Tedious Details Of My Boring Life

Right, not much really happened this week. Doctor Who is over until xmas, so can’t bang on about that. My housemates have all been away or employed. My “night out” Monday was a total disaster. To be fair, I knew it would be, it was a spur-of-the-moment thing. At 12:30am my housemate got back from work and invited me out to a club. I, not unreasonably, shat all over the idea. But after a while, I gave into the part of me that always shouts unhelpful things like “don’t be so negative, give it a go, it’s got to be more fun than bumming around the house, trolling the internet” - it’s that kinda thinking that caused me to buy the excellent Sopranos DVD box-set having not seen a single episode. But also that made me give the remake of Conan: The Barbarian a go, so swings and roundabouts.

Actually just as an aside, is the “the barbarian” bit of that film title really needed? Are there other films “Conan: The Librarian”? “Conan: The Waiter”? “Conan: The PE Teacher”? All of which are just about unnecessarily violent people in those professions and then a giant octopus turns up in the libraries ‘biographies’ section or by the restaurants salad bar near the end of the movie with no rationale or explanation what-so-ever.

So anyway, I got dressed and ready quickly and we headed to a club about 1am. By the time we got there, they were refusing to let anyone in any more and the people we were going out to meet were heading home, quite wisely as it was clearly the end of the night out, not the start! So we came home, but I got a Burger King so I was happy, even if I was over dressed for fast food.

Then on Thursday, I went to see National Theatre Live’s production of The Kitchen in the cinema. I hadn’t been to one of the NT Live things before. It was really good actually. Surprising how filmy it felt, with close ups, pans and everything, clearly a lot of thought goes into the filming. The play was incredibly good. Had it’s funny and poignant bits in equal measure, extremely well choreographed (probably a better word than directed given how much movement went on with 30+ actors entering/exiting all over the shop), they also mimed cooking very well. According to the interview with the director, that was a little treat for us cinema viewers during the interval, they actually learned to prepare meals and were actually properly miming cooking. That’s good acting there. Back when I acted in school, if you had to be cooking in a scene you’d just pretend to stir for the whole scene. No real main-character in it as such, more ensemble, but Peter was my favourite, because Tom Brooke was very very damn good at the ol’ acting. My friend Ben reviewed it better: http://www.theupcoming.co.uk/2011/10/04/what-happens-in-the-kitchen%E2%80%A6/

Bearing in mind, I didn’t have much to say in my blog, I thought I’d read the papers and try and do something topical. This didn’t work so well, as I’d just read the papers and then write angry tweets shouting at the Daily Mail. All it really achieved was made me feel tremendously sorry for Amanda Knox. The papers loved hating her, she was a foreigner who killed a Brit in a foreign place and was a bit fit. Except then it turned out this week, that she hadn’t killed a Brit. Which kinda fucked with the whole persona the British press had built up for her. The Daily Mail were particularly shocked as, in a move that confirmed their status as the shittest newspaper in Britain (at least the Sport is just full of pictures of tits, it isn’t written and edited by them), they were quick to post this breaking news story on their website That article goes on to explain how Foxy Knoxy broke down into tears as her family hugged and comforted each other in the viewing gallery. It adds that the prosecution said “justice has been done [although] it is sad that two young people would be spending years in jail” and that Knoxy would be put on suicide watch for the next couple of weeks in prison. Clearly none of which happened. Luckily the Mail noticed this error before the next days edition went to press, meaning that it carried a headline about how much money Knox would make out of being proved innocent (yeah, I think she definitely planned it all. She wanted to go to jail on a false charge, it’s obvious!) while the other tabloids had a go at her for simply being happy about it. To put it mildly, bastards!

Saturday was mildly exciting in that I met Frank Skinner. But I don’t really have any stories relating to that, other than repeating the jokes he did on stage. He did have some interesting things to say on the nature of comedy, how he’s changed as a performer since Badiel and Skinner, and so-called “offensive comedy.” To illustrate his point, he retold a joke involving an impression of a disabled person’s walk (but not taking the piss out of it. The walk was not the punchline) it was funny and a well made point, but there was a lot of tension in the middle class Cheltenham Literature Festival audience about it. Difficult to have a proper discussion about “offensive” comedy and where the line is drawn when people are so on-edge about it, sadly. Yesterday I met Dave Gorman too. Nice guy, he remembered meeting me before, though I barely remembered it myself. Briefly passed him at a recording of the radio showChain Reaction is all. Maybe he thought I was someone else, maybe he did remember me. Either way: nice guy. Unless he was just saying that to everyone.