Dan Q
You: To Hospital? What is it?
Me: It’s a big building with patients, but that’s not important right now.
Sad to say, he died yesterday. The world has lost a fantastic actor and comedian.
Just a short post, here: the wedding this weekend was amazing, but I’ll be writing about that at a later point, once I’ve caught up on all the work and email I’ve neglected over the last week or so.
We failed quite miserably to see any live comedy yesterday (although the day before was good). I blame the wine.
Y’see, we thought: you know what would be nice before we go out this afternoon? A quick bottle or two of wine.
Six bottles of wine later, the plan to go and watch some shows somehow mutated into a different plan – and I use the word “plan” in it’s loosest possible interpretation – involving:
– Board games
– Partial nudity
– Talking bollocks
– Chatting to an ex-bodybuilder who got hit by a car and now runs a kebaberie
– Swimming
– Saunaing
– Watching films
Today we’re all sleepy and confused.
Well, we made it to Edinburgh. After scooping up (well, not literally, although that could have been funny) Ruth and JTA from Maulds Meaburn we zipped off up the motorway and soon were completely lost in Edinburgh. Now I don’t want to point a finger of blame here, but I’ll say this: if Ruth’s contribution to finding the flat we’re staying in wasn’t a hand drawn map with only three road names and a “here be dragons”note in the corner, we might have found it a little easier. Thankfully the GPS unit in my mobile phone was able to show us the correct route, despite a few early hiccups in it not sufficiently distinguishing between a bridge and a junction, leading to dialogue like this:
Dan (staring at phone): Turn left.
Claire: At the roundabout ahead?
Dan: No, now! Oh, you’ve missed it.
Claire: We’re on a bridge, Dan.
Anyway, we somehow finally reached the flat. It’s a little less spacious that last year’s, and a little further away from the city centre, but it’s nice and it has a garage to put the car in.
[pause in typing to have sex]
We’ve been to a handful of shows yesterday and the night of the day before. We’re basically following the formula we settled on last year of Peter Buckley Hill’s Free Fringe all the way. We’re also taking every opportunity to evangelise against this year’s new rival, the Laughing Horse Free Festival. You ever seen an argument between advocates of different Free Software licenses? Same thing, really: we feel that Laughing Horse is providing the Wrong Thing [TM] to it’s comics. Anyway, that’s a debate for when I’m not blogging from my phone.
It’s nice to spend time with Ruth and JTA, anyway, because I always forget how much I end up missing them in Aber.
Oh, and I AM checking my friends’ blogs, too, but posting comments is challenging, so: congratulations to Paul on his new upcoming job, to Andy for getting Radio One airplay (wish I’d heard it!), and to Faye for finally learning to take time off. And to those of you who’ve commented on my recent posts or e-mailed me: thanks, I’ll reply eventually!
Suppose it’s time I got up and had a shower.
What have I been up to of late? Well, as you ask…
Ruth‘s game of Diplomacy got off to a fine start, and the backstabbing began soon afterwards. I’m not so keen on the engine, for reasons I’ll discuss later. Here’s how the map looks right now.
I’m the red guys down at the bottom who are getting their arses kicked by the purple and brown guys. Very sweetly, JTA (leader of Russia) sent me an e-mail to apologise a little (and gloat a lot) about his recent pillaging of my lands, and congratulate me on trying to set him and Andy (Germany) against one another. It’s kind-of sweet, as I said, but really un-necessary: breaking alliances is what the game is all about.
Plus, it’s not like I didn’t see it coming. My alliance with Russia as a show from the start, but I didn’t realise that Russia planned to attack me so soon (I’d just issued attack orders against him). My mistake was that I didn’t anticipate that Germany side with Russia and backstab me. Memo to self: assassinate leader of Germany.
