....This line never happens in the film but I wish it did...all that happens is Michael Caine goes 'I suppoose yew have such a trick?!' And I wish Bale would 'I got a trick fer yew'..etc....
There's seldom been a time when the book and movie differ and are similar in such a delightful way as the various versions of The Prestige. I think doing the auld stand up has encouraged my love of the story the idea of having a 'trick' a certain turn of phrase in a joke that makes people laugh... you fluff a verb or a noun and it gets less of a laugh than when you do that one bit of mouth air right. But whatever, you know if a stand up routine hasn't gone right beacause people don't laugh, and I imagine if i had the skill to be a magician that a slip up of the hand would a similar effect. the guys in the Prestige have that madness, if you are unaware of this great movie and the novel and the great writer...viddy:the trailer
List seven songs you are into right now. No matter what the genre, whether they have words, or even if they’re not any good, but they must be songs you’re really enjoying now, shaping your spring. Post these instructions in your blog along with your 7 songs. Then tag 7 other people to see what they’re listening to.
Oh dear, where to start, well at the minute it's my usual combination of Frank Black, Easy Listening and bizarre madness, forwith,the most recent Frank Black EP opus, Svn Fingers. For me the thing about Frank Black is that since I was 17 there's been some sort of Pixies/Frank Black/Breeders release every single year (i'm 32 now) that's every year without fail.
Basically, there's alwas been something in my head i can shout via headphones, apparently yon Frank has been inspired by Cuhulainn
Basically for me right now, this is the best song ever, when I was at college I was made into indie music, you know, Pixies, Breeders Oasssis etc, but secretly I was so into Larry Page and Burt Bacharach that when this baby came out I nearlt exploded, it's still on of my favourite songs of all time....this version
and when we're talking about lounge madness, how about an acid jazz remix of Jimi Hendrix not like anyone asked for it, but it happened anyway....it's The Beautiful People's If 60s were 90s:
And perhaps if we can go on a little with the 1990s nostalgia a wee bit, Goldbug's remix of Whole Lotta Love remixed with the pearl and dean cinema ad all I could find was this bit of the chart show but Goldbug's in the middle
What with it's Batman style decor and overall trendy beat, or whatever, this has to be the tune I've been listening to the most in the last few months, Hot Chip's 'Ready for the Floor':
In a way connected to the whole Oasis/Mike Flowers divide is the fact that I love the Rutles much more than the Beatles, because, you know, they're funnier so my next choice
and because I can't help it...cheese and onions...
and how to end? for me it's gotta be chairman mao and roxy music
and of course, the only tune in my head recently:
I tag, or whatever, I'm not used to doing this shit, but I would like these guys to talk about moosic: Karl, Joe, John, Trollop23, Graham, Bob, Adam,
oh and one I forgot! file under wtf from Michael Nesmith!
I love this...jaysus...bloodly hell etc. and the best...'So do you know what's going to happen...no' it's like the Naked Lunch seeing what's on the end of every fork... but it doesn't matter things are going to play themselves out the same way
P.S. If you Haven't seen Indiana Jones and the thing with skull yoke and yer man from Transformers and Even Stevens....stop now, spoilers ahead....
where to fucking start *sigh* I wasn't expecting much and knew it wouldn't be mind blowing, and we've all been prey to Lucas's bullshit before:' I meant Hayden to be a cardboard actor because that was a homage 1920s serials' etc. But I couldn't believe the new Indy. To do a full proper rant would exhaust you and me so I will restrict myself to bullet points:
Opening Sequence: Do you know what I hate, those boring films where there is no proper opening sequence like when its night and a camera shot from a helicopter flys over a bay onto skyscrapers while the title come up in silver letters, isn't that the most boring opening of a film ever? and if you substitute jeeps and desert for that you get the opening sequence to Skull-Fuck (as I will hereby refer to Indy 4 as).
P.S. The Paramount mountain/prairie dog hill doesn't jump-cut it (pardon the editing joke) Lucas and Spielbergo may have almost invented studio logo/narrative tomfoolery but with all the stuff that's gone on since, surely there was something funnier, maybe the mountain could cut to Dr. Jone's cock as he wanked off to a picture of shortround...go on Lucas get the grindhouse market, you seem to have no sense about current tastes anyway.
No CGI: so Fucko Lucas and El Speilbergo go on about how it will be real stunts with no cgi, apart from all the unnecessary cgi prairie dogs, ants and testicle attacking cacti and some cgi backdrops that make it look like outtakes from Casablanca or something that Rodriguez would wipe his arse on, hey Lucas maybe you could cgi some dwarfs in there for the laugh?
