Derren Brown and a Ramble (contains a preview of my amazing artwork)

Introduction

Right, I’m about as erratic and as unreliable as possible with the dates of these blogs. I sometimes know what I’m going to write, other times I have no clue. This, I think, is going to be a bit of a ramble blog, and then I’ll tell you a little unimportant story from the Derren Brown promo. Oh and watch out for my amazing art work.

YouTube and IPhone Investigator

What tends to happen with these blogs, is that I will come on to the laptop with my mind set about what I’m going to write and then, when I get down to it, I splurge all my warmed up creative juices on things I can watch on YouTube. These videos on YouTube aren’t educational, nor do I garner any self respect from it. It’s all mostly stupid and silly videos that I hope exist. These subject headings are usually inane, nonsensical bullsquit like “badger riding Kangaroo” (that video does actually exist, but not on YouTube, it ruined my Tuesday) and “swallowing egg whole”.

On the IPhone you can search on Google, when you type something in, it saves what’s been entered so you can go back to it. I recently looked at the list I’ve created since owning this phone, and became slightly worried with how someone may see it without knowing the back story! Here’s the top four things on my Google history, on the IPhone.

Blue balls

Christopher Walken

Graphite

Migrant Workers

Yes, without knowing where it all come from, it’ll probably seem about as disturbing as a gimps basement (to be honest, it does sound like a checklist usually found in a gimps basement!). The Christopher Walken bit was to show my step dad who he was (who Christopher Walken was, my step dad wasn’t having a case of forgotten identity), as I had previously showed him The Walken Dead (you can see below) and it meant nothing to him as he had no clue who he was, which was kind of the main thing about that video. The other three was to confirm what they meant, as I never usually like to say something without knowing 100% that I’m using said word/phrase correctly! Like when I used the phrase “lets raise the flag and see who salutes” when I was 14, as a euphemism. Why? Because I was a bad ass 14 year old of course. (I didn’t actually say that, I didn’t use euphemisms then, I was too busy deciphering Einstein’s theory of relativity, that and playing Final Fantasy 7….. Mainly the latter).

Derren Brown

Well, yeah I did an advert for Derren Brown’s new show, was really awesome! Everyone was lovely which is always super nice. I’ve done things for television where I’ve hated every moment, but this time it was fun! Except the synchronised bit! Hated that so bad. They hired 20 dancers to do it with us, but they decided to have Mr 2 Left Face here to be near the front! I just couldn’t stop getting it wrong! It was simple and yet I’d either not bend my neck far enough or not move fast enough out of camera shot. Even though the lady beside me was a lovely older lady who walked slower then the younger people surrounding her. There was even one take where I forgot to take the phone out of my pocket so we had to stop and do it again, I’ve never had evils by 50 people instantaneously before, I felt kind of powerful! Yes I got a distinction in dance at college, but that was because the teacher rewarded me for taking myself completely out of my comfort zone with the strip at the showcase (little did she know). It also didn’t help when we were doing it under about 20 huge light bulbs, so everyone was feeling the heat. My face wasn’t sweating like the others, but, to put it bluntly, my area was! I had 2 pairs of jeans on because they didn’t have the right size for me, so I had to have my original jeans on underneath. It felt like I had been tea bagging lava.

I had a chance to quickly meet Derren Brown, I walked past him as he was speaking to 2 other guys. I’ve gone ahead and scripted this, with the possible inner thoughts of the great Derren Brown himself. I think this situation is an example of how I presume I’m being seemingly rude when I don’t mean to be at all (when around new people). Call it being self conscious of others accidental forced (by me) perception. I think I do this because of all the accusations of me being arrogant back in the day because I was nodding to criticism in a way they didn’t like, so since then, I’ve been really aware of what I say and how I say it. I never want people to think ill of me if I’m genuinely being nice or taking criticism on board, anyway. I’m sure his response was deliberate and not a panic button response, don’t see why it would be as I’m sure he’s dealt with stranger people while doing magic tricks on the street! (Initially had to write corridor in the scene heading, as that’s where it took place in, except I found that word such a mind frick, look at it, seriously look at it! How weird is that word!)

