the same way, sending you out into the day with a satisfied smile on your face")

Check out her site here

Fringe Favorites 2009: Kabarett's Kleine Komedie oooo Laaaa dee daaaah!

2009-08-21T00:21:00.007Z

This was in the lovely Voodoo Rooms, which at the right time would create an amazingly fun caberet atmosphere, but even at 6 O' Clock, Kabarett's Kleine Komedie rocked. Part of the great itsy collective it was a welcome break from the stand up and hear some top music emanating from classy, statuesque ladies in the form of the The La De Dahs who do 1940s style harmony covers of the likes of Radiohead's Creep.

Jessica Defino

Is like a funnier, smarter and less smug Sarah Silverman and also does a neat line in one of my favorite funny things: rocking out loads and going mental and then doing something really delicate like placing a chair on its side very carefully and slowly.

Ben Lurman continuing the musical theme there was the great Ben Lurman:

I suspect you may want hear the original?

Fringe Favorites 2009: Dr. Brown in 'Behaves'.

2009-08-20T22:53:00.004Z

Perhaps it was the stand up overload that Edinburgh provides and the fact that even for me seeing my comedy hero Stewart Lee provoked in me maximum respect at his technique but not the constant drain-like guffaws of the majority of the audience, but seeing something different immediately had me on the side of the drain-like. It was on my last mammoth day of show seeing from 10am to about 3am the next day that myself, George Quinn and Pete Maxwell encountered a certain Dr. Brown.

I suppose it's also a love of Tim and Eric too and instill in me the love of well executed awkward pauses and abortive attempts to say something, which Dr. Brown does for a marathon 10-15 minutes or so. Some don't like it, some do. It's a show where you genuinely don't know where it (or you) is going to end up, you could end up half naked applying sun lotion onto Dr. Brown's nipples. The assured acting and the world he creates means audience members just go with it to and extent that would be difficult for other performers. The fact that limply throwing a grape was the worst heckle anyone could muster shows the power of the performance, it must be very reliant on the types of crowd in on a daily basis but I would imagine most people into their comedy would go with it.

It was a tough venue too, The Globe is a sort of 1980s sweaty sports bar that was a reluctant host to the verious freaks and geeks of the fringe as the Nichol Edwards had to shut due to seepage.

There's some youtube clips but it doesn't do justice to actually seeing it:

Tommy Sparks "She's Got Me Dancing"

2009-08-19T21:00:00.001Z

"I don't mean to sound bitter, cold, or cruel, but I am, so that's how it comes out"* Bill Hicks

2009-08-18T23:30:00.007Z

Hello all back from Edinburgh safe and sound. Saw some great acts in Edinburgh but I firstly have to get rid of some bile that's stuck in my comedy hole....so if you'll excuse the following bitterness and (look above for the more positive stuff to come tomorrow).

Some people proudly say they are comedians, I'm like, well I've seen you stand behind the microphone and make some sort of gurgling noise and some people were bemused, but it's not the same as being a comedian.

You get this sort of shit over and over again....

MC: Whooo! give it up for emmm eerrr, don't know his/her name but I'm, emmm, err sure they're great....

this side of the room....

..team a...clap,

that side of the room

team b clap...clap,

[ clap, clap, clap, you fuckers even you don't like it just play along...clap clap clap until your hands hurt....every hour clap clap again....]

MC.... give a big warm welcome to:

[enter another bumbling 'comedian' looking very satisfied by the currently unearned clapping, in lieu of material we all get asked questions until will look like we are about to kill him and then a little half poo nugget of a joke might come your way if you put up with the interrogation, also it's good idea for the comedian to intersperse his own laughter continually, like a bad sitcom it will show the audience where to laugh because they have audacity not to laugh in the 'right' places, or ever]

......where are you from?, where are you from?, where are you from?,where are you from?,where are you from?,where are you from?,where are you from?,where are you from?

WHERE are YOU frooom?

where

are

you

from?

any Scottish people in oooo...

any English people in ahhh

[maybe there might be more English people than Scottish people in and some sort of joke can be made at this point...]

anyone in from a working class area we can perhaps all laugh at ....

[but in an ironic way that so, so ironic in fact its actually just laughing at poorer people]

it's great to be here in what looks like.....Fritzl's house.....ooooo shocking?....oooo....something about Michael Jackson.....ooooo....edgy.....zzzzz

[no, as we've heard it 18 times already]

as you can see...a popular culture character that I think that you'll think I look like...[probably from Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings] has either let himself go or tarted himself up....or something

[probably a few more variations on 'I look like/think I look like but the popular culture reference is supposed enough to get laffs in lieu of actual resemblence, it sometimes doesn't need the popular culture cf 'I look like supply teacher' opening gambit of a well-known comedian]

'hello, it's great to be here in Edinburgh, isn't rainy?

isn't it?

isn't it?isn't it?isn't it?isn't it?isn't it?isn't it?

isn't it?

[if someone mumbles 'yes' at this point, you may get treated to something about a 'chav' stealing an umbrella or something, I don't know, I'm already dying inside]

ooooo I've eaten a fried Mars Bar and am going to die of a heart attack tomorrow....I'm only 47....I'll be the oldest person in Scotland....

[or something along those lines, vis-a-vis the Scottish moratality rate and love of deep fried foods]

have you read the paper today?

have you?

have you?have you?have you?have you?have you?have you?

[you may think a well placed 'no' might work but the bumbling oaf is way ahead of you]

well I've got a copy of today's paper I do! and there was a funny thing in it.....

do you want to see the funny thing?

do you?

do you?do you?do you?do you?do you?do you?

do you want to see funny thing?

etc.

