Monday, April 07, 2008
Planet of the Apes (Franklin J. Schaffner, 1968)
bye yon Heston, bonkers as hell, but made sci-fi his own in the 1970s...making a lot of damn dirty geeks very happy
Wednesday, April 02, 2008
Upcoming Stand Up Dates...
April 2nd, Cabaret at the Birdcage, 8.30 £1:
Weds 2nd April 9pm £1 Founders Scissors Paper Stone host a candlit evening of mischeif and melody.Music: Dick York, Tom ParkesComedy: Lorcan McGranePLUS Competition time
April 4th, Laugh Out Loud at Ambar at the Odeon, 9.00, £2.50
Will be MCing for the first time, looking forward to this will be a really great night
April 10th, Smoking Mic, York Tavern, Norwich 8:30, £5
April 17th, Saltbox at the Horse and Drey £5.00
April 18th, Smoking Mic, Swan, Loddon 8:30 £5
April 19th Smoking Mic, Fisher Theatre, Bungay Special Improv Night 7.30, £6.50
April 21st, Laugh Out Loud at The Rose, 8.30 £2.50
April 24th, Smoking Mic, Kings Head, Dereham 8:30 £5
April 30th Comedy Cafe, my London debut!!
May 2nd, Smoking Mic, London Tavern, Attleborough 8:30 £5
May 4th Laugh Out Loud at the UEA drama studio, special Fundraiser for out Edinburgh gig!, 8.00, £4
May 9th, Smoking Mic, White Horse, Trowse 8:30 £5
May 15th Laugh Out Loud at the Queen Charlotte, 8.30, £2.50
May 16th, Smoking Mic, Silver Fox Taverham 8:30 £5
May 22, Downstairs at the King's Head, Crouch End, Open Mic night
May 31st, Smoking Mic, Queens Head, Wymondham 8:30 £5
June 2nd, Laugh Out Loud, The Rose, Norwich 8.00 £2.50
There will be tears!, a LOL farewell gig in a way before our Edinburgh show.
June 4th, Smoking Mic, Fisher Theatre, Bungay 8:30 £5
Tuesday, April 01, 2008
The Life and Times of a Stand Up Comedian
Apologies to all Irish people ever, I was away from home, they made me do it etc...
wha?
Tom Moran and Myself
A St. Patrick's Nun....
Or 'I hope that fucking Irish cunt doesn't come back on' as some lovely man said in Swaffham.
‘In terms of labor relations, the basic problem with living your life is that it’s on-the-job training and by the time you get some skill at it, you are permanently laid off’ Harlan Ellison
Do stand up comics sleep every day until 4pm and stay up until about 5am every night because they are stand up comedians or do they become stand up comedians because this is what they do anyway. Near the start of my act I normally start like this:
Hello there, thank you, it’s great to be here, I’m a lonely comic book geek, so it’s just nice for me to be out of my room
Where myself and an executive committee of action figure make very many important
Decisions like telling google not to filter my image search results
If I type in ebony I don’t want to buy a coffee table
In Dereham one women when ‘what’s Google’
And there’s some other bits, can’t repeat here, but I worked it into the act and go, 'I can only assume Dereham's top mathematian and for her Googol is synonmous with the number that's a 1 with a 100 zeroes after it'
But I have started adding in : ‘I know I’m a stand up comedian now, I smoke too much, wank too much, drink too much and sleep every day until 4pm….mind you I did all these things before hand but now it’s called research’
It’s been bit insane since I got back from Krakow I have been either teaching or gigging or working in the bar/kitchen. It’s been surreal and great and horrible in equal amounts it’s strange the thrill of the gigs go well and back to the same lonely room with about 2-3 of elation to deal with. Most of the easter time has been spent watching Firefly, which I first discovered one Christmas and now feel the urge to watch it at Christmas and Easter, it’s all too short when you watch it in 1-2 major crazy sessions.
So my internet went down because I couldn’t pay it, no internet?! It’s like having no right hand, come to think of it actually, It’s like the opposite of that. Will sort it out and be online and active soon. It’s hard to do proper long personal posts these days. These days I’m teaching at the art college doing kitchen bar work and doing stand up on average about 2-3 times a week, sometimes more. The first Smoking Mic tour is technically over but we’re starting a new one on April 10, see the press pics above, not really it's from St. Patrick's day, and tour dates along with all my upcoming dates above.