INT. CORRIDOR AT GREENFORD STUDIOS

SEAN enters wearing two pairs of jeans and a hoodie, this man radiates awesomeness (I’m the writer, I get to say what I want). As he plods along in the corridor, his eyes meet with magician and nice man, DERREN BROWN. DERREN is talking to two people while wearing a really nice suit. SEAN attempts a drive-by conversation.

SEAN

Alright!

DERREN

Hello mate, you OK?

Sean notices the suit, his obligations to always compliment nice fabric overrides his vocal chords.

SEAN V.O (INNER THOUGHT)

What a lovely bit of suitage

SEAN

Yeah I’m good thank you, nice suit by the way!

DERREN, taken off-guard by this sudden, badly composed compliment, responds.

DERREN V.O (INNER THOUGHT)

What?

DERREN

Thank you, yes, love your suit as well.

SEAN smiles and waves a hand as if to say “you’re too kind!” Without looking back to see DERREN’S face, leaving the ending of the drive-by to SEAN’S mind.

SEAN V.O (INNER THOUGHT)

Shit, I think he may have thought I was being sarcastic! Keep walking, avoid eye contact, warn Batman.

SEAN then, understandably, sings Holy Diver by Killswitch Engage out loud to drown out all the voices in his head, telling him to draw the guy who says “wonga” in the Envirophone adverts over the walls as a coping mechanism.

He genuinely seemed like a really nice, charismatic man. Which I always find is my first question when my friends meet famous people. I don’t like asking, is he a dick? Or did he kick off on set? Or anything like that, it’s always, “was he nice?” And then, out of my own insecurity, I ask “how tall was he/she?” So, to answer my own questions, he seemed really nice, and he was about 5 ft 8/5 ft 10? He seemed like the type of guy you’d want as a really cool uncle or wingman!

Oh and just to add, the main cast that were doing the puppet stuff with me were really nice as well and a pleasure to hang out/work with. There was one or two that I didn’t get to speak to as much even though I wanted to, but I’ve got them on Twitter now so all good (sneaky walking, social stalking, eating cabbage, swearing at Savage, it’s Twitter!!) Although, it turned out I was the only one there who hadn’t been to drama school, so I had no stories I could of bantered them with, I think I’m just going to have to deal with that for now!

Shoulder Injury

I’m going to do a short blog about this during the week. As much as I am OK which then renders it unnecessary in a way. The effort I’ve put into it makes it necessary! “What Effort??” You say! Well I tried to do a really really silly comic strip drawing which in my mind would take 10 minutes; it’s taken me 2 hours so far. This is one of the boxes. I’m as sorry as you are.

Summary

One of the more nuts blogs. Oh and I’m pretty sure I did say I have the drawing capability of an 8 year old, didn’t I?

Day Twenty-five Happy Go Lucky Goth

Introduction

What an eventful but lovely day it’s been, minus the weather. I had two castings today, one of them I will now be working on next week woop woop, get to meet Derren Brown! The other casting was a strange experience, which will be all explained below along with a little trouble I may have got myself into, enjoy.

Happy Go Lucky Goth

I got the casting yesterday for a thing called Kinkley (trust me, the amount of jokes that had run through my head when I was told could of got me arrested). If I were to get it I’d go to Tel Aviv in Israel for four days. I was a little bit worried about that because of the recent troubles in the vicinity and to calm me down, my brother said “you probably won’t die”, which is not comforting at all! I like my chances of dying to be so low that it won’t even be a respectable probability, not to mention I’d be dressed as a Goth if I get it, so that’ll really go down well with the locals.