[The comedian will then show you the "funny thing"....it is normally a pun or a photoshoped picture of a public figure as some sort of object or animal, this genre of shite can perhaps be best exemplified by Ricky Gervais showing a picture of himself in the Sun and reading out the sub-heading ipodge.....so the comedian has just pointed and repeated a pun that a Sun subeditor made up and thought was funny....although there doesn't seem to be proof that the Sun subeditor came up with 'ipodge' perhaps it was all the creative invention of Gervais, but it hasn't stopped lots of comedians holding up whatever photoshoped shite that's on the front page in lieu of news to be held up in lieu of humour]

Then into the 'killer' material:

something like..... family background, race (it's alright to slag that race because I'm an eighth that/once met someone from that race), meeting a gay person (imagine that!), what their mothers/fathers/uncles/family members/conviently stupid mate/girlfriend says that was funny, chavs, gingers, australians (whatever group/race/nationality it's alright to appear to take the piss out of this week), stuff they saw in a television show/ad/film, paedos, buttplugs, Fritzl, Michael Jackson, implication that the comedian himself was abused.....only joking ha ha, wasn't that funny had you going, Jimmy Carr intonation, Ricky Gervais intonation, mild religious baiting, vague athestism, treating a mild answer back from the audience as a serious heckle and proceed with the 'your mum' stuff to cover up lack of originality and storm off....the end. forever and ever until Sept......

Anyway, the nadir this year was seeing a drunk comedian [in a paid venue late show] repeating jokes within the same set. Unintentionally funny of course, it does get a laugh in that the audience normally sighs or gasps at the repeated joke, and the comedian reads the gasp as shock and offence at his 'edgy' material about some shite and then audience has to shout: 'you said that already!' and in one instance, the comedian panics and goes straight into his other 'killer' line...the audience response 'and that too! fuck sake'....

Apparently there is still nothing funnier that, wait for it, people of the same sex who have sex or are in a relationship, any encounter with such people real or imagined will be the basis of 3-4, maybe more (god help us) minutes of comedy 'gold' (in the comedian's head) in reality it will be tedious and homophobic, but you know, people will laugh so that's ok...just a joke innit....

*See, these are called "quotation marks", you use them when you are saying something someone else already said, apparently there are still comedians out there that do not think they apply when doing a 'homage' of Bill Hicks, and say something like 'I'm going to hell...and you're all coming with me', or 'I am available for children's parties by the way'....I'm always toying with just shouting out 'Hicks!!' when I hear it, but face to face I'm very nice and supportive, it's only here in the dead of night that the bitterness comes out, gah!

Giggity Giggity Gooood: Belfast-Edinburgh-Dublin. 2009

2009-08-07T10:33:00.010Z

There's nothing like a full satchel of stationary, It's business time!

Here's a list of the gigs I'll be doing if you are in Belfast, Edinburgh or Dublin on these days and what to see all new Jimmny rants!:

Friday August 7th Voicebox at the SafeHouse

With Marcus Keeley

Sunday 9th Sowerby and Luff's all Stars, The White Horse, Canon Gate
9.45pm

Monday 10th Verity Welch's Twisted Sister
11pm

Tuesday 11th Sowerby and Luff's all Stars, The White Horse, Canon Gate
9.45pm

Wednesday 12th Verity Welch's Twisted Sister
11pm

Thursday 13th Sowerby and Luff's all Stars, The White Horse, Canon Gate
9.45pm

Fresh Faces at the Fringe with Elsie Harris and Danny Worthington, will be popping and doing a bit during the first week.

Friends' top acts I'll seeing, more to added:

Paul Ricketts

Caroline Mabey:

Catie Wikins/Hannah George/Lou Sanders:

It's Got Jokes In, 3.35 at Espionage Pravda

Then it's back home for:

Friday 21st August Comedy Dublin at the Ballsbridge Inn

A Day In the Life of a Superstar Poet/Comedian

2009-07-16T11:01:00.001Z

Marcus Keeley just has one of those days where only sleep, wine, Marlboro lights and cat videos will retain/destroy his sanity...

Operation Attic imminent! I'll be up in your crawlspace like Klaus Kinski

2009-07-16T07:29:00.007Z

Check it out, this isn't me obviously above, but the promotional image of a skip the family is renting for a week clear out an the attic. It's good to see what size the skip is, unless he's a midget and he's deliberately employed to make their skips look bigger.

I will also be cleansing the old batcave of anything that isn't a book or a comic. Am implicating a certain sister's boyfriend up the attic with me under a 'what happens in the attic stays in the attic', clause God knows what's up there and I'm going to be squawking like Scooby Doo up there if find any dead mice etc.

We had a plan to get disposble suits and facemasks. More for the craic than anything else, also so I can do Beastie Boy poses. I also find the idea of a disposable suit very futuristic because Alvin Toffler talks about it

in Future Shock

Also the phrase 'I'll be up in your Crawlspace like Klaus Kinski, is of course, a reference to the below 1980s movie, I want to promote as a phrase just don't know whether is more suited as an aggressive 'up in ma grillle' style attack or perhaps a slightly preverse come on line. Who knows, I will probably never say it out loud in either context anyway, perhaps on stage.

Comic Cast First Year Birthday....Twisted Pepper, Friday July 17th

2009-07-12T23:49:00.007Z

See these are the kind of conversations I enjoy in rural

Q: What are you doing at the weekend?

A; Ah, I'm going down to Dublin for a birthday party.

Q: Whose is it?

A: Well it's more of a what

Q: What?

A: It's like a birthday party for a podcast about comics and it's one year old.

