Monthly Archives: January 2009

Podcast.

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Oh, and I forgot to mention, we’re releasing a Llamageddon podcast soon. That should make the jingle thing I mentioned in my last post a bit clearer. We’ve recorded the first one, but so brilliant was the material that we threw together out of nowhere, that we may not release it as a proper podcast, and it may just be released as a short ‘teaser’ podcast. That’s how good it was. Oh yeah. Anyway, the second one will be recorded at the end of February in the Kerrang studios in Birmingham. It’s fun there. They have free energy drink. I should have detailed the actual recording of the podcast in my blog when we did it, but it’s too long ago now to talk about it too much, other than to say it was a hell of a lot of fun, even if we probably didn’t really record anything particularly brilliant. We’ll be better for podcast 2 anyway. And that explains the podcast a bit. Bye!

Camera time.

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I bought a video camera the other day. It’s cool. It’s a Canon FS100 for anybody who’s interested (and let’s face it, that’s only me, meaning we’ve got another brilliant schizophrenic post where I discuss stuff with myself, when I could just as easily have the conversation in my head and save some time). Anyway, I bought the camera the other day, whilst also purchasing some editing software (in case you’re still reading self, I bought Sony Vegas Move Studio 9, the Platinum Pro Pack edition, because, let’s face it, I’m a pro who likes platinum stuff. Like a really high ranking magpie I am.), and a memory card which’ll record all the footage. The editing software arrived this morning, however the memory card did not, meaning I’m completely unable to do any recording with the camera until it arrives. When it does arrive though it’ll be a video monsoon. The Llamageddon youtube channel is set up ( http://www.youtube.com/llamageddontv ), which is where we’ll be putting all our stuff. Having said that, I probably haven’t actually mentioned the whole Llamageddon TV idea to a lot of people, so if anybody is reading this who hasn’t heard about it, we’re going to be making videos for youtube hopefully. We’d very much like to avoid the awful videos of ‘LOOK, I AM IN MY GARDEN, HERE IS MY BIRDBATH. SAY HELLO BIRDBATH! HOHOHOHOHO!’ thing, as there’s a lot of dreadful stuff on youtube, there really is.  We’ll hopefully make something borderline watchable though. It’ll be like the radio show, but on video. It’ll be top.

In the meantime, I’m trying to write some jingles that we’re going to have people record for the podcast. We actually have to pay actors to record them I think and make them sound a bit professional. With that in mind, I’m going to try and make them earn their money. I’m not paying them loads to just read five or so words, if they don’t meet my demands, they won’t be receiving their money. With that in mind, the current notes I have down regarding the performance style of jingles includes ‘I’d like it to sound like an old man who’s just discovered Orangina for the first time’. If they can get into the mindset of that man, and I agree that the jingle sounds like it was recorded by an old man who’s just discovered Orangina for the first time, they can get their money. If I’m not convinced, then they won’t get paid. If I even sense a slight air of ‘this man’s lived next to the Orangina factory for 30 years’, then they’re out. That’s it.

Anyway, other things to do. I should apply for jobs, but the application forms are too dull. It’s the usual ‘think of a time you worked in a team, what did you contribute etc’ rubbish. Typically, the best way that I can contribute to most teams is to stay away and let them do it themselves. They never accept my ideas anyway, leaving me to revert to my lone wolf status, as I sit in the corner tearing into a severed arm I’ve found. Whether it’s the fact that I’m almost incapable of working with other people at tasks which require me to be serious, or the fact that by the time it comes to the one-to-one interview stage I’m coated in blood and shards of flesh, something is stopping me from getting a serious job. I can’t imagine this blog will help matters if employers do actually check online profiles etc to investigate candidates. Hello to you all if you’ve found this. I’d like an actual letter of rejection if you’re going to reject me. I’d like to paper my room with them and sit in my room of depression. It’ll be like that Jodie Foster film. You know the one, where she’s sat in that room and that man gets hit with that sledgehammer. Yeah, Panic Room. It’ll be Panic Room, but more depressing. And I don’t have asthma. Perhaps I should put that on my CV actually ‘Don’t have asthma’. In fact, I’m going to start listing all the medical conditions I don’t have on my CV, because if I’m being honest, it probably needs more achievements on it, and I think that ‘never contracted ebola’ is probably as good as it’s going to get. It’ll at least be second next to ‘read a whole Hardy Boys book in a day once’. That’s what employers want you see. Take it from me, the unemployed one, employers love it if you can read through a Hardy Boys book really quickly. Get practicing.