Sadly, the Diplomacy engine we’re using – phpDiplomacy – has a few interesting bugs that make it hard to work out who’s actually on your side. Here’s an example situation:
The screenshot is faked, but the situation is plausible – the engine doesn’t accomodate for this. In this situation, the red player has been successfully attacked by the brown player, displacing their army (according to the message from 10:36pm). It’s not possible that the brown player did this alone, in this situation: they must have had help from at least one of – the green army in Piedmont, the green fleet in Venice, the purple army in Vienna, possibly a purple army from the region above (not shown), or perhaps even from the red fleet in Trieste (an unusual strategy, but not unheard of in some unusual circumstances, is to support the enemy against your own units).
But the engine gives no indication which this is. In this situation, the red player does not know which – green or purple – supported the attack. If the red player had alliances with the two of them, they would not know which one had betrayed them, for example. Whoops!
This could make it an interesting (or a frustrating) game. I’m certain that in the near future we’ll see players strategically helping one another perform attacks, without revealing that it was them that supported it.
This morning, I received a strange parcel from Matt in the Hat, addressed to “Jen, Paul, Dan & Claire”. The contents, as pictured, seem to be two Guinness glasses and three cartons of organic fruit juice. I’m not sure which bits are for whom – or even why we’ve been sent this package at all – but I’m sure Matt will enlighten me soon.
Update: I’ve spoken to Matt on Jabber, and apparently the Guinness glasses box does not contain Guinness glasses. And I’m to make sure that Jen gets one of the cartons of juice.
Basically, Matt’s lost the plot. However, he still managed, through his insanity, to pick a selection of objects who’s size ratios made packing them easy.
I’ve been playing a lot of Company of Heroes these last couple of days: it’s a spectacular game. It’s been a long time since a real-time strategy game has amused me so much (since, perhaps Red Alert 2, seven years ago). It’s yet-another-world-war-2 game, as if we haven’t seen enough of them of late, but it’s a battle-level strategic game, rather than a first-person shooter, and it does a wonderful job of what it does.
Tanks roll through deformable terrain. Infantry hide in the craters your artillery has blown out. And the whole thing looks and sounds beautiful, from the hushed descent of paratroopers into a muddy field (reflections and all) to the flashes and blasts of a distant battle (complete with radio chatter, or plain old voices if you’re looking directly at the speaker). You can build sandbag walls and minefields, and blow them down just as easily. Don’t want to risk your men down a long, sniper-infested street? Steal some German artillery pieces and blow your way though the walls, then – the whole map is completely reshapable. The AI’s not to be sniffed at, either (although it’s a bit fiddly when it comes to multi-selecting and moving a group of vehicles together and they all crumple into each other when they reach a chicane, rather than taking turns).
It needs a beefy machine to do it justice, which is why I got it – to push my new gaming rig to the limits – but it’s more than just a graphics-fest: it’s also a very clever and gritty game.
So, who’s for a co-op?
And, of course, the other thing that’s been occupying my time has been writing stuff to say on Sunday’s Gorillamania event. But I’ve already said enough about that recently, so I’ll shut up and get on with some work.
Wow, my previous post caused a sudden surge of comments. They’re all very sweet. Rather than answer them all individually in the form of more comments, I’ll selectively re-print them here in the form of a dialogue. Well, more like a septilogue, or something. Whatever.
Scatman Dan (earlier): Can I produce enough original material by Sunday to make my act long enough to be worth performing?
Heather: Judging by the size of your notebook – yes. I find things always take longer than I think they will.
Scatman Dan: Yeah; but you’ve seen some of the contents of the notebook. I mean, there’s a quarter page dedicated to the investigation of
whether the following joke is actually funny (spoiler: it isn’t): “Three gay guys go into a closet. One comes out.” Sheer quantity doesn’t actually make you funny in itself.
Tom Davies: [Yeah, but] don’t be afraid to try new things on an audience.
Scatman Dan: I’m not, usually, but somehow this time I feel like I should at least have something that promises to tickle them. On the other
hand, there’ll be three other guys to try to promise that, so perhaps I should be a little more adventurous.
