tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31904922024-03-23T18:14:31.172+00:00Incredible.org.ukMusings about incredible things - a fun site....Ashley Friezehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04782721872899081046noreply@blogger.comBlogger2683125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3190492.post-11907115113476518412022-02-19T17:39:00.002+00:002022-02-19T17:39:29.592+00:00It'll Never Last<p>I had an online chat today with the lovely Rob Halden. He's someone that's on my list of people to collaborate with, when I've worthily prepared enough to do so. That's a list where the title is the longest part of it.</p><p>He recommended that I take up a writing habit of talking about my day, and also constructing material-shaped reactions to the day's news. I'd report what he precisely said, but go and ask him yourself, and pay the man. He's brilliant.</p><p>I shared with him the game I play when MCing, which I should probably call the <i>Jokes You Can Never Use Anywhere Else</i> generator. It's a game that Ian Fox taught me many Edinburgh Shows ago. You get the audience to provide a famous person and a household object and then you have to write jokes bringing them together. I now have notebooks full of a series of what's the similarity/difference between jokes that are impossible to bring up to an audience, because they'd be too busy wondering why you want to know the difference between Nigel Farage and a Spanner to care what the answer might be:</p><p><i>One rights wing-nuts, the other's a ring-wing nut.</i></p><p>A joke that's also deeply flawed, because you don't use spanners on wing-nuts... but I digress.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjdXdGMx0MIHDEa4RWBCsXhj8eHQL-3AOPB3awu4bv-gOpKX1sMe7NeopprlLSFArPchWs3yuNXzgPd6vAiNtbQJAUZocoBpnqWcetuNBN8RMLa53m7FMae29PZ2hNhTITgSW2kegvPZcc2grmAlb11qu9HdodWxG-Xfnn5Yq8njzcVAjFjQLwMp7If6UD7=s1440" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1440" data-original-width="1080" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjdXdGMx0MIHDEa4RWBCsXhj8eHQL-3AOPB3awu4bv-gOpKX1sMe7NeopprlLSFArPchWs3yuNXzgPd6vAiNtbQJAUZocoBpnqWcetuNBN8RMLa53m7FMae29PZ2hNhTITgSW2kegvPZcc2grmAlb11qu9HdodWxG-Xfnn5Yq8njzcVAjFjQLwMp7If6UD7=s320" width="240" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">A grand day out</div><div><p>I'm writing a quick account of some stuff from a booth in the University Library here in Preston where I've been for the last few hours.</p><p>They have a sign up where you can text a special number if there's too much noise and they'll come and sort it out for you. I wonder if I could use it when my kids are being annoying.</p><p>Libraries are a massively underrated resource. They're a place you can sit for hours on end and not be interrupted by anyone else's noise. Essentially, they're coffee shops without other people's annoying families... and coffee... unless you count the vending machine, which is pushing it beyond the point of credulity, in my opinion.</p><p>I was amazed that I was able to get into this library by showing the library card from a different library in Gloucestershire, which I never go to. That's amazing. That's almost the equivalent of being allowed in to see Les Miserables in London, because you can show them a ticket stub from a school production of Joseph that was cancelled owing to the pandemic... or something like that.</p><p>Remember, I've been advised to write and make jokes... forgive the points where this looks overwritten... given that nobody but me reads this blog these days, I don't expect it to go unforgiven.</p><p>The above picture is from a brief visit I made to St Anne's on the Sea, a destination which was a favourite for family holidays when we were kids. It's notionally still the same place it was, based on my limited memories of it. I didn't go down the pier - the weather was bad, and I was there for the selfie opportunity more than the deep nostalgia.</p><p>Bizarrely, the place I thought of to go for a coffee and a bite to eat is somewhere that wasn't even there when we used to go there. I've revisited St Annes a handful of times in the last 20 years and gone there as a new tradition... or something like that.</p><p>To be fair, it was nice to try to remember where the old places were, but it wasn't really a big deal. Just a break from the gloom of being on your own in the 20 or so hours between leaving the gig and going back.</p><p>Last night's gig was fun. It could have been a bit daunting playing a new venue to a limited number of people. New venue to me that is... it's been a venue for a while. It could also have been a bit more daunting doing the latest version of my set along with a new bit, but I just threw myself into it.</p><p>I've been struggling a bit since the pandemic started. I've been unclear where I want to pitch my comedy in a world where the pandemic is happening. Go into detail and depress everyone? Pretend like nothing's happened? Neither seem good options. Similarly, where there's some material which I wrote in the last 5 years, a lot of what I'm doing is getting really old. On the one hand I can play it expertly, on the other, it doesn't quite seem to fit me anymore. Not all of it.</p><p>One trick I've learned over the years is to freshen up even the oldest material with a new line, a replacement WORD, or even a change in the timing. What my set has needed has been an injection of new something-or-other into it.</p><p>That said, I've had a bit of a mindset change recently, and I owe it entirely to my last visit to the Holly Bush... along with the fact that I now run a regular monthly gig which means I can no longer rely on my old bankable material, since I've already used it up there.</p><p>My visit to the Bush started with leaving home early. I had a 10-15 or so slot to play, and my goal was to go with two new songs. There was only one problem. When I left home, I hadn't written either.</p><p>So, under time pressure, I sat in Starbucks in the services and quickly wrote two songs.</p><p><i>I doubt I'll perform either again.</i></p><p>That's not the point. I also had to set myself up to do a set that I wouldn't normally do around these songs. This gave me a chance to select the other things that I wanted to do from my back catalogue. It gave me a chance to rework some material that had half worked new at the gig I was MCing, and then put in context with some more solid material.</p><p>I did the gig, got good reactions for much of it, but didn't fall in love with either of the songs.</p><p>Perhaps a rewrite of one of them will work... the other was already a reheated versions of a reheated version of an old Eurovision Song Contest song - http://ashleyfrieze.co.uk/media/sounds/eurovision-clean.mp3 - which dated horribly because of Brexit, and then the rewrite dated after Brexit moved on, and then the rewrite of the rewrite... well, perhaps a 3rd generation mutant of a song doesn't need to be kept alive.</p><p>When I did the next gig, a few days back, the newly restructured set made sense to me. I'd ditched some material I wrote long long ago and had been finding weirdly out of date, and replaced it with some other stuff, and now I was doing something that interested me.</p><p>Then I wrote two more songs.</p><p>One of these is still not quite where it's needs to be, but the other was performed last night at the gig. It is also already recorded... which is unusual. Normally I'd not record a song written for the stage until trying it out. Normally, stage songs are questions - is this funny - and then when I've got the audience reaction and the rewrites in, then it becomes something I'm going to keep.</p><p>However, the Bossa Nova inspired song about ... whatever it's about... wanted me to record it. I just like the Bossa Nova, and it's got a great middle 8. So I learned to sing it from a fully produced version where I'd even autotuned my own vocals to teach me what I was supposed to be singing...</p><p>And last night it did ok... and in places I forgot bits, or lost control of the performance... it's a tongue-twister of a song... But it's been out there, which is great.</p><p>Also last night, I discovered the perils of washing your hands. The toilet had hand soap, which I applied before discovering that the sink didn't dispense water. So I was running around the venue with dirty hands, trying not to spill a gloop's worth of soap from them before I found a disabled toilet that did have running water.</p><p>Oh, the glamour.</p><p>Yes, there is a punchline to the sticky hands set up, but I'm too polite to bring it up here.</p></div>Ashley Friezehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04782721872899081046noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3190492.post-74242832853295034612021-09-07T12:40:00.004+00:002021-09-07T12:40:48.267+00:00Should Win... Probably Won't<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjArJzN-IYyx3npR_E7xvbBsshfbBW-5y1ohO1N9uhyphenhyphenDXJcipka9Qz9SM1inG5D8t_CAszXYDcjlMwLVJiHSqrGKjbLTEV68B97l7mSv29GSeLCdBPZNNU3Jas89yK_gWVZlR3DKgw_AA/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="698" data-original-width="532" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjArJzN-IYyx3npR_E7xvbBsshfbBW-5y1ohO1N9uhyphenhyphenDXJcipka9Qz9SM1inG5D8t_CAszXYDcjlMwLVJiHSqrGKjbLTEV68B97l7mSv29GSeLCdBPZNNU3Jas89yK_gWVZlR3DKgw_AA/s16000/image.png" /></a></div><br /><p></p>Ashley Friezehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04782721872899081046noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3190492.post-86867559416981183672021-07-26T22:04:00.002+00:002021-07-26T22:04:10.588+00:00It Takes As Much Work To Make A Bad One....<p> The latest drop from Frieze studios:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="317" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/YJRDtIoOhpU" width="381" youtube-src-id="YJRDtIoOhpU"></iframe></div><br /><p>I used time I didn't really have to make a song that nobody asked for. That's art, innit!</p><p>The idea was simple enough. I wanted to write about the multiple billionaires launching themselves into space. The phrase "Billionaires are going to space" could only be a line from Space Oddity. So, I threw myself into full Bowie mode.</p><p>In my opinion, I missed and got myself a Lightning Seeds Oasis hybrid. The point is, it's MY hybrid and I'm going to love it as one of my own.</p><p>There's quite a lot going on in this song. I tried to capture the retro vibe of the original, working within my own limitations. Originally intending to use the melodica for some of the backing, I thought I'd try using the stylophone, and boy did it work well. The fact that GarageBand comes with a mellotron plugin didn't harm things either. I've got various patches from the mellotron, getting increasingly big and soundscape filling.</p><p>I also managed to crank out something akin to a guitar solo here. The guitar lead lines are double tracked from different takes, giving it a wider sound. The mistakes are somewhat hidden by the leslie-speaker patch, that rotates the mistakes out of focus quite nicely.</p><p>For the vocal, the double tracking of octave lines gives it a nice Bowie feel, regardless of whether I'm singing in tune! The chorus is double tracked, but from the same take, giving a strange chorusing/fattening effect.</p><p>It is what it is.</p>Ashley Friezehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04782721872899081046noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3190492.post-25720369438068447402021-01-02T11:24:00.001+00:002021-01-02T11:24:28.036+00:00Take That China!Cringeworthy as it is to level a comment at a whole country, in much the way as Donald Trump's repeated terming of COVID 19 as the <i>China Virus</i> causes my butt to clench, I think it's fair to say that there's a prevalent trap when dealing with Chinese drop shipping companies.<div><br /></div><div>In this case a particular company was advertising a Harry Potter themed book-sized model, that could be added to a book shelf and would provide a lit-up Diagon Alley model in its belly. Quite a delightful present for the Harry Potter fans around the family.</div><div><br /></div><div>Now, I'm not one for supporting J K Rowling these days. Her ill-thought-out stance on trans rights are just another reminder of her dreadful wordplay and inability to summarise. Her books turn children into frightful bores around a relatively dull set of stories... but I'm in the minority on that opinion in the family, so it's best to go with the flow.</div><div><br /></div><div>What arrived from the $90 purchase of the above bookshelf inserts was a weird flat-packed instructionless thing that bore no resemblance to the advert on Facebook. Note: adverts on Facebook are largely scams.</div><div><br /></div><div>Having been thoroughly disappointed with the purchase, we tried to return it. This is where the interesting discussion started.</div><div><br /></div><div>Their first offer was for $15 to keep the item. I declined it.</div><div><br /></div><div>Their second offer was for $40 to keep the item. They would only potentially provide a full refund if I shipped the item back to China.