Anyway, I should go and do something constructive, or at least think of something constructive I can do, potentially at a later date. Bye!

DAYS OF THUNDER!

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I’ve no idea what Days of Thunder is actually. It’s something I’ve heard of, but I couldn’t tell you what it was if you asked. I’ll just go and look it up on google to see what it is.

Right, apparently Days of Thunder is a film starring Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman and Robert Duvall. It has 5.4 stars out of 10 on imdb and the plot is that apparently ‘a young hot-shot car driver gets his chance to compete at the top level’. Sounds intriguing, a lot like The Color Of Money actually, another film in which Tom Cruise plays a young hot-shot who gets his chance to compete at the top level. And indeed Top Gun, a film in which Tom Cruise plays a young hot-shot who gets the chance to fly a plane. Or indeed Jerry Maguire, in which Tom Cruise plays a young hot-shot who gets his chance to represent one man. By this point, I can’t help but wonder if Tom Cruise is being typecast as a young hot-shot. Perhaps this was why he was drafted into Scientology. “We need a young hot-shot to make our ideas seem viable!” “What about that guy who played a young hot-shot in Mission Impossible?” “PERFECT.” Anyway, that worked out pretty well for them…

Getting back to the original point, I only put the title as days of thunder because I wanted something to give an idea of how eventful the past few days have been. I mean, probably not by anybody else’s standards, but for somebody who sits around eating malt loaf and watching Sky Sports News and Deal or No Deal all day, they’ve been a non-stop action packed ride to Thrillville on a roller-coaster crafted out of my own sense of excitement. At the same time, they’ve been a bit disappointing, but still eventful.

Anyway, Tuesday first. This was the day I did my gig in Soho in the Laughing Horse New Act of the Year competition. It was fairly exciting, since it’s quite a big competition, so if you can win it, then it’s a huge boost. Of course, there was no chance I was going to win it this year, what with only having 9 gigs under my belt compared to most of the top acts in the competition having maybe 100+, but still, I’d have at least liked to have got through the first round. I did however, completely fail to achieve this. In fairness, there was no way I deserved to go through, as I was fairly bobbins. Basically, at all my gigs so far I’ve been experimenting with different styles of comedy a bit, to try and work out which best suits me, and this gig was ‘full on strange style’ I think. I confused a lot of people, including myself. At one point I was trying to explain shepherding a dog around a jukebox, to what can only be described as baffled expressions, while this was probably only mildly less confusing than trying to explain that all dole people live in the sewers and perform various tasks for a rat king who promises he’ll help us find a job, but never delivers. It was, in short, fairly strange. I had fun though, but yeah, I didn’t go through. The standard was fairly high at this gig though, and most of the people who I thought deserved to go through did. Some decisions did confuse me though, but I probably shouldn’t rant on and on and potentially burn all bridges before I’ve had a chance to evacuate the island of failure. Of course, after that’s happened then it’s FLAME CITY! (Or not, I’ll see.)

