Everyone @ Chortle

i wish i had known. i would have loved to have his army boots.

but maybe it's better i didn't know. you can't keep everything, as he, in preparing to move to a smaller place, has come to understand.

but what other treasures has he given one last look and then discarded? probably more important stuff than "combat boots".

sure, it's good i wasn't there to covet everything remotely symbolic or intriguing but what would i have learned about his life if i had simply helped him to assess and discard what he had accumulated over the years?

how much more would i know about my father if i had taken one thorough trip through that museum?

oh, well.

another opportunity lost.

i've long wanted to purchase its wares, but i've been too insecure even to go in, 'cause i know they'll know i'm just a looky-loo who's not going to buy anything.

i particularly wished i could afford something there in recent weeks as i've searched for the hat that would save me from scalp cancer and aesthetic disrepute.

well, yesterday, i was walking toward jimmy's no. 43 to do a set and as i passed the store, a girl who worked there -- maybe even owned it -- was outside and when she saw me in my grandpa's hat, she said "nice hat."

maybe she even said, "cool hat."

whatever . . .

i told her it was my grandpa's hat and she expressed her pleasure at its vintage.

i explained what i thought was wrong with "retro" hats made today and she agreed.

i think she was even kinda flirting with me.

. . . wow.

that really is the hat

but my allure when wearing it is illegitimate. without it, i would simply be a dismissable slob of the sort who gets willfully ignored by perfectly normal people in the street.

damn that hat.

why can't i possess the magic that's in the hat.

wabc was the number one top 40 radio station in the new york area (or close to it). right now, for memorial day, rather than remembering fallen soldiers, abc is remembering its fallen format, playing tapes of broadcasts from those years. (it's now a successful talk station.)

with dan ingram (who i never loved but he was their number one jock) playing in the background, i'm looking out the window at the hazy, cloud-dotted sky, wondering when i'll be out there among the clouds, really part of the world outside rather than the world inside my head and my room.


just like back then.

i don't drink a lot of grape soda. maybe i haven't had it in years. but today at the chinese place, they said i was entitled to a free can for spending ten dollars, so, for some reason (interest had been building in me), i chose welch's grape.

when i was a kid, there was a commercial featuring character actor billy sands (i think he had been part of the platoon on bilko), where he (i think), said, with a revelatory tone, "you've never really tasted grape soda before 'til you've tried welch's." (then there was a jingle that said the same.)

well, you know . . .

it's true.

it's hot here in new york and it was refreshing.

i want more.

of course, now, the independent is saying sodium benzoate, an additive in soda, will damage my mitochondria and i'll get cirrhosis of the liver or something similar and die.

(that grape soda was good, though.)

on my invoking/exploiting robin ince for blog-style entertainment value. he's a nice guy and i have other people and things i really need to obsess about.

f'real,
lederer

(you see? it's you, not me.)


i have no problem with calling things as i see them but i suspect i may have created a mistaken impression, which is that eugene mirman has it in for me.

truth is, i don't think he gives a fuck about me one way or the other. i just think that whatever minuscule percentage of thought he may be forced by circumstance into giving me is negative.

and i think (no, i know) that that's bogus.

it comes from the adversarial relationship we were placed in when we both were doing shows the same night of the week at rififi combined with the fact that i'm not in his hip circle of friends and so must not be worthy. (a simplification, perhaps, but not far, i suspect, from being the truth.)

when i wrote that i thought he might have talked me down to robin ince, i wasn't implying a vendetta, rather something circumstantial -- for instance, my name coming up, as in, "i'm supposed to get andrew lederer a ticket," and eugene responding, "[place shallow, negative assessment borne of ignorance here]."

now, robin actually has some reason to be wary of me, 'cause i've been discomfittingly insecure in his presence.

and i apparently ruffled the feathers of some true believers when i did his "book club" and questioned the validity of natalie haynes' enthusiasm for "diagnosis: murder." (i know it seems stupid, but i got a lot of flak for that, though not, i should point out, from robin.)

so, if eugene reflexively dismissed me in conversation, it might have tipped the ince interior scales in favor of "i better steer clear of this lederer guy," which has the same practical effect as conspiracy, though it is, in fact, an accident.

but what bugs me about it is the fact that robin had, maybe even earlier that same day, sent me a note saying he'd get back to me and then he didn't.

if i had gotten a short, brush-off message, i don't think i would have felt so dissed. (i wouldn't be happy, but i would have felt that interpersonal protocols had been obeyed.)

thing is, i actually gave robin another chance (important only to me -- he didn't ask for a "chance"), by going to see him at eugene's show on sunday.

i had genuinely wanted to see robin perform for americans and was rooting for him as an edinburgh brother. (i had wanted to see him in tribeca more than i'd wanted to see gervais.) i thought, maybe, no matter what the circumstances were, when i said hello, he'd be glad to see me, greet me warmly, and that would be that.

but it didn't happen.

instead, he looked uncomfortable, which, of course, doesn't conclusively establish anything.

but, i mean, he should've seen through whatever the bullshit was that might've caused his discomfort.

for god's sake, i was wearing the hat.

Well I've been away a fair bit but this last weekend's been quite exciting, I just haven't got time to write about it now.

I'm just posting to let you know I still care.

BB xXx

for a while i wore a gray, felt fedora, my long hair hanging from its back as if they were one unit, perhaps from a joke store. (ah, but that was another day.)

i'm more of a self-contained fashion icon now, except in the summer, when my insufficiently hirsute pate is subject to the ravages of old sol (the sun, not some rampaging jewish guy) and i find myself ever in search of a hat that will protect and suit (which is, i think, the motto of the los angeles police department).

it's like looking for the holy grail -- i never seem to find it and wonder if one even exists.

so, generally, i end up with a mr. magoo/woody allen-style, crumply "fishing" hat, which neither flatters nor diminishes too greatly my basic (non-)aesthetic.

or, sometimes, i wear nothing at all, leaving my scalp to the limited protective capacity of an inexpensive sunblock.

and that's how it was when i went to new jersey last sunday, draped in my (minimally) beard-appropriate clothes.

i had nothing but no-ad 15 on my skull.

luckily i spent a good deal of time in the garage, helping my father remove stuff from the attic in anticipation of a move. then, while we were looking in a closet, my father unexpectedly said, "you want your grandfather's hat?"

well, there ought to have been a heavenly chorus behind me.

it was the hat.

a recreational, older guy's hat from thirty years ago -- genuinely cool.

in perfect condition. looking like the hats on st. mark's place are trying to look.

i asked my father why he had saved it and he said he thought that i had told him to.

if so, i mystically set aside my own future salvation by doing so.

kinda makes you believe the universe is filled with hats more powerful than we can ever imagine.

i wasn't going to shave off my beard because of my associate's comment.

that only made me more determined to keep it.

but my father was back in new jersey and i was gonna see him for the first time since tucson (the last time i shaved off my beard) and i didn't want him to perceive the unruly appendage as the crystallized embodiment of everything that is, was and will be wrong in my life.

with the right clothes, the beard would probably look ok, however, i didn't have the right clothes and i didn't have the time or funds to get them in advance of my jaunt.

but then, when those four successive check cashing places rejected me, though my money was in my pocket, it was out of my hands.

so, i was forced to move new jersey to another day.

which meant, when "bearded me" was treated like i wasn't there by that normal-looking girl, i was no longer about to go out to my dad's place.

and the fifth check cashing place had given me my funds.

