In the last week.
Oct. 21st, 2009 05:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
slemslempikeThe SU have organised a regular comedy night on campus, so I went along to the first one. It said 8 but meant 9, so I had to go and entertain myself for about an hour at first, and then when I came back there were no seats and I had to stand on cobbles for the whole evening. (It was in a converted barn, and they've left several features, of which one is uncomfortable flooring at the edges.) It wasn't an ideal venue, rather echoey and not good for sound (one of the comedians asked the man at the side if he was going to fix the fucking feedback, or if he was merely decorative), but there was a really good turn-out, and they didn't have enough space for all the people in the unticketed queue. The compere was Joe Bor, who was nice enough. Lots of chatting with the students at the front about finding it difficult to talk to girls, and sallies of the "look at that beard" variety. Then he brought on Matt Blaize, who I was already pre-disposed not to like because I've only ever seen him on FAQ U, where he and Iain Lee ganged up on Paul Foot because they'd got the train down together and Paul Foot had got so fed up with them that he moved to the quiet coach when they went to the shop and wouldn't talk to them. Anyway, he was not as bad as I was expecting, until a joke about him explaining to his niece that Gypsies were a proud people, but "pikeys were cunts who happened to like in a caravan", and the hoary "do you have ESP? Then how come you can move my cock from over there?". I was hoping Pete Johanssen was going to be better, and he sort of was, but still lots of stuff about men are like x and women are like y, and isn't y weird, and aren't women oversensitive, and did that thing I really hate of telling a nasty joke (in this case about rape) and then pretending to berate the audience for having laughed at it, so they get the matey benefit of having told it, and then take a piece of the moral high ground to be going on with as well. I think I will make more of an effort to research comedians before I go again.
On Saturday I went to London to meet up with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
terriem and felinitykat. First of all Terrie and I went to the Clink museum. This is a nice, small museum of one of the first prisons in the UK, from which the others get the slang name. It was a lovely museum! It had some rather repetitive information boards, and some rather worrying educational suggestion questions at the end. On a board about the scold's bridle: "would this be used on anyone in your house today?", which unless it is a deliberate entrapment thing is rather a weird attitude. We learnt a lot! We learnt that men could get themselves freed from the clink by getting a prostitute to ask them to marry her (even if they were going to be hanged), that the cat o'nine tails was only taken off English law books in 1948, that brothels used to be called stewhouses (and I giggled childishly at the woodcut illustrations of ladies at dinner with their boobs uncovered), and that at the start prisoners had to pay for their own shackles. Well! We also got to play with a ball and chain and a foam axe. Then we went to Southwark Cathedral to meet up with Kat, and they have a cool thing where they have a cut away in the floor and you can look down to see all the different layers, Roman road, early stone coffin, kiln, 18th century road and so on.
We walked along the Thames to Tower Bridge, and despite a lack of signs and half the bridge being closed, found our way to the Exhibition. The people at the door warned us that we'd have to walk all the way up, a warning I inwardly scoffed at until I started walking up and had to take several rests. It's quite tall, you know! When we got to the top there was a short film about the building of the bridge, and where all the different components came from, and the design process. One of the early suggestions was a rolling bridge, and another was that cars should be hoisted up to the top bits by a hydraulic lift. After the film you can walk across the (covered) walkways, which does have a really good view down the river. It must be really great at night. There were little boards along the walkway, some of which were about the bridge (10 men died in the 8 years it took to build (...or 8 men in 10 years, I forget), though it didn't say if it was actually as a result), and some were rather more tenuous connections, such as a panel about the Thames whale. Once a London bus accidentally jumped the bridge as it was opening, and the only evidence they have is an artist's impression. It's a BRILLIANT artist's impression though. At the end of the walkways there's another film, about the opening, where we learned that the Prince of Wales pressed a button that caused a deep stirring within. At the very end there's the Engine Rooms, which are a little dull. You do get to see lots of impressive huge machinery, and a CGI reconstruction of how the bridge opens, but there isn't much interesting information. You need 24 hours notice to raise the bridge now, because of reduced traffic, though it didn't say what it has reduced from or to. If the bridge was raised a great deal earlier on, I shouldn't have thought that it would do much to reduce congestion. I completed a visitor's survey and entered a draw to win the chance to (push the button to) raise the bridge myself! There was also a display about the motorcycle jump over it this year, complete with "photo opportunity" where you could hold onto a cardboard motorcycle's handlebars. So I did.
