I feel Ed sums it up well here

With thanks to Felicity Avenal's comedy tumblr, a blog that's chock full of the kind of repurposed copyright material that legislators would like to do away with.

Dara Ó Briain - Craic Dealer

Giddy, is the best description of Dara's mood last Wednesday as he took the stage in Vicar St. Downright giddy.
Mind you, I think I'd be giddy too if I'd just finished presenting three live television shows on one of my favourite subjects in the world and was selling out most gigs on my current tour. Dara says himself that he knows this show lacks the single idea that has given some of his previous shows an obvious hook--the neutrinos from two years ago, the Milky Bar kid, the Gillian McKeith stuff--but it is still a special show, and it did seem to have a clear theme from where I was sitting: Dara's turning forty and he's having a little stocktake.
Milestones are mentioned at several points during the evening. When he lines up his helper elves in the audience, for instance, he reminds everyone that he's been doing this job for nearly twenty years now and so has only a hazy idea of what it is that real people's jobs actually entail. And how could he have? Even at his level of fame, life has become an odd round of being photographed, imprinted on, ignored, or complained about. Not that he minds any of this, really. It's just another phenomenon in the universe for Dara to study and try to make sense of and get a laugh from, along with racism, astrology, the logical conclusion of the necessity for balance on television programmes, last summer's riots, whether we should just put all our resources into girls from now on, what is really the best thing to say to a burglar who breaks into your house at three in the morning when you're having "adult time", and bullshit modern nativity plays that feature characters from Toy Story alongside proper biblical figures.
This is all suffused with the kind of unapologetic intellectualism, massive doses of cheery swearing, and surreal asides that (since we're taking stock of almost twenty years of a career here) used to remind me of Eddie Izzard but have become as ingrained a part of Dara's shows as his callbacks to his helper elves in the audience (I love how people now lean forward to watch him do this, as if he was going to do a magic trick). But this time he also managed to include a couple of wistful stories about his youth that, for me anyway, gave the second half of the show a particularly personal feel as well as reminding people of just how far he has come.
So, yes. See the show if you get the chance. It is honkingly, snortingly good.

Louis CK at the Carlsberg Comedy Carnival

Did you have a chance to come to this gig with us and then not come? Man, you were wrong to make that choice. This was one of the funniest comedy gigs I've been to in years. I was laughing so much I was crying and whimpering and, yes, I was almost relieved when Barry Murphy came on halfway through to read (for about the millionth time) some of his fake poetry, because it meant I could get a little break from laughing.

I had not been to the Comedy Carnival before, assuming that, as an event organized for Irish people to go to en masse, it would be dreadful. When we got to the Iveagh Gardens last night, however, we found a peaceful, sunny place where the fountains were still running and nerdy looking guys were sitting around with women far too beautiful for them, and everyone just seemed to be having quite a nice time. Plus, it wasn't very crowded (I think going to the very last gig on the very last night of the festival probably had a lot to do with this). It seemed a magical place. Even when the venue opened and we went inside, there was a rush for the seats at the front, and everyone sat politely through Barry Murphy's opening two minutes (as some ker-azy German dude! Fantastic!) although everyone really just wanted him to go away so we could see Louis CK.

Who is shorter than he looks on television. On television he looks like a giant, but he clearly must surround himself with tiny co-stars, because in person he just looks like a standard bloke-sized person.

We had been told by the security guy on the way in that CK had died on his arse on Friday night and some people found his stuff really offensive. I can only imagine that such people must live in some kind of fairy world where normal people don't live and nobody ever has a bad thought about anyone or anything, because there is nothing that Louis CK said that I haven't heard expressed by another person, somewhere, at some point, and thought "wow, you must be in a very bad mood today", but not, "wow, you're an offensive person". I just never heard anyone express these things so very well, and all at one time, and quite so vividly. He doesn't just tell you stories about a funny thing that happened to him or something he saw or how his marriage didn't work out and now he has shared custody of his two daughters. He builds you a picture of his whole life and where it all went wrong and how very angry and sad he is about it, but he makes this condition seem normal, and you feel okay because sometimes you feel like that too. For all that he spends the first ten minutes complaining about fat, white people, he then goes on to talk about stuff that only fat, white people can really identify with.

