100 things to do as a comedian

There seems to currently be a glut of all these “100 things to do” lists and I wondered  what things must you do as a comedian.

100 things to do as a comedian

1. Sleep with a member of the audience.
2. Sleep with another comedian.
3. Fall out with a comedian that used to be a good friend.
4. Fall out with a promoter.
5. Drive to a gig with too many people in the car.
6. Be threatened by an audience member.
7. Cover for a comedian that’s failed to show up.
8. Wish death on a comedian for overrunning.
9. Question why certain people aren’t booking you.
10. Got lost on the way to a gig.
11. Get home late from a gig because of redirected traffic.
12. Turn up to a gig and realise at the last minute you have to share a room.
13. Get a cab from one gig to another on the same night.
14. Get a bad stomach from eating too much service station food.
15. Drive with a psychopath in the car.
16. Sit in a car with a psychopath driving.
17. Turn up to a gig and have it cancelled due to lack of audience.
18. Play to a room where there are more comedians than audience.
19. Wait for more than six months to get paid.
20. Get a one star review.
21. Know someone on a really shit TV show.
22. Do a gig drunk.
23. Do a gig on drugs.
24. Do a solo show at the Edinburgh fringe.
25. Have an audience member throw up during the show.
26. Do a gig abroad.
27. Double book yourself.
28. Get stuck in traffic so bad you don’t make the gig.
29. Eat the free meal offered at a gig even though you’ve just eaten.
30. Hang out with audience members after a show, not because you want to because there’s nothing else to do.
31. Masturbate in a hotel room.
32. Bring your own booze to a gig you’re performing at.
33. Do drugs backstage.
34. Be naked on stage.
35. Sleep on comedian’s sofa.
36. Have a comedian sleep on your sofa.
37. Wear the same clothes to gigs two days in a row.
38. Turn up to an empty gig because the promoter forgot to tell you it’s been cancelled.
39. Stay in your hotel room because it’s more entertaining than wandering around the god forsaken town you’re performing in.
40. Get stuck in a conversation with an audience member who spits when they talk.
41. Have someone say you can use the racist joke they just told you.
42. Have someone dull think you’re going to start writing jokes about their insignificant life.
43. Talk about a gig, to have another comedian say, “And who books that?”
44. Lose all your friends.
45. Split up with someone because they never get to see you because of your gigging.
46. Gig with someone famous.
47. Be on the bill with a group of comedians whose material you don’t care for.
48. House share with another comedian.
49. Have a promoter constantly promise to book you but never does.
50. Have a conversation about Bill Hicks.
51. Watch either Mr Show or Arrested Development to show that you “really know your comedy”.
52. Try and write a novel.
53. Shudder when you hear people quote Monty Python.
54. Go to a party and tell people you do a different job because you’re fed up with people asking you where you get your material from.
55. Have someone ask you where you get your material from
56. Have a soldier, policeman or fire-fighter tell you you’re brave and how they couldn’t do your job.
57. Have some prick say to you, “Tell us a joke then”.
58. Have someone really cute say, “Tell us a joke then” and when you tell them a joke they don’t laugh.
59. Lie awake at night thinking you’re not funny.
60. Get up in the afternoon in the name of comedy.
61. Try and write a sitcom.
62. Get an audition for something that’s completely unsuitable for you.
63. Have some of your stand up on YouTube.
64. Have a famous person’s number in your phone.
65. Have a fight kick off while you perform.
66. Read Steve Martin or Frank Skinner’s autobiography.
67. Watch Jerry Seinfeld Comedian.
68. Feel rusty after not gigging for ten days or as your partner calls it “a holiday”,
69. Have a website.
70. Have business cards.
71. Do a charity gig and wish you hadn’t bothered due to it being so badly organised.
72. Go to a party or a gathering where it’s just comedians.
73. Have a break from gigging.
74. In the spur of the moment accidently use a line of someone else’s material and feel really guilty about it for months after.
75. Get all angry and indignant about joke theft.
76. Break down on the motorway.
77. Try and write a screen play.
78. Have your photo on a poster.
79. Met another comedian you know at a service station on the way or coming back from a gig.
80. Get on really well with a comedian you technically shouldn’t have anything in common with.
81. Hear an act talk about how great they are then proceed to see them die on their arse.
82. Dislike a comedian when you first meet them then eventually become good friends
83. Have a crush on a comedian you get on with but never do anything about it.
84. Have a Saturday night off and don’t know what to do with yourself.
85. Get a standing ovation.
86. Die horribly on your arse.
87. Perform to complete and utter indifference.
88. Cherry pick a quote from a review that makes the review sound a lot better than it actually was.
89. Have someone’s mobile phone go off in the audience and you answer it.
90. Have your own phone go off during your own performance.
91. Have your own phone go off during someone else’s performance.
92. Write one liners and put them on twitter.
93. Refer to none comedians as “normal people” or “civilians”.
94. Take yourself and the importance of what you do too seriously.
95. Have an argument with another comedian.
96. Swear that from this day onwards you will write jokes every day and then go back to your usual routine of being a wise arse on facebook the very next day.
97. Play with your smart phone before you go on to relieve the boredom.
98. Have an audience member insist they have a photo taken with you.
99. When a joke goes wrong, tap the mic and say, “Is this thing on?
100. Tick off at least 80% of this list.