Indy's Study... fuck me, the first thing I saw of Skull-Fuck was that they had meticulously created his study to reflect the various periods of Indy's life. Photos within movies are one my bugbears. So we have obvious on set photos and press shots of Sean Connery and Denholm Elliot and these are meant to be pics of Indys Da? when they aren't at all in the style of photos from the 1940s? I know I'm alone on this but these films cost hundreds of millions should there be no logic? the grain, the pose the clarity these are obviously photos from the 1980s-1990s.
Mutt Williams...what sort of fucking name is that.
Aliens?...whatever...Skull-Fuck seems to fall into this worrying trend in movies (cf Spider-Man 3,Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, X-Men III: The Last Stand, Superman Returns) of a complete lack of wonder and inquistiveness in the world and universe around oneself as a self aware human being. Aliens? whatever? interdimensional beings? feck that I'll just look the other way and sit on a stone and pull a bemused Harrison Ford face, because I'm buying a toy and rattling my bones against yer one out of Ally McBeal and basically I don't care about anything this sense that in the tent scene with Cate Blancett that you are about a foot away from an actual alien and you basically don't give a flying fuck makes my gut sink, this is horrible, no one cares about anything...except of course crystal skulls and money.
The 19 fucking 50s....right, I understand the whole B-Movie stuff and bringing Indy into the 1950s and him getting older. But that's just it I get it, you don't need to keep hitting me over the head with the fact...that...it's....the....fucking....1950s...I get it I don't need a cafe called 'The Atomic Cafe', KGB agents, an atomic bomb, a test suburban town (I thought this was Ang Lee's Hulk for a minute) the janitor from Scrubs and Jim from Neighbours, (has Alan Dale got serious blackmailable dirt on every casting agent in Hollywood? he is in everything....rack off)
Hey what country we in anyway...who cares?....whatever about the racism of the original series, and they had it in spades, (cf the obvious Americans 'browned-up' to be Indian in Temple of Doom) there was at least a sense of what country they were in, they talked to locals even if they were Alexi Sayle or the guy who isn't Brian Blessed from Sliders and Lord of the Rings they had fixers there was villagers etc, this film seemed to be scared in a PC way (note the token implant of one black women student in Indy's class) of the very imperialist reason d'etre of the trilogy's success...every foreign person is evil, rips out hearts, eats monkey brains and sheeps eyes etc., this all comes from George 'Jar Jar....Me so Sorleee Binks' Lucas so in this film we have the same 1930s attitude of 'Living dead' natives but without even the courtesy of some sort of 'noble savage' explanation who are these guys? should there no be some sort of hand shake between the main living dead guy and Indy in a sort of 'for sure you are the best warrior' style exchange....
What?! no drinking competion...best thing about Karen Allen in Raiders was her hardass drinking, and here they turn her into a swooning idiot....oh Indy be a dad to Mutt won't you?...please....oh please...marry me Indy...etc. etc. ad nausem. Plus poor Cate Blancett...she only wanted knowledge, but of course ladies who want knowledge in the Lucasverse...what happens to them, they either get their home planets or brains exploded....
in the meantime here's Indy fucking about in Ireland and being at the GPO and shit...
Snuff Box of course being the overlooked sketch show classic of Matt 'Sanchez' Berry and Rich 'Fossil' Fulcher, which for me is funnier than Mighty Boosh and darker than Darkplace...serious. It's out on dvd from June 16. Viddy these if you don't beleive me....
and to finish, it can't be avoided the amazing...motherfucker..
Finally, I am back online....'and low! the perversity index of the Internet exploded'. Not that I can make much physical use of it after recent injuries. I have contracted what I describe as ' Schrodinger's Arsebone', due to events that will be described below. Basically, I have a bruised (possibily fractured) Coccyx and can't do much, and sit on cushioned chairs and groan when I have to pick up pounds from the ground. I knew it was sore, when it happened, and could hardly walk, but the doctor cheerfully told me 'well you've probably got a bruised Coccyx, but it might be fractured, we could x ray it , but even if we did and it was there's nothing we can do anyway*, just take it easy and see how it goes'.... hence my overwrought quantum physics/Heisenberg uncertainity principle metaphor.
The real reason for my near broken arsebone is obviously little to do with quantum physics. I had this crazy idea when finally getting paid from the teaching to go out on a Saturday night in dressy shoes and a dressy shirt like what people do. No one seems to understand my urge to dress like this just once, but, obviously, it's all connected to ideas of maybe getting the ride at some stage before I die. Myself and Ricardo from the kitchen went out and had a good drunken night, at Mustard and I got very drunk and then decided to stay there when R went home. I literally remember nothing about how it happened but I woke up in terrible pain with a CD-sized bruise on my right burtock (to use the parlance of forrest gump) this was because, as I found out later, I had a bad Drum and Bass CD in my back pocket at the time, I've listened to it since, it's not worth it .
