Writer's Block

It's the end of May. Although 8th June is apparently also going to be the end of May according to the Labour Party and their acolytes. It was the leader's debate tonight, notable predominantly for the absence of the Prime Minister who subsequently got a kicking on social media for failing to turn up. I am decidedly unimpressed with Theresa May, who comes across as cold, robotic and unable to outline her party's plans for Brexit or indeed anything else with any real sense of clarity. But I suspect that my parents and everyone else who isn't on Twitter will vote for the Conservatives anyway. The rationale will be that Labour are promising things that they won't be able to deliver without hitting British people in the pocket and their policies will alienate the rich, whose interests need to be protected above all others apparently. Having said that, I am uncertain whether I can bring myself to vote for Jeremy Corbyn. I honestly wanted to get behind him when he was ...

Do you ever wake up knowing that the day is going to be dreadful and then you're right? Well, that was today. You may well consider that a failure on my part to enter a sufficiently positive frame of mind and that's entirely fair enough. I suppose what I'm getting at is that some days you are distracted from the tedium of a job that doesn't challenge, stimulate or interest you. To the point where you say aloud behind the counter "I don't care about horse racing". If you were in my position, you might well do the same. But House of Cards has made its overdue return to Netflix, so that's something. I think I posited in a previous blog that the new season would suffer from recent events in the real world. The response seems to have been to crank up the drama, delivering on the Underwoods' promise to "bring terror" in the previous season finale. There's one or two developments in the opening episode which even the Trump administration w...

It was the London date of the 2017 Slam Dunk Festival today, so pretty much a year to the day since that entertaining background picture of me wearing a pink hat was taken. A lot can change in a year. Moving swiftly on, Huddersfield returned to the top flight of English football for the first time in 45 years with a Championship play off final triumph, 4-3 on penalties after a 0-0 draw with Reading. It was frankly a dreadful game of football but that isn't too much a surprise given there's something like £150 million riding on it. The playoffs are supposed to make the end of seasons more exciting but largely produce damp squibs. I'd like to see them done away with, or at least modified into the relegation/promotion format since elsewhere in Europe, where the third best team in the division below play the third worst team in the division above for a place in the higher league. Or something. As most 50+ year olds will tell us, everything was better in the past, including ...

A relatively quiet day at work. A BBQ was taking place in the beer garden of the neighbouring social club and my colleague and I were very kindly donated a free burger. Any day where someone gives you a free burger is a decent day I reckon. It was a lovely afternoon for it, too. Up until the point it was interrupted by a half hour monsoon. I went out and saw some people last night for the first time in a while, which is important, particularly in light of what I spoke about yesterday. Most people are aware of the benefits of involving other people in their lives, but I seem to need reminders. My friend Chris and I used to speak of a sort of socialising sweet spot during our undergraduate years, where we were just inebriated, engaged and up for it enough to become the life and soul of the party. We described it as "bringing our A game". There were lower level variations of course. A "B or C game" would be most likely to occur and those nights were still fun.  I...

I don't know to what extent other people are plagued by dark thoughts in the night but last night, I thought about killing myself. I should stress that it was a fleeting feeling. Liam Williams put it beautifully on stage once: "I have thought about suicide but only in the same way that I've thought about going for a jog every morning for the past seven years". I feel similarly. I want to stress to anyone who might be reading this that I'm not in any imminent danger to myself and I haven't at any point made plans to end my life. One of the main things that I took away from CBT (I really need to revisit the recordings I made at the time) is that thoughts are not necessarily truthful and should not be considered as such. I have the day off today and I'm in bed now. To be honest, at the moment I'm in bed more often than not if I'm not obligated to be elsewhere. I can't pinpoint it necessarily, whether I'm physically exhausted, mental exhauste...