After dinner we went to find the Jack the Ripper walk people. The website was very clear that we MUSt look for them in particular, and NOT go off with any of the other, lesser, tours. We found the right one, along with a huge load of other people, so we split into two groups. We were following each other around the area, at one point there were three separate groups in Mitre Square. It was really good, winding our way from Tower Hill tube through Whitechapel and ending up at Spitalfields market. Gruesome, but with respect for the victims, and good contextualising information about social history. It has reminded me that I want to go to the Freemasons museum.
On Sunday I broke my journey home in Manchester and went to see Matt Tiller's Awkward Social Situations. It was a free show as part of the Manchester Comedy Festival, in Fab Cafe. Fab Cafe is lovely, but they did not do a good job of hosting comedy. We got there a bit early and were prepared to have to go away and come back, but instead they let us in, merely saying "oh, there's some comedy on, so you'll have to be quiet", so they were constantly being interrupted by the door. We saw the tail end of the previous show, which was two comedians who are married to each other doing a thing about that. "Saw" is a bit strong, since they had no extra lighting, and had in fact positioned the comedians in the darkest bit of the cafe, lit only by coloured lights that flashed lazily on and off. It did not seem very good, though possibly that is unfair, considering. It seemed to be them doing various bits of dialogue in response to questions from their tech people, which might have been "commonly asked questions"? Things like "what do you think of each other's comedy" and "do you write together". Anyway. Matt Tiller's thing was songs not jokes, and they were okay, though a more accurate rendering of the theme was "irritating social situations". He suffered more from the venue's weird attitude to letting people in, as towards the end a large group of people came in and muttered loudly about him not being funny, poor guy. Though he had been completely upstaged by a man called Ryan who he got up on stage to help him sing a French song.
On Monday Jen and I went to see Simon Bird. Or, as he was listed on the ticket "Simon Bird (The Inbetweeners)". I'd liked The Inbetweeners, and also I saw him in a thing at Edinburgh last year called The Meeting which was pretty good. There's also a clip on youtube of him at the student comedy awards which I liked very much indeed. So all the signs suggested that this would be, at the least, a perfectly adequate evening of comedy. Never set your expectations so high, they will only be dashed. I'd assumed it would be stand-up. It seemed likely. There was nothing to suggest that this was not going to be stand-up. It wasn't stand-up. It was a game show about electing the pope. And it was not the worst thing I've ever seen, but it was still fairly terrible. Jen pointed out that if it was something that a friend of yours had organised and you knew everyone in the audience, you'd probably find it quite amusing. But we didn't. And it wasn't.
It was getting people to do various tasks/tests to get points towards being pope, and then electing someone. There was one part I really didn't like when at the end he was eliminating people for papal rules, such as being female, or being Scottish. Then he said that no-one could be gay either, and rather than just asking "is anyone gay, because you can't be pope if so", he acted like it would be a really embarrassing thing to "admit" to, that what he was making fun of was not the rule, but that anyone there might be gay. It was sub-sub Jason Byrne stuff. And much as I don't personally like Jason Byrne, he can at least work with crowds, which Simon Bird really can't. It wasn't actively embarrassing, mostly, it just wasn't funny. It was odd from the start when we were among the oldest people there, which is not typical for audiences in Lancaster. Everyone else seemed to enjoy themselves very much. Someone as we were leaving said "didn't it go quickly". It did not go quickly AT ALL. We were absolutely shocked when we got home and realised it had all been less than an hour. The show started at 7.30 and we were already home by 8.30. I mean, I'm very glad it didn't drag on any longer than that, but less than an hour for a full-length full-price theatre show? Also, I think if you're billed as from the show that made you famous, it's a bit much to get snippy with people who then mention your catchphrases.
