Horses For Courses

I've been thinking about these for a while, when I first started out I went on one with a friend, I'd already been doing stand-up for a couple of weeks when she got in touch and asked if I fancied going.  It was run by Janice Connolly and Archie Kelly was guest tutor, both of them fresh from Phoenix nights (which I know dates this story.)

The course was useful to me, but the lessons I learned wouldn't really help until much much later.

Cut to 6 years down the line and the same friend got in touch with me to ask if I might help out as a guest tutor on the stand-up course that they run.

I jumped at the chance, as I think that if you can you've got a duty to the industry to try to help make it a better place with better comics, promoters and audiences for the good of us all, but that's possibly because I think I might be a goddamned communist, or at the very least un-American.

Now, of the people who went on the course that I was on I believe I'm the only person who's still performing, my friend is a teacher and works in the industry in another capacity as well as running the stand-up course (she doesn't teach on it another comedian does the teaching).

And I've heard a lot of discussion about whether stand-up courses are worth it, if they can actually help anyone and if those who would succeed would do so anyway without the aid of the course.

Broken Computer theory

As with the tipping point of The Broken Window Theory and how that leads on to further broken windows, so my computer has broken and all the good work of me putting the effort in working hard and writing a blog a day is now affected and I'm not going to be able to write a blog for a while.

It's just one of those things that happens, there's no guiding hand trying to stop me, it's just piss poor bad luck and nothing else.

As soon as I've got my computer back up and running I will be back to blog another day.

Broken Computer theory

As with the tipping point of The Broken Window Theory and how that leads on to further broken windows, so my computer has broken and all the good work of me putting the effort in working hard and writing a blog a day is now affected and I'm not going to be able to write a blog for a while.

It's just one of those things that happens, there's no guiding hand trying to stop me, it's just piss poor bad luck and nothing else.

As soon as I've got my computer back up and running I will be back to blog another day.

Another Country

There are times that I'm transported back to being a small child again and I get the feeling I used to get when my friends older brothers had their friends round and we'd get playing, because I could never resist a play with the older kids, and it would go too far and someone would use their superior strength to hold me still and no matter how I struggled I couldn't escape, and the frustration was palpable.  These days  like I get that feeling when I'm battling with putting a duvet cover on, and I never fully trust anyone who doesn't approach this task with caution and a little bit of their heart going "Right there's the outside chance of making a massive cunt of yourself here, be careful, the last thing you want is to end up with the duvet on the floor and you trapped in the cover."

It's my second worst feeling.  Even thinking about it now has brought a little bit of it back to me.

I should have told ya that the things that you love start to own ya

Judgement, and prejudgement.  We all do it from time to time, it's natural and it's one of our basic defence strategies passed down to us from our ancestors on the plains, a stranger comes in to our group from the outside, we're suspicious and fearful, and if something bad then happens to upset the equilibrium it's clearly their fault.

It's not always the first answer that's the right one though is it?

It gets better

I've always been of the opinion that the world is incrementally, day by day, step by step getting better and better, there's little hiccups along the way but gradually we're getting more enlightened and getting closer and closer to figuring out the one simple rule of life.  "Don't be a fucking dick"  and if you are being a fucking dick "Stop being a fucking dick".  Which is the simplified version of what I believe Siddhartha, the Buddha said upon realising that suffering is an inherent part of human life and that the only way to end the suffering of the self is to not harm another living thing.  A less nihilistic version of Sartre's Existentialism, which was built on realising that life has no purpose, no overriding meaning, and that in discovering that we are truly free we first despair, and then realise that the only true choice open to us is to extend the freedom of others.  Fuck yeah, check out my basic level of general knowledge masquerading as intelligence!

Rituals.  They make us who we are, they remind us that in a world where everything can change in a single second, and change back just as quickly that we're still who we think we are.  From paying taxes (if you're self employed) through to Weddinbgs, Stag and Hen Parties, even through to your morning poo and a cup of coffee (not always in that order)  They remind us that in the transience of life some things remain constant.

For me, first thing in the morning involves singing the Doctor Who Theme tune whilst doing an interpretive dance with jazz hands, getting a cup of tea, and a shower and then playing "Dance of the Knights" by Prokovief (AKA The Apprentice theme tune) as I sit down to my computer.  It's at that point I know I'm ready to face the day.

You probably have a slightly different routine, maybe you have a wank to the Blake's 7 theme tune, I don't know, it's up to you you magnificent pervert you.