Writer's Block

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I've tried to write today's blog a few times now. It was going to concern the fact my father informed me today both that Donald Trump's actions over the weekend "don't concern us" and that it's "a perfectly reasonable course of action". But I'm too tired and too frustrated. I'm tired of arguing with old men in my home and in my workplace about it. Tired of being made to feel stupid because I empathise with other people in the world outside.  I've always respected my elders. For how much longer, I dunno.

A mere three days after I requested it in my blog, New Found Glory have announced three London shows in October where they will play the first six of their records. New Found Glory and Sticks and Stones at the Forum. Catalyst and Not Without A Fight at the Electric Ballroom. Nothing Gold Can Stay and Coming Home at the Underworld. I've written about it before this blog, but this band have been part of my life for 13 years. I've seen them live more times than I can count in tiny clubs and at Earls Court. I've travelled to Nottingham to see them on three occasions and once sat shivering in the bus station waiting for a coach home at 3am whilst two girls from Chesterfield offered me poppers*. They've helped pull me out of depressions. I have mountains of their t-shirts and two of Cyrus Bolooki's drum sticks. Jordan Pundik once asked me if I was ok when I was stood in the front row with a surging crowd behind me. I was.  I once walked three miles to the nearest HMV ...

I can finally announce that I am performing "The Wilderness Years" at this year's Machynlleth Comedy Festival at The Store on Saturday 29th April at 2:15pm. Tickets are available from this link . The festival runs from Friday 28th to Sunday 30th April in Machynlleth in north Wales. I have it on good authority that "every show at Mach Fest sells out". I must credit the organisers for refusing to rest on their laurels and booked me to challenge that record in 2017. In all seriousness, I'm very excited about this. It's a brilliant lineup of some of the best comedians in the country, some of comedy's finest up and coming talents and me. It will also be my first gig in Wales. Clearly it's ridiculous that I haven't done any gigs in Wales up to this point, but it's true. It's going to be a grand old time and I can't ruddy wait.

The actor, improviser and comedian Chris Gethard is an unassuming, small, bespectacled man. He takes to the stage in the Soho Theatre's main room and informs the audience he will be telling them a story about his battles with depression and suicidal thoughts for the past twenty yars. It is, as he concedes, not the most promising premise for a riotous hour of stand-up comedy. And it isn't quite that. But Gethard's abilities as a storyteller make it work, as he successfully mines the bleakest of stories for peculiar details, like deliberately crashing a car in New Jersey and hearing a chorus of "Carmella Sopranos" looking on. The story ends with an amusing, if shocking, awkward truth. Gethard has toured with Mike Birbiglia in the US as his support act and his style of storytelling has clearly influenced him. Certainly there are parallels to be drawn between this and Birbiglia's "Sleepwalk With Me", as both explore the absurdities found in a life li...

Following "Dracula!", his musical on Bram Stoker's famous creation, Mr Swallow (Nick Mohammed) returns to the stage to take on the story of Harry Houdini, once again supported by his world weary straight man Mr Goldsworth (David Elms) and the dimwitted Jonathan (Kieran Hodgson). Much like its predecessor, it's full of songs, knockabout action and silly digressions from Mohammad's camp, screeching northern creation. But this time the trio have upped the ante by staging a full on magic show, which gradually builds to a thrilling conclusion as Swallow attempts to take on Houdini's escape from a tank of water. Amongst the lunacy there's a relatively straight faced attempt to examine the idea of a performer suffering for their art, to risk it all for the acclaim of the crowd. But you're never too far away from a sublime piece of daftness, like Swallow inexplicably affecting a Liverpudlian accent whilst taking on the role of Houdini's wife. Mohammed...

I passed the exam. I was convinced for the exam's entire 2 hour duration that I had failed it and failed it pretty badly. Up to the point where I went up to my tutor's office to get the results and told him that he didn't need to tell me. And it turned out that he did need to tell me. I looked at the screen he showed me several times. That's how disbelieving I was. Which tells you everything you need to know about the sort of person I am. It's the sort of person I wish I wasn't. The sections I feared the worst for turned out to be justified but I did well enough on the rest to scrape under the wire. It's a massive boost. I've got another one next week that I need to keep working hard towards, but things look a lot brighter. Basically a fair few things have been on hold for the past month or so that I'd like to get back to soon, like the gym. Overcome next week's hurdle and I ought to have more time on my hands. In other "good day" n...