What the hell has happened to late Night TV
Even with freeview, there’s not much on past the 4am mark, always a turning point for me round about 4-5am whenever puppets start turning up, it’s bad news when it all goes from comedy to education when all that’s left if BBC news 24 which does have some comedy like when archbishops and popes and the like start talking about embryos and stem cell research, when they are wearing glasses and…ahem appearing on television, no science involved there of course. Surely an ex-member of the Nazi youth would be down with lots of experiments involving embryos. Where's the balance? I want a molecular biologist on with his/her opinion on the colour of Jesus's pants.
Other than that there’s Floyd on the Fjords and Taste, the two guilty pleasures of latenight TV. Had a discussion with Rich at work my co-chef and unfortunate listening post to most of insane rants during shifts, I like staying up until 5am and he likes cooking so he did see these shows, but I think he sees them at normal hours not on the 5am repeats. I saw Floyd cooking some goose monstrosity and what looked like a bathtub boiling with lots of pale meats and sausages, that all looked like the ‘baby’ at the end of Alien: Resurrection.
Although Taste has a hot presenter her borderline racism is quite funny, whenever a food expert from an ethnic minority comes on she’s like a lunatic, ‘now this daal isn’t too hot is it?’ etc., as if to assure all concerned that whatever dogs these experts are cooking will be alright for a usual Sky Three audience.
Ah I miss Troma’s Edge TV and the Trip, not to mention Vids and Bits. With No Internet my film watching has gone back to pre-information super-procrastination highway levels. Easter was only made bearable by watching Firefly and Serenity a bit too much and these flicks:
Bug
Like great, old Twilight Zone episodes, 1970s horror, like Bug, which this isn’t a remake of but thought it was before I found out more about it, even things like the David Warner movie Nightwing, that crappy low budget end of horror set in remote motels in the American south or even elements of Psycho along with Phillip K. Dick-like paranoia. Ashley Judd is a revelation and Michael Shannon is a twitchy genius.
Stardust
Alright apart from that unicorn shot that Matthew Vaughan is suitably sheepish about as it's almost identical to Bladerunner's, which Jane Goldman is oblivious to, had to go back to the commentary on that particular bit because I wanted to see what he said, he said as a filmmaker he was embarrassed about it. Bob's a highlight but all I could think about was fucking unicorns and the idiots that like them so it kind of cancelled itself out.
American Gangster
Good but they were a little too anxious to have Crowe and Washington as buddies, Chiwetel Ejiofer as always was great. Was left feeling though that someone who becomes a gangster kingpin couldn’t have been so cuddly surely he did some horrible shit that we’ll never find out about, and as soon as it started I knew ‘Across 110th Street’ would appear on the the sound track and of course it does.
In a Lonely Place
Great always good to take a classical Hollywood breather in amongst contemporary stuff, Bogart and Gloria Grahame are amazing in this and it’s underrated masterpiece.
Aliens
Much as I love the Alien box set the Aliens disc has an awful habit of always going straight into the James Cameron commentry, if I hear the words ‘hey Jim Cameron here, the version of Aliens you are about to see if my favorite’, madness will ensue.
Oh and Grindhouse, I did stay true to my previous rant and did not see Grindhouse until I saw the whole thing properly, and caught the double bill at a late show at the Odeon, where we’re doing a comedy night this Friday. I did like it, Planet Terror more than Death Proof, but the Vanishing Point references and the appearance of the great Zoe Bell made it so worth it. As a crap movie geek, I may have mentioned it, the injokes in Grindhouse are amazing, just to see Michael Biehn and Jeff Fahy (the terrible twins of straight to video crap of the 1980s on one screen as brothers was amazing) As always with anything from Tarantino since Jackie Brown, if you’re a 14-year-old boy, you will probably think this is the best film ever, and definitely one for those that like arses.
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
bye Arthur C. Clarke...
The Sentinel, the short story that 2001 was based on was one of the first proper science fiction stories I read, and Arthur C. Clarke was one of the best creators of believable science fiction worlds. I always loved his three laws, especially the third one:
1. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
2. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
3. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
I also love: "The truth, as always, will be far stranger."
Although for laugh out loud hialarity you can't beat his diary while working with Kubrick:
May 31. One hilarious idea we won't use. Seventeen alien, featureless black pyramids riding in open cars down Fifth Avenue, surrounded by Irish cops.
July 9. Spent much of afternoon teaching Stanley how to use the slide rule -- he's fascinated.
July 11. Joined Stanley to discuss plot development, but spent almost all the time arguing about Cantor's Theory of Transfinite Groups. Stanley tries to refute the "part equals the whole" paradox by arguing that a perfect square is not necessarily identical with the integer of the same value. I decide that he is a latent mathematical genius.