Lord, it is too hot today. It's gradually been building up over the past few days but it is sweltering. It's so rarely warm that I invariably enjoy it, but it's crossed over into stickiness today. Anyway, I've booked to return to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival yet again this August, with no small amount of regret that I'm unable to perform for the full duration, having finally prepared a show to take. This will be the tenth anniversary of my first visit to the festival, when as an 19 year old it felt like the most exciting place in the world to be. On that occasion I was part of the ill fated Royal Holloway Comedy Society's showcase show "There's A Donkey In My Van" where we foolishly booked a church to perform a cavalcade of filth. I'm pretty sure on one occasion we actually performed to some local parishioners, who as you might expect, looked absolutely appalled. But we weren't the first student show at the Fringe to attract the ire of t...

The show must go on, or so I'm told. I headed to Andrew McMahon's show at Bush Hall on Tuesday night, still gutpunched from the night before. He addressed the elephant in the room early doors, speaking of live music as one of the things dearest to us and emphasising that we will not be cowed. Hear hear. This was largely the same format as his previous two London shows, a sort of "Evening With..." vibe with McMahon behind a Baby Grand. On this occasion, he brought band member Zac Clark with him (a man with a kind of "hippie era John Lennon" thing going on) to provide some instrumental depth via keyboards and more implausibly, an accordion. In a moment of candour, he conceded that money issues had dictated this form of touring in the UK but that we could expect a full band return in the future. I was lukewarm towards McMahon's new record "Zombies On Broadway" earlier in the year and he sensibly kept the recent material to a minimum, although ...

It goes without saying that my thoughts have been dominated this week by the appalling events at Manchester Arena on Monday night, where 22 people were killed and many more injured by a terrorist attack at an Ariana Grande concert. Even if I were somehow to place myself in the shoes of a terrorist, to consider myself justified in maiming and murdering innocent people for whatever cause, I cannot fathom this. I cannot fathom targeting an event with thousands of children and teenagers in attendance. I remember the first gigs I went to in my teens. I remember how exciting and thrilling I found going to see Blink 182 at Wembley, the lights, the music, the atmosphere. How brilliant those experiences were. An eight year old girl lost her life. Children have lost mothers and fathers. And those who were fortunate enough to survive have had what should have been one of their best nights of their life irreparably tarnished by a twisted, troubled young man. It's abhorrent, it's disgusti...

After being dumped by her boyfriend, Emily (Amy Schumer) needs to find someone to take on a non-refundable holiday to Ecuador. Her mother Linda (Goldie Hawn) reluctantly agrees, despite certain reservations. Her fears prove to be well founded as the two women are kidnapped. Emily and Linda escape and must make their way to the US consulate in Bogota with their captors in pursuit. Hawn and Schumer have decent chemistry together and I was surprised to hear that it was Hawn's first screen appearance for 15 years. I was disappointed by Schumer's last film "Trainwreck" and the jury's still out on whether her undeniable stand-up success can translate to Hollywood, but this is a solid effort. There are a handful of decent laughs including the outstanding line "When I got divorced, I thought that I'd never have sex again. And I was right". There's some more off colour stuff too, but I've seen worse. Much of the film's humour comes from Emily...

 Gloria (Ann Hathaway) is struggling to find work and her hectoring boyfriend Tim (Dan Stevens) kicks her out of his New York apartment. She goes back to her childhood home town where she reconnects with her school friend Oscar (Jason Sudeikis) who is now running his father's bar. A giant monster mysteriously begins terrorising Seoul and Gloria realises (implausibly) that she is to blame.  This is an exceedingly odd film. We know how talented Ann Hathaway is, so it's odd to see her here in a role that feels beneath her. Gloria is not a fantastically drawn character. She mopes, she complains, she gets drunk. It's actually Sudeikis who delivers the best performance, believably moving from concerned friend to sinister lunatic as the picture progresses. One scene in the bar late on exhibits a genuine sense of menace that will stay with me for some time. There are some interesting themes at work here (misogyny, abuse, the suffocation of small town life) but most of them seem...