therefore, i didn't have to shave to avoid parental condemnation -- i could buy beard-appropriate clothes.

of course, in a way, this would be a cheat -- i had been judged irrelevant while marching around as a homeless-looking bearded guy, not a well-dressed manly guy. how could i show the world that the former guy was ok while being another guy who simply had some of the same hair?

but these were questions i could put off.

anything was possible as long as i had my facial hair.

it was katy wik of penny spubb ignoring my myspace friend request as others are added to her roster of cyberfriends daily.

it was robin ince writing he would try to get me a ticket for a gervais preview (i offered to pay), then not only not doing it but becoming incommunicado.

that's why it pleased me to see the discomfort on his face as i passed him on the stairs where he sat smoking during eugene mirman's sunday show. (a few moments later, i saw a cell phone on the empty steps. had i so jarred him he forgot his phone?)

oh, yeah -- and eugene mirman --

is he a good guy?

a part of me suspects eugene belittled me when he drank with robin on wednesday night, which is about the time i stopped hearing from robin about the ticket.

on the other hand, i got two smiles out of eugene in the past week.

but i think i just looked vaguely familiar the first time -- hidden by the beard, i think it simply took him a few moments to realize he was recognizing someone he'd rather be ignoring.

and the second time, i was standing with janey godley.

so, i didn't get a single eugene mirman smile that didn't have an asterisk.

but john oliver was incredibly warm (incredibly funny, too, on eugene's sunday show), even though i'd only met him twice before.

or maybe because


update (15:27): i just got a myspace friend request from john oliver. see? good guy!

he says it makes me look homeless.

but, you know, a girl who works for the onion responded very favorably to it the other night.

however, my friend says the small handful who'll react favorably will be outnumbered by those who are turned off.

i was gonna shave it off -- even bought the razors, but then a girl in the street treated me as if i didn't exist (actually, as if i looked homeless.)

she acted like i was a lesser entity; one she could, should, and did ignore when i asked an innocent question as a parade passed unexpectedly through union square.

so, i decided to keep the beard for a while.

i'll make this mean, old world love me at my worst.

i'll show those nazis.

it has higher interest rates, but you gotta mail your deposits in. so, when i need money fast, i have to go to a check cashing place.

well, as you probably know, i have mounting expenses that are piling on top of me, so that's exactly what i decided to do saturday morning, having finally received the checks from that comedy newswriting gig late friday afternoon.

sure, i would lose a few bucks to "the vig" but a check cashing place can give you money, fast. and there's a check cashing place right near my apartment, so what could be easier?

well . . .

they refused to cash the checks because they were from a bank of america account and bank of america, they said, wouldn't confirm checks for them.

as a result, i went pretty far, to a check cashing place in my old neighborhood where the guy knew me.

but he wasn't there and the girl who was said she couldn't call the company on the weekend and so i was out of luck 'til monday.

the place near where i used to live in kensington (brooklyn), some distance from there, wouldn't cash them because they weren't sent to a nearby address.

so, i went into manhattan, where the nolita place said the computer red flagged the transaction and that was that.

no money. couldn't go out to new jersey to help my father pack for a move as i had planned. foot still hurting from gout.

i decided to take the subway home.

but for some reason, i decided to surface at 14th st./union square rather than immediately changing trains. don't remember why -- maybe i wanted to see if there were good samples at whole foods and/or trader joe's and/or the union square greenmarket.

i guess there were.

but also, there was another check cashing place. one i'd never been to before.

and they said they couldn't cash a check when the the company isn't in their system.

but the company was in their system.

hooray!

very zen thing that sculptors say they do when they turn a block of stone into a replica of an elephant? just chip away everything that doesn't look like an elephant?

i kinda wish people could do that when they look at you. just mentally chip away everything that doesn't look like you.

i will sometimes spend considerable time in front of the mirror attempting to see myself as i wish to be despite elements that conspire to make me look like something else. rather than changing essential elements -- maybe some of them are unchangeable -- i will move around in the light, push hair around, angle my my head, maybe even squint, and just generally do whatever is necessary to assure myself that i can be seen as i wish to be.

and it's true. i can be.

but i won't be. not likely, anyhow.

because other people aren't going to go through hoops to see what i want them to see. they'll see what's there within the context as they find it, not to mention their own perspective.

as "consigliere" to the green room in both new york and edinburgh. i'm helping to present scottish comedian janey godley, tonight in her autobiographical drama, "the point of yes" and tomorrow in her well-reviewed one-woman comedy, "good godley!"

if you feel like coming, the shows are at 8pm at the green room, 45 bleecker st., new york.

good stuff.

(end of plug.)

island today with julian hall, the comedy critic for the british newspaper, the independent. he was in town to cover the ricky gervais show at the (as it's now called) wamu theater. we looked at old buildings and old people and had a drink looking out at the ocean from the bar of the most probably doomed ruby's.

the pre-"rehab", increasingly demolished coney is lookin' sad but the history-infused charm is still strong.

fun.

one of the great and life de-affirming things about myspace is the fact that you can see when and if people have read your messages to them and just who is ignoring your friend requests. it gives you a clear understanding of just where you're at in a passive-aggressive world that doesn't always tell it to ya straight.

Travelling is the best and worst part of my job. I sort of look forward to a few days away, then once it actually begins it gets on my tits.

Can't please some people can you?

I pack a bag and get loads of dvd's and books and work and stuff together, with every good intention of spending some quality time with myself, get in the car, drive to my hotel, then sit and stare at the wall. Not one of my books was read, not one of my dvd's were watched - I just lugged around a heavy bag for two days, and after succumbing to the charms of Forbidden Planet in Middlesborough I actually came home with more stuff than I left with.

So first up was the university of Northumbria on Monday.

I'd been to Durham on my way up to visit my friend and Chortle Student finalist snowball in Hell Ed Gamble, who was in the middle of doing revising and needed distracting by a comedian who selfishly just wanted to break up his journey. We went and had coffee with Pete and Tom from the Durham Revue, and the fact that it was proper exam time began to dawn on me, everyone around us was stressing and had their heads in books. Proper exam time and I was off to do two uni gigs...I know from experience that not all students are as easily distracted from their work as Ed Gamble...

My fears were confirmed on reaching the gig (after going to three seperate Premier Travel Inns before finding the right fucking one, and I would end up in the one without it's own bastard car park) - about forty people in a room that would hold three hundred. Compere Lloyd Langford and Lee Bannard were already there and Lloyd was already hatching a plan to do the gig in the dressing room, which would have been nicely filled with forty people...and so began one of those odd nights that I seem to end up always being at.

Lloyd went onto the stage in the main room and began the show, informing the audience of his plan and then leading them like the infants of Hamelin out of the door and to their new destination. It was like a genuine underground secret gig - no mic, no stage, no lights really, but it turned out good and felt clandestine and unique. Very informal, very off-the-cuff, but an absolute pleasure, the front row in particular entering into the fun and spirit and being proper supportive (I even had a lightsaber duel at the end with one of the lads from the front row - even though he only had a stick and I had my brilliant proper one).

After the gig we went through to the bar with them and had some drinks and stuff. I fell a little bit in love with a lass from the front row but she was dead posh and any prospective marriage to me would be quashed by her parents and she would probably be better off with the president of the student union or something.

On Tuesday we travelled over to Middlesborough for the gig at Teeside University, which sadly didn't have a dressing room as such, and so we had to go ahead with the gig in the proper environment.