Anyway, having completely messed that up and got in quite late after catching a train back from London, I then had to be up early the next morning to get a train back to London for an interview I had. It was for a company who work on behalf of a few big companies to place people in sales positions. Like a recruitment company of sorts, but with more high profile jobs. Naturally then, they were looking for people who could be professional. Unfortunately, this was not me. Within about 20 minutes of arriving, I realised that I’d actually entered an episode of The Apprentice. It was probably around the point when they started judging success in terms of what car you drove that I realised that yes, I was indeed in a room full of, well, insert your own word here. Some of the people there lived and breathed sales. Literally. I was talking to one person quite calmly, and then the next thing I was hit by a suitcase of brooms that he’d exhaled. I was livid. I still bought 4 though. A lot of them were taking it deathly seriously though, so, as is traditional in such interviews, I headed to the far opposite side of the serious see-saw to balance them all out. The first group task we were set was fine. I say fine, we all failed it because the trick was we were all meant to work together, whereas every group simply went out to ruin the other groups, but still, I hadn’t sabotaged my chances of getting a job I didn’t really want too much. Thankfully, I managed to rectify this in the second task, when we had to decide which supplies were most important to get us from one side of the moon to the other. The argument put forward by the rest of the group was that we should take the two handguns, because FIRING THEM WOULD PROPEL US TO THE OTHER SIDE OF THE MOON. I argued quite strongly against this, saying that the logic was nonsense and it would be quicker to walk, however, when it came to the results, the company actually said ‘You’d use the guns to propel yourself’. I still maintain that this is lunacy. If anybody can set this straight, one way or another, I’d really appreciate it, because if nobody corrects me then I will be angry about this for the rest of my life. Anyway, I’d basically completely blown my chances by this point by being so vocal against the Wile E. Coyote School of Science, so pretty much gave up even trying.

The next part as I recall consisted of a short one-to-one interview, in which I calmly explained that my understanding of sales was that we all sat around and drank orange juice, had a laugh, and then signed contracts. To which they replied “so it’s a fairly basic understanding then?” Yes. It was. This was followed by a short presentation which I made up on the spot, instantly rendering me less professional than everybody else who had brought handouts and pre-prepared notes. I thought it went well though. And by well I mean that I had a nice time. I think I may have just repeated the same point over and over again, changing one word every time I repeated the sentence. I thought that would be enough to make them think it was a different point. Somehow, they were not tricked.

After this, we had another group task in which we had to be creative and come up with an advert for a made up product, for which we were allowed to use a box of props if we wanted. I was appointed team leader by the dungeon masters, and as such, was meant to be in charge. I chose a product from the list they’d given us known as the ‘re-mute’, a remote control which could silence anything. We also had to have a jingle, which was set to a popular song. I chose Pulp’s ‘Common People’ from a list of songs for some reason. Anyway, I was meant to be Captain of the group, and had several unique ideas for the advert which could easily have led us to a resounding victory. Unfortunately, one of the other sales numpties wouldn’t listen to any other ideas, and pitched some astoundingly unoriginal idea about “WE COULD HAVE AN ADVERT WHERE HIS WIFE IS COMPLAINING AND HE USES THE REMOTE TO MUTE HER!” OH LOLZORD! I wanted to die. Especially since the rest of the group seemed to agree that this was brilliantly innovative.  I’d grabbed a number of props from the box and wanted to do an advert about a man playing baseball with a fox, but this was rejected, and having once been Captain, I was now consigned to the idiot step. Thankfully I was still able to do what I wanted from this step, and placed myself in charge of the jingle. Unfortunately, the first jingle that I wrote, which involved slicing people’s mouths off with a sword and beating them with a wrench to silence them, was actually banned by the rest of my group, as well as one of the invigilators who were there to judge our performance in the task, on the grounds that it was ‘too sick’. The rogues. I wrote another jingle though, which still involved hitting people with an old shoe, and this managed to just about slip past the jingle police. Anyway, our dreadful advert which I was ashamed to be involved in somehow managed to just about win the task, mainly on the basis that all the other groups had somehow outdone themselves and managed to be even worse. It wasn’t the resounding victory/looks of shock and horror that would have ensued had I had full control, but still, it may have been some plus point on my marks for the day, bringing my possible total score up to around -74. Needless to say, I didn’t get the job, which was good. I may call them soon to ask for feedback on my performance. That should be fascinating.