Q: Is that one of the Ballinode Podcasts? lovely wee baby it is....

but anyway it's the first year party of Liam Geraghty and Craig O'Connor's great Comic Cast . I remember finally meeting the great Bob Byrne at the Birmingham Comic Show and having the conversation about growing up in Ireland and being a comic fan and all the comic-relating things you have in common even if you haven't met. Like the hot geeky girl that worked in Forbidden Planet etc. So listening to the lads is like an online version of that style of conversation

which goes from hilarious to suprisingly touching in places. Official blurb here:

The Comic Cast is an Irish based show about comic books - from the heroes of DC & Marvel to the anti-heroes of Fantagraphics and Drawn & Quarterly and beyond. Hosted by Craig O'Connor and Liam Geraghty, the show comes out fortnightly alternating between comics news and discussion and

interviews with mainly Irish comic creators, illustrators and animators.

They have also done a great job in connecting the worlds of comics, animation and graphic design in Ireland. Anyway, there first birthday is at the Twisted Pepper on Friday 17th of July

See in my day, comic geeks weren't allowed to hang out with top lady celebrities, but with a geek in the White House....yes we can.

Samatha Mumba rocks, at least I know who she is, had to look up Glenda Gilson as I've been England for 5 years and it takes a while to catch up on nonentities. Looking forward to it.

RIP the ole Indy 500,

2009-07-10T01:49:00.020Z

The Indy 500 and I

So I had this great INOi 500 gig media drive, which dubbed the 'ole Indy 500' due to the trade name's 'o' looking like a 'D' and for it's rugged nature, or so I thought. It looked like something out of an 1980s postapocalyptic movie all metal and black and whirry and it seemed as if you could throw it at a wall and it would still work! Well maybe but not its innards as I found to my cost when one day as I was preparing to watch a movie in bed and it dropped less than a foot while in 'whirring up' mode (sorry for the technical jargon) and now it's dead, well techincally in a coma, it still whirrs but all my 500 gbs of movie and tv magic is all gone. So many happy memories of watching endless episodes of Justice League and Tim and Eric: Awesome Show. Great Job, so many visits to friends places with the wee lad in tow and forcing them for marathon viewings of cult crap.

Stop Press: turns out, I'll not the only comedian with computer death problems, the very funny Catie Wilkins has also had a (computer) death in the family on her fine blog 'Stuff', with the post RIP

NOOOOOooooo!

Good night sweet prince.

What Americans Have Taught us*.....

2009-07-10T01:12:00.009Z

"*Well mostly what they taught me via porn, psychoanalysis and comics..."

Was a (mostly) new powerpoint comedy lecture, (well I couldn't resist reshowing the Spider-man web good stuff) I did at the Safehouse Gallery for Marcus Keeley's Alternative 4th of July festivities. Mention of the night in his post here.

Catherine Hawcroft of Wild Wind Books and author of poetry collectionThe Hour of Doubt read

as did the great Seamus Fox who presented some heartfelt readings by Plath (Lady Lazarus) and Bukowski (Hangover) along with his own work.

Marcus and Northern Ireland comedy sensation and fellow Watchmen fan Ruaidhri Ward

Marcus has some lovely sweetberry wine dangerously close to a projector, livin on the edge!, rock and roll etc.

"It was a good laugh"

Brew Ha Ha at McKenna's Brewery Bar, Monaghan, July 3, 2009

2009-07-09T23:47:00.007Z

So normally, I spend my Monaghan down time wandering around the charity shops which they didn't have when I was wee, and now there's like three and a half. Occasionally, you strike oil, charity shop wise, like this two euro copy of the Batman RIP hardback. My other hobby is wandering by the cinema to see if they have any cool free posters (they never do) and checking out which films are in which screen. Like when Watchmen was in screen 2.

So when wandering around by McKenna's Brewery Pub it turned out they were having a stand up night for the first time ever with Eric Shantz, Rauiri Campbell, and Gary Cross. So I sent a few emails etc and wandered down and fair play to the lads and organiser Seamie, they let me on in the middle and it went really well. Was apprehensive doing my stuff in my home town, but the audience were great and in comparison to my lonely geeky adolescence there were loads of cool geeky people about who liked my Battlestar Galactica (although I didn't go into all the technical details about how the opening sequence depicts 'the act of cunnilingus that destroys humanity and the 'threesome or human holocaust' dillema and etc.) . Was great to see everyone do their stuff and one can see the effect of 10 plus years in Shantz's effortless performace. Even if the audience, overall, were a bit bemused by the whole idea of a comedy show they soon came round and there was many pints afterwards.

Here's me in the loos with a secretive happy face after a good gig. Before someone comes in and wonders why I'm taking pictures of myself in the loos.

Stop Press! the Monaghan Post had a bit on it today. I have a little pic that represents my wee noggin in 3-4 pixels!

Secret Identity: The Fetish Art of Superman's Co-Creator Joe Shuster...

2009-07-08T22:29:00.009Z

"He's chosen the g'day lady!"

I don't normally get books from Urban Outfitters beacause they are a bit 'I need to buy something for the geek in my life but I don't really know anything about what they are into so I'll get something like this, cause, like, it's a little bit rude and cheeky. It's not a bad book available here I got in Nathan Barley-magnet superstore Urban Outfitters in Belfast for 7.99. It's basically a collection of Joe Shuster's fetish art, the essay by Craig Yoe is great. What strikes the reader is how not into fetish work the artist obviously is, compared to the likes of Jimmny fave Eric Stanton. I suppose it a book intended for a 'hey look at this wacky book' at a party style thing, rather than my style of analysis.

I quite like this one because of the wee guy lurking outside the window, He is the husband of the lady and this is a scene of orchestrated nincompoopery (according to my copy of the 1811 Dictionary of the

Vulgar Tongue)

This one's from "Slaves of Gerardo" seems like he's sending a drum style message, or perhaps DJing under his alias MC Allen Jones. More here

Bad Science is great.