After the gig at Northumbria Uni it was an adjustment to go back to stage, mic and lights comedy, but we got through it. I realised that I get very bored on stage sometimes, and that really is the crux of why I end up in 'situations' at gigs. As I've said many times before on here, I really don't see the attraction of ploughing through the same words night after night. Whenever I do a 'set' and don't deviate from it in any way I always feel slightly hollow afterwards, no matter how spontaneous it can be faked to look, it never really is, and even if I am the only person in the room to know this, it still makes me chalk the gig down as one that I didn't enjoy. I like to try and find something unique to do in the room, something I wouldn't have been able to do the night before, and won't be able to do again. Doesn't always work, I don't claim to be an expert, but I like to try for at least my own amusement and usually end up with something to talk about and the audience go away happy and with the satisfaction that they have been a party to a genuine one-off night.

Last night, there was a lass in the audience who was in her final year of a course of a Crime Scene Investigation course. Yeah? Who can't see this one coming?

I had chatted with her early on in my 'act' and she had been a little bit confrontational - nothing ridiculous like, she was joining in and that, but there was just the slightest edge to her that she had taken against me in some way. Not to be dissuaded, I decided to construct a crime scene for her to investigate. I got Lloyd to take her out of the room and out of earshot and I went about making the scene with the help of a couple of audience members. When I phoned Lloyd to tell him to bring her back, the scene that met her was as follows:

At the back of the stage there was dead body #1 (well I say 'dead' - he was sitting up and laughing when she came through the door, but he was meant to be dead) with my lightsaber next to it, clutching my Access All Areas pass and blood (Pepsi) streaming from a head wound. On the steps at the front of the stage was dead body #2, again surrounded by blood (Pepsi) with a crisp packet on the floor, an arm missing, and a badly broken neck (as opposed to those 'good' broken necks you can get sometimes).

Pretty obvious what had happened I think, but she didn't have a clue. She didn't even notice that dead body #2 had a fucking arm missing! Didn't dust for prints, didn't take witness statements, didn't check the bodies properly, just looked at the Access All Areas pass in dead body #1's hand and then shrugged.

So here, once and for all, is what happened. I considered not telling you and letting this saga go on like Twin Peaks for weeks and weeks, and you could all write in with your suggestions and there could be a prize if anybody got it, but I can't be arsed. I'm not known for my patience.

So...body #1 had rushed the stage and taken my Access All Areas pass so security couldn't stop him being there. He grabbed my lightsaber and went to attack me. Body #2 ran on to protect me and took the full blow from the lightsaber, losing his arm in the process. I pushed body #1 away and he hit his head on the wall at the back of the stage, falling dead and bleeding to the ground, still clutching my Access All Areas Pass and my lightsaber leaning beside him. In the meantime, body #2 had slipped on a discarded crisps packet, falling back against the speakers, his missing arm meaning he could not break his fall, smacking his head and falling to the ground, breaking his neck (badly) on the steps and blood streaming from him.

It's fucking obvious if you just fucking think about it.

The CSI girl said that a broken neck wouldn't bleed...I had to point out once again that he'd had his fucking arm cut off.

There's going to be a lot of unsolved murders in the Teeside area in coming years...

Hey. Miss me? Of course you do.

I've got a busy week ahead, after the empty, sad and lonely one that is about to pass, so thought I should put pen to paper (fingers to keyboard) and write something whilst I am able to. Am off to Newcastle for a couple of days on Monday and Tuesday then London and Somerset for the rest of the week ahead.

But anyhows, what news from my camp?

Well, as the title of this blog would suggest and as promised in my last blog entry, I have news about the podcast, and it is thus;

Ahem...

The Ray Peacock Podcast Number #1 will go online for download in mp3 format on the 4th June 2007, for an initial run of ten roughly-weekly shows. It is totally free, you can listen to it online or your iPod (it is pretty much mostly in stereo if you listen through headphones), and www.chortle.co.uk have very kindly agreed to host it. We are currently trying to work out how to put it on MySpace and iTunes also. MySpace should be easy enough (there is a MySpace page at www.myspace.com/theraypeacockpodcast which you are all more than welcome to come and be friendly at) but the iTunes thing is proving trickier as I have been put in charge of it. I'm not very good at doing technical internet things, and often struggle to get my emails properly, so having a load of sheets of paper talking about RSS feeds and all that bollocks that I in no way understand hasn't really been the idiot's guide to putting a podcast on iTunes that I had been hoping for. The instructions are as difficult to follow as the ones for my dvd recorder, which I got at Christmas and am still yet to burn a dvd on.

But never mind this technical stuff, what can you expect from the podcast itself?

I'm glad you asked, and I would like you to remember and continue to bear in mind that it is free before you start turning your nose up at it. If the first episode is anything to go by then you should evaporate any expectation of anything beyond myself and Little Raji James who used to be on Eastenders but ruined it babbling on at each other for forty minutes. Steve Morrison (my occasional writing partner) shall also be present ordinarily, but as he was seeing another writing partner behind my back at the time that we recorded it, he is only heard fleetingly on the telephone (and that may end up being edited out as he began the conversation by asking me if I was doing the podcast with "that black").

Myself and little Raji are going to record another section for it this week, but I can tell you thus far that the first episode contains discussions about crying babies, Scottish neighbours playing bagpipe cds in the morning, far too much casual racism, faux pas at Doctor Who conventions, late night MSN conversations and a water tight defence of using the word 'cunt'. I can sense your excitement and expectation...

And that's all my news. Literally. The week past has been utterly barren of anything worthy of mentioning other than the day spent recording the podcast - and indeed, the podcast was the only thing that could be attributed to artistic achievement in a week I'd originally intended to be brimming with it. Hence the lack of blogs. Wouldn't have been very interesting for me to write a blog about how my Jabba the Hutt throne model arived on Tuesday would it?

If anybody from my management is reading this then I promise I shall start doing some work from Monday onwards. I'd start on Sunday but I am planning to watch all six Star Wars films back to back once and for all, which is just as important if you think about it...

take the laces out of my sneakers. so i could wear them without it being too painful too walk.

but when i went to the store or wherever, the shoes' tongues (i took 'em out of both sides, for balance) flopped around ridiculously.

i kinda looked like i had panting dogs on my feet (or on my "dogs," as my friend alan would likely have said, unwilling to let lie fallow any field of wordplay available for harvesting).

which wasn't a problem locally, as apparent indigence or craziness is probably protective against crime in the transitional area in which i live. but now i gotta pick up a check from city lights television (as detailed earlier) and i don't wanna look like . . . well, me.

so, i cut the tongues out of the sneakers, allowing me to walk but making imperfection less instantly recognizable.

i guess i should leave quickly, once i have the check, so they don't have too much time to scan me.

also, now, once the check is cashed, in addition to my other expenses, i have to buy new sneakers.

but i guess i can use these as slippers or something for walking around in the night.

seems there's a silver lining to every foot problem.

is much better and never got to the crippling point i reached the first time i had an attack, maybe because i went to the hospital and had a deep-dish anti-inflammatory shot before getting to the point where it was too painful to walk.

because of that, i'm not even gonna go in and get the stomach-destroying medicine that was prescribed for me.

