Tuesday 31 October 2006

Stars of the Future

Here’s the listing for tomorrow night’s show at The Stand from their newsletter.

On Wednesday catch the stars of the future with the Comedy Unit's Rough Cuts! Top Scots comics such as Greg McHugh, Susan 'Calmanator' Calman, Keir McAllister, Gavin Smith and You Owe Me Glue will be getting together to perform the hottest up-and-coming sketches, for your listening and viewing pleasure.

Exciting, eh?

I've just been told that we're closing the show, so we should be onstage around 10pm.

Awwra Best Son


As a Rangers fan you may question my sincerity here, but I just thought I’d say how nice it is to see young John Kennedy back playing after his terrible injury problems.

A very promising tough young centre half, Kennedy suffered a complicated knee injury during his Scotland debut and hasn’t played since March 2004.

He's had four operations in a bid to fix his knee and thankfully, his treatment appears to have been a success.

Here’s hoping he comes through his reserve fixture against Motherwell today unscathed, even if his return does inevitably serve to increase Celtic’s advantage over the Teddy Bears even further.

He always looked like a lad who was going to make it to me, and will hopefully be great for Scotland in years to come.

Fizzy’s Gone ebay Crazy


Yes it’s true, I am mad on the old ebay now. I recently found a few graphic novels in my local library and that got me into the idea of digging my comics collection out of the attic.

Having read a few, I’m now completely re-hooked on buying comics (mostly online), which is not a great thing for several reasons.

1) Comics are incredibly expensive. When I started collecting in the late 80’s a standard book from Marvel or DC was about 55p. Now you’re talking £2.15 per issue and that’s before you get into fancy versions of the stuff you’re after.

2) Comics are even more expensive when you consider what you actually get for your money. I bought a book called Scott Pilgrim’s Precious Little Life the other day there and it was great, a really cool wee story BUT…. It took me 20 mins to read something that I paid £7.95 for. Not the whole point of buying it of course but It’s a consideration.

3) As in any kind of collectable scenario, you start off with a list of things you need, which expands to include virtually anything you see. I set out initially to complete runs of Animal Man (Grant Morrison’s run), Doom Patrol (Ditto) and Shade the Changing Man, but have persuaded myself I have “needed” loads more besides.

4) Then of course there is the addictive power of ebay itself. The big scores ( I got several comics I wanted yesterday in a job lot for 40p for example), the competitive element that kicks in as an auction near it’s end, the postage costs that take the shine of your victories.

Most people will use ebay for the odd things but if you do use it to buy stuff you collect here’s my freshman tips on strategy I’ve found more or less work.

Most importantly when bidding on something you want, factor in the postage and set your maximum bid to the very most you are willing to pay. You may end up having your bid upped by speculators but you will stand a good chance of getting your item if you are willing to pay a realistic price.
This way if your bid is exceeded you can draw some satisfaction from the fact that some plum has paid over the odds. Oh yeah, and you won’t end up spending £20 on something worth £10. Most of the time, this approach fends off speculative bidders and you still land a bargain.

If your bid is beaten – LET IT GO. It will turn up again. Don’t panic bid or get competitive about it. You will break this rule.

Be nice, always pay quickly and leave good feedback where appropriate. I tend to look out for people who accept Paypal payments as sending cheques is just fiddly nonsense and you don’t get your stuff for ages.

My top recommendations on stuff I’ve bought so far are Ex Machina, a Superman-meets-The-West-Wing story about a superhero who retires and becomes the Mayor of New York and Scott Pilgrim, a series of chunky mini-collections about a young Toronto bass player in a rubbish band, his pals and their various tribulations. Drawn in a pastiche Manga style, this book cleverly blends Japanese action and plot chaos with Canada’s more rooted comic book tradition of slice-of-life confessional tales.

And loads more besides. 10 years away from reading comics I return to find Peter Milligan is still not as famous as he should be, that Grant Morrison’s stuff is still intellectually challenging but a pain in the ass to read and that Alan Moore and Frank Miller are still capable of producing genius followed by awful rubbish.

The “big noise” I’d missed while away was a writer called Brian Michael Bendis, who has done an acclaimed run on an old favourite if mine, Daredevil and a long run of his own book called Powers. I’ve read a fair bit of his stuff now and it’s good but not great. His Daredevil stuff comes nowhere near Miller at his peak, isn’t as good as Kevin Smith’s short run and offers far less in terms or originality that Anne Nocenti’s run. I’ve yet to read it all but so far – “Meh”.

Powers is a very interesting comic (It’s mainly about 2 cops assigned to deal with Superpower related criminal cases) and is very innovative and interesting stylistically. There is for example an entire issue that consists of a court transcript and a few court sketches of characters, another one where most of the issue is a “Hello” style magazine.