</div><div><br /></div><div>I pointed out to them that they had shipped it to me from the UK (it had a UK address on the original parcel) so I would return it to a UK address of their choice for a full refund. Shipping to China is quite pricey (though it must be cheap to ship from China to here, given the volume of stuff that comes this way).</div><div><br /></div><div>I escalated the case to PayPal who sided with the Chinese company in terms of shipping to China.</div><div><br /></div><div>So I shipped the items to China. It can be done. It cost around £20, but it was the principal of the thing more than anything else, and I think I would still be up on the deal.</div><div><br /></div><div>Weeks passed.</div><div><br /></div><div>Eventually, today, I got notification that PayPal would be refunding me. As far as I could tell, there must have been some argy bargy between PayPal and the company over the refund itself, as there were several days of the date of the latest message changing, but no messages to me.</div><div><br /></div><div>The point?</div><div><br /></div><div>Well, don't buy anything of value from China without a decent refund policy...</div><div><br /></div><div>... and ads on Facebook are shit...</div><div><br /></div><div>... and shipping to China costs, but can be done.</div>Ashley Friezehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04782721872899081046noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3190492.post-90008718844872407872020-12-10T00:36:00.001+00:002020-12-10T00:36:49.950+00:00The Continuous Descent Into Madness<p> When I first met my wife, I was a daily blogger. I wrote many entries over the time we were first dating, some of which obliquely referenced things that involved her.</p><p>At some point, as a well-intentioned gift, which she received in the spirit it was intended, I collected a lot of entries from the blog into a single document, footnoted the whole thing with more information about what I wasn't mentioning in the posts, and printed it in the form of a book for her. As she was never normally seen without a book about her person, this was possibly a thoughtful gift.</p><p>Or maybe a narcissistic one.</p><p>The jury's still out. In fairness, she re-read the book in recent weeks and is still talking to me, so I remain optimistic.</p><p>The thing is that this is a place where I can chronicle my own mental decline... because it is that, isn't it? I started writing around 19 years ago as a rather snarky 27 year old. <a href="http://ashleyfrieze.blogspot.com/2004/11/well-interesting-layout-for-this.html">Three years later</a>, single, trying to be a comedian, I was blogging about buying toasters.</p><p>Then there was a golden age of writing about gigs and doing young-person things like being out all week...</p><p>Now, I'm stuck at home during a pandemic with a house that smells of slow-roasted meat and an increasing number of cats.</p><p>Not being out there gigging is slowly driving me nuts. My kids think I'm funny, which is great, and I am making up silly songs and doing silly voices, but it's not the same. The problem is that I don't have a place to channel the sort of reactions I get to people being utterly insane, or self-serving, or pointless. Comedy is the outlet for cleansing oneself of the ridiculousness of the world.</p><p>If there's a place I shouldn't go when I'm feeling antsy about the people with whom I cohabit this world, it's Facebook... not just Facebook, but the local Faceboook group.</p><p>Often, I can keep my reactions under control. Today I didn't...<br /><br />Faced with this:</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOypUfj23QOC4IymC3_TmFI-14dLkWQALEUtDn9S4udHakZdN56mJy5X2FpJuRQqr0dbS0kGNwrmCwB_yOhZfD0iTcwJ1FDglDQ0txv5yluhyhpqkjcieTG0bQiCaKRbfB57gDid6fJQ/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="343" data-original-width="508" height="216" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOypUfj23QOC4IymC3_TmFI-14dLkWQALEUtDn9S4udHakZdN56mJy5X2FpJuRQqr0dbS0kGNwrmCwB_yOhZfD0iTcwJ1FDglDQ0txv5yluhyhpqkjcieTG0bQiCaKRbfB57gDid6fJQ/" width="320" /></a></div>... and let's just unpack this - she's got some rubbish and she wants to see if she can solve that with Facebook, rather than a bin...<p></p><p>... I posted the following reply:</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpXX9OkCWkBVUZDGuuEh10eKsQvC29HrvipzDDZK5t9f3z8mm5p6Y8mA9TdvQM1KnXPt9uhzsV1jkSFoj5V-O2Dih_x9c6LAs7CbNyFAy_gKb4f3TyJQ1fO-uF3RITINSDUZCcjur0nw/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="62" data-original-width="387" height="51" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpXX9OkCWkBVUZDGuuEh10eKsQvC29HrvipzDDZK5t9f3z8mm5p6Y8mA9TdvQM1KnXPt9uhzsV1jkSFoj5V-O2Dih_x9c6LAs7CbNyFAy_gKb4f3TyJQ1fO-uF3RITINSDUZCcjur0nw/" width="320" /></a></div><br />It's not exactly vicious... but it's a good way to waste the time of someone who's wasting everyone's time.<p></p><p>The silly thing is, that she did as I asked:</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvTvb7pIwkZoqoqaq8UN12z1vrBGr2TTIJswOhWjLwcN3lHrSIEcN6ZlbV8vlRNRYCUqBJmYSujhNL1oi-nUCRA8fG_1fWAyAc8IWlmILfnv7bDfleprpVplsdkTKb6hxKwOaUA46fCA/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="261" data-original-width="334" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvTvb7pIwkZoqoqaq8UN12z1vrBGr2TTIJswOhWjLwcN3lHrSIEcN6ZlbV8vlRNRYCUqBJmYSujhNL1oi-nUCRA8fG_1fWAyAc8IWlmILfnv7bDfleprpVplsdkTKb6hxKwOaUA46fCA/" width="307" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div>The names of the innocent have not been quoted.<p></p><p>I'm fucking losing it. I really am. Between the pointlessness of the above, the ridiculously vapid posts filling LinkedIn, and the fact that the world has split into people who think we should lock down more and people who think that fatties should just stay indoors so they can have a virus party in the real world, the whole limited universe I experience through my various screens has gone bonkers.</p><p>So if I want to look at the underside of someone's garbage on Facebook, then I reckon that's a healthy way forward.<br /><br /><br /></p>Ashley Friezehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04782721872899081046noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3190492.post-4043106163380123632020-09-13T08:53:00.001+00:002020-09-13T08:53:19.965+00:00You've Been Cancelled<p><i>Cancel culture</i> - what a modern classic this is proving to be. The straw man against it goes something like this. </p><p><b>A temporary argument against...</b></p><p><i>The hyper sensitive online activist types, censure people for minor thought crimes, piling on to try to do damage, while ACTUAL NAZIS get into power in government.</i></p><p>There's a lot about the above which is not true, but there's an element of truth in it.</p><p>At its worst, stirring up an outrage for what amounts to passing expressions of opinion by individuals is not particularly constructive, especially when it involves mining their timeline for that particular tweet in which they were a dick. When that outrage is then turned into a public humiliation, or an attack on their livelihood, to which the particular tweet or similar was not directly connected, then it seems like a form of bullying. People are going to have different opinions, and pile-ons are not society at its best.</p><p>For a better perspective on this, read <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0330492292/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_zQDxFbYD2T88Z" target="_blank">So You've Been Publicly Shamed</a> by Jon Ronson. In fact read all of his books, he's great.</p><p><b>But I've come to agree with it...</b></p><p>Earlier in this blog post... like a couple of sentences ago, I spoke up against cancel culture, and now I'll speak in favour of it. I hope I won't be taken out of context.</p><p>My own view about cancel culture is something like this.</p><p><i>If you're publicly being a dick, then the public may choose to filter out your dickishness.</i></p><p>Where this applies to someone's job is where this gets tricky. Anyone whose job involved NOT being a dick, may lose their job over actually being a dick, and that's harsh, but probably fair.</p><p>A good example of this is the <a href="https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/top-stories/rebecca-long-bailey-deletes-maxine-peake-tweet-1-6724401" target="_blank">firing of Rebecca Long Bailey over a tweet</a> that seemed to some to be anti-semitic. While it's arguable whether she had anti-semitic feelings, or even biases when she tweeted, the fact that she is a politician in a party under fire for this sort of thing, meant <i style="font-weight: bold;">she should have known better and was acting recklessly</i>. </p><p><b>The free speechers...</b></p><p>There are those who argue for free speech, in a situation where it's not freedom of the individual to campaign to make life better, or freedom to criticise the government, but more freedom to be generally harsh or nasty to people. The argument goes something like "I can't be put in prison for what I say". This is true up to the point where your verbal actions are themselves used as assault on an individual or protected group, and you can be punished for that.</p><p>The next argument goes, "Don't have a go at me for what I'm saying, if you don't like it, it's your problem - you could not listen".</p><p>In fairness, the second half of that is not really being debated. Those who speak up against someone else's freedom of speech being used by them to be a dick, are generally not so much saying that they don't have the freedom to speak so much as saying that they're being a dick. When I use my freedom of speech to criticise what you're saying, then if YOU don't like it, you can not listen to it.</p><p><b>Free speechers hate being cancelled...</b></p><p><i>I have the right to say what I like. If you don't like it, then don't listen. What do you mean you've blocked me? How dare you react to what I'm saying by deciding not to listen to me...</i></p><p><b>It all comes down to Rule 1</b></p><p>Wil Wheaton is right yet again. Rule 1 is "don't be a dick".</p><p>When I look at the examples I've seen of cancelling, the majority of them come down to someone who's acting in an increasingly unlikeable way being asked to go and do it away from our nice people.</p><p><b>But cancelling doesn't make it better</b></p><p>Tiring though it is, having belligerent arsehole cluttering up our timelines and news feeds, none of them choose to change their ways when cancelled. They essentially double-down, taking their followers with them to new heights of arse-mongery.</p><p>That said, I've been heartily blocking people whose output is disgusting, rather than engaging with them.</p><p>You can't fix these problems online. As the world becomes more connected via non-human online channels, we're perhaps doomed to become more entrenched in the most stupid of our opinions and least able to rationalise our way to some middle ground.</p><p>Hoo-fuckin-ray! </p>Ashley Friezehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04782721872899081046noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3190492.post-90694271062354829942020-09-08T20:19:00.001+00:002020-09-08T20:19:13.712+00:00Sort Yourself Out eBayers<p> I've spent some of the last few months gently upgrading things. The only major outlay was a new MacBook, for which half-measures seemed like a false economy. Given I hammered the new machine's CPU and graphics capability, creating a video that took nearly an hour to render, that was probably a good decision.</p><p>Point is, I've generally bought a new item on Amazon or eBay and then sold the one we had, thus upgrading, but only at part of the cost. I've also sold off things I wasn't using to fund things I wanted to buy.</p><p>I'm sure it cost me more than I raised to do this, but my general costs have gone down, so why not, eh?</p><p>In general, it means I've had a little more exposure to eBay than normal, and people seriously need to get a grip there.</p><p><b>Ashley's first rule of eBay</b> (and this applies to other online purchase sites too). <i>If someone asks questions about an item, they're probably not going to be the eventual purchaser.</i></p><p>I don't think I've seen it happen. The time you spend answering the questions from some over cautious tosspot who can't read the description is essentially a waste. Someone else always either beats them to the final bid, or simply bids more boldly knocking the questioner out earlier. I'm not even sure that answering questions from eBay sellers even results in them bidding.</p><p>Don't get me wrong. I don't think the question facility is a bad thing. I just think it's largely used by people who haven't the gumption to use eBay. I recently asked a question of a seller and, based on their answer, offered them a price. I now have the item... No idea what I'm going to do with it, but fortune favours the bold.