 Long day at work today. A handful of silly mistakes that I shouldn't have made. In all areas of one's life, perhaps mistakes are unavoidable but it doesn't make me feel any better when they occur. Still, onwards and upwards and all that.  I've quickly got through the remaining chapters of "OJ: Made In America" this week. Ezra Edelman's documentary is a superb piece of work that should be viewed in its entirety but I admit that the final two episodes have stayed with me the most, where the hasty final judgement and motivations of the jurors are placed under scrutiny. I appreciate that the African-Americans on the OJ jury saw the trial as an opportunity to get retribution for the Rodney King verdicts and the countless injustices they had suffered in the past. I'm not in a position to say whether that was right or wrong. But I'm sure at this point that most people agree that his exoneration was a travesty of justice.  As with "The People v O...

I wondered on reflection whether I'd been a little bit hard on King Arthur: Legend Of The Sword. But then I remembered that it ends with Arthur constructing a circular piece of furniture and delivering the line "It's a table, you sit at it". Subtlety is not exactly Guy Richie's strong suit. But the whole point of having a Cineworld Unlimited card is to take a punt on things that I wouldn't ordinarily pay to see. Having not previously seen any of the other Alien films, I had no real appetite for Alien Covenant and felt A Dog's Purpose would eventually irritate me, given that I am largely ambivalent to the canine population. With the new Pirates of the Caribbean film arriving next week at my local the situation is likely to get worse before it gets better. But I'm travelling further afield for an unprecedented triple bill on Monday that I hope will sate me in the short term. A friend commented earlier today that the format of this blog was a bit diff...

Uther Pendragon (Eric Bana) is the King of England and has recently foiled the attempts of Mordred (an evil mage) to take over the kingdom. His brother Vortigern (Jude Law) sacrifices his wife in order to gain the power to overthrow his brother and become King of England. Pendragon's son Arthur (Charlie Hunman) is sent away by boat to Londinium, where he is raised in a brothel. In Vortigern's kingdom, a sword appears. Only one man can remove it. Guess who? My only real engagement with Guy Richie's work thus far is through the two Sherlock Holmes movies with Robert Downey Jr and Law. They were silly but well crafted, entertaining fare. This film is just silly, with Law in "panto villain" form and Hunman's "cheeky chappie" shtick largely left me unmoved. There are a couple of scenes in which Shakespearean type plotting is discussed like an Oceans Eleven type heist movie that are quite fun but other than that there's little to recommend this. Sw...

Chris Cornell of Soundgarden and Audioslave died earlier today at the age of 52, in what was apparently a suicide. I'm not hugely familiar with his music other than the latter's "Cochise" (which is a tune) but am aware of how much he was respected and admired in the rock community and he used to be written about a fair bit in Kerrang which I was once an avid reader of. It's obviously desperately saddening news for his family, friends and rock fans but what struck me as being especially awful was that it occurred a couple of hours after Soundgarden had played a show at the Fox Theatre in Detroit. Gigs have been a huge part of my life for 13 years or so. With maybe a handful of exceptions, every time I've felt low, sad or upset, I've gone to see one of my favourite bands and felt better coming out the other side, having lost myself in music for a couple of hours. Cornell stood on stage last night in front of a group of fans who adored him. He had brought v...

I listened back to the "The Wilderness Years" show from Machynlleth today for the first time, a mere two and a half weeks after the festival's conclusion. I was a little bit underwhelmed with the set, but it's possible that I'm being too hard on myself. An audience of 12 in a room with a natural echo isn't conducive to a raucous atmospere and I did feel that I gathered a little bit of momentum towards the end. I sensed that most of the audience enjoyed it aside from one guy on the front row, but it isn't possible to please everyone. I could also hear the rustiness in my voice from a lack of gigging, with far too many errs, umms and y'knows. I'm always wondering if I could get better laughs and what I need to work on to achieve that. My writing and points of reference can sometimes be a bit obscure and I'm thinking about whether or not I need to write more accessible stuff. Having said that, I've only ever written from the perspective of w...