July 12. Now have everything -- except the plot.
October 17. Stanley has invented the wild idea of slightly fag robots who create a Victonan environment to put our heroes at their ease.
December l0. Stanley calls after screening H. G. Wells' Things to Come, and says he'll never see another movie I recommend.
Thursday, March 13, 2008
The John Kerwin Show - Elliott Gould interview
just caught the end of Who? on TV Eliot Gould since seeing The Long Goodbye at college, good interview, once heard he got some sort of mental health problem rap in the 1970s I thought jeez you might as well hand out speeding tickets at la mans
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Yer Having a Laf Final, tomorrow at the Golden Star 9pm
Howdy just a note to say that I'll be performing the final of the Outline/Golden Star's Yer Having a Laf Final tomorrow at 9pm some details below, the monthly heats were good craic.
Here's soemthing that always makes me laugh a screen grab I did from Dominion: Prequel to The Exorcist, where the priest comes across a subterrean chapel....that looks a bit like a bosum...hehe sorry, it was in my pics file for years and never got to use it...
Friday, March 07, 2008
Youtube Hecklefest II
A while back, before I had been doing stand up long I just used to type in 'heckle' onto YouTube just to see when, how and where other comics got heckled, like a sort of an inoculation for being heckled just to see where people went wrong and did a post on it here. I still do it now before every gig when I feel like I'm going to puke, like a sorta ritual. When I looked up wikipedia for the same term I got this quote for getting rid of hecklers...supposedly, from Dane Cook
Comedian Dane Cook was heckled on his album "Retaliation", in the middle of a joke about Burger King, where the heckler yelled, "Make it happen, man! Make it happen!" Dane replied, "Shut up! You're ruining the show for everyone around you. Don't do that." The heckler kept going, and Dane replied, "Shut the fuck up, or I'll have you kicked out of here!"
What wacky comedy fun folks...here's some more
I haven't been heckled so far, but I feel, looking at these clips, heckling normally happens when someone is extremely arrogant and they cannot conceive that someone might think they were shite, it's like in their bizarre brain parallel dimension, no could ever conceive of them not being funny, while everyone in the world is going 'please! for the love of god stop now!' I have some examples:
Ian Paisley Heckles the Pope.....I know it's not stand up comedy per se, but it is comedy, he told them he was going heckle! and he had loads of posters in his pocket...and then he claimed they attacked him, ah poor auld popey, and you've left us with the that nazi guy from toy story....
You Insufferable Arsehole...I couldn't resist (thank you very much ) the best heckle ever, but you have to understand ...who Pat Kenny is, learn from here and here and here and here....and here...
Craig McLachlan's stand up, phew....this is tough to watch, first up he's trying to stand up to a football tv show crowd before ever doing it before with jokes that are all based on his previous neighbours success, but god, this is funny for all the wrong reasons....
Biceps: we have to include this mook, he cannot believe his homophobic views might get challenged by an audience member and his arms are meant to be some sort of hilarious comeback...and lest we forget very close to Richard Pryor's getting beaten up by the folks bits....'look at my biceps you think i can't meet a girl...' yeah you could meet a girl but she may want to kill you...meet doesn't really have the same meaning you think it does.
Lest see the heckler beater's shall we
You can't beat Mitch Hedberg
or Arg Barker
Meskie! Polish tobacco review....
*shudder*
First up, it's Casablanca, tips for visitors to Poland 1. don't buy tobacco based on liking the film, obviously the creator of these badboys doesn't remember what Humphrey Bogart died of and 2. don't buy them because the are 7.40 złoty which is about 2 pounds. They taste like bark that is on fire and are now hidden away in a shelf for dire emergencies, or whenever I want to look at the packet.
ahh eck!....
oh dear, that's about as much as I can handle
In conclusion Rockets and Domingo were joint winners, but they were all pretty horrible....
bye....
Monday, March 03, 2008
Jon Brittain - Chortle Student Comedy Awards 2008
Laugh out Loud stalwart and my cohort in the current Norfolk comedy tour trenches Jon Brittain wows them at the Sheffield heat of the Chortle student comedy comedpetition
Sunday, March 02, 2008
comedy bio
honking on a smoke pipe in Krakow, more pics and laffs to follow:
Had to write a comedy bio for the current tour, don't know if this will do, any suggestions welcome, does this cover it?