</p><p><b>Don't go early you pillock</b>. I am not a fan of being prepared early for things. I don't turn up early for stuff if I can avoid it. I don't pre-book things. I occasionally miss out, but most often I don't, and I find I haven't wasted my energies and prolonged the whole experience in so doing.</p><p>In eBay, though, it's critical that you don't jump the gun. Put stuff on your watch list, but don't bid on the damned thing unless it's within 5 minutes of the item ending. Maybe put on a 1st bid, in the hope that it's the only bid and you'll win by default... but trying to bid halfway through an auction is simply a way to put the price up.</p><p><b>Fucking pay for the items you win you pricks</b>. I bought a new Kindle before the summer holidays. It's had a lot of use, and I was interested in it as I felt my existing one was starting to run a bit more slowly. While I could probably have reset it and gone back to some sort of improved performance, I liked the idea of a more up to date model, with a longer overall life. I reckon a Kindle has about 5 good years in it. I'm now on my third. My wife is on her 4th (possibly 3rd).</p><p>I've put the old kindle up for sale. It works. I've reset it. It's in decent condition. I just fancied a nice newer one.</p><p>It's sold twice so far.</p><p>Twice.</p><p>Then the tosspot who's bid on it and won doesn't bother paying. Then eBay chases them... then cancels the sale... then back to square one.</p><p>Someone bid on it tonight. Idiots... they've raised the price by £7, but the item still has the rest of the week to go. What they've done is make it overall more expensive. Worse than that, someone else is going to win it, then not pay for it... then... the circle of bloody life.</p><p><b>Tonight I bought the sheet music for The Wall</b> - I've half an idea that I may already own this... but I was too lazy to double check. I don't think I do. It turns out I've been bending guitar strings incorrectly all this time, and it's much easier when you do it properly. Lots to learn!</p>Ashley Friezehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04782721872899081046noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3190492.post-39153650939851870522020-08-31T08:15:00.001+00:002020-08-31T08:15:02.877+00:00The Art of Not Writing<p>Watch out, this one's going to get weird.</p><p>In personal blog posts, now largely replaced by social media whingeing, as with columns in newspapers, sometimes the very point of the writing is to write in your own florid voice. You can construct complex sentences, try to broaden the use of vocabulary, talk around the subject, and even introduce your own delightful rhythms into the composition.</p><p>This is because personality writing begets readers who don't really care what you're saying, so long as it's you saying it.</p><p>Columnists like Charlie Brooker, David Mitchell, Mark Steel, and Stewart Lee, can all publish collections of their columns if they so desire, because it's their tone of voice and mood which readers are there for. How current a Charlie Booker column from 2006 is is immaterial. It's his voice.</p><p>Conversely, a lot of content on the internet is intended to convey information. I work as an editor on a technology website where the aim is to efficiently deliver the ideas for an international audience. That's not to say that such sites don't have a voice. They generally adopt an attitude to the subject and the reader. However, such sites actually require the writer NOT to write.</p><p>Writing is a spectrum. It runs from one end - putting data into structured grammar - through to the aforementioned other end, where you let your personality and voice play out on the page.</p><p>In this world of scrolling, the most generous writers will use the simplest language to convey the message with a minimum of their own wibbling on. However, ungenerous writers will either:</p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Waste your time with wibble</li><li>Provoke you with illogical invective</li><li>Try to hook you into virtually empty pages of non-content with a provocative title</li></ul><div>Talking of which, I must go and read a list of 100 well-time photographs which may or may not include a boob-slip.</div><p></p>Ashley Friezehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04782721872899081046noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3190492.post-64487902764741043332020-07-20T13:39:00.000+00:002020-07-20T13:39:29.463+00:00Give Me Your VoiceWhen I set out to construct a virtual choir with the local children, I made a few incorrect assumptions. I incorrectly estimated the extent to which young children might have a singing range, but in some ways that was the least of my mistakes.<div><br /></div><div>I got a few things right. I produced an arrangement for Mr Blue Sky (and It Must Be Love) that had both harmonies and enough tune to be singable, even if singing a harmony part. I was wary of big non-melodic jumps in the parts, and tried to make each part a singable tune. I'm pretty happy with the results. I could have done more, I could have made some bits easier, but on the whole, the balance between scale and difficulty is about right.</div><div><br /></div><div>I incorrectly assumed that notebashing videos would help, but we pulled those before they saw the light of day. I spent many hours demonstrating how to take the lines apart and sing them in bits, and only I ever saw those videos. For young people, learning by rote as a whole is perhaps easier than having it taken apart and shown to you a bit at a time, while you can't quite follow because even if you have the sheet music, you can't read along.</div><div><br /></div><div>Who knows, maybe the notebashing would have helped some people, but less is more. People don't follow instructions at the best of times, so reducing the amount they can fail to follow is probably the right thing to do.</div><div><br /></div><div>The biggest thing I failed to grasp, though, was how intimate a request it was, and how insecure it would make people feel when we asked them to record themselves singing and send it in. There's no hiding from the glare of the camera lens, and people have a very intimate relationship with their singing.</div><div><br /></div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>People need to be able to sing as it frees them and allows them to express themselves</li><li>Many are afraid of how others will judge their singing, so don't want to sing</li><li>They want to believe their singing is amazing</li><li>They fear their singing is not</li></ul><div>It's quite a big deal. You can deny someone the confidence of their own voice by giving them the wrong sort of feedback on their musicality at a young age. It's such an important part of who we are, the ability to sing, and yet it's so fragile.</div></div><div><br /></div><div>Asking the children to give me their singing voice - in fact even asking the adults to do so - was a much larger request than I figured it would be, and I quickly realised the extent to which I needed to treat what they sent me with the utmost respect. While it's easy to criticise singing we might not like or might consider technically flawed, such criticism should only be reserved for those who are presenting themselves as professionals in their craft.</div><div><br />For everyone else, singing is a special thing that everyone should get to do, regardless.</div><div><br /></div><div>That's not always been my opinion.</div>Ashley Friezehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04782721872899081046noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3190492.post-6507137290188738022020-07-15T13:32:00.000+00:002020-07-15T13:32:27.902+00:00Not Another Virtual Choir<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/mq5ewnzXpdU" width="320" youtube-src-id="mq5ewnzXpdU"></iframe></div><div><br /></div><div>Be careful what you wish for.</div><div><br /></div><div>Around about a month ago, I wished that I could replace the missing end-of-year school show at my children's primary school with a virtual choir... so I worked out how to make that happen, asked for the right help and involvement, and here we are with not one, but two virtual choir recordings complete and a whole lot of exhaustion to boot.</div><div><br /></div><div>I think it was worth it. I think we made something special that the people involved love and that captured a defiant spirit of a community.</div><div><br /></div><div>I think we drove ourselves nuts making it, and put in more work than we expected to, having overcommitted to an over ambitious project.</div><div><br /></div><div>But I like a challenge.</div><div><br /></div><div>I learned a lot about how vulnerable singing can make people feel. Oddly, singing is something that nearly everyone loves to do. It's something you can hurt people by criticising, and it's something that makes people feel good and free... but so insecure. People are both frightened of singing up, and need to do so.</div><div><br /></div><div>Seeing all the performances we wove together, along with the moments before where people were worriedly psyching themselves up to do it, was a hugely humbling experience. It was a privilege to be allowed access to everyone's voices, and I treated these recordings with a huge amount of respect. I had some recordings that I simply could not fix for technical reasons, and one or two acts of utter disrespect to the efforts of the project came through from participants I shall not name.</div><div><br /></div><div>We tried to provide all the instructions, but instructions + common sense does not always add up to the right results... luckily there were a lot of ways to undo mistakes in post-production, and I tried to restore people's efforts to the level they would have been had there been more time to learn, record, and respond to the sound coming from everyone else.</div><div><br /></div><div>In the next post, I'll offer some thoughts on how this project succeeded.</div><br /><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>Ashley Friezehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04782721872899081046noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3190492.post-89968126218697441042020-07-02T12:20:00.001+00:002020-07-02T12:20:11.032+00:00Demented RealityLockdown for Covid-19 started late March 2020. We entered lockdown earlier, around 12th March... since that time I've not performed at any gigs, bar three online ones which were not quite the same as in person ones.<div><br /></div><div>When I don't gig, I go a bit crazy.</div><div><br /></div><div>Here's a brief diary of the results of insanity, as I've tried to create a new creative world for myself, outside of my normal way of doing things.</div><div><br /></div><div>(approx) <b>11th April </b>- did an online gig, decided to write a new song for it - released that song on YouTube</div><div><b>12th April</b> - having decided to "get into Garageband" I bought some video editing software and created and released "Only One Song" a musical parody of La La Land</div><div><br /></div><div>around this point, I also recorded some music with the children, which I didn't release publicly</div><div><br /></div><div><b>18th April</b> - having had the "basic necessities" idea lodged in my head, I released "Covid 19 Lockdown Shopping Song" - a musical parody of The Bare Necessities</div><div><b>2nd May</b> - two weeks after my second parody song, a third emerged - my grand opus - "Lockdown" a Downtown parody</div><div><br /></div><div>around this point I decided to buy more recording gear - a new microphone especially</div><div><br /></div><div><b>26th May</b> - released "Working from Home" a daft original song about remote working</div><div><b>26th May</b> - also launched a new Funny's Funny website - a site about comedy by comedians</div><div><b>2nd June</b> - "Every Day It's Getting Closer" based on me suddenly hearing how the lyric could be subverted while in the car - a music editing video, more than anything else</div><div><b>3rd June </b>- after a LOT of editing, I managed to recapture the Skype/Cher experience in a daft video</div><div><br /></div><div><b>3rd June</b> - started writing a book on how to prepare for a cancelled Edinburgh Fringe...</div><div><br /></div><div><b>14th June</b> - I tried out my new microphone in a three person video shoot - the idea being to get ready to record a montage video with the children - it turned out I needed a new Mac to do that!</div><div><br /></div><div><b>16th June</b> - sent out a training video to 10 children to create "It must be love" video virtual choir</div><div><b>17th June</b> - launched the book</div><div><br /></div><div><b>21st June</b> - released the "It must be love" video and then immediately suggested a much larger virtual choir video with the school - a 4 week project, still ongoing!</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>So, a bunch of videos, a website, a book, two virtual choir projects... a new computer, two kittens (somewhere along the way) lost a stone or so... </div><div><br /></div><div>When I take the video material I get for the virtual choir, I tweak it so it looks a little better than it did in the room on the day - mainly to fit it in with the project. This is what lockdown is. Reality, but not quite... more so... and yet less so.