Month: September 2010

I haven’t missed you!

I found this interesting article on the SMH. I had been thinking that more and more internet is not necessarily better (Full disclosure: I am a big consumer). I was taken, a while back, when my reading speed accelerated, so that I was reading decent sized books in a few days, the only problem was, I had diligently consumed the words, but the nuance of the story was completely lost on me.

There are many things in the article I can’t even attempt to compete against.  The closest I get to being non-internet ready is when I go out for a decent cycle on my bike (is there any other kind? Yes!), man I feel significantly creative by the end of it, I just don’t know who is topping google trends at that very moment, so it is a dual edge sword.

You know an article like this is cool when it quotes the Roman philosopher Senaca :

”To be everywhere is to be nowhere.”

Awesome.

This may sound like a joke, and that is my style, but it did take me at least three separate attempts to finsh the article (sadly true)

One of the hardest things about trying to be a comedian is the quiet nights where there is nothing but other comedians in the audience.  They are usually very supportive, they just don’t laugh.  It is not that you are not funny, it just that comedians are usually analysing what you are saying.  That’s why I love whenever Dana Carvey turns up on the Dennis Miller radio show, say what you like about Miller’s lean to right politics, every time he has a comedian on he lets them run wild and free and none so as Dana Carvey.  Laughter, unlike applause, must be earned and is very hard to fake.  Here is a snip from that show where Dana is imagining the next celebrity sex scandal and it is Regis Philbin, Dennis is on the ropes! Awesome! There is nothing as contagious as true laughter.

Here is the full 16 minutes, it gets a little weird in the middle.

I missed this video when it was released at home, but due to the miracle of the intertubes I found it on YouTube.

Based on the original recordings taken by Peig Cunningham in Dublin schoolrooms from the 1960’s, (subsequently re-discovered and released by EMI record) this film dramatises the event as a TV crew arrive to record the children and we are treated to the story of John the Baptist told as only children can. It received an Academy Award nomination for Best Animated Short at the 2001 Oscars.Give Up Yer Aul Sins has screened in almost 50 film festivals, including The Galway Film Fleadh (where it won Best Animation), Cork Film Festival (Best Irish and Best International Animation), Cartoons on Bay (Special Award for Original Idea), New York Comedy Festival, Boston Irish Film Festival, Aspen Film Festival and Cannes Film Festival.

If you can believe it, many years ago I probably sounded a lot like the kid taking in the video and ye think I have a funny accent now?

I recently started doing a bit on stage about William Shatner and how I don’t think he acts, but people create this world around him, like the Truman show, and just film his response.  I must have tapped into the zeitgeist as there is a big write up on “The Shat” in the New York Times and on page 3:

“Denny was a wun-der-ful role. There’s a little bit of every actor in a role. The sadness of the character was very close to my consciousness. It’s hard to play an old fool, non sequiturs, which is all Denny was. Then I realized he thought his life was a TV show. That helped me.” It helped because Shatner’s life seems at times to be a TV show lived in public, a benign “Truman Show.”

Is there nothing “The Shat” can’t do!

DragonCON 2009, originally uploaded by Annissë.

This is an absolutely class fan produced Silk Spectre II costume (did I say it was class)