Scatman Dan (earlier): How much of my previous material is acceptable for re-use?
Heather: None of it. I’d be quite disappointed if I came along and you were reverting to stuff we’ve laughed at before.
Scatman Dan: That’s what I was afraid of.
Heather: Actually, if there was a particular thing and you can work one hell of a callback, that’s ok to repeat.
Scatman Dan: That’s a far more positive answer.
Matt In The Hat: Play it by ear. If you don’t recognise the audience or if you happen to be in the neighbourhood of one of your ‘older’ jokes then use it.
Scatman Dan: Good advice.
Scatman Dan (earlier): Is any of this stuff even funny?
Heather: Yes.
Scatman Dan: Yeah, I know. Like I said, I know this stuff is semi-irrational.
Scatman Dan (earlier): Why do people keep trying to help me?
Heather: I keep “trying to help you” because I want to steal your reject jokes, and to palm off all my tasteless ones on to you to make funny.
Scatman Dan: Fair play (and I do appreciate your – and anybody’s – help… usually). To clarify: I don’t mind help, but sometimes I really don’t want it. I tried to
explain this to Claire the other week – most of the things I end up recording or making a note of for later aren’t even remotely funny. They’re recorded because they might
lead to something funny, but if I think too hard about them while they’re unfunny I never get motivated to find the joke in them again. That’s just me being odd.
Matt In The Hat: People will keep trying to help you because you’re doing stand-up comedy. Since everyone is funny at some point some people get the impression that
they are an authroity on it. Some people are writers who want you to perform their material. Others are making conversation. What I always found frustrating was that somebody would
tell me something that didn’t fit my style and I’d have to smile and nod. I imagine with an absurdist route you’ll be doing that a lot.
Scatman Dan: Excellently put. And you’re very right.
Scatman Dan (earlier): I have a very unusual sense of humour, which doesn’t really translate very well to anybody else. For example, here are several of the funniest
things I have ever thought about: [gives three examples]
Tom Davies: I particularly like the thing about lettuce. Punning is possibly the most underappreciated of the comedy arts.
The Pacifist: I did find the lettuce thing amusing. Far too much stand-up nowadays seems to focus on satirical observations or sarcastic… it would be a pleasant
change to have puns, surrealism and huge, huge tangents…
JenBanks (via IRC): Lettuce of the Alphabet is hilarious.
Scatman Dan: What do you know; I’m not the only one.
Scatman Dan (earlier): If you come along and see me on Sunday, that’s what you’ll be seeing – the patently bizarre.
Tom Davies: Don’t shy away from absurditiy (or things that Dan finds funny).
Heather: I like absurdity. I like laughing. You’ll kick ass. I’ll buy you a drink afterwards.
Scatman Dan: That’s a promising start.
Matt In The Hat: As I’m sure you know, the absurdist route can be a great one for one-liners. You mis-pronounce soemthing and then turn it into a joke or you just
randomly stop in the middle of a set to throw in a one-liner.
Scatman Dan buzzes and does a little dance.
Becky: Oh shit, what the smeg’s that word I use… the one were you put your head in some chick’s cleavege? You know what I mean.. now THAT was funny.
Scatman Dan: Mmm… embezzling. But is it more or less funny than The Feather Game? Y’know, sometimes I think that we’re the only people in the world who’d appreciate
reverse engineering of a trifle. And I wrote an entire page on that.
Jon: Video the event. It would be nice to see.
Scatman Dan: Not sure I can manage that, but we’ll see. Or wait until I’m funnier. All of the best comedians in the world are over 30, which means I can only get
better, yet.
Scatman Dan: That you to everybody who commented, but that there were so many comments of reassurance demonstrates that I didn’t write my previous post very well. I tried, with phrases like “the following semi-irrational concerns“, “I’d been quite frankly shitting myself, until tonight“, and “Thankfully I’ve found a cross-over”, to indicate that since last night, everything’s a lot better. Everything’s slotted into place quite nicely. Claire was revising, so I sat down with some complete strangers and a couple of pints and discussed funny things and then wrote a whole heap of material which’ll kill. Nonetheless, thank you all for your varied votes of confidence; hopefully I’ll show you I’ve earned it come the weekend.