</div><div><br /></div><div>I'm quite tired. I enjoyed the brief period in May when I just ate a lot of toast!</div>Ashley Friezehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04782721872899081046noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3190492.post-76790555826108599372020-06-18T11:55:00.000+00:002020-06-18T11:55:35.022+00:00My Way of Losing My Mind is Quite ConstructiveA lot has happened over the last 2 weeks.<div><br /></div><div><b>I Wrote a (short) Book</b></div><div>In the spirit of taking a joke too far, I wrote a parody of the <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Produce-Perform-Edinburgh-Fringe-Comedy-ebook/dp/B007FN9FD8">How To Produce, Perform and Write an Edinburgh Fringe Comedy Show</a> book. In the form of <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Perform-Produce-Cancelled-Edinburgh-Fringe-ebook/dp/B08B4Y9BTM">How to Write, Perform and Produce a Cancelled Edinburgh Fringe Show</a>. I was lucky to have its original author, Ian Fox, on board. We worked hard on what is essentially a long daft chapter with swearing in it.</div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><b>We Got Kittens</b></div><div>Bill and Ted.</div><div><br /></div><div>We're still slightly guessing their genders. They came from a socially distanced trip to a corner of Birmingham where they were born to a mummy cat that really needs spaying. Her offspring will be looked after by our family and slightly spat at by our other cat.</div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><b>My New Microphone Arrived</b></div><div>After a lot of tightening of the budgets at the start of lockdown, the arrival of an Amazon voucher led to the purchase of some audio kit. Especially useful given the amount of music stuff I've been doing. The new microphone was a great price, but a long time coming.</div><div><br /></div><div>It's very nice.</div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><b>I Created A Trio With Myself</b></div><div>To road test the microphone and to try out some new video editing software I wanted to use, I made Fugue for Tin Horns from Guys and Dolls:</div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Ue_kb1ivjDQ" width="320" youtube-src-id="Ue_kb1ivjDQ"></iframe></div><div><br /></div><div>The video software crashed, so I used my old software.</div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><b>I Decided to Start A Virtual Choir With Children</b></div><div>Not content with a choir of mini-me's, I decided to create a virtual choir with the local school children. More on that when it happens. But it really needs better video editing software and my 2012 Mac just isn't up to the job.</div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><b>I Decided to Buy a New Laptop</b></div><div>So much for tightening the belt during lockdown. After a lot of searching for laptop and computer options, my brain became numb to the worrying price of a new MacBook Pro... so I found a "bargain" one... and I'm now a proud MacBook daddy.</div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><b>So My Office Got a Spruce Up</b></div><div>I didn't want the most expensive computer I've ever owned to be offended by a dirty desk, so I did a bit of a clear up - it smells fresh in here now. Good times. It's still too full, but the desk was always the biggest issue.</div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><b>I Arrange Music, Apparently</b></div><div>I've learned how to use MuseScore and produced sheet music. I'm working on some musical arrangements... In fairness, I've been writing a few musical arrangements during lockdown, though they never amounted to much. The virtual choir project requires me to masquerade as musical director, film director and editor... and I'm going to do a lot of autotuning!</div><div><br /></div><div>I imagine being able to sleep again sometime in August!</div>Ashley Friezehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04782721872899081046noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3190492.post-8444829328454384972020-06-09T19:21:00.003+00:002020-06-09T19:21:59.802+00:00I'm A Cilla Black Fan On Bike<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Strange, with my sore knee, that I should decide to go on a medium-sized bike ride this evening.<br />
<br />
But I did. And it was great.<br />
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I didn't push myself too hard, had a lot of problem with accumulating flies, but on the whole came out of it feeling positive and refreshed. What's come over me.<br />
<br />
Flies.<br />
<br />
In other news we have kittens at home now.<br />
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The rest of this blog will be about kittens.</div>
Ashley Friezehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04782721872899081046noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3190492.post-36633475586101817192020-06-07T22:56:00.000+00:002020-06-07T22:56:48.096+00:00It's Stupid, Yet Still I Do ItOn the whole, it's probably not possible to change someone's opinion in an online discussion, be it on Facebook or Twitter, or anywhere. There are a lot of ways this this is pointless, and a lot of common traits to these discussions. I suppose it probably feels like this, whichever way you're arguing, whether you go into a right-leaning/leaver-leaning discussion with the opposite view, or vice versa. It's not quite that clear-cut, of course since Brexit is an intersectional problem. However, it's probably fair to say that a huge amount of Brexit support is also right-leaning, or anti-liberal left.<div><br /></div><div>Here are a bunch of pointless things that I'll have thrown at me, regardless of any tone I take in a debate:</div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>It's not racist because I (a white man, usually) don't think it is</li><li>You're virtue signalling - i.e. you're expressing something from your conscience and by doing that it's invalid because you're just showing off</li><li>You're just offended - i.e. you have a feeling, not any valid thought</li><li>What about my freedom? - from someone who is not, on the whole oppressed by anything</li><li>You're a snowflake - from someone who is overreacting to criticism</li><li>Well you're not funny - from anyone who is losing any argument, picking at anything subjective they can latch onto</li><li>"Your <X>" - any accusation of anything from someone too stupid to write "you're" - this winds me up the most, because it grates through my brain like nails down a blackboard, and you can't correct them because that only makes them act more stupid</li><li>Boiling the question down to a false dichotomy - clever trick, make the whole discussion pivot on a relatively uninteresting black or white question which <b>totally misses the point</b> - the problem with oversimplifications being that you can then argue the toss on the tip of a big fucking iceberg</li><li>"I want to join in this pile-on" - any insult, or participation from people who have nothing to contribute to the conversation, but identify with the subject matter</li></ul><div>It's a real shame.</div></div><div><br /></div><div>Fuck the lot of them.</div>Ashley Friezehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04782721872899081046noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3190492.post-52104001990068322102020-05-26T21:03:00.000+00:002020-05-26T21:03:18.877+00:00Idea to YouTube in Two HoursIt's odd that I posted the writing process for a song on here and then had the impetus to go away and write a new song.<div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/qxmMC70Ow4o" width="320" youtube-src-id="qxmMC70Ow4o"></iframe></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">The process for this video was similar to the one I used for "<a href="http://ashleyfrieze.blogspot.com/2014/05/a-new-idea-for-show.html">Tax That</a>", a song I challenged myself to make in the time it took my daughter to have a nap.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">It was similar, in that I didn't give myself a long deadline, and aimed to get something done within a short timeframe. I'm not a huge fan of the Tax That song, and I don't like the video, which was just a montage of pictures of Gary Barlow. What was I thinking. It's no longer publicly listed on YouTube, but you can see it from the above link.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">In this case, I wrote a page of observations on the daft things that I've seen happen with home workers, or have suspected home workers from doing. Then I started a verse to lead me into the song... then I realised it had a calypso vibe, so write a chorus that fell into that sort of rhythm - this allowed me to rhyme my observations or put setups in for observations. The setups themselves were brought out of my head, prompted by the rhyme I was aiming at.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">I put in a nice trick rhyme to bridge chorus 1 with verse 2, which was cute... then I had to start writing verse 2 on the right hand of a double page as I wanted to make it easy to flip back to the left hand page where I'd written by list of observations.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Once we got near the end of the song, it was a matter of trying to put some cherry-on-the-top observations on.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Up comes the guitar, play with the chords, try to avoid the obvious ones. Learn the song a bit... tune the guitar a bit...</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Then out comes the phone - point it at my face, record a few terrible takes... get one that's basically ok.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Into the video editor to add subtitles and a final titles card.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Upload.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Share.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Done.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Couple of hours, easy mate...</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div>Ashley Friezehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04782721872899081046noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3190492.post-71805156166005561952020-05-26T18:06:00.001+00:002020-05-26T18:06:29.821+00:00It is worth a whole new site?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I discovered some comedy notes and thought I'd share them here. Then I thought I'd share them on a whole new site about stand-up comedy... that's going to take a while, so they're coming here first.<br />
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I like old notebooks. Specifically, I like finding in old notebooks half-finished versions of something that later did get finished. It's interesting to see how something evolved. That applies more to the work of others than myself. I'm fascinated to see how musicals get adapted from original works, or how the later familiar version of a show is different from some earlier incarnation.<br />
<br />
In today's installment of my braindumping, here are some evolutionary steps of the Where's Wally song that's available on my Discograffiti album. It wasn't intended to be in the Discograffiti show, but ended up replacing a song about Roget's Thesaurus that was ultimately less enjoyable. The Where's Wally song was originally written for a one-off show called "Not Now, Bernard". I say it was a one-off. It was for me. It was a run of shows where people were invited to bring along material about favourite works of fiction.<br />
<br />
I think I ended up doing 4 pieces in the show, one of which was never seen again, and two which ended up in the Discograffiti Album, and one of which ended up in The Seven Deadly Sings. As I recall, I did an ill-conceived version of Anne Frank's Diary as a Ladybird book, where it had a happy engine with a rescue by Space Badgers. Not a zinger.<br />
<br />
Then I did The Gruffalo, reimagined as a musical theatre song of self-doubt. That's on my album. I did a break-down of Doe A Deer from The Sound of Music, and then Where's Wally. Not necessarily in that order.<br />
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I used my piano and everything.<br />
<br />
So, the main driver was to write a song about a childhood hero character, and Where's Wally is, of course, a blank slate as far as this is concern, not having a personality as such, just surface features.<br />
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<b>Version 1</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
Wally, where are you?<br />
You're really quite elusive<br />
It's totally confusing<br />
That you wear a woolly hat whatever the season<br />
Wally where are you?<br />
For crying out loud<br />
You ask me to meet you in the middle of a Crowd<br />
Then you don't seem to stand out, there's got to be a reason.<br />
<br />
What are you hiding from?<br />