My logic was that I must have fallen down the stairs at home after I got home, because if I had fallen down the stairs at the nightclub I would surely remember some altercation with bouncers or punters. I could have been so wrecked that I could walked home quite happily with a bruised arsebone and a bruise the size of cd so, frighteningly it could have happened anywhere. Suffice to say, I was so in shock I worked a split shift in the kitchen and bar on sunday and then on monday I could barely walk and since then it's been a slow pillow/painkiller/babystep recovery type deal. In conclusion, readers, don't fall on your arse, it is quite literally a pain in the arse.
can't wait until I get the auld internet back will probably go on a 24 hour blog rampage, in the meantime here's some oddities from the old Rockcorry batcave where the geeky madness began!
P.S. No prizes for psychoanalyzing them, as the Badbrute says, 'no subtext
One of the guilty pleasures/morbid nostalgia interest in my own twarted ambitions and failures of any trip home is reading old notebooks and finding bizarre scribbings. It's kind of like when an FBI agent is hunting down a serial killer in a movie or something. Sometimes even I don't know what the heck I was on about (writing this in the library so excuse the archiac swears, I'll beef them up later). The below examples are from a wee notebook (circa 1999) from a particularly dark and perverse time but also quite creative. I was juggling a an arts admin job that although superficially suited to I was awful at and would escape mentally and physically from it at any given opportunity. Half this period was spent in a tiny bedsit in Dublin where painted cardboard versiosn of some this sort of demented crap appeared.
On the positive side it did lead to doing the masters and I ended up living with one of my best friends, the fact that we shared a room together for about a year and a half and didn't kill each other is a testiment to our friendship (although I'm sure he came close as I would often do all-nighters inside a walk-in wardrobe while he tried to sleep).
'Bewildered Bob: I could try and pass this off as some wacky character that's a total exaggeration of yours truly, but what's the point!
Another of my sad antics was coming up with the ideas for 'comedy' tv ideas, actually looking as some of these they are actually quite funny, although I don't know if is a relative thing, these ideas for dadatv are not funny compared top Big Train or Jam but are comedy gold in comparison to Swallywagga, as is accidentally ripping off your srotum with the underside of a car driven by everyone you've ever slept with.
Check out this post via She-Hulk fan blog Shulkie.com speccifically on Peter David's, 'super-strong vagina thesis':
I think any normal man who would have sex with She-Hulk is courting disaster. I don't care how stiff your stiffy is: She-Hulk's vaginal muscles alone, if she were to orgasm, would be enough to earn you a trip to the E.R. The price of a tumble with She-Hulk being broken bones pales in comparison to the prospect of a broken boner because, yes kids, it can break, and not all the king's horses, men or Viagra will put Humpty back together again. Lambskin Trojans? Forget that. Tony Stark must have used an amored condom. The Invinicible Iron Man Thing.
Just back from my London debut at The Comedy Cafe a lovely venue in trendy Nathan Barley-style Shoreditch. It was very exciting, went early and was in London about 6 for a 9pm show. Went to a pub around the corner the Barley Mow and got to preparing. When young Tom Moran did it he got a 8-10 min slot but there was a lot on my night so I only had 5-6 minutes, so had to cut loads of stuff at short notice but it went really well. I may have talked a bit too fast but did better than the guy on after me. During his set (something bland about shampoo bottles) a girl who was really pissed fell over with an earthshattering clunk. He went 'ooeer what happened there?', some bloke in the audience goes :'you sent her to sleep mate!'. In the words of Kiss Kiss Bang Bang...'ouch!' It's a strange but great mixture of open mic night and competition where the best of the night by selected audience vote gets to go on for a paid slot the next week. Didn't win but went down really well, when my name got called out there was a definite cheer from certain pockets of the audience (which inspired this bad stand up joke I just thought of: 'ah well, I am an acquired taste, must me all that asparagus I eat)
The demented scribblings of deluded, perverted mind.
My friend Rachel outside the comedy cafe.
The Comedy Cafe has a sort of Beano theme, dad would have liked the fact that they have a 'Bash Street' sign up
I left my camera at my mates' table to take a picture, this is either me finishing or starting, p.s. I'm in the background not the bald guy (the MC) in the foreground.