Kudos there, but for me the stories almost always fall flat and have used anti climax as a plot device virtually throughout. So, not only are the endings to the story arcs largely disappointing, you know they are going to be, because they’ve used virtually the same method to end all the stories I’ve read so far. Good stuff then, but not the be all and end all. That said I’ve only read the first 3 books and the rest are meant to really hot things up.

So there you go, I am pure back into comics. For how long I don’t know because I seriously can’t afford to keep it up. Thank God for libraries I suppose eh?

Friday 27 October 2006

Graeme the Ringmaster

It's Halloween today...well in our office it is. I think Graeme looked better with the YOMG mullet wig on, but he looks mighty fine here.

Long Ayelander

Here’s a new blog for you to read. Katie sits next to me at work. She’s recently started her own quite funny blog about life as an American in Glasgow. Go have a read.

YOMG @ The Stand

As most readers of this blog will be aware anyway You Owe Me Glue are doing a 20 spot at The Stand this coming Wednesday night. It’s part of the Rough Cuts night that’s on there once a month.

Tickets are a fiver or 4 quid concessions and you can reserve them on the website above. There are some photographs from our (probably only) rehearsal for it at my Flickr page.

Wednesday 25 October 2006

Some YouTube Stuff

Here’s a little selection of things from You Tube.

First off, some football. This is a goal scored by Zlatan Ibrahimovic while playing for Ajax against NAC Breda. Although it is pretty impressive the defence stands off him and opens up.



From the new album Get Yr Blood Sucked Out it’s Viva Voce with From the Devil Himself.



About a minute of Doug Stanhope in Edinburgh. Funny cos he looks like he’s just back from a funeral in that suit.

Doonesbury's War

This is a brilliant article from The Washington Post by Gene Weingarten about the creator of Doonsebury, Garry Trudeau. It’s in five parts and there’s an online discussion after it.

Tuesday 24 October 2006

George Costanzup

Jason Alexander is doing 4 nights of stand-up in order to spend Christmas in Australia.

According to the National Ledger he’ll follow that up with directing a musical.

Jason Alexander is apparently going to moisten his directing chops -- with a production of Stephen Sondheim's "Sunday in the Park With George" (as in Seurat, not Costanza) opening at the end of January at UCLA's Freud Playhouse.

Monday 23 October 2006

You’re Gonna Hear a Lot More From This Brother

I recently bought The Best of the Chris Rock Show Vol 2 on Region 1 DVD. I’d always been holding off, cos I thought that eventually they’d release the whole thing. So far they haven’t.

It’s pretty funny with a lot of good sketches and bits with the man on the street. Probably the funniest bit though was the extra feature. Taxi Driver Confessions is a parody of a popular hidden camera show of the time where passengers in cabs talk to the driver.

Here though Chris Rock is in disguise as a cab driver. Whether taking drugs, showing off his jar of ‘clean urine’, stealing mobile phones or frightening white passengers with a tape of a guy more outrageous than Farrakan it’s all laugh out loud stuff.

You can see it all below.

Sunday 22 October 2006

The Librarian

Yesterday I was part of a short film. It's called 'The Librarian' and is made by Oak Tree Productions.

Nothing too exciting to report. As you may imagine there was a lot of hanging about. I got a fair bit of make-up applied, unfortunately all used to make me less appealing than I am naturally.

As the film is a horror I also spent a fair bit of time tied to a chair, bound and gagged. When the camera wasn't rolling there was a photographer taking pictures, telling me not to move or to take the gag out. So slightly gruelling, but fun in the end.

When it makes its appearance I'll llet you know.

Sunday 15 October 2006

The End of Therapy

So, Beyond Therapy is over. I think we can call the run a success. Pretty much everyone who spoke to me about it had nothing but good things to say, friends, family and strangers alike.

I think it's safe to say that we all enjoyed it. There was a good spirit aming the cast. Everyone put in decent perfromances each night and all in all it was a good experience. Even if being soaked with glasses of water each night has left me with an awful cold.

There's a little feature on Wendy from the show in today's Sunday Mail. The photograph used to illustrate it was taken by me.

All my photographs from the run can be seen here.

Friday 13 October 2006

Tuesday 10 October 2006

50 Fake Dilberts

Out of sheer boredom, I’ve taken a single Dilbert cartoon and re-written it 50 times. Like I said, I was bored.

Here’s the first ten, so enjoy. I’ll put more up later.

BTW, this was totally done for fun, so don’t sue me Mr Adams please!



















Stuff To Watch


If you haven’t watched The Wire yet, you’re really missing out. Season 4 is on in the States right now and having seen the first 5 episodes, it’s another slow-burning treat.

Having dealt with dysfunction in the police force, the death of the American working class ideal, the corruption of the political process and the harsh pragmatism of the Baltimore drugs trade, the show has moved into even more shocking territory. The schools.

We’re pretty used to seeing grown men and women realistically portrayed in American crime drama, but the hopelessness manifest in the classroom is chilling to watch.