After that I calmed myself down and I was kind of up for going there and doing it, except in the email it said that I had to dress like a Goth and wear as much make up as I can. So I put on my blue jeans white tshirt and for the Goth aspect of my clothing, a leather jacket? Now on hine sight, that’s not Goth at all but I had another casting an hour later so it had to do. I get there; they all look similar to me so it made me think maybe this won’t be a waste of time. I get into the casting and she well, she wasn’t happy. Anyway, I get out and see these 6ft 2 Mohican wearing tattoo and big boot stamping Goths. If they were my competition, I think I stand a pretty good chance…

There really isn’t anything Gothic about me, I do look a bit pastey sometimes but that’s because I bathe in paste, sexy paste. But don’t judge me though; I’m just a bit Kinkley.

Stop Laughing at my Disabled Child!

I was walking around Leicester Square after my second casting, slightly bored as I knew I’d have to wait at Euston for my train. I thought I’d do it in a place where people don’t pass wind and then do circles round you, or where I won’t get shouted at for eating Burger King because the company are testing the food on African babies (which surely they'd be grateful for if it was true?).

After a while I started to notice people who had press passes for a local horror film festival, so I played a little game where I just counted how many I saw before I got to the staition, this is when it happened. I had noticed a boy wearing a long jacket, big red scarf with tassels on it and a hunters hat. There was just something about it that I found hilarious and couldn’t help looking incredibly rude as I attempted (and failed) to hold in my laugh. I tried to avoid looking at him as he walked past so I looked into the distance and just starting laughing. Unfortunately that “distance” contained a handicapped child who had dropped his ice cream. When I realised, I felt so bad, and as I walked past them the mother literally peered into my soul. I wanted to apologise but I reckoned that if she actually didn’t notice my mistake then it would look a whole lot worse if I went up to her and said “sorry I wasn’t laughing at your handicapped daughter struggling to pick up her ice cream off the floor, I was laughing at a boy with a funny hat”.

Summary

Maintaining a perfect thing is always hard to do, which is why I really wrench myself about when I feel as if something isn’t adequate. I tend to react quite badly inside if a casting hasn’t gone right or a blog isn’t up to the hardships I had previously put myself in to get it right the day before. I just hope that the ones that I feel aren’t adequate in my eyes are up to par in others, the same with everything else. I really do rip myself a new one if I feel as if I haven’t done as well as I could or should. So on that note I bid you a due and I hope everything is going well for you, just you, you saucy bugger. 

Podcast

http://themetaphoricalbeard.podomatic.com/entry/2011-08-17T15_09_58-07_00

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Day Twenty- One of Those Day's (and Why Get Angry at Nothing?)

Introduction

This might be a short one, it might not. Actually I won’t put it in that bracket I’ll just put it in the “just one of those day’s” category. This is due to my tiredness along with contributing factors of not feeling well at all and others I don’t feel necessary to mention. I won’t go into yesterday night to which is a factor to blame in why I’d probably feel a little bothered/like a mess, but lets just say, it was “one of those nights”.

One of Those Days

This “just one of those days” scenario is a day compacted with tiny mishaps and unfortunate events. So far I’ve managed to forget I had crisps in my pocket when I sat down, got up to fast from a lying position and lost sight for a few seconds and fell up the stairs (not downstairs, I’m not an animal). The best one was when I tried to pump myself up for the day by looking in the mirror and telling myself “it’ll all be ok” (I never usually do that, too scared my reflection will reply with “nothing will be ok until you kill your neighbours” or something to that description), only to notice I had chocolate on the side of my neck, which is bad, but not as bad as recalling the last time I had chocolate was yesterday afternoon. My reaction to it all could be a number of options, all as significant and drama queeny the higher up the metaphorical ladder of options I go. I’ve gone with the option of sighing and then getting on with it (which is how I deal with pretty much all my problems, even when I had a problem about how much I sigh). The one I try to avoid the most is getting angry at something that I can’t change, this is due to the fact that I will gain nothing from getting myself so stressed out about it (F**K YOU LARGE HADRON COLLIDER, WHY DON’T YOU PARTICLE ACCELORATE THESE NUTS WHILE YOU ATTEMPT TO UNDERSTAND THE DEEPER MEANING OF MY GOOCH, anyway.) Actually completely off subject for a moment, comedian appreciation time:

Why Get so Angry at Nothing?