Is it love? your sexuality? or debt collectors?<br />
What lies behind your fixed smile and dead eyes?<br />
Did you lose your mind in Vietname?<br />
Did you only ever buy one set of clothes?<br />
Or did someone lose the others in a laundry incident?<br />
Have you ever been somewhere that's not very busy?<br />
Are you a secret agoraphobic?<br />
<br />
Wally, where are you?<br />
You're hiding like a chimp [possibly wimp - can't quite read it]<br />
Are you a drug dealer or pimp?<br />
I've wasted hours trying to find you<br />
Wally, I'm leaving!<br />
I've waited long enough<br />
Spotting you's quite tough.<br />
Oh.... you were behind me.<br />
<br />
<b>What the hell was that?</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
I don't think that was quite intended to be the song. It looks more like a deliberate attempt to force ideas out into the open. On it, I've gone and marked certain lines with dots to show how powerful I must have thought they were when I read them back. This is a good trick I've used before with written material. Write the expected reaction type on the page and then review the density/quality from your own point of view. Then edit.<br />
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<b>Version 2 (incomplete)</b><br />
<br />
Wally where are you?<br />
You're impossible to find<br />
I've wasted a whole lunchbreak<br />
Trying to meet you for coffee<br />
Wally, what's with you?<br />
Suggesting we meet in crowded places<br />
Everyone has red shaped clothes and similar faces<br />
and no matter the season you're in winter clothes<br />
<br />
What are you hiding from?<br />
Is it love, your sexuality, or debt collectors<br />
What lies behind your square jaws, enigmatic smile, and haunted eyes<br />
Did you lose your mind in vietnam?<br />
<br />
<b>Version 2 thoughts</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
It was more structured, but it died on the page. Perhaps at this stage, the lack of structure wasn't helping it. There are a couple of lines starting to take shape, but still it's relatively weak.<br />
<br />
<b>Version 3 (of 4)</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
Wally where are you?<br />
You're so difficult to find<br />
You ask to meet at lunch<br />
When when I finally spot you it's teatime<br />
Your suggest the meeting spot<br />
Where everyone's in red and white<br />
You're proof that the best hiding places are in plain sight<br />
<br />
What are you hiding from?<br />
Is it loneliness, debt, or your sexuality?<br />
What's behind your fixed smile and dead eyes?<br />
Did you lose your mind in vietnam?<br />
<br />
What's with those winter clothes?<br />
You're in a woolly hat come spring and summer<br />
Have you considered a change in style<br />
Might help you out of your obvious case of depression<br />
<br />
Wally, where are you?<br />
Are you even real?<br />
Or are you a hallucination, brought on by eating too much yoghurt...<br />
<br />
<b>Close but not quite</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
This is very close to the final version. It runs out of steam, but it has a lightness of touch in between the darker punchlines. It reads familiarly, but hasn't been finessed in terms of some of the choice of language.<br />
<br />
The problem was that it didn't really know how to end. In the end finding an ending involves a visit to Wikipedia as you'll see from this last draft.<br />
<br />
<b>Final Draft</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
Wally where are you?<br />
You're so difficult to find<br />
We arrange to meet at lunch<br />
But when I finally locate you it's tea time<br />
You suggest a meeting spot<br />
Where everyone's in red and white<br />
You're proof that the best hiding places, are in plain sight<br />
<br />
What are you hiding from?<br />
Is it loneliness or debt or your sexuality?<br />
What lies behind that fixed smile and dead eyes?<br />Did you lose your mind in vietnam?<br />
What's with those winter clothes?<br />
You're in a woolly hat come spring and summer<br />
Have you considered a change in style might snap you out of your obvious case of depresssion?<br />
<br />
Wally, where are you?<br />
Are you even real?<br />
Or are you an hallucination?<br />
Brought on by eating too much veal... I should say cheese, but that doesn't rhyme<br />
I hear you change your name<br />
When going abroad<br />
<br />
In the U.S. you're Waldo<br />
In France you are Charlie<br />
Estonia Volli<br />
In Iceland you're Valli<br />
In Israel Effi<br />
In Sweden, you're Hugo.... HUGO!?<br />
<br />
Where did you go Wally?<br />
Are you Jura, Willy, Holda, or Worri<br />
Or Weili or Walter, I'm sorry<br />
I cannot find you in a hurry<br />
<br />
<b>What happened?</b><br />
<br />
Some of the above happened when the song was sung through with a tune and better lyrics suggested themselves.<br />
<br />
Some of this is applying the usual musical comedy cliches of awkward rhymes, either a good rhyme that doesn't make sense, or a shoehorned half rhyme (sorry/hurry).<br />
<br />
There's even a structural decision that a rapid-fire laundry list at the end of the song, taken from the aforementioned Where's Wally Wikipedia entry, and full of probably lesser-known facts about the character, would bring the song to a crescendo in terms of interest and density of material.<br />
<br />
It's not stand-up club funny this one. It's amusing. I think it's written ok.<br />
<br />
You can hear it here - <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B008U8XRIG/ref=dm_ws_tlw_trk10">https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B008U8XRIG/ref=dm_ws_tlw_trk10</a> as well as your favourite streaming services.</div>
Ashley Friezehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04782721872899081046noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3190492.post-82677941744626868632020-05-25T17:46:00.000+00:002020-05-25T17:46:16.548+00:00NeglectfulSomewhere a few years ago, I stopped writing this blog. I'm going to say that it's been about 4 years since I even hit approximately monthly posts. I for one have no grand desire to go back and see how frequently I was posting before then.<div><br /></div><div>I can't give a good reason right now why things changed. Parenthood, career, life, other blogs. I'm sure all have factored into the equation. I think the more I blogged on my coding blog, the less time I had for my <i>what I did on my summer holidays</i> style posts for here.</div><div><br /></div><div>But, as people keep saying, these are unprecedented times and I think it's ok to return to the fold. I seriously doubt anyone beyond a few stragglers accidentally hitting here owing to weird searches, will read this. These posts are intended for my present mental state and for the confusion of my future self, who will, no doubt be in equal measure:</div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Embarrassed at the folly of my future youth</li><li>Unable to remember what the hell I'm talking about</li><li>Cross that I didn't prof read this better</li></ul><div>Sorry future me, the "prof" was a little joke.</div></div><div><br /></div><div>There's no doubt that the past is a foreign country... and sometimes even the present can be. I had no idea, for example, that this blog didn't properly work if you accessed it from its native address, rather than the wrap-around shell you get when you visit via <i>www.incredible.org.uk</i> its original home.</div><div><br /></div><div>Blogger stopped publishing to my own webspace years back, so I allowed a compromise where the <i>www.incredible.org.uk</i> site would be hosted by me and would enwrap the blog, in the hope that the address would still kind of work. The redirection tricks I did were superseded a couple of years ago by something cheaper, and the upshot is that my blog hasn't properly loaded for years and I've not noticed...</div><div><br /></div><div>I fixed that today. This is what happens when you revisit an old home and notice the maintenance issues... easily fixed, easily not noticed.</div><div><br /></div><div>To illustrate that the past is a foreign country I shall now read a blog post from <a href="http://ashleyfrieze.blogspot.com/2010/05/" target="_blank">10 years ago to the day</a> (ish).</div><div><br /></div><div>Blimey, younger me was into:</div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Comedy gigs</li><li>Doctor Who</li><li>Cats (the animal)</li><li>Long drives</li><li>Criticising bogus proponents of mediumship</li></ul><div>and ironing.</div></div><div><br /></div><div>It's reassuring to know that apart from the last one, these are still a good summary of me.</div><div><br /></div><div>It's also weird to imagine a life of peaks and troughs of effort where work and gigs were frenetic, and then there's room for chilled out mornings of dozing hugging a cat...</div><div><br /></div><div>Then you have children and all this turns to something else.</div><div><br /></div><div>Then you have facebook and all this turns into endless fruitless scrolling.</div><div><br /></div><div>There's probably a song in here somewhere.</div>Ashley Friezehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04782721872899081046noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3190492.post-77334589680673558192020-05-23T14:14:00.001+00:002020-05-23T14:14:12.151+00:00Round and Round my Brain<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
There's a potential play on words here. Round - is it me being fat? or is it repetition? In this case it's the latter.<br />
<br />
The weightloss regime continues (day 4) and I've lost 11 pounds in weight... but in fairness, this is just shock weightloss that doesn't particularly affect one's actual body. It's just a reduction in expendable baggage.<br />
<br />
However, dropping carbs, does lead to a general shock to the system and I felt awful this morning. I had a headache, a tummy ache, my tinnitus was particularly strong... I was living the ACTUAL dream...<br />
<br />
... and I was dreaming of a song I'm writing.<br />
<br />
Another bloody song. The problem with them is that while you're working on them, they're almost all you can think about.<br />
<br />
For some reason, I've chosen to pair some angry, intellectual invective with a rather poignant and jazzy accompaniment. Worse than that, because the song is in 4 keys (it key changes every verse) and because it's in two time signatures, and because I've hitherto, only written down the chord structure, with a couple of bits left to a later draft, I have a ghost ship of a song banging around my head with a melody that has variations in it, depending on how I remember to play it.<br />
<br />
It was this half-finished tune that was going round in a loop in my head this morning, making me want to shut it out.<br />
<br />
Perhaps it should have made me want to go to the piano and play it, but nope. This was a "shut up" tune.<br />
<br />
However, once the day got truly started, and I'd finished lying on the sofa like a beached whale, then I did go to the piano and try to map out the song.<br />
<br />
Here's an interesting problem with my "skills" as a composer. To be honest, the best way I can understand the melody of the song is to have it as written music. I can't quite read music perfectly, but I can definitely decode it, and it can be a permanent record of which notes were in a particular song. I've cheated before and written a list of notes down as letters, knowing I can assemble them back into a timed melody in the right key... but that's not something I can do perfectly in real time, and it's not incredibly helpful if I'm going to record the song and make an accompaniment in some music software.<br />
<br />
So my instinct and my abilities are add odds with each other; another reason for the conflict in my brain.<br />
<br />
I want to just sit down and write the music out... I physically do not have the skills. How do time signatures look? Do you put the flat or sharp symbol before or after the note? Where does the tail go? Which rest means minim?<br />
<br />
I can read this musical notation fine and even use it to put notes into a computer, but the moment I have to write it with a pen and paper, I'm at the writing age of my 5 year old son.<br />
<br />
But I persisted with it and had a damned good go, because that's how you learn.<br />
<br />
Why I've chosen to write a song in 4 keys is anyone's guess... perhaps it's because I'm a cheap musical comedian using the tricks of the trade...<br />
<br />
That said, I've never heard a comedy song in this idiom before, so maybe I'm just doing my thing.</div>
Ashley Friezehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04782721872899081046noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3190492.post-83550129209587254092020-05-22T15:28:00.001+00:002020-05-22T15:28:27.451+00:00Fat Fat Fatty Fatty Fat Fat<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
If I hit 18 stone, I should buy myself an expensive Fender Stratocaster... FATOCASTER more like!<br />
<br />