i'm not being an idiot -- gout attacks go away whether you do anything or not. treatment is about pain, so as long as my pain is minimal and i'm mobile, i might as well not put stuff into my body that, last time, my doctor made me take with two stomach medications and a full meal, yet it still caused bleeding that required me to stop taking it. (yes, that was partly because i'd hurt my stomach before i started taking it, but the doctor didn't know that when he made me cushion myself thrice over, so . . . )

if the 600 mg of motrin i'm taking every 4-6 stops working, i'll go in and get the indomethacin and colchicine, but, for now, i'll pass. it's worth noting that last time, when my doctor took me off the indomethacin after just a few days, he said, "i'm more worried about your stomach than your foot." (it's not so good beyond the gastrointestinal effects, either.)

the positive side of this is that it's put me back on water, which i've been drinking like a fish (by immersing my whole body and swimming through it as i do).

i'd wanted to drink more water; i'd meant to, but instead i drank coffee and diet soda and felt dehydrated but hoped more diuretics (which both of those are) would somehow supply the hydration i needed.

and i'm so fucking persnickety. my apartment co-inhabitor was keeping the brita water-filtering pitcher out by him, so i stayed away from it, even when it was in the 'frigerator, fearing it had been drunk directly out of (which seems unlikely given it's design) or otherwise rendered impure in some fashion.

what?! less pure than aspartame?.

than a bottle of soda purchased from a small, dark, cluttered shop with a cat running around it?

boy, water makes your skin look good.

my hands are beautiful. (i'm sure my new tube of sunblock is helping with that as well.)

but i don't regret the coffee.

just the other day, it took me to a little corner place near the current domicile, with outdoor tables placed perfectly for watching the passing parade. sitting there, i met an artist who'd moved to the neighborhood in 1957 to go to art school and never left.

he told me about the elevated train that used to rumble above myrtle avenue and all the demographic and sociological changes during the decades he's been around.

and then we were joined by his friend, who'd come to the neighborhood as an art student in 1971, after leaving the (vietnam-era) army, and had likewise settled in what was for many an undesirable neighborhood and seen it through its darkest days and its many changes.

there we were, new yorkers from three different eras -- two of us natives -- talking about the places we grew up, their differences and similarities, our mothers (it was mother's day); learning from each other.

it was a trip.

so, i'm gonna go back there, gout or no gout.

but next time, maybe i'll have a hot chocolate.

I'm getting my check on Friday!

in the same facility.

i pay (theoretically) $74/month but if i were taking that space today it would be $25.

so, when i got paid up to april 30th and wasn't auctioned off on may 3rd, i figured when i got the city lights television money, i'd take care of it and that would be any day.

but now it's more than two weeks and the city lights money hasn't come.

and fees have been added to my may storage bill to make it about $100

still, if i paid it today, i'd only have to pay about half plus the much cheaper new unit charges -- a reasonable compromise between perfection and monetary doom.

but i can't pay it today.

and i have gout.

and now my father has finally sold his house (pending a long time) and i probably have to move what i'm taking into my storage this weekend.

but i can't if i haven't paid.

and i certainly can't tell my father my actual financial situation.

but even if i find the money, i gotta move units before we bring the things from jersey or else i'll be paying the higher rate for additional days.

but i have gout.

i'll probably get it taken care of, though.

'cause anything is better than having my father know the truth.

when it became clear things were only going to get worse.

my temporarily permanent roommate recommended i go to st. vincent's, at least in part because it specializes in helping poor people who "aren't skels." (yea! i'm not a skel!)

however, i ended up going to methodist because the first train that came was going in that direction, there would be less stairways if i went that way (when it hurts to walk, this is a major consideration -- i almost opted for the bus instead of the subway for this reason, but also 'cause it was a nice day and the bus would have kept me outside), and finally because my cousin is a big exec in the chain that owns methodist, so if for some reason i needed backup, i might've been able to call him.

they've really fixed up the emergency area at methodist since the time i went there with a cold. (they mocked me for it but i didn't know. i thought it was something bacterial that could kill me.) everyone was nice and nobody made me feel bad about anything. (and there weren't any skels.)

while i waited to be seen my foot grew worse, fast. i was glad i hadn't stopped at smiling pizza to eat and read the paper as i had seriously considered doing when i got out of the subway. i had taken the laces out of my shoes so i could tolerate wearing them on the way over but now i had to take off my right shoe and hold it in my hand.

yet when i got to the treatment area, they wouldn't give me the cortisone shot that had fixed me within an hour the last time i was afflicted. apparently, it isn't protocol. (last time, i went to a regular doctor's office.)

the woman who was treating me said maybe it was because steroids require follow-up that an emergency room doesn't do. so, she gave me a shot of some anti-inflammatory.

but no magic bullet.

and on top of that, there was no social worker around to arrange for me to get poor people's freebie drugs.

so, i was told to come back today to get the medicine i really needed. in the meantime, she sent me home with motrin (ordinary ibuprofen) to take when the shot she gave me wore off in maybe 6 hours.

thanks for the help, sister. (ok. i know the omissions were not her fault.)

actually, the limited service did help. i still haven't needed to take a motrin even though it's a lot more than 6 hours since the shot was given.

still, i'm gonna take some motrin, though the pain is quite tolerable and barely pain right now, 'cause it's an anti-inflammatory and clearly i am still inflamed.

but what seemed on the precipice of becoming a multi-day-robbing emergency has become workable thanks to the fine service at new york methodist hospital of park slope.

. . . Gout!


according to wikipedia, second attacks usually occur within 2 years. (it is now 22 months.)

i can still walk.

puttin' on my shoe may be a problem, though.

and to think i walked across the williamsburg bridge yesterday.

in fact, i walked all the way from the clinton hill area in brooklyn to 25th and 3rd in manhattan.

and last week i walked to and from, across the brooklyn bridge one way and the williamsburg the other.

the day before that, i did the manhattan bridge to the "green room" in noho.

tomorrow, i may not be able to stand.

as last time (of course) i did all the wrong things just before the attack and even after i suspected one was coming on.

hey, it's been almost 2 years -- i forgot what i'm not supposed to have.

so, last night, i had beans and scotch and coffee as the infirmity descended.

and i switched to diet soda lately. (guess what.)

i keep moving my toe as if waggling it will prevent the uric acid crystals from settling in.

two years ago, my gout treatment was the first time i used my brand new, government-funded, poor people's health insurance (to treat the "disease of kings"). now, due to an error on their part followed by a year of avoidance and inactivity on mine, i don't have any health insurance.

i wonder if my father has any of his stomach-punishing anti-inflammatories left.

he did this to me with his gouty genes.

of course, he also did this life thing to me, so you win some, you lose some.

best i can figure is i lost it in november, the next to last time (thus far/that i know of) that my gym lock was cut for keeping things in it overnight.

don't know why i would have left something like that in there but i was movin' around at the time and i might have indulged some bad thinking 'cause i wanted a lighter backpack.

maybe i didn't notice it 'til now 'cause my friend's old cellphone is similar-looking and, naturally, i still have that, about which i care little.

my solitary, improvisational talk-throughs of "me and hitler," my well-reviewed 2005 edinburgh show, were on it along with the unbelievably confused first performance. (the second night was great.

when are they gonna make those machines that can pull memories out of your head and record them for external retrieval and presentation to others?

this blog is now setting the pace for my comedy rather than the other way around.

for instance, my set tonight was based on my desire, as expressed in recent posts, for normalcy.

i even talked about the vanilla cupcake. (it was funny.)

and i expanded on the blogged-about notions by talking about my feeling that i didn't quite come out at the chisel-jawed, totally erect end of evolution as traditionally pictured.

all in all, it was very satisfying and a significant number of compliments were proffered.

and hey -- this is kind of cool --

there was a guy who'd come all the way from homer, alaska and thought he'd be really exotic in our downtown manhattan realm.

but two of us had actually been to his home town.

so, there were three people in one small east village showroom who had been in the same small town in alaska.