My previous post was supposed to be uplifting, but it evidently came out kind-of bland, just like this one would if I ended it here, inconclusively.
The Gorilla Monsoon Mailing List is finally becoming usable, after a lot of kicking of the Monsooners by yours truly. If you’re in Aber, and interested in stand-up comedy, and weren’t on the mailing list because it was impossible to persuade anybody to put you on it, the problem has now been fixed and you can sign up like a normal person. Now go do it.
It’s been a fastastic weekend overall. First came my surprise receipt of several hundred pounds from my bank, yesterday. Then came an enjoyable Troma Night on Saturday evening, which could only have been made better if everybody hadn’t got beds to go to. Then to top it all off came last night’s promised open mic comedy night at The Angel.
The event’s given me such a buzz that I’ll forgive myself outright for this shameless blowing of my own trumpet: my set rocked. Yeah, of course I can pick holes in it – that’s what I do best – but folks laughed out loud and at length as I did my bits on Muslim extremism, astrology, psychotherapy, “I’m a little teapot,” and, probably best-receieved of all on a Rememberance Day evening, Hitler’s birthday party. At the end of the evening I was awarded a banana wrapped in gold foil wrapping paper, nailed to a plank of wood. This is my award, and, unusually, I found it hard to contain my self-conciousness… as the crowd started shouting out “Scatman, Scatman!” towards the end of the night.
This is just a fantastic end to an already great weekend. Some friends and I took the oppertunity to galvanise the moment with a glass or two of champagne at Wetherspoons, which turns out to have been a little bit sillier an idea than I’d first thought when I realised that I needed to be at the office this morning before 8am.
Also particularly worthy of mention last night are Adrian O’Toole, who remains a great stageman and did a great job of keeping charge of the evening after the task had been dumped upon him; the first act, Sam, who cracked a few classic gags in the face of a cold crowd; “Tony from Llanidloes”, who turned up late and still managed to remain confident and funny onstage; and Heather.
Yes, that Heather. Perhaps the single bravest person in the crowd last night was Heather, who lost her comedy virginity in a spat of well thought-out, clever bits of original observational comedy, only a little nervously delivered. If there’s one person who above all else deserves respect for their activities last night, it’s her. I tip my hat to you.
Thanks to everyone who came along and lent support. You made a good night great.
After a week of nudity, drunkeness, comedy, diversions, and unexpected board games, we’re back from Preston/Durham/Edinburgh/Oxford/everywhere else we’ve been. Buffy Night is on, tonight, if you want to come join us. Stories will be posted here soon (there’s some good ones you have to hear).
Here’s a picture in the meantime of us all with Peter Buckley Hill, one of the most spectacular comedians I’ve ever seen. The photo was taken by Yianni of “Yianni’s Head”, another show we saw.
Firstly; thanks to everybody who tested my kitten-based authentication system yesterday. It seems to be working quite well.
Claire and I are undergoing a grand tour of the United Kingdom this coming week, as follows:
Additional missions we’re on include:
Any other missions you’d like to assign to us while we’re out? No, Matt, you can’t have a cornetto. You’ve got perhaps a few minutes to tell us before we go.
I’ll be trying to keep online with e-mail access and perhaps even a blogpost or two while I’m away, but I can’t promise anything about my connectivity. Phone signal should be okay if I’m needed in an emergency, though.
This article is a repost promoting content originally published elsewhere. See more things Dan's reposted.
This repost was published in hindsight, on 18 March 2019.
Matt R wrote:
Well it would have were you there. I hope.
