Snow!

Okay, so it isn’t actually snowing, so the title of this post was a little bit of a lie. But it has been: walking to work this morning, I passed a number of cars (presumabley having come down from the mountains) with small drifts of snow on their rooves (not just frost, like those in town have). Winter’s picking up pace. The weeks and weeks of rain we’ve had have at long last stopped, giving us a week of clear skies and frosty, crisp days. Wonder if we’ll get snow in Aber this year. I want to have another try at getting Claire sledging.

Went, last night, to the future history of the future of the thing that was historically The Future History Of Comedy, “Gorilla Monsoon”, Aberystwyth’s alternative comedy/open-mic thingy, with Claire, Jimmy, Matt, and others. Matt’s said a lot about it already in his review, so I won’t go over old ground by telling you everything in as much detail as he already has, except where I disagree with him.

Our MC was Bryan Patrick, who I found to be good throughout. His quips at things were spot on and his crowd interactivity was good, and he seemed to do a good job throughout of getting the crowd motivated and making them feel connected with him on a personal level. I’ve seen Danny Furness a couple of times before at Future History, and his performance has always been… variable… but last night he really shone: a particularly spectacular act which repeatedly made me laugh out loud. Anton Pique was next up. I saw this guy once before at Future History, where he did a wonderfully morbid and dark act which was one of those “funny but you don’t laugh at it” things we see so rarely, like Chris Morris’ Jam. Last night, however, he seemed to be struggling – perhaps trying too hard to maintain a dark, subtle humour while simultaneously trying to appeal to a wider audience. Perhaps not. All I know is that he didn’t tickle me quite so well as he did when I first saw him. Nick Page was our headline act, and, as Matt says, he was very good, delivering a stream of well built-up, developed, thought-out gags with a hint of “what-next, graduate?” loss that I can’t help but empathise with. Witty, intelligent humour with which to finish the evening.

Here’s a thought: who’s Wes Packer (he claims to have been performing last night)?