It was exam retake day today, fortunately with a more successful outcome. Despite having gone through all the revision questions and feeling that I had prepared adequately, it was a little bit closer than I would have liked. A couple of unexpected wordings and concepts threw me a little bit. But if you get over three quarters of the available marks, you probably deserve to pass. There were about 12 others retaking exams from various modules, which at least demonstrated to me that I'm not the only one who has found this process difficult. But I'm on the final stretch now. One last final big three hour exam in mid-July and hopefully that will be that. I watched the first episode of "OJ: Made In America" on BBC4 on Sunday and I thought it was terrific, so much so that I'm currently watching the second episode on Iplayer already. I'm familiar with the story of the OJ trial, but I was less aware of the background to it. This documentary series is terrific in plac...

I took the relatively short trip to Charing Cross and the pleasant environs of the Playhouse Theatre on Saturday for a matinee of David Baddiel's latest one man show. It starts with some generally light material about the nature of Twitter, making jokes on Twitter and the nature of offence that reminded me somewhat of Mike Birbiglia's recent Netflix special "Thank God For Jokes" which I keep meaning to get around to reviewing. We quickly get into the central thrust of the show which concerns Baddiel's mother Sarah, who passed away a couple of years ago. We discover several of her eccentricities, starting with her lack of awareness that lighting forty candles on a birthday cake is a potential fire hazard. There's also some delightful footage of her hijacking an episode of "Baddiel and Skinner Unplanned" as she successfully matches wits with the double act and utterly embarrasses her son. But the real story here is Sarah's 25 year affair with a...

Back to the Roundhouse for yet another Frank Turner show. On a lovely Saturday evening I walked through Camden from Mornington Crescent, enjoying the hussle and bussle. I had almost forgotten that the first time I went there 13 years ago, my friend was threatened by a guy wielding a knife outside a cafe. Good times. I got there for Seth Lakeman's main support set. It was something of a surprise choice for a support act. I'm not familiar with his work but have read enough gig guides to know that he's capable of selling out the Roundhouse on his own. Lakeman treated us to some virtuoso violin playing before half an hour of enjoyable folk rock. It transpired that Turner used to open for Lakeman in the early days of his career. Kudos to him for returning the favour. Tonight's headline set was comprised entirely from Turner's debut record "Sleep Is For The Week" and his first two EPs, back when he was more troubled troubadour than rock and roll showman. How...

It was off to the Roundhouse last night for the opening night of the inaugural "Lost Evenings" festival, featuring two stages and four headline sets from Frank Turner amongst a plethora of other events, gigs, workshops and afterparties around Camden between now and Monday. On tonight's evidence, it's going to be a grand old time. The main stage kicked off with New Pagans, who were playing their third gig. I thought they showed some promise with some guitar riffs that reminded me of "Futures" era Jimmy Eat World. But I'll admit that their vocalist was not to my taste. Still, it's obviously early days. AJJ were next. My first impression was that they play acoustic rock with a sort of nerdish sensibility, not a million miles removed from something like The Barenaked Ladies. But their set moved into different and darker areas as it progressed, culminating in something of an epic sounding finale. I'd be interested in investigating further. I...

Washed up actor Richard Thorncroft (Julian Barratt) is struggling to find acting work two decades on from his career defining role as Mindhorn, a detective on the Isle of Man who possesses a bionic eye capable of "seeing the truth". When a murder suspect on the island demands to speak to Mindhorn believing him to be a real detective, Thorncroft is recruited by the police to revisit the role as part of their investigation and he accepts, hoping that the publicity will kickstart his career. There's only one thing that matters with a film like this and that's "Is it funny?". In Mindhorn's case, the answer is a regrettable no. There's nothing inherently wrong with Barratt's portrayal of the pompous Thorncroft, struggling to come to terms with the fact he's yesterday's man living in the shadow of Peter Eastman (Steve Coogan) whose character "Windjammer" from the original series enjoyed a successful and lucrative spin off. It's ...