The meal is not over when I'm full, he says, the meal is over when I hate myself.

Truly, it was an excellent night of comedy, and it's always lovely to see R&D ( ha ha, our friends are Research & Development), so it was an all round great night out.

Also, the mystery of such an excellent comedian dying on his arse is explained in his blog, so perhaps we were very lucky after all.

Anyway, Louis CK is playing in London throughout much of August, with a brief stop over in Edinburgh on August 15th and 16th. If you have never seen Louis CK live, and you are a grown adult with some experience of the world and the people in it and you would like to hear someone feel your pain on these topics, then I urge you to go and see him.

You will not be sorry.

Except about the shambles your life has become.

The Office

Forgive me for being late to the party, but I've just started watching NBC's The Office on Paramount. Because they're showing two episodes a night and the first season is only six episodes long, I have missed the entire first season and came in at the fourth episode of season two. I liked it just fine; the characters are pleasant and the whole show is less cringey and comedy-of-embarrassment than the original version, so the fact that I wasn't laughing at it didn't bother me.

Last night, though, they showed "Take Your Daughter to Work Day", and either the characters have finally clicked with me, or it was genuinely a much funnier episode, because I laughed until I was almost sick. It feels a little like when The Simpsons finally realised that Homer rather than Bart was the star of the show; The Office seems to have figured out that, unlike the British version of the show, the will-they-won't-they relationship and the overpowering manager figure are not the centre of the show. The centre of the show is Dwight. I hope it keeps up like this.

Also, the great thing about watching it on Paramount is that I'll be able to catch all the episodes I missed when they run them again in a couple of weeks time. The only thing is that you can never, ever sit through the ad breaks on Paramount unless you want to see the same ad for Everybody Loves Raymond, That 70s Show, or some random bloody Lee Evans or Al Murray thing over and over again, every break, every show, forever.

The world of unfortunate acronyms

MANPADS

I know this is going to raise a flag somewhere and make me a security risk, but really, how have I not heard this acronym before?

See what happens when you use androcentric terminology?

Do you like a laugh?

This could be just the thing.

It starts on Tuesday night on RTE.

Ha! They don't know they're being funny

Thanks to Big Boss for sending me the link to this. You can get your context from here, and you can read a wider selection of comics hilarity here (which I think is where the first guy got his from).

The 40 Year-Old Virgin

It seems I am the last person in christendom to see this film. If you haven't seen it, you should. The fact that it has Steve Carell in it might make you believe that it's going to be like Dodgeball or Anchorman, so if you don't like that kind of film, you might have been put off. But this isn't like that. It's very old-fashioned, the people in it are real characters and they don't behave in a totally unrealistic manner that makes you wonder if they could actually keep themselves alive in a real situation. And although the film is, and I don't think I'm giving anything away here, about a 40 year-old guy whose friends find out he's a virgin and try to make him stop being one, it's not an all-out see-how-many-women-we-can-degrade-with-boob-humour jokefest. I really, really enjoyed it. And having seen some of Steve Carell's stuff on The Daily Show's ten-year retrospective, I have decided he is my new hero.
The photo, by the way, comes from this fun site. I like the modern Marilyn Monroe in particular.

End of an era

The Perrier award is no more. Controversial in recent years, because of Perrier's connection to the evils of the world, thankfully it's now being sponsored by Intelligent Finance (no chance anything bad can be associated with them, right? I mean, a financial services company, always squeaky clean, right?).

So, new award, new name. The Comeddies. Because they're sponsored by If.com. Clever, no?