I very much enjoyed Mr Swallow and Chris Gethard's shows at Soho last night and will be reviewing them as soon as I have the ability to string coherent sentences together. As it is, I have an exam tomorrow morning. I'm still convinced of failure but I'm content to wait for confirmation at this point. In other news, two of my major hopes for 2017 were a Blink 182 tour and Frank Turner playing his debut album "Sleep Is For The Week" in full on its 10th anniversary. Pleasingly both of those things have come to pass, at the 02 Arena in July and at the Roundhouse in May respectively. Today it was confirmed that Frank Turner will also be supporting Blink 182 at the 02 and I am a happy camper indeed. My 2017 gig calender kicks off next week with The Wonder Years (hooray!) at Koko (boo!). I'm trying to say that I don't like Koko, not that Koko is haunted. Although I suppose it is. By the ghost of poor design and planning. One of our regular punters came into t...

I'm not in a fantastic mood. I have an exam in two days time where I am not optimistic of success, to put it mildly. In this precise moment, the choice to do the course I selected feels like the wrong option. But I've no choice in the short term but to push on and try to get through what is a stressful and anxious time. I missed the inaugeration on Friday due to work, which feels like something of a blessing. Regrettably I felt compelled to read the transcript of Trump's speech, with its total disrespect for all who came before him. Certainly his jingoistic rhetoric was cause for alarm. It's difficult not to be down on the slogan "America First" when a man shouting "Britain First" was responsible for the murder of one of your country's MPs last year.. I was heartened though by the reports of women mobilising all over the world on Saturday to protest this man and his shameful attitude towards women. This feels like a profounding dispiriting mo...

In LA, aspiring actress Mia (Emma Stone) and down on his luck jazz pianist Sebastian (Ryan Gosling) keep bumping into each other. La La Land follows their burgeoning relationship and attempts to follow their dreams whilst consistently bursting into song. Around the release of Birdman I wrote something to the effect of "I think I'm falling for Emma Stone". She is a brilliant, charismatic screen presence and proves it again here, entirely believable as an actress struggling to get attention and frustrated by the business. She has a strong chemistry with Gosling as the slightly pompous and arrogant jazz snob desperate to bring a dying genre back to its feet and open his own club. The underpowered opening number aside the songs are strong too, from Sebastian's captivating solo efforts to his performances with a band that are more Uptown Funk than freestyle jazz. Mia's audition piece towards the end of the film is the highlight though, a real emotive showstopper th...

I'm going to completely violate my "no football" rule to comment on Wayne Rooney becoming Manchester United's top goalscorer of all time this afternoon with an equaliser deep in injury time to force a draw with Stoke City, edging a goal past the legendary Sir Bobby Charlton. It seems odd that Rooney will now end his career as an all time top goalscorer at both club and international level yet still remains the subject of derision amongst some football fans. At his best, Rooney was unplayable. In February 2011, he scored one of the best goals I've ever seen to win the Manchester derby against City. The ball crossed into the box looked to be flying out of the other side of the penalty area. Rooney contorts his body into a ludicrous position to make contact with the ball with an overhead kick. Said ball flies into the top right hand corner beyond a helpless Joe Hart. As I said at the time, "Oh my god, what a goal". He's scored many important goals b...

Today Donald Trump will be sworn in as the 45th President of the United States. This premise would have appeared outlandish to me if it had appeared in something like Brass Eye in the 1990s. I doubt I can say anything on the subject that hasn't already been said. I remember wandering around the day after the election unable to think or focus on anything else but the outcome. I will never understand the American people's emnity towards Hilary Clinton, a flawed but eminently qualified candidate. South Park put it brilliantly, as they often do: "We've learned that women can be anything. Except for president". I do understand the desire to send a message to the powers that be. But to believe that this boorish, narcissistic, ignorant, belligerant idiot is the answer to your problems remains beyond my comprehension. I can only hope that he gives himself enough rope to hang himself with over the next four years. But even then it's difficult to see what he has to do...

I finally caught up with Ethel & Ernest last night, Raymond Briggs' tribute to his parents which has been adapted from a graphic novel into a 90 minute feature. T.he story covers their lives together through the events of wartime Britain and the birth of their son, with bright colourful animation beautifully recreating Briggs' visual style. It was certainly a different time as one finds it difficult to imagine that a midwife would chastise an expectant wife for causing "such a fuss" during childbirth these days. The tale of happy go lucky milkman Ernest and the aspirational Ethel (she delights in young Raymond's acceptance into a grammar school) feels idyllic for much of its running time. This is of course shattered by the events of the Second World War, with scenes that take a genuinely perilous turn. The film is at its funniest when commenting on the issues on the day, like Ernest's failure to describe homosexuality to his wife. Briggs also nicely capt...