Earlier today, I went back and wrote about the events of my birthday this year, as I felt I was ill equipped to do so on the day in question for reasons that will become obvious. I'm still not entirely happy with how I've attempted to articulate it. As Daniel Kitson once said, trying to explain the complexity of a thought is akin to giving a monkey a fishing rod and asking it to catch the sky. I'm still searching for the reasons why I feel the way I feel and why things have panned out the way they have to date. You can read it here if you're so inclined. This evening I have mostly been irritated at Manchester United but I won't go into that. My foot pain has abated to the point where I feel I can proceed with the Frank Turner double bill this Friday and Saturday at the Roundhouse so that's good. I have mostly been listening to Turner's debut record "Sleep Is For The Week" in preparation for Saturday night's show. He has also promised us his ...

I wasn't actually aware that the assertion made in the title of this blog was the case until I heard a rather eccentric interview with Tom Courtenay on Kermode and Mayo's Film Review last year.  But then I don't care much for astrology or horoscopes or what have you. This is all a roundabout way of saying that I have a foot injury that I'm struggling to combat, despite having been born in early March. It feels like an impact injury rather than something muscular, which is odd as I would have thought that I would have remembered the impact in question. In any event, it's developed into something that is threatening my good time vibes and general sense of mobility. I'm one of those people who won't go to the doctor unless I feel like I'm dying so I'm hoping with further rest it might abate. These things always seem to happen to me when I have a music gig to attend on the horizon.  Still, I turned my ankle in the week before Bruce Springsteen's ...

"The Age Of Spin" is one of three Dave Chappelle specials recorded for Netflix. This and "Deep In The Heart Of Texas" were released in March, with the last to follow later this year. I'm not hugely familiar with Chappelle's history save for the fact that "Chappelle's Show" on Comedy Central was massively popular before he elected to walk away during the production of its third season. Since then he's sporadically performed stand-up before a more sustained return to touring in the past couple of years. He's frequently courted controversy and starts here by providing a broader context to a disastrous gig in Houston where he took to the stage stoned, brushing it off with the line "I'm like Evil Knieval, I get paid for the attempt". He possesses a cool natural authority that makes him a likeable stage presence in spite of such indiscretions. And there are a few in this show. His revelation that he chose to go the Oscars in...

My local Waitrose has recently installed self-service checkouts. It's the sort of thing that constitutes news in a town such as mine. They are approximately a decade behind the curve at this point. But then Waitrose have never been ones to follow the herd, with their exobitant prices and willingness to describe profiteroles as an "Essential item". In addition to the whole "giving their employees a say and taking bank holidays off" thing. They perhaps could have done this a while ago to ease congestion during busy periods, but fair play to them. My friend Tom works for Sainsburys and has often spoken despairingly of his customers' entitlement regarding contactless payments, affronted that they were asked to spare eight seconds to enter a PIN and employ a basic security measure until last year when the company finally introduced them. I'm uncertain what point I'm trying to make here. In any event, self-checkouts are a dangerous business for those of ...

A fairly nondescript day off work. Mostly football again, mostly end of season heartbreak again (with apologies to Blackburn fans). In other news, Emmanuel Macron has triumphed over far right bellend Marine Le Pen in the French election. This may prove scant consolation to those of us unhappy with the direction the Western world has moved in, but I'll take it for now. I've still got post Mach Fest blues and still thinking about what I might do next. I am continuing to wear my tatty festival wristband as part of my stubborn refusal to move on. I think for certainly the past couple of months, I've been focusing on the deadline of my Mach Fest show and trying to put on a show worthy of inclusion at a comedy festival of considerable stature. It has been a welcome distraction. With that out of the way, in the past few days my negative thoughts have returned to the fore. Or certain specific longstanding negative thoughts have returned. Negative thoughts don't ever real...