On Tuesday I went to London to see Romany, and we went to a recording of a pilot show for It's Debateable, with Jon Richardson. The press release claims that Jon has strong opinions because he has OCD. Well 1) he doesn't appear to actually have OCD, and 2) that really doesn't follow. Anyway, the premise is that Jon puts forward an idea that is ridiculous, and then tries to change people to his way of thinking, while Lloyd Langford is the voice of reason. The topic for this show was that all relationships should be made illegal, and we had short questionniares to fill in on whether or not we were in relationships, for what reason we'd ended relationships before, and whether or not we'd cheated/been cheated on. There were boxes to tick to say whether it was fine to talk to you during the show about your answers, or if you were shy but didn't mind them just reading them out. There was a disclaimer at the top saying that they hoped there would be a certain amount of audience participation, but not to worry because they absolutely wouldn't make anyone join in if they didn't want to.
It was quite good - a lot of the material came from his stand-up, so it was funny but not new-funny to me. There were scripted bits, short clips and general talking. Lloyd Langford was a bit "now I am reading out loud" in the scripted bits, so it seemed a bit stilted. As with most recordings the funniest bits weren't really part of the show - that Lloyd's girlfriend half-seriously suspects that they are having an affair, that giving a blow-job to a dildo is the ultimate waste of time, Jon giggling every time he thought of something rude. They also had a guest, Kerry Godliman (who I only then realised is in Home Time - I knew I recognised her from somewhere but couldn't work it out), talking about how the rule would affect her life, and why it wouldn't work. Afterwards we walked up to Camden through Mornington Crescent, and then ate fried chicken in front of half of House.
On Wednesday I went to QMU and wrote while watching The Thick of It specials. At lunchtime Romany and I went to the Ragged School Museum, which is on Regent's Canal. It was a Ragged School set up by Barnado which closed in 1908, and until then it was an infants' school, a boys' school and a girls' school, and a Sunday school, all in three buildings that aren't really all that large. The top floor is a Victorian kitchen, apparently, but it was accommodating a group of schoolchildren when we visited so I can't be sure. The middle one is a Victorian school, which was the girls' school. Lots of small proper desks (with lids and holes for inkwells) - two lids but housing three children generally. I used to work in a musuem that had a smaller version, they're all very much the same. Nice views through the windows. The ground floor had an exhibition about the history of Tower Hamlets, really interesting. The match-girls' strike, Sylvia Pankhurst giving a speech from a shop in Bow, a tool for shaping fur into animals' heads in the fur trade, and a picture of Barry Sheen. Oh, and one of the artefacts chosen to represent the Palace cinema was a ticket stub for Analyse This. There were also general boards about Barnado and social background, but we didn't really get a chance to read that because there was a man who was very insistent that he tell us all about it instead.
Also recently I had two Nicola Marlow connections that I forgot to mention. In the Royal London Hospital there is an invitation to Nelson's funeral that she could have wrapped with her other Nelson things, and one of the songs in Cymbeline is Fear No More, though I think that Dr Herrick would scarcely have approved of the new setting.