Sunday came and went and left me with the greatest buzz I think I’ve ever felt. I’m loving this comedy lark. I was terrified of the performance right up until the end of my first set and then I started to relax into it. Things started to fit and I let my material flow more than I probably should have in that I abandoned what I’d worked out of my script and left much of it up to the audience. It certainly paid off that night because the audience were spectacular. They deserve the most credit for the night as they came along wanting to laugh but best of all was their forgiveness. They would sit listening with the attitude “OK, that didn’t make me luagh but maybe the next one will”. I don’t think that I’ve ever seen that sort of generosity from an audience before.
The performances went well and Dave was better than I thought he would be (don’t misread me, I thought he was going to do well and he did marvellously). He’d rehersed his stuff well and thought it through and the closest I can come to a criticism was when he talked through the laughter, but that has to be balanced against his angry man ‘character’ and starting and stopping that can remind the audience that they’re watching a rehersed, rather than spontaneous, performance. Absolute Kudos to the man for not being phased by a joke that didn’t go as well as he’d hoped. I think it’s still got potential if it has a bit more set-up and is moved a little later in the set so the audience is more in tune with his character.
The ‘winner’ of the night was Adrian O’Toole who really was very good. He kept the audience laughing with his festival experiences and paused in the right places, had his call-backs to earlier jokes, spoke to the crowds experiences, called in his own without alienating them. He was very very good, especially considering he had only got up as part of a Gorman/Wallace style challenge system. You phone the man, set him a challenge and he’ll try it. When we told him afterwards that he was kind of expected to perform at the next comedy night he was very despondent. “But I’ve had twenty years to come up with this material” and that was exactly how I felt after my first show. I didn’t know how I’d ever be able to come up with anything else. I hope he carries on trying because he was a delight to watch.
Big shout out to Scatman Dan who’s review and expansion on what other people had done was fresh and exciting, definitely the sort of thing that we’ve been looking for — anything that goes against normal comedy boundries and pushes things in a new direction. Refering to other comics in your act is at least tabboo and at worst shunned and disparaged. I see both sides of the argument but if it’s done in a respectful manner I don’t see too much of a problem with it. If it’s not… well… I think that anyone who would do it without being respectful should be condemned to a red coat forever. Dan, of course, was nothing but respectful and I’d like to see him back, especially with some of (forgive the expression and please take no inference from it) his own stuff. I especially liked his explanation of the second war in Iraq.
There was a guy videoing it and I’ll let you know how that turns out. I really want to see it to find out where I went wrong (getting more and more Ducth Couraged on stage may have been one of them) and what bits worked better than I thought. Don’t worry Mum, I’ll send you a copy too.
Not quite finally I’ll be performing again (possibly MCing) at Yr Undeb on Tuesday. No, this is not the professional comedy nights that Steve-o runs but it is for RAG week and so please come along to support a well deserving charity case… and RAG! BOOM BOOM! No. There’ll be about five of us doing comedy and I really don’t know much about what else is going on that night but it should be good, and if not at least it’s for a good cause.
Finally I’m quite worried that I’m only funny when playing to a small crowd of Aberystwyth students who, if they don’t know me, at least know of me.
Guys, I really need your support here and I know that it’s very last minute.
There’s a comedy open mic night tomorrow in The Angel and, not only am I performing in one of the slots, I’m also the MC. This is a big thing for me so if you could all come along I could at least be guarnateed some laughs. Well, that’s not entirely true; I’m worried about failing in front of my friends and possibly even worse that you’ll only laugh because you know me and I’ll carry on with this dellusion that I’m funny but if tomorrow isn’t a success (for the bar, I mean) then we may not get to do anymore at The Angel and then I’m certainly scuppered. I know that some of you already have plans and again I’m sorry that this is so last minute but if you could make it to The Angel at 20:00 tomorrow (Sunday) and pay £2 on the door then that would be fabulous. Had I more money I’d bribe you all with drink. Also it is open miic so if you’ve got a great anecdote or a good impression feel free to step up and give me some respite.
Please please come.
I really hope I’m good.
Went to the Future History Of Comedy last night. I’m not going to write about it here, because this is what I would have said.
