Writer's Block

Oh lord, it is too hot today. And tomorrow threatens to be the hottest day in living memory. I've been consuming rocket lollies like some sort of madman. Fortunately, I can bypass my inability to get to sleep by watching USA vs Germany in the World Cup semi-finals. Today was made better by the news of the return of The Wonder Years, who have become one of my favourite bands over the past couple of years. Their 2013 record "The Greatest Generation" has become one of my favourite albums, full stop. It's a 13 track whirlwind through what it is to be young, what it is to be depressed, what it is to aspire to do better and to achieve.  I don't think I've ever related to any lyric as much as "Jesus Christ, I'm 26. All the people I graduated with all have kids, all have wives, all have people who care if they come home at night. Jesus Christ, did I fuck up" from "Passing Through A Screen Door". I'll write about that album more in depth...

What a lovely day yesterday was. The sort of day that temporarily makes you forget that your life is going completely awry. In something approaching a good mood, I went to the beautiful Regents Park Open Air Theatre to see Simon Amstell's last performance of "To Be Free". Alex Edelman opened the show, largely reprising the material he had performed on The John Bishop Show the night before with some additional musings about Glastonbury. It was an assured 25 minutes, thought his newer material is not yet at the standard that earned him the Best Newcomer crown at Edinburgh last year. There's currently a vast mirror behind the stage at the theatre which is being used.during the week for a production of "The Seagull" by Anton Chekhov. It feels like an appropriate backdrop for an hour of Simon Amstell's introspective musings. I've related to his bleak existential mindset in the past (he ended a previous set with the words "Remember, death is comin...

As I write this, it is ten to three in the morning. My body clock is a bit out of kilter. Or rather it feels like someone has smashed my body clock against the floor and it's in a permanant state of malfunction. I suspect contributory factors include my medication and poor general physical state but we'll put that to one side for the moment. The current insomnia situation proved useful in watching England vs Canada in the Women's World Cup quarter finals in its entirety, with a 12:30am kickoff BST. We suckerpunched the Canadians with two goals in the first quarter of an hour. Canada dominated the rest of the half and scored courtesy of yet another error from Karen Bardsley in the England goal. Bardsley then went off with an eye injury, throwing in Siobhan Chamberlain at the deep end. Fortunately she didn't have a great deal to do and coped admirably. Canada were below par but England did well at nulifying their attacking threat in the second half, save for a couple of...

Over the past 9 months I've had six free Vue cinema tickets at my disposal. I used the last one yesterday on a screening of Mr Holmes, completing a run including Interstellar, Birdman, While We're Young and Still Alice. An ailing 93 year old Sherlock Holmes (Sir Ian McKellen) has retired from public life, living in Dover with his housekeeper Mrs Munroe (Laura Linney) and her son Roger (Milo Parker). The plot centres on his final case, an attempt to correctly recall and retell a case that has been misrepresented in prose by his old charge Dr Watson (who it is implied has written the Arthur Conan Doyle stories). There's fun to be had with the notion that Holmes lives in same world as his stories, particularly when he reacts in disdain at a cinema screening of one of his fictionalised tales. Anyway, needless to say we are some way away from Guy Richie's pugilist interpretation of the character here. It's a mellow, thoughtful 100 minutes with McKellen excelling in t...

I'm going to be doing some volunteering with the Ben Uri Gallery at Somerset House and went to a training day there yesterday. The gallery is named after Bezalel Ben Uri, a master craftsman from The Bible. Nine years prior to the formation of Ben Uri, the Bezalel School of Art was formed in Switzerland, so the founders elected to use the second half of the name for their new institution. The challenge of getting on top of a collection in terms of knowledge can be tricky but there was a great deal there of interest. The exhibition is a generally chronical look at the history of Jewish emigre art and the history of Ben Uri. My highlights were the particularly haunting "Merry-Go-Round" by Mark Gertler, depicting soldiers on a carousel at the height of World War I and "D-Day Preparations/The Briefing" by Barnett Freedman, an official War Artist, depicting a scene at a military base in Portsmouth.  Celebrating the centenary of Ben Uri, the exhibition is entitled ...

Who doesn't enjoy a blog written in the small hours of the morning because there's no time to write it tomorrow? It's good to take some time away from the voices in my head that amongst other things are keeping me from sleep. I listened to the episode of WTF with Marc Maron featuring Barack Obama and thought the President came across very well. I wasn't expecting him to speak with any great candour, but it was an interesting conversation touching about his motivations, his family life and relationship with his father. Maron gently steered towards some interesting topics of discussion while giving Obama the space to talk at length. Unusually for WTF, the podcast was recorded last Friday and released on Monday, giving the interview a sense of immediacy. Maron took the opportunity to ask Obama about the Charleston shooting a couple of days previously. His response went as far as I felt he reasonably could in terms of expressing a desire for gun legislation ("It...

Back to the Star and Garter in Putney last night for another gig with the We Are Funny Project. I wasn't exactly in the best frame of mind going into it and I wasn't entirely sure which material I was going to do, which is unusual for me. I know many comedians who go on with a handful of bullet points in their mind to work from. I pretty much have to know every word that I'm going to say. There was a point during yesterday's set where I asked how long I had left, which is a bit hypocritical when it's something that annoys me in other comedians. But if you are going to lose your place, the place to lose it is at an underpopulated open mic night. I believe there were about four punters to compliment the group of acts and given those circumstances I thought I did a respectable job combining old and new material. A couple of bits have a future, while a couple of others won't. I was also pleased to get some solid adlibbing in and to stay "in the room" to ...