On Saturday I went to London to meet up with
terriem and felinitykat. First of all Terrie and I went to the Clink museum. This is a nice, small museum of one of the first prisons in the UK, from which the others get the slang name. It was a lovely museum! It had some rather repetitive information boards, and some rather worrying educational suggestion questions at the end. On a board about the scold's bridle: "would this be used on anyone in your house today?", which unless it is a deliberate entrapment thing is rather a weird attitude. We learnt a lot! We learnt that men could get themselves freed from the clink by getting a prostitute to ask them to marry her (even if they were going to be hanged), that the cat o'nine tails was only taken off English law books in 1948, that brothels used to be called stewhouses (and I giggled childishly at the woodcut illustrations of ladies at dinner with their boobs uncovered), and that at the start prisoners had to pay for their own shackles. Well! We also got to play with a ball and chain and a foam axe. Then we went to Southwark Cathedral to meet up with Kat, and they have a cool thing where they have a cut away in the floor and you can look down to see all the different layers, Roman road, early stone coffin, kiln, 18th century road and so on. We walked along the Thames to Tower Bridge, and despite a lack of signs and half the bridge being closed, found our way to the Exhibition. The people at the door warned us that we'd have to walk all the way up, a warning I inwardly scoffed at until I started walking up and had to take several rests. It's quite tall, you know! When we got to the top there was a short film about the building of the bridge, and where all the different components came from, and the design process. One of the early suggestions was a rolling bridge, and another was that cars should be hoisted up to the top bits by a hydraulic lift. After the film you can walk across the (covered) walkways, which does have a really good view down the river. It must be really great at night. There were little boards along the walkway, some of which were about the bridge (10 men died in the 8 years it took to build (...or 8 men in 10 years, I forget), though it didn't say if it was actually as a result), and some were rather more tenuous connections, such as a panel about the Thames whale. Once a London bus accidentally jumped the bridge as it was opening, and the only evidence they have is an artist's impression. It's a BRILLIANT artist's impression though. At the end of the walkways there's another film, about the opening, where we learned that the Prince of Wales pressed a button that caused a deep stirring within. At the very end there's the Engine Rooms, which are a little dull. You do get to see lots of impressive huge machinery, and a CGI reconstruction of how the bridge opens, but there isn't much interesting information. You need 24 hours notice to raise the bridge now, because of reduced traffic, though it didn't say what it has reduced from or to. If the bridge was raised a great deal earlier on, I shouldn't have thought that it would do much to reduce congestion. I completed a visitor's survey and entered a draw to win the chance to (push the button to) raise the bridge myself! There was also a display about the motorcycle jump over it this year, complete with "photo opportunity" where you could hold onto a cardboard motorcycle's handlebars. So I did.
After dinner we went to find the Jack the Ripper walk people. The website was very clear that we MUSt look for them in particular, and NOT go off with any of the other, lesser, tours. We found the right one, along with a huge load of other people, so we split into two groups. We were following each other around the area, at one point there were three separate groups in Mitre Square. It was really good, winding our way from Tower Hill tube through Whitechapel and ending up at Spitalfields market. Gruesome, but with respect for the victims, and good contextualising information about social history. It has reminded me that I want to go to the Freemasons museum.
On Sunday I broke my journey home in Manchester and went to see Matt Tiller's Awkward Social Situations. It was a free show as part of the Manchester Comedy Festival, in Fab Cafe. Fab Cafe is lovely, but they did not do a good job of hosting comedy. We got there a bit early and were prepared to have to go away and come back, but instead they let us in, merely saying "oh, there's some comedy on, so you'll have to be quiet", so they were constantly being interrupted by the door. We saw the tail end of the previous show, which was two comedians who are married to each other doing a thing about that. "Saw" is a bit strong, since they had no extra lighting, and had in fact positioned the comedians in the darkest bit of the cafe, lit only by coloured lights that flashed lazily on and off. It did not seem very good, though possibly that is unfair, considering. It seemed to be them doing various bits of dialogue in response to questions from their tech people, which might have been "commonly asked questions"? Things like "what do you think of each other's comedy" and "do you write together". Anyway. Matt Tiller's thing was songs not jokes, and they were okay, though a more accurate rendering of the theme was "irritating social situations". He suffered more from the venue's weird attitude to letting people in, as towards the end a large group of people came in and muttered loudly about him not being funny, poor guy. Though he had been completely upstaged by a man called Ryan who he got up on stage to help him sing a French song.
On Monday Jen and I went to see Simon Bird. Or, as he was listed on the ticket "Simon Bird (The Inbetweeners)". I'd liked The Inbetweeners, and also I saw him in a thing at Edinburgh last year called The Meeting which was pretty good. There's also a clip on youtube of him at the student comedy awards which I liked very much indeed. So all the signs suggested that this would be, at the least, a perfectly adequate evening of comedy. Never set your expectations so high, they will only be dashed. I'd assumed it would be stand-up. It seemed likely. There was nothing to suggest that this was not going to be stand-up. It wasn't stand-up. It was a game show about electing the pope. And it was not the worst thing I've ever seen, but it was still fairly terrible. Jen pointed out that if it was something that a friend of yours had organised and you knew everyone in the audience, you'd probably find it quite amusing. But we didn't. And it wasn't.
