Opening night

Thank goodness. No more rehearsal. It’s time to get things started, it’s time to light the lights (etc etc).
Opening night and I’m so relieved. Once the production opens, I can sleep again, no more strange dreams about forgetting lines, or sets collapsing or new bits being inserted into the script.
I’ll post photo’s later and let you know how it went.
You lucky people.

Made up!

I have to admit it, but I don’t have the patience to be a transvestite.
I shall explain, yesterday was dress rehearsal for the panto. I spent an absolute age in make-up and ended up looking like a cross dressing wizard.
Normally, stage/TV make-up is a 2 second job. Some powder on the forehead and nose so that the light doesn’t bounce off too harshly. That’s fine. Humiliating, but fine.
The sight of a man putting mascara on is really quite horrific. Whilst sat in the chair, I felt like I was in Clockwork Orange, the part where Alex has his eyes held open whilst being subjected to traumatising film clips.
Then lip-gloss. Why do women do this? It’s deeply unpleasant. It felt like my lips had been glued with boiled down horse hooves. I couldn’t drink a cup of tea without leaving it looking as though a slut had been trying to eat it.
Then there is the experience of taking it off. After using a wipe, I showered my face, then used a hot towel and still I felt like I had make-up on.
The morning was spent with my good lady who instructed me on the art of wearing tights. These pesky items of clothing are fickle and prone to disintegration. It’s also a nightmare when one hears the call of nature. However, I suppose as an aspiring actor I should be glad to finally be in tights!

So long to all that

This time of year the Television schedules are fit to bursting with tedious review shows. These inane dribllefests are hosted by a vacuous panel of D-list celebrities who plough through a three hour show bereft of any humour.

The relentless head shots, repeats of footage you only saw last week and pithy comments tend to bring on feelings of self-harm after about 3 hours.

So, with that in mind, I thought I would do my own review of the year.

January:

The year started off really badly. I was started a poorly paid boring job, listening to corporate drones who used newspeak. However rather than hang myself I went for an audition and got the part of Dr Spivey in One Flew Over The Cuckoos nest.

Feb:

More tedium in my paid job. Child protection training was done on-line, which was ironic I suppose. I had to suffer the horror of cartoon social workers blabbering away about things such as neglect and abuse. This made me want to go out and punch the nearest child in the face and steal his dinner money.

March:

March was actually not a bad month. I had a night out in a pretend casino and lost lots of pretend money and drank real tequila. Actually, that was probably the only highlight. So, really it was another shite month.

April:

Ah, this month I did Cuckoo’s nest. It went down a storm, but afterwards I felt like there was a huge hole in my life. With no new productions coming up, I had precious little hope of any form of relaxation to look forward to. I did a few days filming, which was something of a curates egg. I did not enjoy getting up at 4:30am. I did however appreciate a large cooked breakfast that was free of charge, lunch and afternoon snacks. Oh, I started this blog as my previous site (which was hosted by Blogger) died on me.

May:

My career reached yet another nadir. I don’t think there is a collective noun for the plural of nadir but maybe ‘a nuisance of nadir’ would be appropriate. I turned down a job, as frankly I have to admit to myself that I am far too judgemental of people’s behaviour at times. Sexual health promotion would not be the ideal job for me. I can’t be laissez-fair about this sort of thing. I am typically English, and I like being repressed. I spent my day job handing out ill-fitting shoes to people and trying to work on peoples inter-relatedness. Hmm. I’m a fine one to do that.

June:

I met my new and truly terrifying new dentist whom I thought was both evil and attractive at the same time..I’m such as sucker for that.  I had some shots done for a theatrical agent, erm….I think that was it. I’m sure something was going on somewhere else but I can’t recall.

July:

Audition month. I went for the 39 steps, which I didn’t get. I did however get my first part in a musical. I’ve never done a musical before. I must admit it was quite daunting at first, my character didn’t sing but I did sing in the chorus the songs ‘Oldest established’ , ‘Luck be a lady’ and ‘Sit down your rocking the boat’. Meeting this new company did me the world of good however and I’ve made some great friends there. It was also the holiday to Majorca which went very well, despite the appalling food, the family and I had a blast.

August:

Time for my post holiday psychosis. I decided to roll dice to make decisions for a few weeks. I re-started meditation, read books on Buddhism and the Tao. Spent my paid working hours doing absolutely nothing at all.

September:

I started to write my book ‘Kevin the third’. I did nothing else other than rehearse that month.  Not really my most memorable.

October:

Show time. Guys and Dolls was a blast as was the after-show party. I auditioned for Dick Whittington and got the part of Alderman Fitzwarren. Donned a moustache. Went to work in a team I had previously been fired from. I had job interviews but in the end I turned them down, my heart isn’t in mental health nursing.

November:

I spent a great deal of time rehearsing and reading about economics. Not at the same time of course, that would be dangerous.

December:

Lots more rehearsing for Panto. Of course we had Christmas which wasn’t particularly fun for myself and Lady Nobacon. I may post more about that once the festive season is over.

Hmm

What a boring year!

Humbug day

I don’t know about you, but it seems that if one says “I’m not keen on Christmas” then you may as well sign the sex offenders register and defecate on Princess Diana’s grave for all the popularity you will gain.

I know I am not alone in my ambivalence towards all things festive.

I enjoy seeing my son open presents but after that it’s all down hill. Copious drinking, eating food from dawn till midnight, people talking over a TV show you want to watch. Sigh..