Doctor Who and the Season 7 trailer

Well I haven’t had much to report Doctor Who-wise for a while, but that’s mainly because I’m getting on with an Animation MA and currently attempting to write a more in depth Doctor Who book.  Also there haven’t been any episodes for a while and real life kicked in towards the end of the last series.  I have to confess I felt a little uninspired to blog about series six towards the end, because Last Orders, The God Complex and The Girl Who Waited all had the same basic plot.  Some robot or computer goes wrong and the malfunction is the cause for all the problems in the story.  I read that plotline in a Fantastic Four comic when I was 10 and can’t believe it was rehashed three times in a row.  I didn’t get around to writing about the last three episodes of series 6 and it even took me three months to get around to watching the Xmas episode The Doctor, The Widow and The Wardrobe  which I thought was decidedly, “Meh” as the Christmas episodes have been since the Titanic episode.

So even though I’m being a bit negative, I have a short memory and got really excited with the new trailer and completely forgot how disappointing I’ve generally found the show recently.  Don’t get me wrong, it hasn’t stopped me pouring over each episode and online prologues like a geeky little fan boy (which I am actually, so there’s no “like” about it).

Like the trailer for series six, this new one is  a fast paced high action packed one minute of fun with a few quirky quirky one liners thrown in.  And a possible return of the Daleks.  The Doctor mentions that he’d rather face a Dalek any day of the week and we see what looks like a Dalek stalk sticking out of the sand parodying Star Wars.  I’m not sure about you, but unless it’s a story akin to the Christopher Eccleston Dalek and the story which was a soul searching philosophical tale, I’m not going to get excited about it.  I haven’t been that excited about a Dalek story since Doomsday at the end of series two.

As far as I can tell it’s just a trailer for the first episode.  A sci-fi western with a few snippets of other episodes thrown in, but let’s hope it doesn’t take itself too seriously this series.  Moffat has also said that there will be no two parters this series and hopefully  a break from the whole Silence stuff for a bit.  In this series we’ll say goodbye to Amy and Rory and say hello to Jenna-Louise Coleman as the new assistant, well known  for playing someone on Emmerdale.  I shall reserve judgement till I see her.  I thought Billie Piper was a bad choice, but got over that hurdle in the first few minutes of Rose.

Oh and they’re splitting the series into two parts again.  This time it will be split over 2012 and 2013.  Isn’t that just making this year’s and next year’s series shorter?  Also as much as we’ve got to wait till after the Olympics.  It’s a good job we’re so loyal.

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Edinburgh Fringe 2012 brochure photos

Here are some of the photos I’ve resized for the Edinburgh fringe brochure 2012.  And for some excellent advice about producing your brochure photo and blurb red this

http://theianfox.wordpress.com/2011/01/01/how-to-list-a-show-in-the-fringe-programme-part-2/

  

Welsh Lady Ass Fudge 2012

Every now and then, comes along something so puerile and childish that it takes the world by storm.  Fellow comic Sion James took a photo of this in his local Tescos and within fourteen hours it it had 86 shares and hundreds of views on Facebook.  This is what the Internet was invented for.