I try not to get angry at the small things, what’s the point of it? It’ll just get me more stressed, which in turn isn’t good for my health or the people surrounding me (when I get angry I have a tendency to roundhouse kick blindly, I don’t actually but can you imagine?! I can, you won’t believe what I just imagined! That’s right, a rhino playing hopscotch on the back of a tiny unicorn, the spike headed cracka). When I see people go all drama queen on my ass and get really angry about the small things, I just get down. Then when they’ve resolved their problems by listening to some depressing music and dropkicking a dyslexic down some alphabetty spaghetti stairs (it’s a featuring trend in Slovakia), they are met with a disappointed smile, as they notice I wasn’t really cool with the outburst.

A problem of mine is that I tend to give people too many excuses, in the sometimes futile attempt to understand the modicum of motivation they had used to be disgruntled. But when it comes down to it, I tend to fall back on the more plausible and consistently correct deduction that they are just over reacting and being a little childish. I just don’t get why people relish in making a big deal out of a little thing. It’s like saying “the car is ruined” just because someone deleted a photo of said car on their phone.

Why can’t people just realise that maybe some things aren’t worth getting angry about? Why can’t we all just notice that when thing’s can’t be changed, then they can’t be changed, no matter how many post-boxes you kick and punch out of primal frustration and built up rage. I say this because I used to do it (get angry, not practice judo on an inanimate objects, I don’t want to be embarrassed when I get my arse kicked by it), but now I just chill. Life is a conundrum, an unexplainable ride of experiences and emotions with no real control over anything with a heartbeat. Surely we all know this, so let’s just make things run smoother, no-one wants another dyslexic kicked down a spiral staircase while they carry books (which they no doubt read perfectly the liars! Kidding)

Summary

I’ve decided the “it’s just one of those days” invigilator is a Tyrannosaurus Rex. With this knowledge, I’ve deduced the proclamation that I shall not move all day, and as we all know, good ol’ Rexxy can only see moving creatures (I got that from Jurassic Park, but the more I think about it the more I start to think that it can’t be true, because that’d be so pointless and they’d be screwed travelling near trees. With that and the tiny arms, I’m starting to think they perhaps were disabled nerds and the Spinosaurus mocked them in the locker room after P.E, while the iguanodon dribbled and gave a constant thumbs up. Bullies I say! Bullies! God, I’ve just realised I just did a few jokes for a crowd that is smaller then a Sex in the City Storyline). I can obviously say I was wrong at the beginning, it wasn’t short at all! And for that I say, deal with it! Don’t like it? Well I’m having one of those days (and the blog becomes full circle).

Podcast

http://themetaphoricalbeard.podomatic.com/entry/2011-08-17T15_09_58-07_00

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Day Thirteen- Improvisational Sins (Top Three)

Introduction

I don’t tend to get aggravated much, especially when it comes to the ideas and the flourishing of people with the capacity to do so, which is a huge reason for my love of all things improvised. If a man/woman is witty enough to create pitch perfect improv it really does make me feel all warm and tingley inside. But if certain people are ruining that for those with such a deep love for it, it aggravates me (like the star wars fans felt for the prequels).

Improvisation, My Love

I have got plenty of stories of success and tragedy on stage during my improvisation career. I was part of a class (to which I miss those lessons so much now and wish I never left them) that would do comedy improvisation for an hour and a half every Friday. It gave me a chance to flourish and fine tune my improvisation while being surrounded by those who feel the same way, or those who enjoyed taking a back seat and watch me make a toilet dick of myself. It really did give me a feeling of satisfaction when I was on stage and made people laugh through my sudden spurts of improvised remedies to the high expectations of an audience who are used to it to all (call them the upper echelons of improvised thought).