Anyway, Accentmonkey interest in the awards rests on David O'Doherty, or Phil Nichol, or God's Pottery in the newcomer category. It would be so great if once, just once, the person I wanted to win actually won. Surely by spreading it around three of them, I've got to have a chance.

Shows we saw at Edinburgh

This year, we had possibly the best balance yet between loads of shows and loads of hanging around with people. Aside from the usual desperate Saturday night scramble for something decent to eat, we remembered all our own rules and avoided overcrowded, really cramped, basement pub-style venues. So that cut out The Stand, sorry Eddie Bannon and friends, and also The Tron, sorry Glenn Wool. However, we did see a lot of stuff. Friday night we went to see Matt Kirshen. He's very funny. Clever, pleasant, likeable, witty, personable. A good comedian. But there were fireworks on Friday night. ComedyB was presenting Best of the Fest in the Abbembelly Booms. It was a typical late night audience. One stag party in, many of the more middle-aged patrons were asleep (it starts at midnight), and the comedians were having to work for it. Glenn was reasonably popular, if a little rambling. And then Rhys Darby came out, and he was also very good. He does sound effect stuff. Then Richard Herring. I was quite looking forward to seeing Richard Herring. I was wrong. His material was alright, I guess, but the drunken element of the audience didn't appreciate it and one of the stag party started a slow handclap. Richard Herring did not appreciate that. First, he berated the drunk bloke for not appreciating his very clever style of comedy. Then, he had a go at the other comedians. "Sorry I can't make silly noises", he said "or be casually racist like Glenn". There was an argument, and he eventually left the stage. Luckily the next act on was Phil Nichol, a man who could make people laugh during an air raid, I'm sure. He pulled his pants down, pulled his t-shirt over his head, and sang songs very loudly and with a kind of frightening energy. Relief all round.
Saturday, we saw Hoodwinked, a kids' film, CGI and all that, you know. It's fine, as these things go. Some amusing jokes, some nice songs, some nice homages to computer games, but something lacking to make it really great. However, it does feature very positive potrayals of both young girlhood and old womanhood, and there is no innuendo, and not a lot of violence. So it's a parents' dream of a film. We had great intentions to do other things on Saturday, but we were very tired, having been up drinking the night before till ever so late.
Sunday, we saw the loveliest film. It was called Into Great Silence, a two and a half hour film about a particularly ascetic silent order of monks and their daily lives. Sadly the director didn't have enough money to shoot the whole thing on lovely film, so a lot of it is filmed on digital video, which gives it too much grain, but otherwise it's superb.
Sunday night we saw ComedyB's show, which was up to its usual high standard and has a Special! New! Opening! which is very flash and swish.
On Monday we saw a children's show, as we usually do, called The Onomatopoeia Society 2: The Etymological Conference, which I thought had some serious flaws: largely, it was too difficult to hear some of the dialogue, and the bit where the Kissing Horse would run out and sing a little song to cover up lazy joke writing was an awful admission that there was lazy joke writing. Why not just write better jokes? ComedyB pointed out that he was annoyed about the show's definition of the word "alliteration"; he claims it only applies to consonants. I confessed that I thought alliteration was when two or more words in a sentence started with the same letter. It turns out that Webster's agrees with me, while other dictionaries agree with him. So everyone's right. Or only some are.
Later we saw God's Pottery do their Concert for Lavert, which was a very moving show in which Gideon Lamb and Jeremiah Smallchild sing songs and try to bring us all closer together (even the Jews and Muslamics), and raise money for a young boy called Lavert, who has cancer. They don't know what kind he has, or who he got it from, but they're going to help him beat it. Great show. I felt affirmed by it.
Then we went and did a lot of drinking, because it was the launch of ComedyB's DVD, his first ever, and we had to help swell the crowd at the party.
Then, much later, we saw some boys trying to jump over things in the street on their bikes and everyone stood and applauded, because we were all so used to being an audience by then that we had to react to them in some way.
And today we came home, and the woman in front of me reclined her seat, so I stuck my knee in her back, and when she complained that I was sticking my knee in her back, I said "No, I'm just getting my magazine out of the pocket", and waved my magazine at her, but really I was sticking my knee in her back. Fuck her.

