Friday 13 April 2012

Proper planning produces perfect plans

In a few weeks it's time for the 3rd annual Machynlleth comedy festival. 4th - 6th May to be exact. I went last year and had an ace time.

Machynlleth is a charming little one horse market town in Powys. This time last year it was more a fifty-six horse town, but there's just NOWHERE for starving volunteer ushers to go eat once the sun has set. It's also a place that has no concept of local geography once the sun has fallen. Night time? Right, let's plummet the temperature below zero and set a few Trans-Siberian weather patterns in a low orbit above the camping field.

I guess what I'm trying to hint at is that my immediate post festival thought for 2011 was along the lines of "ain't never gonna git me camping in Machynlleth ever again. No sir."

Roll forward to Jan 2012: Five months till Mach? Right, start thinking about hotels.

February 2012: Four months. Need to get in early. Get a good deal.

March 2012: Oh crap. It's soon. Only be a few places left. Right, on it.

1st April 2012: Shit. Book it. Now. Now.

Anyway. I digress. But I have just bought a fancy new tent.




Tuesday 10 January 2012

QUICK!

Quick James!

Post something.

Anything.

Make your sole reader fall off his chair and go, "crikey!".

So, Phil. Did it?

Tuesday 30 August 2011

Some things that make me attempt to pull away from traffic lights in neutral


  • Typing up comedy tweets
  • Checking out my (quite frankly) amazing hair in the rear view mirror
  • That blonde girl
(This next bit is completely unrelated, but is too short to warrant its own post)

Amazing (adjective) - to have a hairstyle of such magnificence that it puts an older man, typically a fatherly figure, in mind of a porcupine molesting an electric light socket.

Thursday 4 August 2011

Puppy dog eyes

You know the thing - the TV spot where the cute dog with those big brown eyes looks beseechingly at camera holds up a paw and poses the question: How can you not love this?

There are times when my compassion gets the better of me, when I'm almost taken in.

Then I think to myself - do I really want a dog that can write letters knowing where I live? I have enough trouble with next door's cat climbing in the bathroom window and pilfering my tea without a bloody great dog making off with a string of sausages in its mouth.

And with these dogs, it's even worse. These are abused dogs right, so street dogs. That makes them even more wily and cunning. We're talking Fantastic Mr Fox levels of cunning, combined with a detailed knowledge of the workings of a human abode.

A fox gets in your house he's just blinking in the kitchen light trying to work out where the chickens are. But you let a dog know where you live and he's going to town on the remote control.

And no way, absolutely no way am I adopting a monkey. Those little fuckers would be up a drain pipe and into to bed with granny in no time.

It doesn't stop with TV ads. Yesterday I saw a handwritten poster taped to a lamppost.

Please help me, it said. I'm a grey 8 year old parrot and I'm lost. Please help me to find my way home.

And I say yeah right.

You can write a letter and tape it to a lamppost, you free loading bird?

Well read a fucking map then.

Sunday 31 July 2011

I'm sorry Kevin TotallyTheBestSurnameEva

I'm sorry Kevin James.

I liked you in that sitcom you did, King of Queens. I liked the whole chalk and cheese thing you had going on. You doing your whole chubby funny man thing with the impossibly hot wife. Okay, so I lie. I only watched it for the impossibly hot wife, but c'mon, she was hot. But still, sometimes you'd do something fatman that amused me. I dunno. Ate a massive burger or cheated on your wife with a plate of nachos or something.

But now you've become the guy in the films that are automatically shit.

Tonight I saw the poster for your film, The Zookeeper. There you are in your fat man shirt with your fat man grin luring me in with the promise of fat man jokes. Perhaps I'm being judgemental and unduly harsh, but I've seen the trailer for Paul Blart: Mall Cop, and I've heard the premise for The Dilemma (and by the way, it's not hard is it. YOU TELL YOUR BEST MATE HIS WIFE'S CHEATING ON HIM).

Okay, so Hitch was passable, but that was mainly down to Will Smith's innate coolness.

(Interesting side note - they actually modelled one of the characters and how he talked to women on me. Not that I'm trying to brag or anything, but I have been known to rap).

Anyway Kevin, I'm sorry. From now on I will review all your films based on the amount of fat man gurning going on in the poster. And I'm sorry to say, any amount of fat man gurning, is too much.

It's your own fault. If you will star in films with Adam Sandler.

Monday 13 June 2011

Go, go, graphene!

I know little about this new miracle material - graphene - but the more I read, the more excited I become. For too long boring white coated egg heads have beavered away in the lab to give us useless products that have little application outside of an academic environment. Like DNA sequencing. Sure, you can get a good movie out of it, but come on, give me one practical example.

But this graphene stuff. Just wow.

Richard Van Noorden writes in Nature that:
According to the Nobel prize committee, a hypothetical one-metre-square hammock of perfect graphene could support a four-kilogram cat - the hammock would weigh 0.77 milligrams, less than a cat's whisker, and would be virtually invisible.

I think the phrase is along the lines of "hot diggity damn", because I for one have gone on long enough living in a world without invisible cat hammocks. Why, just last week I saw a cat, and it was SITTING ON THE FUCKING GROUND. How boring is that? From now on I want all my cats to be almost shitting themselves with fear at being suspended three to four feet up from the ground.

Thank you Science People.

Saturday 11 June 2011

Early to rest, early to rise. It keeps the mind sharp, the Sashimi knife sharper.

If I knew any wise old Sushi masters I'm sure it's the kind of sentiment they would echo. Doubtless they would frown on my approach involving Jack Daniel's sour mash whisky, involving most of a massive bag of cashews (roasted and salted), and involving copious amounts of Portal 2 till well into the wee small hours.

Oh, and don't forget the one litre bottle of yellow snot my friend brought me as a gift. Perhaps I'm being a touch harsh. We think it's Spanish eggnog, though we're not quite sure. It tastes faintly of banana. It cannot be drunk, it must be poured, much like that last globule of a runny yoghurt that would bring grief from your mother because you lifted the pot to your mouth.

Now the shot glasses of yellow goo stand on the counter top, a monument to my rudeness as a gift recipient. I truly am sorry for my initial knee jerk reaction ("What the hell is that?" I said). But I stand by it.

Anyone fancy some of my 1.0 litre bottle of strangely sweet and gloopy liquid? There's at least 0.99 of it left.