(like i said -- cool.)

after the show, i ventured briefly into the downstairs bar and this girl i'd chatted up the other day looked less than happy to see me.

i wish she'd been upstairs to see my set.

i was so happy yesterday, i even indulged my new penchant for "normalcy" by buying a non-bargain-priced bottle of "bath and body works" shampoo.

but when i went to pay for it, i discovered i had seemingly lost a five or ten dollar bill, which, along with the waning effects of coffee and the wine i'd tasted at a nearby merchant, plunged me into crankiness and depression.

i resolved to spend less money than i intended for the rest of the day and skimped, strangely enough if you know me, on food. so, instead of buying nice things to eat, i made do with what i had in the house, which resulted in my dinner being that stick-to-your-ribs latin favorite, rice and beans.

anyway, today i'm looking at comedian mark watson's "crap at the environment" site and i see he has issued a challenge to readers to go a day without eating meat and -- whaddaya know -- i did that yesterday.

that's right.

all i had all day was the rice and beans, a vanilla cupcake (see i feel alive today.) and a bag of north carolina-made, previously unknown to me-brand potato chips.

seems i'm green without even trying.

of course, that's only if you define the day as going from waking to sleeping. if you count it as midnight to midnight, i also had a tender, delicious slab of london broil (which i'm told they don't have in london, so for the benefit of the uninformed, it's steak).

but that was before i went to sleep on "friday" night.

i'm good.

really.

no, i am.

I lost nearly two hours of my life tonight by watching Basic Instinct 2. I don't know what I was thinking...there weren't even hardly any busters in it.

Last night I did yet another audience warm up, this time for The Consultants at Teddington Studios. You know how these new shows sometimes have a tendency to be a bit shit? Well I am happy to report that this is very much NOT the case with The Consultants - the fact that the show was so good and all the sketches hit the mark made my job a whole lot easier. The fact that my little legs were tired after a few hours running around the audience made my job a whole lot harder though.

Also - I feel I must say - I was essentially locked away by my management yesterday. The show was an Avalon production and my call time for the show was 4pm, which I arrived promptly at and was bundled into my dressing room. There was a script and stuff in there and I noticed that the show wasn't being recorded until 7pm, which I thought was slightly odd. I wasn't in the show, I was just the warm-up person.

An hour went by without me hearing a thing.

Then another one.

I eventually got bored with reading comic books and there was no telly or porn or anything in there, so I decided to venture outside of my cell and see if anybody anywhere cared about me. I ran into the producer Nick Symmons and he made a nice fuss over me. I explained that I had been there since four and he said that I was called for that time as he thought it would have been helpful for me to sit in on the dress rehearsal. I said that nobody had told me that. He said did I not think to just come down to the studio. I said no. He was very apologetic. I said in future he might be best of leaving me a little note.

I personally think Nick Symmons arranged the whole charade deliberately to undermine me, whenever our career paths have crossed he has seemed to go to great pains to place me in uncomfortable situations.

A few years ago, for example, he employed me on Harry Hill's TV Burp to play a character called the "Couch potato", which involved me dressed up in a massive potato outfit (later seen in my 2005 Edinburgh show) and walking the streets of London causing mischief. We filmed one of these at the Brits that year and it wasn't any good so we never did any more, but the first time I set foot on the streets dressed that way I was jumped on by a gang of youths who tried (and failed I might add) to 'tip me over'. They failed to take into account my trademark low centre of gravity that defied many an opposing rugby league team in my playing days of yesteryear.

Now, I'm not one for keeping my fists down in these physically confrontational scenarios but it is really difficult to maintain any degree of being handy when you are dressed as a fucking potato. Nick Symmons, on the other hand, was out of the blocks like a good'un, swinging his arms at my young foes and chasing them away. If you've ever met Nick you will know what an unlikely image that evokes, but I swear to god he took no prisoners that day. That moment alone cemented my admiration and respect for the man. That and the fact that he tends to produce exceptional television, and as I said, I have no doubt that The Consultants will maintain his consistency.

So, the warm up went well enough. It was a long old recording, and because of the breaks between sketches and costume changes and that, it meant that I was having to do far more work than I normally would on a TV warm up, but it chugged along reasonably nicely over the course of the evening. I met some great people in the audience, including a couple called Chris and Crystal who had met when she was stranded at Leicester Square tube station after coming over from Canada, he looked after her, they got engaged six weeks later and now have been married for seven years. Isn't that lovely?

On the other side of the coin I met a man who had bought himself the title of "Baron" on the internet, and terrified both myself and the rest of the audience with his tales of being in Pantomime up north. Apparently he was in (or had) Aladdin in Durham many years ago but struggled to understand what the northerners were saying...yeah, he was weird.

My warm up ended with me proposing to a girl named Clare who I had met at the beginning of the evening and done some of my great flirting with. She turned me down, but explained it was because she was scared of Julie the floor manager who I had intimated previous intimacies with.

The best TV warm ups are, in my opinion, when you can ingratiate yourself with the people working on the set and play this up to the audience. Throughout the evening I had spoken about the sexual tension between myself and Julie, whilst she occasionally shot me nasty glances much to the delight of the studio audience. Everytime she halted my babbling to begin filming I had a smart arse flirty comment to throw back at her, and the double act started to write itself with her saying things along the lines of "We're going to do it one more time" (Me: I used to dread her saying that), "Nearly there now" (Me: She used to say that to make me try harder), etc etc oh you get the idea...

She played bad cop to my good cop brilliantly and deliberately, and the look she could give when taking off her glasses and tossing an icy glare my way after I'd been naughty would be enough to strike excited fear into a lesser man. The 'banter' with her was the highlight of my evening, and I can't thank her enough for making me look good.

And that was that. I really wanted to stick around for drinks afterwards with everybody, but truth be told I was too fucking knackered to. I'm always very aware of seeming rude in those sorts of situations, because it is rare that I ever do hang back after a show, but it really is just a case of being tired and knowing that I have a long drive home to negotiate before I can properly relax, as opposed to me not actually wanting to. Well, sometimes I don't actually want to, but last night wasn't one of those times...

And that was that - I have a kind of a week off this week, with just one compering gig just around the corner from my house, so you may not hear from me, but all being well there will be some definite news about the podcast within the next seven days as that is taking priority in my sabattical. I am assured by the 'producer' (little Raji James) that we are very nearly good to go, and I have no reason to doubt him. I am sure he wouldn't let me down, especially as he would technically be letting all of you down as well as himself.