Some other Current Reading

Big Laughs at the Big House! 29th June 2009!

2009-07-08T19:51:00.008Z

So after the tv show auditions thing, see below, it was nice to wander around my usual haunts, and I hung around for Big Laughs at the Big House on the Monday night, which was great becuase we all got to rant about the weekend and see organisers George Quinn, Sinead McCullagh and Graeme Watson (who I didn't realise was a co 'survivor' of academia) again.

I decided to wear a black trouser/shirt white tie combo. Which was good but a size too small because I really wanted the tie and Primark didn't have it in a 15.5. I walked from central Belfast to the Pavilion (down Ormeau Road) which inspired new opening line: "Hello there, I am Lorcan McGrane, but according to some kids I encountered on the way here, I've come dressed as WAAAanker".

With the day that was in it, it was also a chance to get all the poor auld Mickey Jay jokes out of our system. Mine was: "It was very sad about that paedophile that died last week, yep his name was ..(insert name of choice, like someone mundane but possibly vaguely well- known, I choose a semi-famous nonfiction author because, you know, he looks like one) ..and he died when he was stabbed in aorta by a shiv in a secure unit in Belmarsh, but he did release any records, so no one gave a fuck!" What about poor auld David Carradine? that's more like I would potentially like at 70, why do you never hear news reports of the sex experiments that went right?

Am also still laughing at Marcus's unrepeatable Lady GaGa joke and Ruari's great stuff on religion, race, and carbonated drinks.

Scott Calonico of Scott and Stacey fame in pensive mood

he read from the hallowed tome of an Automan novelisation, props!

Marcus was introduced as Belfast's grumpiest gay! not true!

54-46 Was My Number, well no it was 160...at Find me (the) Funny

2009-07-07T22:53:00.013Z

3am while listening to Stewart Lee dvds is a bad time to be at this craic!

So it's been a comedy rollercoaster the last few weeks, and by rollercoaster I mostly mean the winding bus to Belfast. And by winding bus, I mean, it's not a bendy one but just flies round loads of country roads towards various shopping centres before it gets to Belfast while I'm normally strapped into the back seat listening to God Speed You Black Emperor * and drinking diet coke and gurgling and I go through Lurgan...they have a pub there called The Batcave! established 1947. I wanted to open a pub called the Batcave, oh well, I'll have to call it The Robocop Arms or something.

Anyway, I digress, so there was this BBC Northern Ireland Show called Find Me the Funny, that I went for. Young Marcus Keeley has documented his before and after reports of the experience but I thought I'd mention it here too. I was up north that weekend anyway to say goodbye to the Badbrute, who is off to Florida for a month, and staying up until like 4am watching Funny Games and Dune was prehaps not the best preparation for the 'audition'. Also 10am on a Sunday is not a very 'comedian' time of day, and few of us realise there is such time as any 'am' on a Sunday.

I thought it would be good to have something short and visual so I a version 2.o of the 'Hello There' book in various sizes.

The main judge was Kurtis Matthew who runs this comedy college in San Francisco seemed like a nice enough guy, but in contrast to Marcus I got a 'no, I don't like it' rather than a 'hey, I like this kid'. He just didn't like the prop and my overall geeky nervousness which is kind of the point, but I saw his too, he wanted more 'attitude' to 'fill a room' and different voices.

"You're into this geeky stuff, Do Batman!"he says, I'm like wha? my brain short-circuited I mean which incarnation of Batman did he mean? Gotham By Gaslight? Do Batman? what am I? some sort of a performing monkey on a regional BBC station reality TV show, oh wait a minute, there's a number on my McG jumper and I've been waiting in a room drinking bottled water and going quietly mad for 8 hours, that's exactly what I am.

I presume he would meant some generic gay Batman/Robin schitk but all I could come up with was my 'Good Evening Comissioner' bit with the silly voice (long story). It was bizarre experience normally when you're at gigs you can wander around and not everyone you talk to will be a comedian, but this was a holding pen of hundred plus comedians all wandering around going through heightened mood cycles from hilarity to bleakness.

The production staff were cool and really friendly and it was great to meeting up with such top Northern Ireland comedy luminaries as Marcus Keeley, Ruaidhrí Ward, Simon McCullagh, Stacey Mead, Scott Calonico , Paddy Mc Gaughey, Matthew Collins, and Gary Croft (who I like, because unlike all the afore mentioned he also got knocked out in the first round). In between the madness there was much trips to the Crown. Have been to Belfast since and it's great to go there and not have to hover around the same building for 8 hours. I got off lightly, however, as all the afore mentioned had to wait around until like 12.30 or so to do many a 'Who's Line is it Anyway' style improv or joke writing tasks and still didn't get through. It will be interesting to see the show though, and they seem to have centred on some totally new people so it will be interesting to see the training aspects.

If I feature at all it will be for some impromtu slapstick, whereupon hearing that I was 'out' I just wandered off and they had to call me back to gather all my stuff which I did in a 'pick up one thing while simultaneously dropping another thing' manner, which is always hilarious (for onlookers).

*Christ, thought there was an official video but there seems to be some sort of youtube subgrenre of people making the most obvious video for this.

From the Vaults: The Temple Bar Review

2009-07-03T04:53:00.007Z

I like this one because I was bemoaning how ridiculous 1980s nostalgia was in the wake of The Wedding Singer and how 1990s nostalgia was just around the corner in 1999.