Last night will not go down in the history books as one of my favourite gigs. I went through The Wilderness Years for approximately 50 minutes in front of a crowd of about ten. My abiding memory of the gig will be of the portly, grey haired man who stumbled in about half way through and interjected frequently throughout the remainder of my set. I foolishly attempted to engage at first before ignoring his constant attempts to disrupt my momentum. Many will probably disagree with me on this but heckling does not have a place in stand-up. At Louis CK's Wembley Arena gig last August there were messages on the big screen informing the audience that hecklers would be ejected and I think Louis has it right. Regrettably I lack the same clout in a pub in South London. He bounded up to me after the gig. I assumed it would be one of those situations where the heckler congratulates the performer whilst trying to excuse his own behaviour ("I wasn't too bad, was I?" is one such...

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I can't really write a blog about the effect of insomnia on my working day or the merits of anchovies and olives on pizzas so I guess I'm going to have to go with Daniel Kitson who has released "The Impotent Fury Of The Privileged" on his Bandcamp page today. I am delighted that Kitson has been keeping a record of his work to gradually release out to his fans. His shows are brilliant, eloquent, thought provoking delights and it would have been a great shame if none of them were kept for posterity. Everyone I know outside of the comedy community is probably sick of me banging on about Kitson. He's quite simply the funniest man I've ever seen on stage. I'm particularly pleased that he's released "Impotent Fury Of The Privileged" as it was the first show of his I ever saw back in 2008 when I was a 20 year old student. I had only recently started performing and had a very particularly idea of what stand-up was when I went to South Street Arts ...

I'm hoping that at some point I'll have something to write about other than revising for exams, working and damaging myself with hot cake filling but that time is yet to arrive. I'm also frenziedly trying to remember my show ahead of Tuesday. Listening back to it again, I still think I've got the basis of a decent piece although the ending still needs work. Hopefully there's time for all that.  My main thoughts for the day are football related. But I've already said I'm not going to talk about that.  *Cough* Manchesteruniteddrew1allwithliverpoolandsquanderedtheopportunitytogaingroundontheirrivalsatthetopofthetableandwhiletheteamareperformingbetterthantheywereintheautumnitsdifficulttoescapethefactthatthecontinuedexcellenceoftheteamsaroundthemiskeepingthemoutofthetopfourandislikely tocontinuedoingsountiltheendoftheseasonwhichwillbebadnewsbothfortheclubssupportersandforthemoneymenwhorelyontherevenuegeneratedfromtheclubappearinginthechampionsleague*Cough"...

Not a great deal to report today. A largely uneventful work shift. I did however wake up this morning, put two doughnuts into a microwave, cook them, take a bite out of one and watched as molten jam burned my topless chest. I am 28 years old. I was later to defend myself as "a dreamer with singed nips" on Facebook as the event caused discussion and some derision amongst my friends. Why microwave a doughnut in the first place? As Pete Dillon-Trenchard pointed out on Facebook, microwaving can work wonders with your common or garden Tesco doughnut, particularly those that have lost something from the day before. I wouldn't dare do it with a more sophisticated high end doughnut and shudder to think what the impact would be on say, a Krispy Kreme. You live and learn, I suppose. To bring myself some comfort I've been thinking about the then 34 year old Chelsea goalkeeper Dave Beasant dropping a bottle of salad cream on his foot and missing eight weeks of the season. Or ...

In my time away from blogging, I wrote and performed my first stand-up show entitled The Wilderness Years. Someone asked me pretty much straight after the final of the three shows of my Camden Fringe run how I wrote it. I'm not sure the answer I gave was at all satisfactory so I'll attempt to remedy that here. I think it was around February/March time last year that I committed to doing it and even then the idea of writing an hour seemed daunting and impossible. I had the concept and title in my head for at least a couple of years and knew that a lot of my strongest material would fit into the theme and narrative. From there I've revisited certain events in my life that I thought had comedic potential but were not necessarily punchy enough to warrant inclusion in a 10-20 minute club set. It has ultimately ended up being a chronological journey through the last six years of my life and I've tried not to deviate too much from that. There are small structural elements ...

Having been threatened with snow all day, it finally materialised in late afternoon. The only real test that needs to be applied to anyone wondering if they're an adult or not is how they feel about snow. Snow is a horrible, hazardous pain in the arse. And when you live on a hill it seems to cause misery all around for miles, specifically if you're the only person who lives in town who can open a particular business that will remain nameless. I still can't quite believe I was snowed out of my house for an entire week in 2010 after leaving to go to one of my MA sessions at Royal Holloway. The main news of the day was the sudden passing of the former England and Watford manager Graham Taylor. Taylor's managerial heyday was a little before my time, having come to football as an eight year old in 1996. I have mostly come to know him as a sage like figure popping up to provide analysis on various matches. I hadn't realised until today that he took Watford from the 4th ...