I'm not at all tired but I have run out of things to say so shall fuck off and leave you to it. I will probably just wander around my house now all sad and anxious in the morning light. Not that you care.

xxx

maybe it's because i'm out wandering around in a breezy, mostly sunny day. the trees are turning a deeper shade of green as their new leaves spread into full, lush, summer canopies.

but it took me a whole day to prepare to be out in the day.

after two days of lying around, sleeping a lot, and basting in my own natural juices, i spent yesterday doing laundry, putting clean sheets on my bed, eating and drinking as required and, finally, showering, so that when i woke up today, i'd be more or less prepared to face the world.

it's always been like this. i frequently have spent three days indoors, not leaving the house at all (maybe a walk to the supermarket to get tomato paste if absolutely necessary). then exited the cave to go exploring and reacquaint myself with the glories of the world outside.

i always tell myself i'm gonna do more of it -- that with the world this wonderful, i'll surely be motivated now to spend my time out in it, not hiding like a brown bear in winter. but the protective solitude of inside proves darkly seductive almost immediately. it's like when i go out early in the morning and am so moved by the perfect newness of the light and the abundance of day to work within that i determine i will meet this morning again and soon. the only thing that happens soon is that i go back to leaving the house at 5 in the afternoon.

i'm sitting out in front of the tea lounge in park slope now. a little while ago a girl who really knows how to do minimally-colored tattoos and multi-tone hair walked confidently by.

what would it be like to know her? what would it be like to know anybody?

when my living situation was unsettled, i was too much in the world in the wrong way. now i am too much in my own world.

when i go outside, i take my protective cave with me.

when i am in, i recognize how unprotected i am from the slights of the world and am reluctant to venture forth into the warmn and sunny, cold, cold world.

in recent times, ive finally been made aware of the fact that i'm not any different from hordes of other people in having these feelings. but even that feels like a gyp as i spent so many years feeling different that -- in a way -- it was the one thing i had that was mine -- the individuality of my experience. (i'm different.)

now, it turns out i'm just like other people? my unique place int he world is not unique at all?

what good is that?. what good is unknowingly "shared" aloneness?

ok. i can embrace normal.

i bought a vanilla cupcake today 'cause that seemed normal.

and i sat with the nice-looking saturday people in front of an attractive coffee, sandwich and baked goods place in fort green and ate the cupcake as breezes carre4sed my face and plant-type reproductive shit blew into my face and over my things.

and you know what?

the cupcake wasn't good. and neither was the coffee. i go out of my way to be normal and i can't even enjoy it.

oh, well.

i went to the movies the other day 'cause that seemed normal.

saw spiderman.

it was good.

How long has it been? What year is this! Ok the second line should have been read emerging from a Delorian with dry ice smoke billowing around, but you get the picture.

I've been so busy, and so tired, it's difficult to remember all that happened since I last wrote in this, needless to say I've been really busy. The end of the Year at uni came with a whimper and in spite of the DVD that I ordered to help me write one of my essays turning up on the morning that it was due in I'm quite positive about how I've done, aptly enough it was the Film 24 Hour Party People, and that I managed to do a 4,000 word essay on Tony Wilson without once using the word "Twat" is a testament to my presence of mind.

As March was so full of gigs, and with Uni work to finish I've unfortunately forgotten to book any gigs for June and July, so if any promoters are reading this and needing my services then please get in touch.

As it happens the last gig I did was in Huddersfield for Lou Saffire, it was the first gig I'd done for him since he left the Lazer Quest gig that he used to have. That was a fantastic gig, full of teenagers and lesbians, and teenage lesbians, all into their sci-fi and rock music essentially it was a gig with my ideal audience, I could have farted into a microphone and they'd have loved it, that was actually about the only thing I didn't do there. I once gigged there and took a load of magic mushrooms and then got Dug stripped to the waist wearing an executioners cowel to deliver justice to a bunch of video tapes with a hammer, the movies were Barb Wire, Robocop 3 and worst of all Highlander Endgame (as the audience chanted at me "Highlander: there should have been only one!")

The last time I gigged there was four days before I quit drinking, and a week after I'd met Sarah, back stage at the gig, Lou rallied the troops "Look guys, this venue have taken the piss, they've never allowed me to charge on the door, they've never allowed me to pay you guys and tonight's the last gig here, the only thing I've ever been able to do for you is offer you free drinks, so what I'd like you to do is, as far as possible, bankrupt the place!" I sat up in my floor length red and black fake fur coat and snapped the compact mirror closed as I finished doing my lipstick, checking the 1920's bob hair cut I'd got looked perfect and said "I'll take that challenge!" In between eating the face off my shiny new girlfriend I managed to get through about 16 bottles of Bud before I was due on stage, Lou had put me on just before he headlined, and in an attempt to make this plan work he'd booked 12 acts for the night.

By the time I staggered to the stage any semblance of cool or sophistication had gone, I was some pissed up tart with lipstick all over her face slurring her words into the microphone, barely able to talk, then suddenly out of nowhere I did a new bit and snapped into sobriety for the 3 minutes it took me to tell the story and then boom I was gone again.

The only other thing I remember about that gig was that there was a former grange hill actor naked on stage covering his boys rudeness with a guitar.

the next morning I woke up with my bag full of sweets and a monster hang over.

4 days later, December 6th 2005 I stopped drinking, for good reason as you can see.

Anyway I did Lou's gig which was in a trendy town centre bar with a slightly different clientelle, and what was special about this was that it was the first comedy Road Trip I'd had with Dug for ages. in my first year I did something stupid like 240 gigs, and Dug came with me to every one, it was only after that that he started doing comedy and we've rarely been on the same bill. He'd not seen me for ages and I've been watching him do stand-up whenever I can, he's fantastic, and seriously has the most natural ability of anyone I've ever seen.

So getting into the car and putting on an Iron Maiden CD we looked at each other and said "It's been too long."

The journey was easy enough andwe got there and the room looked a little bit dead but there were enough to make it fun, Dug was on first and I was following as Main Support.

They were a cold room they didn't really warm to Lou but he did a great job and then brought Dug on. Dug's 38th gig. he got to the stage with his usual aplomb and then... nothing. 38 gigs and the first time he's died, for some reason his natural charisma deserted him. He gained a lot from it though and it was very useful for him and I don't think he's had a death since then.

Then I had to follow, and I think that over the last few months with all the ups and downs that I've had I've learned so much, I don't think that a year ago I'd have been able to handle the room there quite as well as I did, it was by no means easy and I didn't set the world on fire but it was a good gig none the less.

This made it even worse, I'd have traded places with Dug with very little prompting, I kind of forsaw that one of us would have a bad one that night, and I'd have rathered it was me. We chatted about it for hours and in the end I think we got exactly why it was needed and I think that it helped him loads.

that was over a wek ago now and I've had nothing since then.

Last week however I drove with Toby Hadoke and Jason Cook up to Inverness.

Inverness!!! that's a 6 and a half hour drive from here! It's not "south of Glasgow" like I thought, it's across three continents. Still it was lovely to get up there and the road trip with two of the people I respect most in comedy, Toby who gave me my first gig in a real comedy venue with an audience, and Jason who saw some potential in what I was doing and took me under his wing and taught me all I needed to know to get onto the right track so it was fun.

When we got there I realised how unfit I am, after walking about half a mile up a slight incline I got a thumping headache and couldn't catch my breath. I need a personal trainer. Then a Jaguar came tearing round the corner with the window wound down and in a strong Norn Iron co. Down Accent i heard a guy scream "this town's fucking shite!" and it felt like I was at home. I told Sarah this immediately.

The gig was lovely and the room was great but the 7 hour drive home the next day was very tiring. 80 miles in two days, I spent all of sunday unable to communicate with people, seriously I got showered, got dressed and ready and headed over to my friend Katie's for a barbeque, I drove for an hour to get there and walked up to the house, saw the party going on through the window. got to the front door and knocked. There was no answer. I knocked again. No answer. I went to knock again and thought "never mind" and turned round and walked away.

I headed over to Solomon Grundy's in Withington where another friend was having her birthday do and walked in and saw how busy the place was and left straight away, walked back to my car and drove the hour home. I was in bed by 10:30.

I thought that the next day would be better, It wasn't, I spent most of the day on and off crying for no real reason. I later found out Jason was exactly the same which made me feel better.