From the vaults The Trigger..."Thanks but no tanks...comicdom's other violent femmes"

2009-07-03T03:30:00.009Z

This is from the summer of 1995 I think (might be 1996). Via friend Danny Watkins, I got a placement on Sun Zoom Spark in Galashiels and this was their next incarnation, The Trigger, with NME-style inspirations it had some great articles, note the cover interview by Roger Simian with Traci Lords and although covering music mainly there was normally a cultly style two-page spread. In this particular issue I wrote an article on female superheroes, quel surprise.

The curios are Big Bertha from Blast! magazine and Hell's Angel, Motormouth, and Tuck which would perhaps be unfamilar with anyone who didn't read Overkill or the parallel US publishing of Marvel UK's stuff.

From the Vaults: The National Student..June 1995

2009-07-02T23:22:00.003Z

Had this idea a while back to scan in all my old journalism stuff instead of carrying round photocopies all the time. Here is one of the first bits of humour writing I ever did from the June 1995 issue of 'National Student' called the "The illusion of Study".

At the time, I was amazed to be in the same publication as Jarvis Cocker, Stewart Lee, and on the same page as Tank Girl. 90s-tastic...

Twitter twatter of tiny tweety top tips

2009-06-18T00:01:00.006Z

Have been getting into Twitter a wee bit, like a total nowbiter, but am not totally convinced. Some things suit that short of a posting and some don't. My Twitter page is here. There's lot of grainy picture up a the minute of geeky bargains I've had. Strangely I can only tweet my uk mobile but can upload pics from the Irish one hence the useless pics, must find more interesting things to look at, undercrackers perphaps.

It's ironic that there's sites out there that allow people to do longer tweets? why don't they just start a blog? Or go the other way and start a program called 'Punctoplot' where you have to express your day using only punctuation marks or 'Syllibaba' where you can only use a syllable to express the mundanity of your existence...'blah', 'meh', 'argh' etc.

Anyway the main use I've found so far is to send top tips to Viz, it's good trying to get a joke across in such few characters, especially when you are trying to get something esoteric across. I like the tips for very specific groups of people but have an aversion to typing half the tweet in caps so that is curtailed.

It's hard to describe the best 'top tips' it's the one's that make a good observation or pick up on a scientific breakthrough or cult film reference and then debase in a purile way, my favorite one-two in this respect was the one about the human ear on a mouse's back and the suggestion that scientists should transplant a mouse's ear onto a certain part of human anatomy. My all time favorite though is:

'Don't answer the door. It might be burglars.'

Also great are the ongoing jokes of scale, 'half a boiled egg cut in half and the yoke removed makes excellent urinals for hamsters' and the old fun size bar making the eater feel like a giant schtick.

Forwith here are my viz top tip tweets

AGING MALE NOVELISTS: Write a book about an aging male novelist that gets off with a hot young woman, because like, we really need that.

HORROR FILM MAKERS: In lieu of genuine suspense, have a character saying goodbye and immediately getting run over by a bus.

HUMANS FROM TERMINATOR: SALVATION: Radiation sickness from the nuke at the start can be cured by simply ignoring it.

DRINKERS: Stick to drinking alcohol out of only one colour of bottle. When recycling you'll dispose of more bottles quicker.

FRESH PRINCE: You didn't need to stay in Bel Air for six years as those guys from the playground left after two months.

GHD Hair straighteners make ideal "mini-George Foreman" aka Gary Coleman grills for a single sausage or toast soldier.

BARCLAYS: Patronise your clients by assuming their poor lives will be enriched by a cheap plastic pen with "I'm Free!" on it.

BARCLAYS: why not call the bureau de change desk "holiday money" to ensure that your loyal patrons feel thick as well as poor.

GILETTE AD MAN: stop uncontrollably morphing into different people and maybe then you might not need 8 blades on your razor.

PEOPLE: Avoid heartbreaking relationships (and save time and money!) by simply not meeting anyone you like in the first place.

POSEURS:Claim to only like 'World CInema' and 'World Music' without admitting that ALL music and cinema comes from 'The World'

YOUTUBERS: Why not film a badly made spoof of the Mac Vs. PC adverts...that'd be just great.

JOURNALISTS: when writing about health care issues, use the metaphor that maybe the system itself is ill and needs a cure...

HIPSTERS: Give the impression you have the thinnest tie ever by making a tying motion in mid air in front of the mirror.

Twitterers: save up all your tweets for the day and write them in some sort of notebook on a daily basis to form a life story.

Television ghost hunters: why not add the prefix 'aspirant' to your job title until you actually catch some

Realous Zealots: why not be right about everything despite having no imperical proof based in physical reality via faith

ipod headphones make ideal cardio pulmonary resucitation paddles for comatose rotents

Ironically sexist comedians: if you want a joke about smartie tube-legged cats walking like robots check out some old Vizes

Soap box Arts Festival June 6, 2008, and surrounding days of infamy....

2009-06-12T15:46:00.015Z

So superstar poet and comedian Marcus Keeley and I took a rock and roll road trip to Norwich to perform at the Soap Box Arts Festival at the Norwich Arts Centre. He to perform numerous poems and smear venietta into his face and me to present my Sex and Superhero Version 2.0: Now with added embarrassing pictures.

Soapbox Youtube Channel some of my stuff should be up there soon.

We stayed for a bit in the Fawlty Towers-esque Landsdowne Hotel. As I had the laptop and media drive with me, first things first was to check the night-time film suitability of the television. I managed this via an Alan Partridge-style 'mirror trick' of putting the television on it's side which made in squawk and turn everything a frightening grey.

On Friday we went Tim Clare's book launch for his book 'We Can't All Be Astronauts', which can be bought here. Tim also had a bit in the Independent about getting published.

This isn't Tim Clare, it other Norwich literary luminary Nathan Hamilton. We all went to the Birdcage and Havana, well I went to Havanas others had more sense.