Was a good opportunity to meet other comedians, met Roisin Mirza (a great comedian from an Irish and Pakistani background) and Lee Hume both from Brighton. There was also a guy from Ipswich and a woman from Dorset can't remember their names because I was shitting it before I went on. (if any of you are reading this and can fill in my blanks that would be great). Then there was about three blokes that were all tall and pretty and too trendy for my liking, Russell Brand has a lot to answer for. One of them had an adoring hot girlfriend than took pictures of every second of his performance. I want my comedians to be bitter, lonely and geeky, not trendy, popular and sexually active, where's the humour in that: 'so yeah, I was banging my hot girlfriend and then I got new tints in my hair from Tony and Guy and then took some coke and banged my hot girlfriend again' comedy gold. These guys could have been models, but pretend to be geeky and dysfunctional, meanwhile the real geeky and dysfunctional guys, i.e. me just seeth from the sideline. Oh yeah and one had that Ricky 'ipodge' Gervais habit of reading tabloid headlines in his act: in reference to Derren Brown being gay...'mindbender', you feel like going, yeah but The Sun came up with that, not you.
P.S. cheers to Rachel, Lisa, Laura and Corin for coming to see my demented ramblings. All in all a very pleasant and enjoyble trip to London, (just to prove to Norfolk people that nice things do happen in London, not just murder and multiculturalism, the two things Norfolk people fear most) the next day I wandered around Soho (of course, I walked past a strip joint at 10am and it was open and a lady asked if I wanted to come in, a)who's dancing nude at that hour and b)what loons are looking at it, the answer would of course be me if I had that sort of money to waste) and walked via the British Library to King's Cross. Bought this book for 2 pounds in a remainder shop across from the Library.
Just back from a Smoking Mic gig in Attleborough, went well, mostly new stuff, they seemed to know who Rocco Stiffredi was which always helps with my stuff. The room was mostly pissed blokes though about 3 women, including one loon with a bumbag which had a gollywog toy dangling from it, must be all the rage in Attleborough. We're in Trowse next Friday.
Apologies for a lack of blogging, probably a reflief for yous not to have the jimmny gibbering more regularly, will get reconnected whenever I cough up the funds for it, things like rent and electricity currently have priority over online entertainments (ahem). Currently using the forum's great wireless system while leafing through comics.
One of my best friends (plus mentor and usually conscience) Mr. John Burrows (above, with a certain gurning Jimmny) has started up a new blog called HicHop check it out for stuff on Lebowski toys, Watchmen and thoughtful essays on his Robert Crumb-like old time blues obsessions.
Young Heston enjoying a few of his favorite things, loincloths, guns and women who can't speak.
He also lurrves the monkey love...
See below a bit of a Heston youtube fest to mark the madman's passing. I first came across Planet of the Apes while channel surfing (well changing channels as it was known when there was only 4 stations) while quite young during a episode of Perfect Strangers which instilled in me an odd feeling of the links between dire 1980s Odd Couple ripoffs and the end of the world. Although an older generation would see him as Moses or God and other fictional creations, I would see him as the last man standing in some dystopian nightmare, where are we going to get our edible people, talking monkeys and blaxploitation sidekicks now Heston? My favorite Heston moments include him smoking a cigar inside a spaceship in Planet of the Apes and claiming Woodstock is 'the best goddamn movie ever' in The Omega Man, straining credulity even in a film about pasty face vampire types in robes.
Bye Charlton, what will the Wheelies do without ya.
I write stuff about superheroes, do stand up, draw cartoons and teach. I'm more often at my tumblr Lorcranium, on Twitter and corun the Tim and Eric Tumblr
"McGrane’s self effacing set is esoteric, occasionally filthy and always funny."-Peter "Hotrod McCaughan", culturenorthernireland.org
“McGrane’s set goes into the kind of detail about cult comics and movies that would have even Jonathan Ross’s head spinning.” - Andrew Johnson, AU Magazine
"Straight faced comedy with a good sense of comic timing"*** Three Weeks
"Free comedy is a mixed bag, and free student comedy is an even bigger risk - but in this case it's one worth taking. East Anglian comics Tom Moran, Jonathan Brittain, Johnny Kearns and Lorcan McGrane filled an enjoyable if variable hour at the Standing Order. "***Three Weeks
"Lorcan McGrane charmed the audience with sensitively told observational comedy, regarding mainly pornography and onanism"Ant Cule, Laugh Out Loud Review, Concrete, Dec 4th, 2007.
Followers
Taking over the ethergut one demented page at a time
Internet blogs are depressing and sad. There is only one person whose blogging I will accept and tolerate, and that is my friend and co-worker Lorcan McGrane, because he is Irish and studies superheroes, so he's allowed to be a bit quirky. Also, I think he may have a gun.-Tom Moran, Standup Comedian.
