I’m pretty good at improvising me. Its what I tend to do most days. For example, I didn’t plan or script for me to get up at 11.30am today, then it was totally random and unpredictable that I had a toasted cheese sandwich for breakfast. Who would’ve seen that coming? Exactly. Mind blowing. In fact I think it’s best that life is like this otherwise I would suspect I am in a low budget version of the Truman Show and would start to get very scared about any time I got on a flight anywhere incase it just flew into a sky coloured wall. So today I’m going to utilise these mega impro skills and take part in a workshop with the London Comedy Impro peoples, ie Brendan Dempsey, Tara Flynn and Michael Legge. I haven’t done comedy impro for ages, not since the first year of my university where me and my friend Mat were part of the am dram impro group. It was a weekly impro session which only lasted for a year after we got there. I suspect we might be to blame although I’m more sure that it was all the people in it who were hugely shit at impro. Its not hard to be shit at coming up with something good and I will forgive some screw ups but these were the sort of people who were handed a fantastic scenario on a plate and would then block it with crap one word answers. ‘ Will you help me pull this giraffe out of the burger van, Henry the eskimo?’ would be asked, or some such bollocks, ad the response would just be ‘No’, entirely killing the scene. There was one master at this, that did it with an edge of class that will never be known again. His name was Simon and he excelled in strolling into any scene, doing the same droll voice and asking someone ‘Could I have a pint of bull semen please?’ Effortlessly the audience would be in stitches and the scene would crumble. It was the catchphrase of a comedy champion. Me and Mat would look up to him in awe as we merely acted out a Mission Impossible version of buying some bread in a supermarket, with absolutely no bull semen involved at all. So hopefully today shall be much fun. There are loads of other comics going and it should be ace. What they don’t know is that I’ve already warmed up by entirely improvising today’s blog. Yeah it wasn’t scripted or anything. I’m a frikkin’ master.
Few other notable things:
– Yesterday had a writing meeting with Tom Craine. The meeting involved 2 minutes of writing, having a breakfast for lunch (yeah take that everyday meal conventions) and then packing it all in and watching the Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. It was good, but I really can’t tell you why. It hurt my brain a lot and I left with a headache. I love directors such as Gilliam who use the medium of film to completely take the audience on a journey to unrealistic worlds, but at the same time, it helps if there is some sort of story line so I can board that train of fantasy rather than feel like I’ve taken ketamine mixed with glue and passed out on someone’s stairs. Damn you Gilliam. Damn you.
– Fat Tuesday was bloody awesome with excellent stuff from Seann Walsh and Stephen K Amos. Lovely crowd too. Its not funny but its fact. So there.
– To all those billions of people who commented how we should get a magnetic cat flap, there are several reasons why this cannot happen. Firstly, trying to put a cat collar on my cats is one of the most impossible feats of scratch endurance ever. If you want to look like you’ve dived head first into some barbed wire then danced around in its spikey barbs then please feel free to come round and try. If you’re lucky Rosie will shit on you as well. Secondly, getting a magnetic implant in them is a no-no as far as Layla is concerned. She doesn’t like the idea. I however would be keen to get them the implant, a bionic eye and robotic legs so that they can leap 50ft in the air and such things. Lastly, what if a cat in the neighbourhood has the opposite magnetic collar and as they approach my cats, both repel each other in opposite directions at high speeds? Hang on that actually sounds awesome. I’ll get my camera.