Now, I've hit that weight before... mainly on the way up. Arguably, I must have hit it an odd number of times - approximately the same number in each directin, because to hit it on the weigh up, I must have either hit it on the way down, or been under it to start with - something that's definitely been the case before.<br />
<br />
I was about to write wistfully about the time in my life where I'd never exceeded 18 stone, but I don't think it's appropriate.<br />
<br />
I'm pretty sure that I once found I was 16 and a half stone and was shocked into crash dieting, but I was younger, less experienced, had no idea that I could be attractive and fun, and squandered such youthful folly in a series of darkened rooms.<br />
<br />
The darkened rooms of my older age are much better. They come with better facilities, more screens, and a more comfortable savings account.<br />
<br />
They also come with fears for the future, a deep complex relationship with the tax man and my accountant, and a continuous sense that life would be better if there was less <b>stuff</b>.<br />
<br />
It's odd. The desire to have loads, and the desire not to be burdened by it all, seem to go hand in hand. And this is both a metaphor for weight and the actual problem with weight.<br />
<br />
My weight has been a heavy part of my life in recent years. Two years ago, weighing a little more than I do today, I was at a waypoint in a weightloss journey that began the previous year with a health scare. I lost a lot of weight while worried that I was doing so to get myself ready for an operation. Then the operation wasn't necessary. But I was healthier and happier, I did a musical, then rehearsed like crazy for another one's dance moves, managed to stay at some helpful weight equilibrium and was generally in good shape.<br />
<br />
Since then life's had its way of tossing me about. Each dip or toss of the waves results in a weight reaction, positive or negative. The nature of the weight change isn't entirely related to whether it's a good or bad turn in my fortunes.<br />
<br />
I changed job, and my new lifestyle caused me to gain some weight. Then I took control and lost some. Then I changed jobs again, and I got a part in a show, and steadily gained weight, despite feeling I'd be more in control of it. Then, with a job change imminent, I flicked the weightloss switch and steadily and sustainably brought the weight under control... until November last year.<br />
<br />
Auditioning for a part I'd not even intended to audition for at first, and then getting hooked on the maybes of getting it, and doing ok in the audition process... that let me to another spike when eventually the part went to someone else. Worse than that, after many successful months (from June) of multiple dance classes a week, I was suddenly unable to do them owing to a knee injury.<br />
<br />
Christmas last year was an eating competition - me vs my common sense.<br />
<br />
Then January and I went to work, decided I actually couldn't quite bear to use the work kitchen to prepare healthy lunches, so just went without, and I came up with my best invention ever - losing weight by just eating briefly between 5pm and 9pm. I could largely eat what I liked, and the weight was dropping off again.<br />
<br />
Fast forward to March and lockdown began. We self-isolated as we were under the impression it might be in our household and supplies waned a bit. I ate even less...<br />
<br />
I broke a stone barrier I'd not broken in a while...<br />
<br />
.. then things got easier... and I relaxed my regime... and packed weight back on.<br />
<br />
At this point, I'd like to state without any fear of disagreeing with myself retrospectively, that eating loads of mashed avocado on sourdough toast is absolutely fantastic from the point of view of how it feels while you're doing it.<br />
<br />
I also seemed to crave cereal.<br />
<br />
I'm going to call this the lockdown-carb-addiction phase.<br />
<br />
And it was a real shame. I'd been looking trimmer and feeling healthier and then things went back to binge eating.<br />
<br />
On the up side, the local mobile fish and chip shop provided some very excellent food which me and the kids enjoyed enormously.<br />
<br />
Something has to give, and ideally not the waistband of my trousers, or the central post of my office chair.<br />
<br />
Before I became too much heavier, I decided to join in with my wife's "Fast 800" diet plan. It combines three things which we know to be effective for weightloss, but I'm not enjoying them and I'm planning to continue not enjoying them, while earnestly giving them a fair old crack of the whip.<br />
<br />
<br />
<ol style="text-align: left;">
<li>Interval fasting - you could do 8 hours, I'm trying to about 4 (or less). That's the period of the day when you consume calorific food. We're assuming that coffee and fizzy squash don't count.</li>
<li>Low carbs - where previously I was trying a vague carb avoidance, and low carb works enormously well for me in general, here we're calculating the carbs down to very low numbers... scarily low</li>
<li>Low calorie - fat not an issue... just keeping the calorie count around 800</li>
</ol>
<div>
It's day three and I've lost 9 pounds!</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Though in fairness, they're not real pounds... but they still count!</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Lockdown is an opportunity to do a bit of self-care. I know a few people who've had a more constructive experience than the one I've had... i.e. a gradual thing, rather than the awkward spike leading to a food-based lockdown.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
However, black and white rules can work well for me. Let's see how long this attempt lasts!</div>
</div>
Ashley Friezehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04782721872899081046noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3190492.post-763056415142380832020-05-22T14:05:00.000+00:002020-05-22T14:05:05.187+00:00No Fringe No Holiday No No No No No<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I don't know why I was slow in trying to arrange our trip to the Fringe this year. I'm usually champing at the bit. It's probably something to do with the fact that the cat was dying in February and I didn't quite get around to turning the conversation with my parents, when they visited, around to plans for August, as my mind was on other places, and I generally don't like to steer the conversation around to big favours.<br />
<br />
That we're not visiting the Fringe has nothing to do with poor Spax the cat losing his short fight against cancer... I say short fight - he probably had it ages, but he was under treatment for a short time. Poor thing.<br />
<br />
It soon became apparent in March that we were facing a real risk of the Fringe either being cancelled, or being a risky place to visit given the pandemic. After a few weeks of vacillations, the Fringe Society cancelled this year's event and now August has a giant hole in it.<br />
<br />
It's weird. We only really go to the Fringe for 4 days, but it's a huge feature of the year nonetheless. In recent years we've followed it up with a family holiday, which helps decompress after the turbulence of enjoying Edinburgh. It is turbulent too. The diary becomes a series of 60 minute (ish) adventures, including the show and the race to the next one. Each show has an emotional curve, and your mood gets swung around for a day and then you repeat the crazy for a few more.<br />
<br />
I like the way we do the Fringe, but it's not the way it used to be.<br />
<br />
As a comedian facing a life-altering period of time, one's mind is always drawn to the possibility of the hour-long show that might emerge from something... the situation, one's own imagination, the availability of spare time that's suddenly been enforced on you.<br />
<br />
So will I be back at the Fringe next year with an hour long show?<br />
<br />
Probably not... but maybe the planning for the long return to the Fringe may start.<br />
<br />
Next August, the kids will be 6 & 8. There's a high chance that we could take them to the Fringe and entertain them there... but making child care/entertainment work AND seeing/doing the sorts of shows we did before they were born is a big old ask.<br />
<br />
I'm racing towards 50 years old... (next Fringe I'll be 47)... how long could I reasonably expect to charge around the city of Edinburgh with the sort of energy I had back in the day.<br />
<br />
Some of this comes back to my long-term bizarre relationship between my weight, stand-up, and Edinburgh.<br />
<br />
The worse my weight, the harder Edinburgh is to blast around, yet I always have a special burst of energy when I hit the Fringe... yet Edinburgh has, in the past, poisoned me with its plethora of unhealthy eating options. Yet Edinburgh has also acted as my annual exercise and diet plan. Weird.<br />
<br />
Stand-up has been a good place to explore my feelings around weightloss, yet the late night driving and eating of the stand-up comedy circuit have been quite toxic for my health.<br />
<br />
If I look back to last year's trip to Edinburgh, I was in a great place weight-wise and Edinburgh proved it. I'd packed on quite a bit of weight in the first half of the year, despite my desire to use an introduction to a dance-based fitness class, and a part in The Producers as my excuse to get fitter... in the end I regressed to stupid eating and gained weight... but the end of The Producers was like a switch being flicked.<br />
<br />
I blasted harder than ever at my eating and exercise, doing multiple classes per week, doing building projects at home (two sheds!) and I lost a fantastic amount of weight in a short period and was genuinely more nimble.<br />
<br />
We hit Edinburgh and I left my wife in the dust as we blasted up hills... Which is not very polite. She was, I think, amazed that I was being so energetic.<br />
<br />
It's out of character.<br />
<br />
These things come and go though... post Fringe, though the diet regime held for a bit, other things clouded the sky, health-wise.<br />
<br />
This is what happens when you head into middle age. It just gets harder.<br />
<br />
So, I find myself wondering how well the leisure industry will bounce back after this pandemic, how quickly the Fringe Society and other organisations will recover, given this year's aborted attempt at holding the festival, how much disposable income we'll really have in a year's time, and whether my aging bones will have it in them to do one of my favourite things.<br />
<br />
Time will definitely tell.<br />
<br />
As negative and conflicted as this all may sound, I'm looking forward to finding out what time does tell, and I'm not going to give up easily on the Scottish August silly season. </div>
Ashley Friezehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04782721872899081046noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3190492.post-89254921892477117922020-05-22T13:44:00.000+00:002020-05-22T13:44:09.288+00:00Where's my New Microphone?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
That I have bought a new microphone is not a personal first. I own several microphones, though this new one will be the most expensive one I've ever bought. The question to ask is "Why now?".<br />
<br />
I've been using GarageBand on my MacBook more than usual. I bought the MacBook about 3 years ago to be able to do this, but hadn't touched GarageBand at all until a few weeks back. So, again, why now?<br />
<br />
I have been writing more songs than normal for the first time in many many years. The last time I was this prolific was because I had an hour-long show to fill... now I don't.<br />
<br />
So why now?<br />
<br />
I mean, the answer is obvious. This is not the story of a man and his microphone. This is the sort of thing that happens when the world is turned upside down and locked down.<br />
<br />
For the sake of emptying my mind of this stuff, and creating a record that I'll look back on and perhaps even laugh at (who knows what lies the future will make of the following), here's where we're at.<br />
<br />
<b>Current day job</b>: IT - in a contract role that I'm still managing to hold down, despite disruptions from the UK tax regulations, a huge disruption to the aviation industry owing to a global pandemic, and varying degrees of challenges owing to home working. On the whole, I've worked consistently and hard throughout and done some good software engineering.<br />
<br />
<b>Current other day job: </b>still editing for Baeldung.com, for which I have spurts of effort and periods of nothing to do, or so much to do that I can't imagine how to start it. I'm presently on top of the pile of things to do.<br />
<br />
<b>Stand-up comedy:</b> somewhat on hiatus as the leisure sector has imploded/stalled. I've been on the circuit for years, and have some regular haunts. If the truth were laid out plainly, I've not "broken through". It still seems a struggle to be taken seriously, and I constantly say to me that I'll be appreciated more once I've written some new material... which I don't actually get around to writing.<br />