Amy Nicholson

Jim Thompson and Slightly Offensive Steve

Marcus and organisers Amy Wragg and Jim 'The Legend' Thompson

Arts Centre Dressing Room

Sex and Superheroes Lecture.

Batman and his wee ballbag

Judge Dredd: The Early 1990s Cardboard N' Guinness Years

Sean the Spudtrooper

Killmanjambo

Organiser Stewart Harrington rips it up

On the way home, my regular train-ride/Viz combo no Drunken Bakers this issue, however.

you too tired? too tired to write a blog? then link to someone else's you dufus! for your blog!

2009-06-12T02:35:00.010Z

Susie Showers

some mook

ephemera

Hello there. Recently back from the Soapbox Arts Festival extravaganza. Young forlorn Marcus Keeley has done a wee post here. As blog titles suggest there was a lot of saying 'road trip' and 'for your health' and continued calibration of Kinky John Fower and Christopher WALKen impressions.

Nerdgasm

2009-06-12T00:40:00.012Z

These pics are from a while back, but I love 'em. They are by fellow Irish comedy superstar Marcus Keeley and document a lovely post gig visit to Forbidden Planet in Belfast where myself and Gerard McKeown checked out the 'Goth Section'.

There is nothing that makes an aging geek happier than a large, soft core erotica photograph book.

Sure aren't we all 'broke but fixable'

I haven't bought this yet, on my last visit I spent 4.99 on this gem, but I went to visit the above and it seemed to have it's wanking/arrow pulling hand broken off. Thought 'Broke but Fixable' would be a good/wanky name for a comedy stand up show.

Let me get some action from the goth section!!

"ooooooh...Eeenid"

sure, aren't we all livin' in a Ghost World

"wow, that's lovely...I can't afford it though"

For prosterity my first major headling gig! at the Pavilion Bar

NPH is LOL on SNL

2009-05-01T08:57:00.008Z

I don't think Patrick Kavanagh was writing about Saturday Night Live when wrote, 'through a chink too wide comes no wonder'* but in Ireland and the UK I think we are actually well served by not seeing full episodes of SNL. From the earliest days SNL for me meant just 'best of' clip shows of the Dan Ackryod/Chevy Chase stuff which would be shown on late-night Channel 4, (along with The Maniacs: Four on the Floor') back when late-night Channel 4 was insteresting. This trend continued with the Will Ferrell and Chris Rock best of DVDs which Monaghan Library has and have been a great source of solace.

Of full episodes, which were periodically shown at like 4am on ITV4 or something, I've only recently seen the Zach Braff and Dane Cook ones, which were pretty awful. In the Braff one about three of the sketchs just trailed off with no punchline and title comes up with 'The End' so we know the sketch is finishing in lieu of laffs. It's telling that in the episode of supposed comedian Dane Cook, he only appears in one sketch.

The current line up is alright but there is a too-many-cooks dearth of handsome leading men type jocks like 8 or 9 of them all filling time until some awful movie vehicle. Since Chris Farley they need a token fat guy and since Rock and Eddie Murphy they need a token black guy...step forward your man from Kenen and Kel, Kenen Thompson, they must of been so pleased to find him, yet they don't even let him play Obama, but they also have a backup fat guy/Jonah Hill look-alike Bobby Moynihan.

The highlight so far has been the great Neil Patrick Harris, who since the Harold and Kumar cameos and of course Dr. Horrible has transmuted into a whipsmart comedy collossus. 'Two First Names' is a classic sketch. It would be nice to show some clips but of course they've taken them down off YouTube so we'll have to settle for SNL approved digital shorts.

Of course 'excusi excusi!' the current star is Fred Armisen is still excellent, if they put up clips, I could show you the wonderful Scarlett Johansen 'Moirble Columns' sketch but know.

In the meantime, there's Andy Samberg and the great This Lonely Island crowd.

*My second favorite potentially sexually misconstruable phrases in Irish poetry after W. B. Yeats' 'fumble in the greasy till'

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

2009-04-23T21:33:00.011Z

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

Well Hello There....

2009-04-22T21:09:00.011Z

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....

Comedy 365 Showcase

2009-03-02T19:40:00.001Z

The Madness of Harlan Ellison

2008-11-18T18:01:00.005Z

Was researching today's lecture on online identities and got caught up in watching clips of Harlan Ellison which are always fun and get the creative juices flowing. Wiki entry here

The Documentary on Ellison Dreams with Sharp Teeth .

On writing (and getting paid!)

Writers strike.

Talking to Robin Williams on L. Ron Hubbard

NEW Watchmen (2009) Trailer 2

2008-11-17T20:11:00.001Z

in the words of trixie...hubba hubba

Newcastle.

2008-11-10T01:19:00.007Z

Was away for a week for mam's birthday, where we went to the lovely Newcastle in Northern Ireland:

where the mountains of mourne sweep down to the sea etc....

Funland, it's a whole lot of fun where prizes will be (not) won...

We were in the Slieve Donard hotel a pretty famous place, they've named a bar there after Charlie Chaplin but this artifact that explains that he was only in Northern Ireland to search for the family of his 15 year old lover, as you do, so this is like some sort of historical child sex offenders register. There's also loads of stuff there about Percy French when will we get a Percy Sledge bar?

a lovely pint of Bass at about 3am, the trademark all makes sense now, as Bass one of the first trademarks this is research work and fun...

here we all are, happy birthday mam!

The DC Vault

2008-11-10T00:35:00.005Z

Another highlight of going home was getting to the Belfast Forbidden Planet which is a 'forbidden planet international' store so it meant that I could finally spend a 20 pound voucher my wee sister Katie gave me ages ago, and what better thing to spend it on than Martin Pasko and Paul Levitz's The DC Vault for only 23.99, the Marvel vault still costs about 30 quid!. Good review of it here.