How do you teach children who see no value in education, with no money and no experienced staff? Well, you don’t – you just try to stop them from killing one another.

As for the seasoned staff, they ingeniously shuffle funds and resources to maximise their impact, but even they can do no more than merely soldier on in a battle their politician superiors have long since abandoned.

It’s bristling stuff, with many new additions to an already large cast and seamless writing by some of America’s finest, including Clockers author Richard Price.

What the show has really missed so far is McNulty, the sociometric star of the now disparate group of “good guys”.

Here’s hoping he gets roped back into things, as the show can only really be criticised for his largely missing charisma.

If you can get the first 3 seasons of The Wire, do so. It’s Rolls Royce stuff.

Perhaps more of a souped-up sports car is Rescue Me, Denis Leary’s show about the crew of a post 9/11 New York firehouse.

I’m just done watching 3 seasons of that and while it does occasionally use minor characters as plot fodder for no compelling reason, it’s a dazzling blend of action, comedy, sex and intense drama.

They say a happy family is merely happy while an unhappy family is unhappy after its own fashion.

The Gavins are a uniquely unhappy bunch.

I’ve never been a huge fan of Leary, mainly because of the obvious instances of theft in the stand-up act that made him famous, but he’s really found his place here.

Starring as the main character, he performs excellently and has co-written I would say at least 2/3rds of the episodes.

His involvement has meant that the comedy element of the show is very sharp – few other shows would give you a scene involving a 40 stone man being wooed by his black midget gambling buddy for example.

Where the show really attempts something profound though is in the portrayal of the post 9/11 mans man. Leary’s character Tommy Gavin is a faultlessly brave fire-fighter, but has found that his other personality traits made him very much a man out of time. His lying, gambling, drinking and womanising have cost him everything time and again and he is wracked with psychological problems and bitter guilt about his failings.

He is also literally haunted by those he couldn’t save, a supernatural element to the show that is skilfully blended stylistically.

Tommy Gavin is a compelling character excellently portrayed, in many ways the equal of The Shield character Vic Mackey.

Like Mackey, Gavin’s intentions and aspirations are largely honourable, but are scuppered by personal weakness and character flaws and like Mackey, we watch Gavin bulldoze his way through any chance of personal happiness for himself with startled fascination.

It also has an excellent cast of supporting characters, mostly portrayed by largely unknown actors and actresses, although there is the occasional cameo from the likes of Susan Sarandon and the utterly delicious Marisa Tomei.

Well worth a watch.

I’ve also watched the first season of Entourage, which was good but not the compulsive viewing it’s been touted as.

Set in Hollywood, it’s about a young, suddenly successful actor from New York who is trying to keep it real by hiring life long friends to look after his business. This keeps him at odds with his agent played by the terrific Jeremy Piven, but the star of the show is Kevin Dillon, who plays the less successful actor brother. Like I said pretty good but so far (and I have only seen the first season) nothing special.

I’ve also seen the pre-air pilot of The Knights of Prosperity, a crime caper comedy which I thought was pretty funny and I’ve a couple of episodes of Aaron Sorkin’s new show Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip to watch. Personally, I feel TV has adapted what Sorkin brought to TV drama a while ago and has moved on, but we have to remember this is the guy who gave us Martin Sheen as the US President and Sports Night, so he’ll always get a hearing from me.

Monday 9 October 2006

I’m Beyond Therapy

As most of you who read this blog know I’m appearing in a play, which opens tonight. Beyond Therapy, written by Christopher Durang, is set in 80s New York and yes I do an American accent, of a sort.

I play a somewhat sleazy therapist with designs on his patient. We rehearsed for around nine hours yesterday and in the penultimate run I manage to slip up on my lines a few times. The last run of the evening was fine. Fine in terms of remembering my lines, but of course, there’s more to it than that.

It runs from tonight until Saturday at the Ramshorn Theatre on Ingram Street.

You can see a load of photographs from the rehearsals on my Flickr page. You can also see much more besides as I’ve recently upgraded my account so there are several hundred photographs on there some of which have appeared on ‘Pish and a lot more that haven’t.

Friday 6 October 2006

A Baguette and Square

You ever wondered what a Baguette and Square looks like? No? Well thanks to the café next to my work, who regularly run out of rolls, you can.

Wednesday 4 October 2006

YOMG Review

There has been an unofficial review of Saturday’s You Owe Me Glue.

Twenty past eleven it finished. No wonder Death Kill 4000 were shoving them out the door at the end. Over two hours of solid comedy. Hamlet at half-time, Honky at the 'Broo, competitive mothers, The Mothman has a disciplinary, Bouncers & Theorem. And of course Bertie.

This show had it all.

The actors told us that they winged it - it certainly didn't look that way from my seat on the floor. Indeed, it was so packed that some of the audience ended up on the floor in order to get a good enough view.

The Fraser Campbell Show. Don't miss it when it next rolls into your town.

Nicola Currie