The very next day I saw this one on Facebook.  Tuna Cum Sandwich.  It’s becoming a craze.

Batman South Park Style – The Dark Knight trilogy in 97 seconds

Finally finished it as part of a project for my MA. The Dark Knight Rises – South Park style

Davy Jones RIP

I heard a few hours ago that Davy Jones from The Monkees passed away.  I never met him and never saw them play live, but somehow I felt a great sense of loss.  I looked to myself and tried to find out why that is.  I think for most people when you boil it down, The Monkees for a certain generation were a band that you got into as a child or an early teenager.  Like most people in their late thirties and early forties in the UK, I got into the Monkees by watching the re runs in the seventies.  I remember my mum buying a cheap greatest hits from a supermarket (yes they sold the old vinyl LP in supermarkets those days).  Money was tight, but every now and then we would get a luxury like this out of the blue.  The LP had ten tracks and contained their most famous songs, I’m a Believer, Monkees Theme, last Train the Clarkesville etc.  As this was a treat and we really didn’t have much in our house this album was played over and over and over till we practically wore it out.  But I remember watching the TV show avidly and wanted to hear more of their songs.  It wasn’t until I had a paper round and hung out with other friends who were also music fans that I eventually bought a double LP greatest hits that had 40 songs on it.  This was a real revelation to me.  To hear some of the songs like Randy Scouce Git, Valerie, In This Generation and many others on my record player rather than on the TV show was a revelation.  I don’t recall Monkees albums being all that available at the time and this was as good as I could get.

Eventually I got a full time job, left home and a friend of mine called Colin had a copy of a Monkees album called Head that he bought in a bargain bin.  Due to the film and the album being panned and ignored I had no idea of this existed, but he raved about how it was a perfect work of art and couldn’t recommend it highly enough.  I was intrigued and never forgot what he told me about this great album and film and about a year later there was a season of Psychedelic movies at the BFI so I went to see a film they had in schedule called Head.  On my own.  Happily.  I absolutely adored it and I know I wasn’t the only one interested in this film because it was completely sold out.  Coincidently this friend of mine who had the album moved in with me and brought (sensibly enough due to out rakish ways) a copy of the album on cassette.  We regularly got stoned and listened to the album and eventually the film was released on VHS and we regularly switched between film and cassette versions on many a mind expanding night.

In between out Head experience we bought various albums and watched re re re runs of the TV show.  Even later in life I bought various copies of Monkees albums with loads and loads of extra tracks which I loved.  When I did my children’s show at the Edinburgh fringe in 2010 I always played Mokees songs while the audience were arriving, because it was my way of giving the audience a small piece of my wonderful Saturday morning childhood experience.

When I found out Davy Jones passed away I felt sad.  Sadder than I thought I would.  I played some of my Monkees records and felt mixed emotions about the fact that some of my friends first heard the news from me via facebook.

Something that I never thought of until today was growing up in a multicultural time in the seventies was everyone loved the Monkees.  Absolutely Everyone.

I don’t know what else to say.  It’s nearly 2am 1st March 2012 and a part of my childhood and growing up has disappeared.

Goodbye, goodybe, goodbye.

We were speaking of belief.
Beliefs and conditioning.
All belief possibly could be said to be the result of some conditioning.
Thus the study of history is simply the study of one system of beliefs deposing another.
And so on and so on and so on.
A psychologically tested belief of our time is that the central nervous system.
Which feeds it’s impulses directly to the brain.
Is unable to discern between the real, and the vividly imagined experience.
If there is a difference.
And most of us believe there is.
 Am I being clear?
For to examine these concepts requires tremendous energy and discipline.
To experience the now.
Without preconception or belief.
To allow the unknown to occur and to occur.
Requires clarity.
And where there is clarity there is no choice.
And where there is choice.
There is misery.
But then, why should anyone listen to me?
Why should I speak?
Since I know nothing.

Batman South Park style – The Dark Knight Rises

I enjoyed doing these. Maybe I should animate them too.

I did this one a day later. Obviously not from The Dark Knight Rises but kind of fun.