However, I know that men of a certain age love a good moan. It does us good, I have no empirical data to support this assertion, but as it is the time of year when magical thinking is allowed, I will assert my case.

I advocate a world wide holiday of moaning, being grumpy, brutal honesty and sobriety.

One day where we can really let rip.

It’s more likely to bring peace on Earth than some fat bloke trying to squeeze down your chimney.

 

Sorry to disappoint

As a blogger it does become something of an obsession to see how many ‘hits’ one gets each day.
This blog tends to get about 13 per day. I’m quite happy with this, some days I’ve had over 100 and others not a soul has visited.
More revealing however about the nature of the visitors is their terms they used to get here.
Typical entry routes are as follows “leather shorts, amateur guys, arse, bad tempered Jack Russel”.

So, if you are a kinky homosexual with a foul tempered dog, then I’m terribly sorry, but this probably isn’t the site for you.

On having a ‘dirty’ mind.

I think the more panto rehearsals I do, the more I become like the late Frankie Howerd.
It has become almost impossible for me to read a line without making it sound suggestive, filthy or camp.
This morning for example, I was teaching and I had to read the following sentences;
“It’s nice for me to be here”.
“Why don’t you put your fish in?”
“Don’t be selfish, move over and let Tim play too”.
and the one I could not repeat due to the tears of laughter running down my face was “I like the way you make the duck float”.
Oh the joy of parenting programmes.

Another one bites the dust

It’s not been a good year for dictators. Now, the best dictator has gone the way of all flesh, one can only hope that Kim jnr can live up to his fathers reputation for playing golf ( North Korean myth department, reported that ‘dear leader’ got 18 holes in one on a round of golf), directing movies (again, North Korean myth department inform us that he directed 72 films).

Of course, he was an odious, murdering bag of puke. Most dictators are. Lil’ Kim was perhaps the most preposterous monster of them all. He wore built up shoes, had a perm, littered the countryside with statues of himself and created stupid ‘myths’ about how great he was.

One has to ask, how insecure does one need to be to become a dictator? Sadly, I doubt I will ever be able to visit North Korea, which is a shame. I’ve always found dystopian societies fascinating. You can imagine the look of disdain on my wife’s face when I suggested that we visit former eastern bloc countries to look at the drab architecture. Indeed, I put my foot down on the issue and we ended up going to Majorca.

2011 will certainly prove to be an interesting year for those of us interested in insane dictators. I have high hopes that the Muslim Brotherhood will prove just as ‘quirky’ for Eygpt.

 

 

The world of rock and roll beckons

Well, today I scraped into the last year of my 30′s. I was most heartened however when I was presented with birthday gifts that I actually wanted! Imagine that!

So, I am now a proud owner of a ukulele.  A joyful little instrument that is proving really rather fun to play.

May I suggest having a look at the following to ‘get you in the mood’?Chap Hop

Prepare for meltdown

Snow has started to fall in the usually sunny town of Wigan.
This means that everything in the UK will now fall apart, trains will be cancelled (indeed the signals failed at Wigan north-western station this morning). Roads will be as treacherous as a politician, those looking to jet off to sunnier climes will find that their holiday plans are ripped to shreds.
The warnings have been there for years though. I remember as far back as the 70′s receiving Christmas cards that clearly featured snow scenes on them. I mean what other signs did people need?
Also, the fact that we are in winter might just have had a little suggestion that we might be in for weather that is a little chillier than in autumn.
The tedious thing is though, is that we have about 2mm on snow fall. It’s not like we’ve had arctic conditions or even Scandinavian temperatures.
I thought we British were supposed to ‘keep calm and carry on’. Instead we seem to ‘panic and grind to a halt’.

Use stereotypes to save time

The EU blunders its way through one financial crisis to the next. This of course is of no surprise. Europe is old. Indeed, this may not strike you as a particularly exciting point, nor a topical one.

However, bear with me on this. Europe is old, it also has habits. For example, Greece has always been rubbish with money. Italy too.

When these countries used their own currency, frankly it was better to buy goods over there with monopoly money such was the chronic and rampant inflation. We Brits used to joke that as soon as you went to Italy you became a millionaire. Considering that a newspaper and a cup of coffee would cost 20,000 lire, you could see where we were coming from.

The German economy was a force to be reckoned with once they stopped trying to rule the world and make people wear leather shorts. The Germans were a sensible bunch really. Despite their inexcusable admiration for the music of David Hasselhoff and their predilection for scatological pornography, you pretty much knew were you stood with them. They could make really good stuff, cars, stereo systems and anything that required a degree of precision.

The French? Well, there is a mutual antipathy between the UK and France. We’ve never really forgiven them for sending the Normans over in 1066. Since then, we’ve had wars a plenty, mocked their ways, and insulted each other on the world stage. Saying that, I do like French people, love the language and their films.

So, it is no surprise to see that the Euro is dying, that the politicians of Europe cannot come to an agreement that would make everything fine and dandy once more. Interestingly, it seems that the old stereotypes are coming to fruition. The French and English can’t get on together, the Germans are cross that other countries wont see their point of view and the Greeks, Spanish and Italians  stare blankly at the economic figures, shrug their shoulders and say ‘meh’. This of course annoys everyone apart from the Irish who blame the UK for everything.

Which of course begs the question, what on Earth were they thinking trying to merge all their different cultures and currencies together? In the old days, we used to just have wars. Much cheaper in the long run too. Not necessarily fun of course, but it’s always nice to do a Basil in front a German chap.