<br />
<b>Family:</b> (probably should have put them first... but this is a solipstistic blether about me, so they'll have to forgive me for not doing that) doing well. The kids are generally positive about their home schooling regime. My wife is a hero, and she's getting increasingly better at all the things she has to juggle to make things work in these challenging times. We have some great moments, but life is significantly weird.<br />
<br />
<b>Health: </b>now that's where it's complex. I'm more healthy than most. I'm not dying (any more than anyone else), but I feel like I could have been in a better position than I am now.<br />
<br />
I'll whack dieting concerns into another post.<br />
<br />
If I take a quick mile high view of where I'm at right now, it's "doing ok". Everything is basically under control. We have supplies of things we need, especially coffee and soda stream gas. Everyone's still friends, we have a routine that gets us through the week, and there's talk of the school reopening for my son on 1st June, which, if it's safe to do so, will benefit him more than staying at home.<br />
<br />
Trying to stay focused and on top of things in these circumstances is a challenge, but we're doing it.<br />
<br /></div>
Ashley Friezehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04782721872899081046noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3190492.post-35796537830960821852020-05-06T22:39:00.002+00:002020-05-06T22:39:36.768+00:00Lockdown<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Before I go into what I think I got right with the Lockdown song, it's probably worth looking at some stuff I got wrong.<br />
<br />
The vocal take isn't good enough. There are notes missed, breaths not taken, and the phrasing's not great. However, it does manage to convey the words accurately and tells the story ok.<br />
<br />
The video has a few glitches in it. The scene with the goats is too long and loses some context as it should really appear inside a YouTube frame - perhaps zooming out to show it was a YouTube cut... though how to do that in the video editor, who knows?<br />
<br />
There may be a couple of dodgy lyrics in there too... trying to get <i>officers</i> to rhyme with <i>scissors</i> makes the joke work, but it should be O-fficer, not o-FI-cert...<br />
<br />
The point is that there's always room to say why something's imperfect, and something that could have been done better. However, overall, I'm really happy with the video and song when put together. I'd like to put a few notes together on how this might not have ended up as good, but did result in something I'm proud of because of some decent decisions that happened along the way. I'm not sure they were entirely by design.<br />
<br />
A quick lesson on how the song came about. I had the idea for a song about lockdown based on downtown because they're simply the same sounding word. I've enjoyed Tony Hatch's music over the years anyway; closer scrutiny of the song reminded me how brilliantly ironic it is that the original song is about going downtown, the opposite of the state we're in.<br />
<br />
I wrote a couple of verses, and found it an interesting challenge, owing to the fairly complex original rhyme scheme and lyrical structure. I got something I quite liked. That was started on April 21st. I tweaked it a little. On 28th I wrote the last verse. I stood in the garage and recorded the vocal a day or so later. The video was filmed on 2nd May, though I'd recorded a snippet down the side of the house a day or so before. The process from idea to complete video was a couple of weeks.<br />
<br />
When I write a parody song, which I've not done a lot of before, but have been doing a lot recently, I often review a performance of the original, or the original lyrics, putting them side-by-side with the lyric I'm writing to get it to scan. This feels like writing to a formula... there must be some good creative moments/decisions to make it live, and I think it here that this song jumped off the page.<br />
<br />
Before I go on about the things I think I did, I should point out that this was a case of walking in beautifully crafted footsteps of greater writers/performers. The original song is a work of art. It must surely have done a lot of the work for me... but I also did some work. I remember doing it.<br />
<br />
<b>The Third Verse</b><br />
The rule with comedy songs is get out before they get bored. Try to avoid instrumentals. Try to avoid repetition. Don't overstay one's welcome.<br />
<br />
The original draft got to the line "While goats invade the centre of town" and I thought it had peaked. There's a key change and instrumental break. Stop here. Point made. Or so I thougt.<br />
<br />
However, as writing challenges go, finding new words to fit the awkward structure was like a drug and I thought I'd have another go. All the initial more obvious ideas were now used up. They weren't bad ideas, they were just predictable.<br />
<br />
Creating with constraints is good for you. You end up finding something new. I couldn't repeat what I'd said before. I had to dig deeper into my personal experience. I had to find funny counterparts for them. In the case of <i>Disinfect the post</i>/<i>Hide in the curtains and pretend you're a ghost, </i>one of these was something we were essentially doing - a damning summary of daily life treating the post as dangerous. The other was me coming up with a funny image that rhymed... I'm so glad I did.<br />
<br />
The last verse is my favourite and it could so not have happened.<br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>Trying it out on my Wife</b><br />
I've been somewhat reluctant to try my hilarious comedy ideas out at home, since often what's funny to an audience is awkward in person. However, I read through the song to my wife and it made us both laugh. This gave me the mood for what I wanted to reach in the edits and the last verse. I had the perfect audience. If my wife, who can see through me, finds the material funny, then it's probably very funny. Another constraint to the writing process.<br />
<br />
You should write comedy to make yourself laugh. I laugh most at my own stuff when it causes laughter, or when I can't believe I'm about to say/sing it.<br />
<br />
It took a few takes to be able to sing the <i>hide in the curtains</i> line without cracking.<br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>Filming on a Glorious Day</b><br />
The nicest thing about the video is that it was filmed on a blue sky day with green fields. I was taking the kids for a walk. I tried getting my daughter to film me, but it didn't quite work. I did a couple of quick selfies to the camera and took some texture shots.<br />
<br />
I must surely have mined the book of film student cliches with the spinning round bit... but it was fun and it looks good. It's obvious that the two verses are selfies, but the change in camera angle was a good idea as it makes it look more well though out than it was.<br />
<br />
I performed the first lines of the song without any backing track.. just from my memory of the rhythm of the song. It ties in remarkably well.<br />
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<b>Discovering the magic of Lip Sync</b><br />
Once I discovered that my attempt to record without an backing track to mime to actually worked, I got bolder about what else I could possibly achieve by miming and shuffling the footage into the right position to sync.<br />
<br />
It seems that the brain is remarkably forgiving of lip sync in videos and you just need to drag a clip to the right sort of place and suddenly it lives!<br />
<br />
When my friend recorded a video to another song we made, without the final backing track, I was similarly surprised at the lip sync of the end result. This time, I was editing and I soon discovered how little I need to rely on making a video take of the actual track recording... not that I'll stop doing that. It's fun to see the video of the actual take you're hearing - if that's an important thing in the presentation of the song.<br />
<br />
The Netflix bit of the song came out well with the above technique. I built a video with the Netflix background and a frame of me singing - I then played that on our TV and filmed that with a moving shot, knowing it would all tie together in the edit.<br />
<br />
Trusting lip sync gave us some of our best shots.<br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>Listening to my Wife's Ideas during Filming</b><br />
I had an idea for each of the shots, but it wasn't set in stone. I didn't get too precious about the ideas and gave my wife the camera to try stuff with. I say camera. It was an iPhone.<br />
<br />
An an example, thought it was my idea to go up in the loft, it was her who put the ladder up after me and then made me slam the loft hatch shut up there... a shot that made us and the kids laugh when we watched it back.<br />
<br />
You've got to admire someone who agrees to set fire to envelopes over the sink in the name of art.<br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>Trying to Finish It</b><br />
It could have stalled and never really finished. I have a video in that state; there's some photography done, and some graphics, but loads more to do on top.<br />
<br />
In this case, the self-imposed pressure to get it out on YouTube on the day of the main photography forced us to come up with passable and in many cases, spontaneously funny clips.<br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>Using a Karaoke Track</b><br />
It's kind of an admission of failure that I couldn't create my own backing... but there was a really rather good one I could just import. Build/buy... it's a no brainer here.<br />
<br />
I would have had more things to worry about, preventing me from getting anyway, if I'd decided to make my own backing. The one I chose gave the end result a much more professional feel.<br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>Editing it down to the minimum</b><br />
There's a cut in the backing track I chose. It means the song goes a bit faster and there's less fill between the first and second halves around the keychange.<br />
<br />
As a rule, never use the whole song without slicing bits out unless it's perfect.<br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>Thinking about the Words for the Video</b><br />
A video is a chance to do an act out, so each scene was a mini 3-4 second visual gag opportunity. This is a great way to make the material deeper.<br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>Subtitling the Video Early</b><br />
The subtitles ended up acting as signposts on the video editor about where we were in the video, much easier to use than the on-screen action.<br />
<br />
I think I do a reasonable job of subtitling, trying to get the subtitle up at the point which is both funniest and in time with the music; sometimes they coincide, sometimes not.<br />
<br />
Often the subtitle boundaries were also the perfect edit boundaries to switch between shots... it worked really well.<br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>Building the Video Before Shooting was Complete</b><br />
By putting the structure of the video together, we could dry run the shooting we'd done in context quickly, and get a sense of progress with the whole thing. It motivated us to finish it, and gave us ideas about pacing.<br />
<br />
To be honest, the whole thing was slapped together without too much thought or planning, but that was made possible by the scaffolding of the existing shots, roughly edited on the timeline with subtitles and the backing track. It guided us to completion awfully well.<br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>Making Static Shots move in Post</b><br />
There were a couple of shots which didn't move when we filmed them. The pan across Netflix stopped, and a view over my shoulder of me watching a video had a moving video, but the shot was still.<br />
<br />
I noticed that this sapped a little energy, so I made them zoom in, during editing... this kept the shot interesting, especially since the attention span we'd set up with previous shots was about 3 seconds.<br />
<br />
<br />
I learned a lot doing this. I think the above went well... I look forward to future videos.<br />
<b><br /></b>
Overall, this is a silly three minute video, but it surprises me how rapidly it runs through, and how much fun it is to rewatch. It was worth the microscopic adjustments and hearing my own voice on a loop for a day.<br />
<br />
Let's see if I do any more.<br />
<b><br /></b>
<b><br /></b>
<b><br /></b></div>
Ashley Friezehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04782721872899081046noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3190492.post-35368195862116923502020-05-05T11:19:00.001+00:002020-05-05T11:19:49.977+00:00Locked Down<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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So, the world's gone mad...