That post by Andy subsequently got made friends-only, so I’ve republished it here to save you dragging it off archive.org:
Went to a student-run comedy night last night on the promise of seeing Matt in the Hat do some open mic. It was surprisingly good, given that it had the potential to be utterly awful. Only one of the acts was genuinely excrutiating, a girl called Narin who didn’t actually appear to have written anything at all. She basically apologised for her last stand up routine ‘being all about sex’ then went on about how she never got sex because she moaned too much. then went on some obscure tangent about a picture of Clint Eastwood in a Semiotics lecturer and how her lecturer was gay (i think i’ve had that lecture). Anyway she elicited nary a titter.
The other acts were surprisingly good. The compere Barry Pigeon had a confident, if studied, delivery, lots of shouting and swearing and recurring jokes which worked well. The lead balloon/genuinely funny ratio was about 50/50 which is pretty good, and he didn’t let the clanging silence after the shit jokes put him off.
Then there was some guy who’s name i’ve forgotten but who had a pony tail, who wisely tailored his routine to the crowd. “We’re all Students right? That means we like to get DRUNK” kind of thing but managing to be genuinely funny a good portion of the time. A drama student, his obvious confidence helped him through a lot of joke-free waffle between gags. His routine about the Ship and Castle was laboured and lampooning students for talking about thundercats is nothing new, it went down a storm but then i guess the freshers in the audience probably hadn’t heard that kind of thing before.
Next was someone (i think) called Anton, who got talked over a lot so a lot of what he said was lost on me. He talked about cats and cheese and seemed to go down well. He had a very intimidating dark manner, standing very still but he allowed his pose to go a few times by chuckling along with the audience.
Then came an open mic section which Matt apparently decided not to bother with. It began with a guy called Liam who was probably the best of the night. though i can’t really remember much of what he said. routines about circumcision and not being able to dance. He was the most consistently funny but still suffered from nerves when a joke didn’t go down well, and had a touch of waffle about it.
The final act was Goatboy, which was a dramatic two-man sketch show featuring pony-tail guy, and another man who i took an instant dislike to because he was wearing a t-shirt which said ‘Your mum!’. They were good, very much in a League of Gentlemen vein. One sketch in which a man tries to contact his dead mother via a medium and apparently ends up talking to Mr T. Finishing off with a skit in which two monks allude darkly to ‘the curse we do not speak of’ (it turns out to be being gay with each other).
As a night designed to give wannabe student comedians a chance to perform amongst a crowd it was excellent. There were long spells with crap jokes and no jokes but when they hit the mark they were all genuinely good, and surely the point of the exercise is to let them see how different jokes and routines go down. Whether it merits a fortnightly slot remains to be seen. A non-professional comedy night with inexperienced performers relies heavily on the goodwill of the audience, which might not last. Some people last night clearly lost interest and talked through pretty much the whole night (fuck off downstairs if yr not gonna listen) and the danger of this happening will increase as the novelty wears off. The promise of different performers at each night is good but some consistency is likely to bring back casual punters (such as myself) and will give them a chance to build on what they’ve done.
Overall good. I’ve always wished i could do stand up, I’m pretty sure of my ability to make a room full of people laugh as part of a conversation but the moment i start trying to think of what i would say onstage with a mic in my hand i draw a blank. maybe i’ll try and chuck something together for the next one.
Cool And Interesting Thing Of The Day To Do At The University Of Wales, Aberystwyth, #4:
Buy a ticket to see Craig Charles, Still Live On Earth, on November 20th, at the Aberystwyth Arts Centre (a.k.a. My Doorstep). Not bad.
The ‘cool and interesting things’ were originally published to a location at which my “friends back home” could read them, during the first few months of my time at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, which I started in September 1999. It proved to be particularly popular, and so now it is immortalised through the medium of my weblog.
This post was later revisited as a nostalgic look back.
Ooh. Open mic. I’ll give that a go, if I can think of something to say.
See you there.