Urgh. Why did I take this on again? I suppose I thought I might have some more topics of interest to talk about or that I might go over some of the topics and events that I neglected to cover last year. I may just relegate random short thoughts about 2016 to footnotes*. But all my life is at the moment is numbers, formulas and struggling to remember numbers and formulas. BBC4 showed Dawn French's one woman show "Thirty Million Minutes" on New Year's Eve (the title referencing the length of her life to date) and I've been catching up with it over the past couple of days. It's the entertainment equivalent of a warm hug, a relatively genteel couple of hours with a much loved friend with a few hokey jokes along the way. Truly laugh out loud moments are few and far between (footage of French meeting the Queen Mother being a notable exception) but French's affability is undeniable and it's a pleasure to spend time in her company. This is essentially a love...

I feel quite tired today. Not an awful lot to report. I was going to talk about some events of a more personal nature that have occured over the past few days but have decided against it. Perhaps another time. Although I don't believe any topic is necessarily off limit on these blogs, I am conscious about oversharing. In short, I'm finding everything a little bit much right now. I completed some more revision work today for exams that loom in 2 and 3 weeks respectively. I'm still not tremendously optimistic about the outcome. My best case scenario is to fail well and hopefully be in a better position to succeed in the retake. Also, FIFA voted to turn the World Cup from a 32 team tournament into a 48 team tournament today. It is estimated that it will bring FIFA another billion dollars in revenue. A small price to pay for ruining the tournament as a spectacle and allegedly bringing in terrible law changes like all drawn matches going to penalties. Although this is due to...

As promised, here is my list of the best films of 2016. Room Newcomer Jacob Tremblay and Brie Larson excel in this moving drama about maternal love in the most wretched of circumstances. The Big Short The Big Short's real achievement is in explaining the 2008 financial crash to laymen like me. But there are a fair amount of solid laughs alongside the devastation, too. Spotlight  A film where the protagonists basically run around Boston attempting to find evidence to investigate historic child abuse in the Catholic church does not necessarily sound thrilling. But it was one of the most compelling pictures I saw last year.  Deadpool Marvel finally produce a film that is laugh out loud hilarious and Ryan Reynolds is terrific as our titular hero. I saw this on a Saturday night in a packed cinema which is precisely where it belongs. A top notch blockbuster. Hail, Caesar! The Cohen brothers' love letter to the golden era of Hollywood is not necessarily the most...

Having promised not to talk about football, I have little to report today. I was going to do my list of the best films of 2016 but have that post-bath tiredness feeling and that would require having to think about the words I'm going to write. Deadpool. I liked Deadpool a lot. If you like to read reviews of movies then I will point you in the direction of Andy Routledge's very good film blog here . He is much better at doing it than I am, please see his review of  A Monster Calls as a case in point. He seems to actually know things about the directors and actors involved and puts films into context. But he found Sigourney Weaver's accent "a bit distracting" in AMC and I thought it was alright. Let the record show I thought he was completely wrong about Sausage Party and too hard on Bad Moms. As always, a plethora of views are available. Anyway, I've taken three days off from studying which in my position was probably a mistake but I felt like I hit a wall...

I've been catching up with some podcasts of late. I've listened to a couple of episodes of WTF With Marc Maron this week. The first one saw Maron travelling to New Jersey to interview Bruce Springsteen. Maron is normally adept at getting interesting information from his interviewees but I sensed Springsteen was quite guarded. In any event, an hour is scarcely enough time to get the bottom of what makes The Boss tick but it was interesting to hear his thoughts on Trump in particular. It's more of a conversation about mental health than about rock n roll but worth a listen regardless. The second concerned voice artist extraordinaire Billy West, best known to me for his involvement in in Futurama. He had quite a story to tell, from child abuse, to ludicrous Peruvian drug runs to becoming one of the most in demand voice actors in the world. Hearing him drop into the voice of Philip J Fry and explain the process of finding Zapp Brannigan were particular delights. A must listen...