By Tuesday Iwas back on top and headed down to XS, which was good, Jason was on top form his Edinburgh show is one of the funniest hours I've spent in a long time. And Josh Howie was good too, though finding out fairly soon into his set that I need to entirely drop my opening joke soured it slightly. Allwas going well I was going to hang out with Dug when he finished work and we'd just talk shit until sunrise.

Then as we were leaving the club I got a text telling me that my parents needed me home that night, My Gram was ill, she'd had surgery and it didn't look good.

as soon as was appropriate I went home. My gram, who I love dearly was very very ill and to be honest at the moment it doesn't look too good for her. But I visited yesterday and the nurses told me she was comfortable and that they'd make sure they did their best to look after her. My sister and I cried and my Brother told us to stop it, he's always been the sensitive type.

I did however make a bit of a blunder earlier in the week, i couldn't get hold of Sarah to let her know what was happening so I got on MSN to our friend Kirsten and said "If you see Sarah will you tell her my Grandma's stable but my phone battery's died." and hit send, then as an after thought sent "whatever you do don't mix the two up."

Also my cat, Marcus, who is a big black ball of fluff and the most lovely docile loving cat in the world has dissapeared. My sister was looking after him and he went out on Monday and hasn't returned. I miss him. I had him since he was a kitten small enough to fit into the palm of my hand and he's the most gentle creature ever. So if anyone's in the Preston Area and you've seen a big black cat, about the size of a small horse with a flat nose and green eyes, then please get in contact with me, there's a reward.

I feel like I've written myself into a corner here, and I don't really know how to get out of it, but I'll move on to last night.

Last night I ended up in Hemel Hempstead with Toby. His show; "Moths Ate My Doctor Who Scarf" was on there and he needed a lift. It was good to keep my mind off things and the show was the best I've ever seen it, and I've seen it about 16 times now. Toby'd finished recording the play version of it yesterday for the BBC and I'm really looking forward to hearing that too. What was lovely was that there where a bunch of people who were big Doctor Who fans who stayed behind afterwards to chat with toby, and that he'd made such a connection really stuck with me. That's why I do this, for those moments.

Nah, I seem unable to pick up the ending of this blog, so I'll just leave it and step away and hopefully come back in a few days with some better news.

Oh before I leave I found out that one of the lovely women who's buying my parents house reads this blog, So I'm now terrified about what to write.

Until next time I love you all.

the latest "electra elf" played at the pioneer cinema the other night. i say it's the latest one but really, it's the latest one completed -- my work was shot 4 years ago -- the first day we ever shot.

i was so much better in it than i've been in recent episodes that it would have depressed me if i weren't so successful of late in putting a nice, protective cushion between me and my emotions.

i told the audience last night at mo pitkin's about my declining quality and attributed it to personal growth. i said i now have such a complex and nuanced view of the world that it is close to impossible for me to perform with the certainty necessary for maximum effectiveness.

i don't think that was entirely bullshit.

tulips illustrate the pitfalls of both greed and not knowing your limits, not to mention the delusion of individual exemption from the rules that bind others.

they open and look beautiful and open further and inspire as their petals stretch outward and up toward glory but they don't stop. they want more. more sun, more glory, more freedom and continue spreading past the point of reason until their backs break and they fall into oblivion.

meanwhile, the tulips next to them, only just blooming, ignore the fate of their neighbors. "they were orange tulips," one says of its neighbors. "we are purple tulips. it can't happen to us"

and soon, they too are gone.


i finally assimilated enough new york latin ambience to find myself saying -- as i passed a pulchritudinous beauty in the streets of the east village yesterday -- "hello, mami," or something of that nature. (but not so she could hear it. sheesh.)

so, why do puerto ricans and maybe dominicans and other latins call hot women mommy? i know it's not spelled that way but that's what it is.

i suppose it is a recognition of biological and sociological reality to see the maternal in someone who makes your loins stir, but isn't there something disturbing there as well?

maybe not. (see "i want a girl just like the girl that married dear old dad" and "my heart belongs to daddy" for references of trans-cultural legitimacy.)


here i am -- it's close to midnight and i'm walking through a massive chasidic neighborhood with a gastrointestinal issue that's nearing emergency proportions.

it seems to be a holiday or something (lag b'omer?) and the streets are filled with well-dressed chasids. but there are no restaurants or bars or anything -- not just none that are open -- none at all.

but there are synagogues. large ones, small ones, elegant ones, decrepit ones . . . i know if i go into one, i'll be conspicuous but i think maybe if i say i'm a jew it'll be all right ant they'll let me use the bathroom.

but i'm afraid they won't. i'm afraid they'll say i'm impure or something and that if they let me use the toilet, they'll have to take the seat to a mikvah or ritual purification bath.

i know this probably isn't true. but what if it is? i don't wanna chance the conspicuousness and discomfort and anyway, if they do turn me away for some reason, it'll make me angry and probably make my situation even more of an emergency than it already is. (my kishkes [intestines] will churn.)

so, i start looking for a vacant lot that isn't fenced in -- anything -- and finally i see an off-brand, shithole of a gas station -- pride -- maybe it's the only "pride" station in the world. a young guy and an older one with a gray mustache are standing in front of the small structure -- do they even have a toilet?

i don't know what they are -- latin? indian? but the old guy points and there i am, a jew taking a shit in the only place i felt comfortable asking for help -- a run-down restroom with "love allah" on the inside of the door.

Hello

So firstly, today I fell over.

I can't recall the last time I fell over in public but let me assure you it really doesn't get any less embarrassing the more you do it.

I was leaving my house to go to the Fopp gig this evening (Tues) and there was one of them foam sheet things that they use in packaging lying on the steps outside my house. Being a relatively lazy chap, bending over was never an option so I simply stepped on it. Slippy fuckers them sheets are. I fell for at least twenty seconds, flailing my little limbs in an effort to find some sort of solid ground but eventually lying in a heap on the second step, my knee red hot and feeling wet with blood already and my elbow throbbing.

Luckily there were a couple of hundred children from a nearby school walking past, otherwise nobody would have witnessed my feat of stupidity and found the necessary humour in it to laugh like fucking hyenas as I picked myself up and, for some reason, walked back into my house rather than to the car.

I gave it ten minutes before venturing out again (to ensure that my audience had moved on, and to check the damage to my knee which was horrific and probably needed stitches if I wasn't so brave as to just hold some tissue paper against it and cry a bit). Back on the first step I moved the foam sheet (which I actually suspect was from the packaging of my Jabba the Hutt statue from a few weeks back - dunno how it got there), and I actually hit it in anger. Genuinely, like a fucking five year old I hit it! It wasn't nearly as satisfying as I thought it would be.

So into London I went, having a little mooch around Forbidden Planet and buying some comic books to kid myself I'm still relatively young. Mike McShane was in Forbidden Planet, speaking very animatedly to a friend about a comic book. I would have spoken to him but I don't know him.

I met Little Raji James who used to be on Eastenders but ruined it for a quick drink before the show. He was off to a film premiere in Leicester Square, some Shilpa Shetty thing, and when I met him he was bounding up the road from Leicester Square with his Ipod in his ears singing out loud to "Don't you forget about me" as he bounced along. It was like the end of the Bollywood version of The Breakfast Club and I didn't know where to look and so just simply stared in astonishment at the man. I was relaying this tale to my friend and Chortle Student Final maker up of numbers Ed Gamble tonight and we both agreed that we are worried about Raji's sanity. Or at least we would be if his slip from stability wasn't so fucking funny to watch.