Football is a cruel business. So I'm sparing a thought this evening for the fans of Hartlepool United. They had to win against Doncaster and hope that Newport County failed to beat Notts County to stay in the Football League. 18 year old Devante Rodney scored his first career goals in the 74th and 83rd minutes to give Hartlepool an unlikely lead. Both were superbly taken particularly under the circumstances. Six minutes later, Mark O'Brien scored for Newport to keep them up instead. The margin between success and failure has seldom been so narrow. It was tremendous to watch and one of the many examples of why so many of us are invested in the agony and the ecstasy of this stupid sport. It's a blow for football in the north east and for everyone involved in the club, including Soccer Saturday's Jeff Stelling. Sunderland dropping out of the top flight is one thing, to lose your status as a league club is quite another. I wish Hartlepool all the best and hope that they c...

Peter Quill (Chris Pratt), Gamora (Zoe Saldana), Drax (Dave Bautista), Rocket (Bradley Cooper) and Baby Groot (Vin Diesel) are working as mercenaries for hire after the events of the first film. After another of Rocket's indiscretions, the team once again find themselves on the run. They find shelter on the planet of a mysterious man called Ego (Kurt Russell) who turns out to be Peter's father. Peter finds himself with a dilemma as a result. I found very little to fault here. The first film is vast, action packed and funny and the follow up provides more of the same, alongside another big 70s and 80s soundtrack in the form of "Awesome Mix Tape Vol 2". Quill's cassette player is replaced by another antiquated piece of music technology in an amusing scene towards the end. I personally didn't think "Brandy (You're A Fine Girl)" by Looking Glass would provide character motivation in a major Hollywood picture and yet here we are. Russell is perfec...

Pop-punk heroes New Found Glory return with their ninth full length record, Makes Me Sick. The band have departed from the heavy hardcore influences of previous record "Resurrection" in favour of a synth driven sound. Indeed, opener "Your Jokes Aren't Funny" contains a synth line that wouldn't be out of place in a Motion City Soundtrack track. It's a little bit underpowered as an opening song but saved by a crunchy riffed chorus.  Unsurprisingly, previously released singles "Party On Apocalypse" and "Happy Being Miserable" are two of the record's stronger tracks but anxiety anthem "Call Me Anti-Social" has become a firm favourite of mine, its use of keys echoing the band's previous pop-rock LP "Coming Home" with a smidge of "Failure's Not Flattering" and backed up with a fine guitar solo. "Blurred Vision" is a slower piano infused effort which also would not have been out of place ...

One of my work colleagues had thoughtfully left the sports pages of Monday's Daily Mirror open on the headline "Stadium of Blight" for me to discover when I arrived on Tuesday morning. Due to Machynlleth's poor 4G reception, I discovered Sunderland had been relegated by overhearing a Welsh child's conversation at around 8:30pm on Saturday night. It seemed fitting. After about five years of implausible acts of escapology, the club's demise was something of an anticlimax, meekly slipping out of the top flight having not won a match since the infamous 4-0 win at Crystal Palace on 4th February. That day now feels like some kind of fever dream and any lingering chance of survival ended about two months ago. At the start of the season, the club were perhaps unfortunate to lose Sam Allardyce to England but David Moyes' tenure has been a disaster. He is a man whose attitude to his job makes me look like a motivational speaker by comparison. No-one, anywhere in f...

Back from Machynlleth and back to reality with a bump and a 14 hour shift. On Friday night I was sharing a stage with some of the best comedians in the country. On Tuesday morning, I was writing odds on betting slips for elderly men and tolerating banter from Millwall fans. It was undeniably something of a comedown. Still, I'm not suffering from a great deal of fatigue in the aftermath which is a bit surprising. Although having said that, I did generally manage the weekend well. I slept a lot better than I have in months and performed the show as best as I could. I haven't really started reflecting on it yet but the weekend has given me a lot to think about. Not least whether I'm going to try and work up another stand-up show a good deal earlier than I had originally planned. But for now, my priorities lie elsewhere.