I am in love with the shows containing improvisation and games similar to which I have played (shows like Whose Line is it Anyway and Mock the Week who were produced by Dan Patterson). Which makes it all the more difficult to deal with when I witness pitch perfect copycats of jokes from those shows. As much as originality is so difficult, if it stinks of someone else’s stink, then I will be questioning my wife to where she’s been for the last 20minutes (dying on stage possibly?).

Improvisational Sins, Top 3

Three

A sin to which I have been guilty for is that improvisation is a team effort in games that require conversation. Don’t instantly try to upstage or take over the stage if you’re with someone who can’t keep up with you. Help them and if it doesn’t work then try and work with them subliminally by getting them to say things to which you can react in a preposterous manner, anything to get the juices flowing. I’ve worked with people who weren’t as imaginative or on the same wave length but they ended up being the stars because they were the real straight man of the situation. If you make it into an upstaging competition then it could either make the audience uncomfortable or it’ll produce some genius stuff. Brad Sherwood does it a lot in Whose Line is It Anyway US and quite a lot of the time it works out because the people he works with can keep up or even do better. When he’s with someone who can’t, it just makes it look a bit rough half the time (instead of none of the time). I’ve skipped the steps with people who weren’t with it at the time and I got told off for it (to which I was outraged at the time but now understand why, oh realisation you heavy handed Panda).  

Two

Similar to stand up, joke stealing is a huge sin. I did a show couple of years ago, during that show we played a game called worlds worst (an example would be worlds worst speech at a funeral etc), a friend of mine then said 3 jokes during it that were word for word from Mock the Week. Now, not only did he look like an arse hole in front of those who have watched the show, but he then made us all look like arse holes cause it buried the perception into their mind that all of it was somewhat planned or stolen. Even when I went out into the foyer after the show I heard murmurs that quite a lot of the jokes were stolen, which they weren’t it was just from that one guy. I pride myself on my mind working a million miles a second and because I participate so much then I will take it to heart to be told all my stuff came from someone else. I did get him back after though when we played a game called props and he did a joke and then I got up, grabbed a broom and said I was sweeping away his failed jokes then, adding the nail to the coffin, by saying “oh wait nothing is there anyway”. He’s a great guy and now he’s older, he has potential to be a great stand up, but if you do a sin on stage I will make you pay, whether it be another time, or even on stage (don’t fear the reaper, just avoid meeting him by having your comedy 5 a day).

One

This sin is what aggravates me the most. Planning a game to the extent that renders the people involved as somewhat “creative prisoners”. The embodiment of improvisation is for it to be unpredictable, for only quick ideas to exist and planning to only be done by the host for order purposes and not for creative imposing. I react more outraged when I know certain games have been planned then someone making a sex joke about my cat (to which doesn’t exist, which could be why I don’t react). It’s a huge slap in the face to the audience and a big hammer blow to the performers (to which it makes me feel so angry for). I’ve heard about shows that have boasted its improvised and people have come out incredibly happy and wanting to see it again, so they go the second night and it’s exactly the same. Either call it improvised because all of it is improvised or don’t call it improvised. You’re taking the audience for granted, your offending the participants and your spitting on the forefathers of improvisation.

Summary

My love of improvisation is as deep as it comes. I’ve been looking for somewhere else to “hang my hat” so if anyone knows a good place then I’d love to check it out, as long as the improvisation isn’t belittled by the sins above. Nothing disgusts me more then to see the things I love taken advantage of. If you fear that the improvisation will suck even though there are at least two dependable people in it, then let it happen and see where it will go, the audience is in it as much as the participants.

I apologise if you were expecting a funny blog as the title will have the words improvisation in it. I’ve just had a bit of a problem that has frustrated me and I needed to get it out there (venting on a blog? EEEEEMMOOOOOOOOOOOOO)

I will of course go into my improvisation experiences a little more on another blog, something involving 2 fantastic people to work with and the vow to impregnate everyone in the audience even though they didn’t come to see us (it was a multiple company showcase, not a singular one). Love you all!

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