The spacecraft Aurora is transporting 5,000 passengers to Homestead 2, to colonise a new planet. It will take 120 years to travel there from Earth and each passenger is kept in a state of hibernation. Engineer Jim Preston (Chris Pratt) wakes up 90 years early due to a pod malfunction and finds himself alone with no other company but an android barman (Michael Sheen). A year later he is joined by writer Aurora Lane (Jennifer Lawrence)  and the pair must deal with the consequences. It's an interesting premise but one that gets somewhat squandered. I greatly preferred the first half of the film where Pratt's character attempts to come to terms with a lifetime of isolation and what is probably best described as an ethical quandary*. I like both Pratt and Lawrence as screen presences and their chemistry carries them a certain amount of the way here. But in the second half of the film, things take a turn for the shitbonkers and suffers as a result. Michael Sheen meanwhile is deli...

I took the plunge and got a Cineworld Unlimited card last year which resulted in me watching something like 43 films. As I'm a negative sort, I'll start with my top ten worst films of 2016 in no particular order. Zoolander 2 Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson go through the motions in this unnecessary sequal to 2001's cult comedy hit. Not the worst film I've ever seen, but totally mirthless and utterly uninspired. The funniest person in it is Sting, which ought to be a concern. Grimsby I've enjoyed segments of Sacha Baron Cohen's work in the past. Here he drags down Mark Strong with him to a pit of irredeemable vulgarity. If you enjoy watching two men flounder in an elephant's vagina while another elephant mates with her, by all means proceed. Demolition I saw this film on a date. Even with unlimited cinema, I would not have chosen it. Jake Gyllenhall stars as a man totally ambivalent to his wife's death. He's a difficult character to spend an...

Conor O'Malley (Lewis MacDougall) is a shy and frequently bullied child who lives with his cancer stricken mother (Felicity Jones) and invests his creative energy into drawing and artwork. One night he is visited by a monster (voiced by Liam Neeson) who takes the form of a tree near his home. The monster informs Conor he will visit him again to tell him three stories and becomes a frequent presence in his increasingly turbulent life. I don't normally start these type of reviews with a warning, but don't go and see A Monster Calls if you are feeling in any way emotionally fragile. I'm not 100% sure but I thought I heard someone in my screening sobbing at the film's denoument. Said finale perhaps tugs on the heart strings a little too forcefully but one would have to be a curmugeon not to be somewhat moved. This is in part due to a strong performance from young MacDougall who excels in portraying a child struggling to come to terms with the way of the world, especia...

Having got the bank holiday out of the way, I now consider the new year to have properly started. There are remnants of Christmas excess still on the high street, with Greggs desperately attempting to give away all of their mince pies rather than send them back to the depot. At least in the Bromley South branch anyway.  I now have nine days off work but some accountancy exams looming large on the horizon. In the past three months I have found myself struggling with it and feel like I've bitten off more than I could chew. Consequently I now find myself cramming like a Red Bull addled undergraduate. I had rather hoped that those days were behind me. Oh well. Other than a pleasant family meal yesterday had little of interest to report. Most of my opinions on what happened centre on sport. Events in the world of football were a sizable portion of my previous blogging stint in 2015. It split my audience straight down the middle. One said "I read all of your blogs, except the fo...

I thought I'd give the layout of the blog a bit of an update. It was previously white text on a completely black background (in part because I couldn't be arsed to change it). Whilst appropriate for most of the content, it was starting to look rather funereal. The backdrop is now a photo of me at last year's Slam Dunk festival wearing a hat I found on the floor, displaying a weary countenance. I despise most photos of myself but deemed that appropriate for use here. I watched Billy Connolly's new DVD, "High Horse" with my father last night. I had briefly floated the idea of going to see him live earlier in the year. My Dad was reticient to do so, concerned about the impact of Connolly's well publicised health issues. He's noticeably more frail in the recording obviously and he's lost his physicality, spending almost the entire 90 minutes on the same spot. But his delivery remains assured and there are several stand out moments as good as anything...

Hello again. I've decided to resurrect my daily blog after taking a year off. I, like a lot of people, am happy to see the back of 2016 but I can't help but feel it would have been a much more interesting year to cover in its entirety than 2015. Anyway, I'd like to write more and know that I'm strangely motivated by the arbitrary goal of 365 consecutive blogs. I can't guarantee a word count but will at least try to string some sentences together. All things considered, it's a good policy to not reveal too much of yourself on the internet. But I work for a bookmaker somewhere in the Greater London area. Yesterday on Facebook, I discussed whether you could describe continuing to turn up and do a job you're unsuited to as an achievement. As I was verbally abused at the close of play today by a punter for an entirely imagined transgression, I thought about it some more. I had shown up at another shop on New Year's Day, opened it, closed it, worked alone ...