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<br />
This blog doesn't get much attention; usually I write an annual post-Fringe-visit review of why I like going to the Fringe and forget that I used to be an avid blogger, with myriad self-interested posts about my life.<br />
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I'm still a blogger, but not on this platform. I write technical blog posts and edit for another technical blog. It somewhat saps the creative juices to be doing it all over the place, so this blog has somewhat been neglected. It's unlikely I'll resurrect it in any meaningful way, but there are things to be said at the moment.<br />
<br />
Now's a good time to write a few notes about life in lockdown.<br />
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Perhaps I'll take to writing a self-interested, mewling, post about how weird it is to be shut in the house for about 6 weeks with no sign of the world going back to any semblance of normal. This is not that post.<br />
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In fact, this isn't even the post I came to this platform to write.<br />
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I want to say something in this post. I made something. In fact, I made a few things.<br />
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I've even just committed to buying more kit so I can make more things in the future. Why not, eh? Now's the perfect time to devote time to doing things that I've put off.<br />
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I have released a couple of comedy albums online. They were home recordings to support the two major Edinburgh shows I did myself. Back in 2004, we recorded the album of our show The Musical!, released on CD (spoilers, it didn't sound great, because I'm a terrible sound engineer). However, it was better than not releasing one.<br />
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I've intended to do something much more sophisticated with home recording since. There have been occasional tracks, but nothing serious.<br />
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In the last few weeks, I've recorded the following songs:<br />
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<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>Only One Song - a spoof of La La Land</li>
<li>How Far I'll Go - from Moana, with my daughter singing (54 vocal takes and a lot of editing)</li>
<li>The Basic Necessities - a parody song based on The Bare Necessities</li>
<li>Lockdown (as above) - another parody song</li>
<li>(half of something else I'm not going to mention yet)</li>
</ul>
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I also wrote a Covid 19 song about having a new great fire of London (not especially good, but it was a bit of fun).</div>
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<br /></div>
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Given that my previous output was basically nearly zero, with one new song written a year ago, performed to an iPhone, rather than recorded properly, this is quite a change in my circumstances.</div>
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<br /></div>
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I've also quickly learned the ropes with video editing, having bought Movavi to enable me to make the Only One Song video, for which I wanted a montage of the performances of the actual takes that went into the video.</div>
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<br /></div>
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More importantly, I've started using GarageBand. In 2020. I bought my Mac in late 2017 with the aim of getting into GarageBand. I then installed Windows on it (dual boot, I'm not a monster) and used Mixcraft, which I'm more familiar with... I even <b>upgraded Mixcraft</b> rather than use GarageBand.</div>
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I'm an idiot.</div>
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<br /></div>
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I'm now a GarageBand user... though I can imagine upgrading to something more sophisticated if I keep up the output.</div>
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<br /></div>
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I'm also committed to solving my vocals recording issue, some of which I think comes down to not understanding the dilemma of gain, proximity, and apparent loudness before compression... nobody cares but me, but that's not the point. I'm trying to perfect a craft here, and that's fun.</div>
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<br /></div>
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I just bought a new microphone and other associated bits for better recording. All of this is great fun...</div>
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The lesson here is not to neglect one's craft. It shouldn't take a lockdown to teach that, but learning the lesson counts regardless of how it's taught.</div>
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Ashley Friezehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04782721872899081046noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3190492.post-67406727019952147982019-08-19T11:22:00.003+00:002020-05-23T14:15:25.765+00:00I Know What I Did This Summer<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="color: #454545; font-family: inherit;">It’s time for my annual August blog post. I used to post far more regularly, but... you know... life and stuff.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I always believe I’ll come back from the Fringe fizzing with ideas and just, kind of, shit out a new show, or at least 20 minutes of zinger material. There’s something about the Edinburgh bubble that activates my comedy synapses and also the bit of me that imagines I’m funnier than I actually am.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I am quite funny...</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">... mainly because of dogged determination and practice. I’ve been a stand-up comedian for nearly 17 years FFS. If I hadn’t learned how to be funny, I’d probably have stopped.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">So, as is customary, this is a blog post from a train to a blog I seldom update and nobody but me reads. Hello me from the future... turgid, isn’t it?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Anyhoo, the lady across from me on the train has just opened a banana the wrong way. But she hadn’t fathomed out how to open her coffee cup lid either, so I’m not too surprised. It was one of those cups where you have to tear off a flip up flap - a flip-flap - to open a mouth hole; the flap is then reflexively secured by plastic jaws to the lid. To be honest, it’s a pretty unfeasible system and hard to guess at. It’s also a real waste of ingenuity, given the fact that the cup and its lid won’t compost and will kill us all.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Anyway. The point is that this is the journey back from Fringe number 18.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">That’s a number derived from last year’s. Let’s double check the maths.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I went to two Fringes in the nineties. 1994, and 1995. During these I saw the likes of Lee and Herring, Greg Proops, Mark Little, Mervyn Stutter... you know what, I can’t really remember. There was definitely Richard Thomas in the mix, with a character I can’t remember, but a song I can. Peter Baynham too... It’s been a while.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">I resumed going in 2002. Performed for the first time in 2003. Did “The Musical!” In 2004, “The Great Big Comedy Picnic” from 2005 onwards. Hannah George and I did “The Seven Deadly Jokes” in 2009, year one of “The Seven Deadly Sings” was 2010, in 2011, I did a rework of the show and also got married (not at the Fringe). 2012 was my last year of doing shows with Discograffiti. I’d been to 11 consecutive Fringes, performing at 10 of them.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">We started visiting the Fringe again in 2015 doing what is now an annual long-weekend - Friday afternoon to Sunday night (with a guilty slink back on Monday morning to our waiting children - we leave them with my parents, not just in the left luggage at the station). So that’s 2015, 16, 17, 18, 19 - 5 consecutive years.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">So 2 + 11 + 5 = 18. My wife’s at 9 years of this.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">It’s not really about keeping score.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I’m definitely keeping score.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">This year we saw 18 shows. That’s a pretty respectable hit rate. I remember bygone years of doing 9 show days, but my memory may be faulty, and I didn’t stop to eat as much then as I might do now.</span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">To have seen 7 shows yesterday was made all the more impressive by the fact that we crossed town a ridiculous number of times into the bargain. The Edinburgh North/South or New Town/Old Town divide was in full force this year. We wanted to see things which involved nipping from The Assembly Rooms to Bristo Square - the home of The Gilded Balloon Teviot site and The Pleasance Dome (among others).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">These old legs can walk, apparently. Recent advances in my fitness (or reversals of my unfitness) have stood me in good stead. Edinburgh is a city in which I often feel I have boundless energy, and that’s not all caused by the Irn Bru.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">It’s odd to be messing around in a city when the country is falling apart and the narrative around environment is much the same. This is a place where you can be both informed and distracted from the awful truth of the world. Maybe it was ever thus, maybe it’s the end of days...</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I’ll answer that in next year’s post...</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">...maybe.</span></div>
<div style="height: 0px; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">x</span></div>
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Ashley Friezehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04782721872899081046noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3190492.post-32366294847634630542019-08-11T20:26:00.002+00:002019-08-11T20:26:31.174+00:00Funny Old Week<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
It's been a funny old week. So much so that I'm onto my second post of the year on this blog.<br />
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If the truth were told, I'm clearly not blogging on here like the diarist I once was. I've gone from an almost religious zeal to tell each day as it happened, or at least blog about the major appointments in my diary (I'm pretty sure I wrote most of 2005 retrospectively like homework).<br />
<br />
Last year: 4 posts.<br />
<br />
This is post two of 2019.<br />
<br />
Highlights of the week:<br />
<br />
<br />
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>Did two gigs</li>
<li>Went to a circus (today)</li>
<li>Got rained on randomly a lot</li>
<li>Was offered money for the rights to my online training course</li>
</ul>
<div>
Whatta week!</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
If ever there was a moment's thought that my life is glamourous and going well, let's quickly establish that I was offered a mere $100 for the unlimited distribution rights to a training course that's supposed to sell on Udemy.com at $9.99 per student. I declined. Offers like that are as much insulting as they are ridiculous.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Similarly, the trip to the circus was interesting and fun, but somehow not quite the exciting thing it could have been. Call me a jaded old performer, but the crow work and structuring of a circus show seem thin and transparent and for me take away from the skill of the performers. That said, it's a matter of taste.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div>
I for one, don't like it when the staff start applause breaks every 15 seconds or so, and I also really despise shows which run on the basis that the audience want to stand up at the end, sing along and dance... and especially I abhor shows which end with the audience on the stage.</div>
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<br /></div>
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If I'm going to go onto a stage, I'll do it because I'm the performer. Otherwise I'd prefer that I sat and enjoyed something inventive and entertaining which I can't see through.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div>
Talking of paper-thin performances... I closed a new material night in Hereford this week and it was fun. Some of the new acts were exactly what you'd expect of new acts. There were a couple of brilliant older comedians from Cheltenham, who were a complete delight to watch and had me roaring with laughter. As a comedian, when you're cheek-achingly laughing at an act who is earlier on the bill than you, there's always a part of you thinking <i>"how the hell can I follow that!?"</i> but that's insecurity at best. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div>
Every comedian can follow the previous ones. Go out there and do your best!</div>
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<br /></div>
<div>
Last night I opened at a gig I thought I was MCing. It's a regular show I do in Bristol. Last week I opened, the first time I'd done a set there. Warming up last week's crowd took more work than MCing them, but by the end I'd dissolved their resistance and dissolved my own sense of decorum. I found myself riffing on something or other which sort of worked, but was half formed.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
On the way back to the car last week, I did a <i>what I should have said</i> in my head, and decided to incorporate that into the bit of the set where it had happened. I tried that out on Thursday and it worked (enough to try again, at least).</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Where last night I was expecting to shoe-horn it into a non-set bit of my MCing, arriving at the venue it seemed there were two MCs and no opening act. Great... a quick rush back to the car (20 minutes of power walking - good for the weightloss) and I'm back as the opening act.</div>
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<br /></div>
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So a week after making it up on that stage, I'm doing the corrected version of a bit of silliness, and to be honest I felt both delighted and cheapened by the reaction it got. Delighted, because this is how stand-up works: perform, invent, refine, perform, perfect... but cheapened, because my <i>Sodastream Knob</i> bit is hardly going to go down as a bit of literature!</div>
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<br /></div>
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It's all daftness... and that's worth the driving, walking and getting drenched in the British flash monsoon season for.</div>
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Ashley Friezehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04782721872899081046noreply@blogger.com0