If you like action then maybe you'll like 'double action'!

Like most aging comic fans, nothing is better than getting a big deluxe hardback style doohicky like this to enjoy

The Christine Jorgensen Story 1970 Trash Movie Trailer

2008-10-23T19:14:00.001Z

Pull the Strings!!!Glen or Glenda?

2008-10-23T18:39:00.003Z

Ah no blogs today my time has gone away...have been sorting out teaching most days with the odd great gig in between, but while researching for my gender identity unit found some great google videos including:

Glen or Glenda? (1953)

The Lavender Lens (1995)

The Blue Angel(1930)

Man from Deep River/Deep River Savages - alternate trailer

2008-10-13T03:31:00.001Z

got this from Poundland, love the Planet of the Apes style...I'm a human being not a fish man style stuff...'murderers!...murderers!...'

Free Enterprise trailer

2008-10-13T01:57:00.001Z

Fresh Tim and Eric Madness,

2008-10-12T16:10:00.008Z

Was trying to put the new Ben Folds video "You Don't Know Me" (Feat Regina Spektor) by Tim and Eric (because if represents two of my favorite things colliding) up here but it got taken off the auld youtube for some reason, but it's up on Tim and Eric's Website and can be seen here.

Badbrute also alerted to me to the madness of Tim and Eric's Dancefloor Dale video from Warp: with the missive: We've hosted the video here as it keeps getting banned elsewhere due to some explicit scenes (Allegedly). Warp and Eric Wareheim (Tim and Eric) would like to urge you that it's probably not safe for work-depending on where you work of course. Oh and there are flashing lights.

See it here.

Tim and Eric also had a live show here
AVClub Interview with some of the greatest Tim and Eric clips. Tim also does a bizarre anti-stand-up act called Theidecker. Eric's youtube channel. and The Guardian did a article on them recently with quotes from Graham Linehan and Dr. Buckles. Speaking of Adam and Joe, get to the cinema early and you get a minute version of their BBC6 radio show as part of the BBC ad, thank god it's not Chris Moyles anymore!

Kevin Spacey's Christopher Walken impression

2008-10-10T18:21:00.001Z

Soap box gigs

2008-10-07T09:17:00.003Z

Just a quick one, in the middle of starting a new unit I designed on gender identity and transgenderism which I'm looking forward to, we'll see if the students will. Have a nice gig tonight at St. Gregory's Centre for the Arts, where I'm described as: Lorcan McGrane: A deliciously deviant wordsmith who has been grafting a name for himself around Norwich, known for tackiling the most inappropriate of subject matter with side-splitting results.

Also on the poster for the all day Soapbox on October 18th! see above.

Graphic Design and font madness

2008-10-04T01:01:00.009Z

Started teaching in a rural art college last week, taught there last term, it's a bit nuts, up at 5-6am 40 minute walk to train station, 45 minutes on the train and then 20 min walk to the college. Last year it's where I came up with must of the stand-up in my head walking to work with Lambchop on the ole ipod. It's weird being back, both staff and students seem suprised that I am back for another term, and it's earned me a certain amount of vague kudos among them. Being back for a second year means I'm more confident in trusting my own judgment in what to teach. Not being a graphic design practicioner (although did once get 85 in a graphic design module) I kind of feel out of place but I try to get the students enthusiastic about people like Chip Kidd and stuff like the Helvetica doucmentary. It's good as well to get to show some of my favorite designs and posters etc., like this one for The Birds

this baby of course, can't find examples on google right now but this two tone fecker and its clones was all over the shop a few years ago.

What's funny for me in all the Graphic Design books they don't go into the classic book covers, my that I mean the classic book covers, forwith:

and this:

Desktop Image clean out

2008-09-29T06:02:00.016Z

I like taking pictures of my bookshelves when they are all sorted out and tidy and stuff, before they are all covered in crap, this is one such instance...

Longer posts probably tonight (note: actually thinking about it, I've been watching bbc4 shows on iplayer so probably not), but for now have to clean out the ole desktop to make way for loads of teaching stuff, teaching about 4 different modules this term so it's pretty manic with that and bar work (thanks to that lovely phrase 'month in arrears' can I teach everything a month late then?) and comedy. Couldn't part with some of this pics so I'm putting them up here.

A wee pic I did for Owen Bryant from the Rose, as a tribute to his hedonistic lifestyle, this is 'Fear and Loathing In Norwich'.

My favorite picture of all time ever...I mentioned this pic as some sort of proof I made some one laugh once, but in retrospect someone else could have made my wee sis laugh

Reasons I love this ph0t0: 1) me and caitrin 2) a stack of comics 3) some diet coke 4) lovely view of home.

An article I wrote once that is bit like this one...although

mine was about ten years earlier damn it...

My favorite bono slag, not as good as this obviously. From my attempt to do a competition entries here here and here

One my first stand up pics

An old Hansai comic I own, my only ever purchase from a Christian bookshop recently mentioned in this book.

I am a ball bag

Cartoon I did for a Dublin magazine called SixMag..I thought it was funny. Editor Gary Byrnes once said I was like a new Flann O'Brien, a compliment I will take tot he grave...

My Aplple Mac style cartoons, again I didn't persue this avenue like a fucking idiot. Who would have thought that the Internet would explode with this sort of guff.

Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid - Theatrical Trailer

2008-09-29T00:38:00.001Z

THE STING trailer

2008-09-29T00:28:00.001Z

SLAPSHOT ORIGINAL MOVIE TRAILER

2008-09-29T00:20:00.001Z

Cool Hand Luke (1967) Trailer

2008-09-29T00:13:00.001Z

Cool Hand Luke - Car Wash

2008-09-29T00:07:00.001Z

Peter Parker writes the news!