Marry Me

An appropriate choice for the fortnight gone by. Carey Marx is a friend of Elvis P, and Elvis recommended I buy this book. Of course he recommended I buy it new, but I did not. I found it in the Oxfam Bookshop on Byers Road in Glasgow. An excellent Oxfam shop, I urge everyone to patronise it. Carey didn't mind though, he said that he would not be happy until someone told him they'd read a half-burnt copy they found in a skip.

Anyway, the book is good, which is a relief, because there's always that trepidation when you approach a book by someone you know, or someone who knows someone you know. Basically Carey decided that 2005 was going to be his year of adventure, and one of those adventures was going to be that he would find his perfect woman and marry her. Conveniently, this turned out to be an easy pitch for an Edinburgh show and a book. It caught people's imaginations. And, bless him, he worked really really hard at it.

I won't tell you what happens in the end, because that wouldn't be fair. I will tell you that I liked his choice to stick to the storytelling aspect of it at the expense of jokes (unless I've just really insulted him, and actually it was supposed to have jokes galore on every page and I've missed them), and that he does a lot to banish the stigma that attaches to dating in the UK. Yes, I would read another book by him. I would also go and see his standup.

So there you are. Oh! And the book has Elvis P in a cameo appearance. So it was definitely worth it.

Fat comic and the forces of sodomy

Post titles like that make me glad I don't have Adwords on my blog.

We went to see Dara O'Briain in Vicar St. last night. Whatever its limitations when seeing bands, Vicar St is a great place to see comedy, especially if you've got front row centre seats on the balcony, where you get to look down at the full house below you. Dara really is just a quality performer. Two hours of varied, hilarious, well-observed, clever comedy that never understimates the intelligence of the audience is hard to come by, but he delivers it.
My particular favourites are the image of some young person jogging along beside technology asking "what have you got for me today, technology?"
"Well, I've got a phone that you can carry around and call people from anywhere in the world!"
"That's brilliant! What have you got now?"
"I've got a phone with a camera attached, so you can take pictures of all your friends!"
"That's brilliant! What have you got now?"
"I've got an iPod that plays your music and stores your photos!"
"Oh shit, I've got a stitch. You carry on without me, I think I've gone far enough."
He breaks up the second half of the show very cleverly too. Having been invited on to the BBC's Room 101, he spends some time thinking about all the things he hates (opining that comedy is the ideal art form for petty things you hate. Broad strokes of emotion? Leave that to music. Irritating people you met on the train? Comedy!) but of cours they only used a few. So he has made a list of other ones, which he gets someone in the audience to read out. It's a good plan, because as soon as the interest in one topic starts to flag (assuming it does), he can just switch to the next thing. Smart.
He is just class, bless him.

Fat Comic and the Milky Bar Kid

On Friday afternoon our shop was robbed and loads of cash stolen from the till. Luckily, no-one was hurt or even threatened, but we'd had a good day in the shop and there was a lot more money than there usually is.

Ed to the rescue. He organised a lunchtime fundraiser in Cleere's for us, starring himself, Dara, Colin and Max. It was a brilliant gig. All four comics reckoned it was the best one they'd had in the festival and Colin got ten minutes of new material out of it. And we raised enough to replace the stolen money twice over.

Hurrah for the sad clowns.
Original comments
You must tell us when Dara is next on in Dublin, we keep meaning to go see him.

Posted by Ray on Jun. 07 2005, at 11:24 PM
I just keep forgetting, because I don't go myself most of the time.
Posted by perfectlycromulent on Jun. 08 2005, at 7:37 AM