Lorcan McGrane is an Irish comedian based in the UK. He came from the rural Irish village of Rockcorry, Co. Monaghan to Norwich to write a PhD called “Superheroic Bodies: the Corporealities of Contemporary Film Superheroes”, along the way he has worked as a barman, kitchen porter and chef. Stand up allowed him to combine the geeky knowledge of academia and the humour of bar and kitchen work. Tales of his trials, tribulations and unhealthy obsessions with fictional Amazonian superhero ladies can be found at The Life and Times of Jimmny Homunculus (jhomunculus.blogspot.com). Beginning stand up in 2006, he has foisted his perversions and peccadilloes on an unsuspecting public with surprising success. Lorcan’s stand up is a mixture of bizarre stories of his times in rural Ireland, Belfast, Dublin and Norwich and his ongoing obsessions with sci-fi, relationships, porn and comics and the surprising connections between them all. He is usually to be found pottering around second-hand bookshops, comic shops, charity shops and dodgy bookshops (or would do if Norwich had any decent ones). He has been hailed as a chronic masturbator, but he is actually really good at it. Lorcan has performed in most of the clubs in the burgeoning Norfolk comedy scene, including Laugh out Loud, Earlham’s Dirty Little Secret, The Salt Box Comedy Club, Smoking Mic Comedy Club and the Outline/Yer Having a Laff competition, (in which he was a 2007 finalist, forthcoming final: March 13, 2008). He has also performed at the famous Battle of the Axe night at the Ha Penny Bridge Inn, Dublin.
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
The Embargo Can be Lifted....
hahhahahh hheeee etc...
We're ready for our close up Mr. Welles.....
Like there ever was an embargo, I just want to feel like I'm a media network or some shit. Anyway, stop the presses! we're taking our stand up show to Edinburgh. Tom Moran, Jon Brittain, John Kearns and Myself will be performing our show, "Don't Rub Your Funny on Me" at the Standing Order (It's a Wetherspoons) in Edinburgh as part of Free at the Fringe. We're on every night 9-10 from July 31-August 31 with more slots besides, we all can't wait. It' won't make us famous or anything but it'll be seriously fun, so if you happen to be in Edinburgh you can hear our comedy rants for free and at a reasonably priced Wetherspoons!! So if you you want to see us in Edinburgh come up, and it'll be in a room in a Wetherspoons for free with cheap booze and expensive gags, well some of 'em are cheap.
names wise I typed up some ideas, some good, some not so...
Straight outta Norwich
Live from the means streets of Norwich
Alright boi
John, Jon, Tom and Lorc
Don’t Rub Your Funny on Me
The First Kings of Norwich
Laff Nelsons
Pun’s Labyrinth
Punshine
Norwich Parcan (John Kearns's came up with this, I had to look up parcan, it was a clever pisstake of Cambridge Footlights)
Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (I liked the idea of it just being the name of a crap movie rather than a pun on a movie, also a kinda injoke with me and Tom on his 'love' of Doug Jones)
Funtastic Four: Rise of the Morning Duvet (Tom's)
Is that supposed to be funny
Funny, Peculiar.
Desperately Seeking the Ride
Foursomes and Moresomes
Inbred Space
The Pun Ultimatum
No Country for Old Jokes
Flyer Idea either, a photoshop job or us in cowboy hats and sheriff’s outfits with the requisite hairstyles (I left this in my list of titles it was deamed quite unweildly for a flyer title)
Their Will Be Jokes
East Anglian Promises
But the whole doing film puns on films that are out now but might not be current this July might've been a problem. Just after a great night at Laugh out Loud, at the Rose, it's the first place I ever did stand up and always the best, the audience is really friendly and you get to try new things, and then you find out what's good, whereas the more the frightening places you feel like just going for the tired and tested stuff. Today I read my favorite bits from Brenda Love's Encyclopdia of Bizarre Sex Practices here's her blog I'd recommend to anyone just for the great illustrations.
Such tales from the Norfolk tour, in Swaffham there was about eight people in the audience and they dwindled to four when there was a fight outside the pub, there was some idiot sitting on s tool shouting shit the whole show, in the interval he was telling racist jokes. For the second half me and Jon came out to join audience and he just goes "I hope that fucking Irish cunt isn't coming back out", must but that up on the blog as a review. I was round the corner going 'yeah that irish bollix, coming over here and stealing our broadband! that fucking Irish cunt', really loudly in cunting Irish accent, ah well, he's still in Swaffham and I'm in Norwich stealing his broadband (I would say stealing his women but we only saw about three all the time we were in Swaffham)
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