It was getting people to do various tasks/tests to get points towards being pope, and then electing someone. There was one part I really didn't like when at the end he was eliminating people for papal rules, such as being female, or being Scottish. Then he said that no-one could be gay either, and rather than just asking "is anyone gay, because you can't be pope if so", he acted like it would be a really embarrassing thing to "admit" to, that what he was making fun of was not the rule, but that anyone there might be gay. It was sub-sub Jason Byrne stuff. And much as I don't personally like Jason Byrne, he can at least work with crowds, which Simon Bird really can't. It wasn't actively embarrassing, mostly, it just wasn't funny. It was odd from the start when we were among the oldest people there, which is not typical for audiences in Lancaster. Everyone else seemed to enjoy themselves very much. Someone as we were leaving said "didn't it go quickly". It did not go quickly AT ALL. We were absolutely shocked when we got home and realised it had all been less than an hour. The show started at 7.30 and we were already home by 8.30. I mean, I'm very glad it didn't drag on any longer than that, but less than an hour for a full-length full-price theatre show? Also, I think if you're billed as from the show that made you famous, it's a bit much to get snippy with people who then mention your catchphrases.
On Tuesday I went to London to see Romany, and we went to a recording of a pilot show for It's Debateable, with Jon Richardson. The press release claims that Jon has strong opinions because he has OCD. Well 1) he doesn't appear to actually have OCD, and 2) that really doesn't follow. Anyway, the premise is that Jon puts forward an idea that is ridiculous, and then tries to change people to his way of thinking, while Lloyd Langford is the voice of reason. The topic for this show was that all relationships should be made illegal, and we had short questionniares to fill in on whether or not we were in relationships, for what reason we'd ended relationships before, and whether or not we'd cheated/been cheated on. There were boxes to tick to say whether it was fine to talk to you during the show about your answers, or if you were shy but didn't mind them just reading them out. There was a disclaimer at the top saying that they hoped there would be a certain amount of audience participation, but not to worry because they absolutely wouldn't make anyone join in if they didn't want to.
It was quite good - a lot of the material came from his stand-up, so it was funny but not new-funny to me. There were scripted bits, short clips and general talking. Lloyd Langford was a bit "now I am reading out loud" in the scripted bits, so it seemed a bit stilted. As with most recordings the funniest bits weren't really part of the show - that Lloyd's girlfriend half-seriously suspects that they are having an affair, that giving a blow-job to a dildo is the ultimate waste of time, Jon giggling every time he thought of something rude. They also had a guest, Kerry Godliman (who I only then realised is in Home Time - I knew I recognised her from somewhere but couldn't work it out), talking about how the rule would affect her life, and why it wouldn't work. Afterwards we walked up to Camden through Mornington Crescent, and then ate fried chicken in front of half of House.
On Wednesday I went to QMU and wrote while watching The Thick of It specials. At lunchtime Romany and I went to the Ragged School Museum, which is on Regent's Canal. It was a Ragged School set up by Barnado which closed in 1908, and until then it was an infants' school, a boys' school and a girls' school, and a Sunday school, all in three buildings that aren't really all that large. The top floor is a Victorian kitchen, apparently, but it was accommodating a group of schoolchildren when we visited so I can't be sure. The middle one is a Victorian school, which was the girls' school. Lots of small proper desks (with lids and holes for inkwells) - two lids but housing three children generally. I used to work in a musuem that had a smaller version, they're all very much the same. Nice views through the windows. The ground floor had an exhibition about the history of Tower Hamlets, really interesting. The match-girls' strike, Sylvia Pankhurst giving a speech from a shop in Bow, a tool for shaping fur into animals' heads in the fur trade, and a picture of Barry Sheen. Oh, and one of the artefacts chosen to represent the Palace cinema was a ticket stub for Analyse This. There were also general boards about Barnado and social background, but we didn't really get a chance to read that because there was a man who was very insistent that he tell us all about it instead.
Also recently I had two Nicola Marlow connections that I forgot to mention. In the Royal London Hospital there is an invitation to Nelson's funeral that she could have wrapped with her other Nelson things, and one of the songs in Cymbeline is Fear No More, though I think that Dr Herrick would scarcely have approved of the new setting.