2008-09-28T04:44:00.002Z

More scoops here

Via Something Awful

Upcoming Stand Up Dates...

2008-09-22T22:43:00.006Z

The patented LorcMask(TM) drawn by Jos Norrish from an original design by Bob Moran, modelled by Johh Kearns...amaze your friends at parties and perturb ladies with the LorcMask (TM) while stocks last....

Some dates for your diary, if you have one, of my upcoming stand up dates in Norwich, would be great to see you there to listen to my demented rantings:

Monday 29th September - Laugh out Loud/The Rose Tavern, 88 Rupert St, Norwich, Norfolk, NR2 2AT 8pm (2.50)

Tuesday 30th September -Soap Box/St. Gregory's Art Centre 7-11pm

Tuesday 7th October- Soap Box/St. Gregory's Art Centre 7-11pm

Thursday 9th October - Laugh out Loud/Queen Charlotte, 286 Dereham Road, Norwich, NR2 3UU 8pm (2.50)

Friday 17th October- Laugh out Loud/Ambar at the Odeon, Odeon Norwich Riverside Leisure Park Wherry Road Norwich NR1 1XA 9.00 (2.50)

Monday 27th October - Laugh out Loud/The Rose Tavern

Wednesday 5th November- Stone/Paper/Scissors Caberet at The Bridcage

Friday 7th November- Laugh out Loud/Ambar at the Odeon, Riverside

Thursday 13th November - Laugh out Loud/The Queen Charlotte

Thursday 20th November- Salt Box at the Ribs of Beef

Monday 24th November - Laugh out Loud/The Rose Tavern

Friday 5th December-Laugh out Loud/Ambar at the Odeon, Riverside

Links
Laugh Out Loud
Soapbox
Saltbox
Scissors/Paper/Stone Cabaret
Birdcage Revue

The Rose Tavern
The Queen Charlotte
Ambar
The Birdcage

Dee Lite - Groove Is In The Heart

2008-09-22T07:17:00.001Z

how do you say?...

Wow! Alan Moore can't wait for the Watchman flick...

2008-09-21T08:14:00.009Z

Wow!

Hey everyone! Libby here, your pal from Excitable Tedium PR!!with some news HOT news straight off the Hollywood press:

I recently caught up with wacky funny book man Alan Moore in his Hollywood home. He says he can't wait for top visionary director Zach Snyder's new action blockbuster Watchmen. 'Ah me and Zach, or the Zacster or Zac-man as I call him', grins Moore, 'are having a blast, he really has nailed it and we get on so well, he made me a cool jacket with the Watchmen logo on the back and he has one as well, and we go jet-sking together and all the ladies in bikinis at the beach see us in our cool jackets, it's awesome!'

Wacky funny man Alan Moore relaxes in California yesterday.

Moore loves all his movie adaptations and thinks that if he wasn't a funny book writer he'd definitely want to be an action film maker: 'I remember visiting the set of LXG: League of Extraordinary Gentlemen that was sooo cool I got to meet James Bond (Sean Connery) we had a great time he asked me where I got all my crazy ideas from and we had a whiskey'. The hairy funny man Moore is always open to the imput of great directors like Stephen Norrington (who made the unforgettable Death Machine with Brad Dourif and the masterpiece Blade):

'What's great about my work is it can be tampered with easily by Hollywood, especially with LXG you can add characters all over the place I never thought of adding Tom Sawyer into the mix, but it was a real blast 'cause he had a cool car and a big gun, which was extreme!' Moore's keeping stum on LXG2, It's tough because things like 2Fast2Furious came out so we don't know what to call it, it could be League of Xtreme Xtraordianry Gentlemen and Ladies or LXXGL for short, we're talking to Vin Diesel to play either James Dean or JFK (or cloned mixture of both!) cause it's set in like the 1950s or 60s or something oh and Thomas Jane has just signed up to play Oscar "The Wildman" Wilde...'

Well things seem to be going well for the humble writer from Britland who now has Hollywood in the palm of his hand, what's next! an LXG/From Hell crossover with Jason Statham as the Elephant Man? time will only tell... In the meantime we have Watchmen to look forward too, with a truckload of wacky characters including:

Doc Manhatthan (Vin Diesel): a big blue guy, his perscription, blowing stuff uuuup!!!
The Comedian (Chris Katten): he'll kill ya with his punchlines!!
Rorscach (Ryan Reynolds): He's gotta wonky face and a wonky mind!
Silk Spectre (Carmen Electra) : She's one sexy superlady!!
Ozymandias (the guy who played McLovin'): A rich geek with a funny cat!!

Wait a minute...it's not like that at all, this just in from reality:

Alan Moore on 'Watchman movie': 'I will be spitting venom all over it'

For the record, Alan Moore has not softened his view on Hollywood nor its plan to bring his classic graphic novel "Watchmen" to the screen next March. "I find film in its modern form to be quite bullying," Moore told me during an hour-long phone call from his home in England. "It spoon-feeds us, which has the effect of watering down our collective cultural imagination. It is as if we are freshly hatched birds looking up with our mouths open waiting for Hollywood to feed us more regurgitated worms. The 'Watchmen' film sounds like more regurgitated worms. I for one am sick of worms. Can't we get something else? Perhaps some takeout? Even Chinese worms would be a nice change." via Hero Complex

I'm warming to the trailer a bit but the music still reminds be of the NHS std 'give me what you got' advert, which I tried to find on youtube but couldn't it makes getting an std look really cool though, more accurately it an anti-std ad but in my mind it's always an std ad.