Anyway, yesterday was another thriller because the dog kept throwing up, but he was so cunning about it that he hid it everywhere. He vomited behind a curtain at one point. I’m not sure if he realised I was bored and just wanted to help out by creating some kind of strange ‘Finders Keepers’ situation, but if that was his intention, then it wasn’t as fun as he’d perhaps hoped. Anyway, this blog has gone on for ages now, so I should end here before I’ve got nothing left for my memoirs. BYE!

A WHOLE NEW BLOG.

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A NEW FANTASTIC POINT OF VIEEEEWWWWWWW. OH WHEN SOMETHING SOMETHING SOMETHING, SOMETHING SOMETHING ELSE, IT’S LIKE I SEE A WHOLE NEW BLOG WITH YOUUUUUUUUUUUUU.

I thought I should actually bother to post something here, as it’s been a while since I did (back in December was the last one), and I thought this might aid my frequent writers block a bit, so I’ll try to make a point to blog more often this year. Anyway, what have I been doing today? Today I’ve been working on a job application, in which I’m currently trying to think of a brand that I think needs a makeover, and what I’d do to make this happen. I was thinking of Woolworths, but I don’t think they’d see the funny side. I wrote to one company recently telling them that when I was 12 I bought my own chocolate factory, but went bust within a day, as I had no money to fund it. Needless to say, I didn’t get the job. They were very polite about it though, they could easily have just turned around and gone ‘OWNED A CHOCOLATE FACTORY DID YOU?! WELL CHOCOLATISE THIS!’ and sent me my CV back in Toblerone form. That would have been strange, but I’d have enjoyed it at the same time. I haven’t actually had a Toblerone for ages, and they’re pretty good, so I almost feel sad in a way. I think the enjoy a Toblerone would be a reasonable New Year’s Resolution that I could achieve. I may need reminding at some point though, I don’t want it to reach 11:55 on New Year’s Eve 2009 and I’m frantically running around the streets, darting in front of cars, mouth foaming screaming “WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH ALL THE TOBLERONES!?” at strangers. If anybody reads this, remind me before then that I need to eat a Toblerone.

As well as all this, I’ve been trying to prepare for my stand-up gig tomorrow. It’s in London, and it’s the first round of a competition. A good, pretty high-profile competition too. It’s one I’d very much love to win. Unfortunately, I’ll be going into it with just 9 gigs under my belt, making me, at best, a horse so dark that it actually absorbs light. Pretty much everybody else will have a lot more experience than this I feel, but I can only really do my best, and it’s all good experience. I’ve been trying to work out what I’m actually going to say tomorrow for a while, but every time I think I’ve got it, I decide I don’t want to do that anymore. It’s not that it’s rubbish necessarily, but I don’t like to think things through too much, or else you’re just going through a script in your head. I think I’d like for it to be a bit more chaotic and improvised really. I think that’s my style, rubbish. Rubbish is my style. I’m Oscar the Grouch. Briefly talking of Sesame Street, has anybody ever done a better production of Gone With The Wind than Cookie Monster? Unbelievable it was. Those cookies went everywhere. My heart went out to him.

I must say, I’m actually a bit nervous about the gig tomorrow, and I don’t know why. I say I’m nervous, I felt a bit anxious when I got up, but that seems to have passed ever since I just put working on it to one side for a bit. For some reason though, apart from my first gig, I’ve never really been that worried about doing stand-up, and I don’t know why. It’s just fun. I have to say though, it’s absolutely nowhere near as easy as some people make it look. I think some people assume that it’s nothing, you just stand there and talk, what’s hard about that? To be honest, I myself was probably one of those people, as before I started out I was guilty of thinking it would be easy, but it really is anything but, it seems to require a lot of work. There’s a hell of a difference between being funny with friends and being funny on stage. It is brilliant though when it goes well.

Anyway, I’m going to go and amble about for a bit, maybe have a snack, finish this application and then sit around and write some ideas for tomorrow. They’ve really been very strange so far, but they’re worth testing at least. Anyway, bye!