I have informed Raji that he and I are not to talk at any length in the near future until we record the first podcast (that is so imminent you can almost smell it), because there are simply too many things that I want to talk to him about on the record. Our conversations are wasted in private, I want everybody to hear them.

Fopp was a nice gig this evening, with Edinburgh previews from Dave Ward and Al Pitcher. It was nice to see people getting nervy about the fringe, and going through the excitement of putting a new show together and that, but it provided me with no envy about not going up to Scotland this year. The idea of going up there really doesn't appeal to me right now - I am a big fan of the place, just from afar these days.

On my way home I stopped in at a KFC in North Finchley to grab something to eat. Oddly, over the last few weeks I have come across a couple of peripheral players from my life past who I really wanted to tell you about, but had difficulty in putting it into the right sort of words as it is a vaguely awkward topic to discuss, but I'm going to give it a crack.

I used to live in North Finchley when I first moved to London, and it's perhaps the only place in my life that I have ever integrated myself into the local community, due in no small part to the fact that I worked behind the bar of the Tally Ho pub on the High Road. It was a a fucking rotten job, but it was also one of the best and perhaps most decadent times of my life, I was getting over a long-term relationship at the time and so my life consisted of very late nights and going too far at the dark ends of the street with various barmaids and customers alike. Some may call it a slag phase, but I prefer to think of it as me simply having too much love to give...

(You buy that?)

I met some great people, as well as some cunts, but with the passage of time it makes no difference as I am no longer in touch with either.

There were two people that made a genuine impression on me at that time however, and they are the two people that I have bumped into over the last few weeks, the second being this evening outside the KFC.

The first one was a guy called William who lived in a 'home' in Barnet, who would come down to the pub on a Saturday and Sunday afternoon and be the most genuinely entertaining man I have ever met. He would wander around the pub, often collecting glasses and chatting with everybody. It is very difficult to explain how he spoke, but basically he would refer to people walking past and say things along the lines of "There's your dad! I didn't know you're dad walked around here!". I know it doesn't sound funny, but trust me - it really was. He had no doubt heard somebody say this sort of thing in a coherent way at some point and simply learned and repeated it, but it was genuinely funny - and not in a 'laughing at the special bloke' way, it was just surreal stream of consciousness. When I bumped into William in the Tally ho the other week I was with my friend Martin and William pointed at him and said "Hello Dickie Davies! (then to me) I didn't know you were friends with Dickie Davies!".

Martin doesn't look even a little bit like Dickie Davies. I hurt myself laughing at this.

Now, I am a bit of a soft touch with people like that, and would slip him free drinks at the expense of J D Wetherspoons, because the dude kept me entertained during 12-12 shifts, and despite his seemingly impenetrable personality I would often try to break through to him in some way in, I convinced myself, much the same way as Tom Cruise in Rain Man. I was often told that it was impossible, that he was on a different plane to everybody else, perfectly contentedly so like, but nevertheless not really aware of what we would consider 'reality'. The thing is, I did break through to him in a most unlikely way.

I would spend most of my time behind that bar singing. Wetherspoons had a policy of having no music in their pubs, and so to beat 'the man' I would provide my own musical accompaniment. On the day in question I was singing Simon Smith and his amazing dancing bear which is a fairly obscure song to most people - it's the sort of song that people think they know, but actually don't, it just has a familiar feel to it. As I was singing it one day, I heard from the other side of the pub somebody singing the piano refrain from the song.

Dooodoo do do do do, doodoo do do do do...

It was William, pointing straight at me with a massive grin across his face, his other hand miming playing a piano, whilst he cued me in to sing the verses.

From then on, whenever he came into the pub he would come straight to me and start the singing, we performed it as a duet more times than I can remember. I saw him the other week for the first time in about six years and he started to sing it again, later telling me sadly that he "did really miss me not working here anymore" which brought a genuine tear to my eye.

The other guy in Finchley who I regularly spoke to was a guy called Horace, a big black dude, who wanders around the High Street in a massive parker coat in all weather, often sitting down to draw some pictures in crayon, and incredibly endearingly shouting "The best of luck!" to any passer-by that gives him the time of day. Horace became known to me as Mr White, and I to him as Mr Boldsworth (my real name) as he once informed me that he was a "formal gentleman" and liked to be adressed as such and would adress me in kind.

Now, in contrast to William, Mr White is not quite as stable in his actions and would occasionally have enormously aggressive outbursts on the street, seemingly out of nowhere. From a long way away you would hear him go from "The best of luck!" to "You fucking cunt! You fucking fucking cunt!".

For a long time I just thought this came from nowhere, but as we got to know him better we found out that people were goading him into doing it. There was a word that when shouted at him will trigger this response. I'm obviously not going to tell you what that word is, it's pretty non-descript, and I don't know why it triggers the outbursts but it is genuinely upsetting to see, and as I got out of my car tonight I heard "you fucking cunt! you fucking fucking cunt!" behind me and knew straight away that it was Mr White.

I went over to him quickly and said hello, in an attempt to diffuse his temper. It worked immediately, and I was greeted with "Hello Mr Boldsworth, not seen you for a long time". We had a little chat, and he asked after Miss So-and-so who I used to knock about with, and a car pulled up beside us. Four lads inside and one of them asked Mr White if he wanted some food, Mr White said yes, and then this cretinous specimen threw an empty KFC drink and wrapper right at Horace, before shouting 'the word', triggering an outburst and driving away laughing.

When William would walk through the pub, certain individuals would wind him up, and take the piss out of him, all in aid of their own and their friends amusement. This is very different to somebody making disabled jokes or whatever, I see no reason to exempt anyone or anyone's situation from humour, but this is very precise, very specfic and personally targetted cruel bullying.

Seeing this cruelty still going on was the depressing downside to crossing paths with them both again. Like I say, I haven't seen either of them for around about six years, yet they are both still figures of fun to some people (not all I hasten to add - just a distinct minority), and have to endure this bullying when they go out and attempt to integrate into society. One of the main problems with the care in the community idea, wasn't the much mooted idea that these people simply can't operate in the community, but rather the fact that parts of the community are simply unable of offering any semblance of care, choosing instead to abuse these 'impaired' people for their own entertainment. There are genuinely some out and out cunts knocking about.

So the reason for me mentioning William and Mr White today, is just to say that I personally think they are both fantastic people - not patronisingly, genuinely. As I said, William happily entertained me consistently at my time at the Tally Ho pub, and a "Best of luck!" from Mr White would regularly temper any late night dark mood when I went down to the local 7Eleven. They should have every right to lead as normal a life as anyone, regardless of whatever mental issues they have, and the fucking bullying that I saw them endure is an absolute insult and disgrace. To find someone's weakness and exploit it in such a way for literally no reason is abhorrent.

The only evidence of retarded people I saw this evening were those lads who found it so funny to throw a drink at somebody after pretending to be friendly towards them. Like beckoning a cat towards you and then striking it. It may be one of the cruellest things I ever saw in my life, and my only bit of consolation is the possibility they were laughing so much at their hilarious 'joke' that they wrapped their shitty little Fiesta around a fucking lampost on their way home, ridding society of four less cunts in the process.

Tipping them out of their wheelchairs would be an exception to weakness exploitation I would gladly allow.

a philly cheesesteak sandwich and some cherry coke zero.

what a way to start the morning at around noon!