Block Copy Coders

It’s odd, over the years I’ve admired a lot of what Mark Thomas has done but that admiration has been pretty steely and not accompanied by much in the way of affection. It wasn’t until about 15 minutes into his stand-up show at the Royal Theatre in Winchester a couple of days ago it all became clear. Thomas was just getting into his stride about the SOCPA act and how with the help of a few friends he’d been subverting it in both ingenious and funny ways.

I’m still not feeling the love and then it hit me why; Mark Thomas’s delivery is scarily similar to Shane Richie’s. He’s a near identical cheeky, cheereful, chirpy chappie, silly voicing the characters that populate his monologue, plenty of conspiratorial asides to the audience and a fair amount of face pulling too. He’s even got a voice that sounds like there’s a gallon of phlegm swilling around the back of his mouth, something Shane Richie, Sara Cox and Roy Hattersley are all similarly afflicted with.

I’m sitting there laughing at some wildly inventive, near aggressively funny comedy that I’ve nothing but admiration for but at the same time the Shane Richie alarm’s going off in the back of my head and making me feel itchy. Luckily demystification being a fantastic cure for fear and hatred and all qualms melt away.

Lucky that as the show was absolutely excellent. The first half was a tale of a slew of protests by Thomas and Chums stretching the SOCPA act’s requirement for permission from the police before waving any banners near Parliament Square to near breaking point.

The second half is look at the arms trade and had moments as brilliantly ludicrous as the first but heads towards a serious and affecting end where agit-prop hi-jinks end up in stopping the illegal import and sale of some very nasty weapons of torture. He holds the audience really well, bringing them from hysterical laughter to near silence and on the edge of their seats as the gig comes to a close.

Surprisingly ace and once images of gurning ex blue-coat Richie had been exorcised from my mind a show that I really enjoyed. Pretty surprised to be saying it’s some of the best comedy I’ve seen this year.

He’s still playing the below dates, if you’re near any of these venues it’d be well worth checking out:

• Swindon – Mon, 2 July (20:00) – Arts Centre – SN1 4BJ
• Oxford – Wed, 4 July (20:00) – Pegasus – OX4 1RE
• Oxford – Thu, 5 July (20:00) – Pegasus – OX4 1RE
• London – Mon, 9 July (19:00) – Tricycle Theatre – NW6 7JR – 2 shows on the same night
• London – Mon, 9 July (21:00) – Tricycle Theatre – NW6 7JR – Note 2 shows on the same night
• Newbury – Wed, 11 July (20:00) – New Greenham Arts Centre – RG19 6HN
• Aldershot – Thu, 12 July (20:00) – West End Centre – GU11 3JD
• Tolpuddle – Sat, 14 July (19:30) – Tolpuddle Festival – DT2 7EH
• Galway – Wed, 18 July (21:00) – Radisson SAS Hotel – Galway Arts Festival
• Norwich – Thu, 19 July (20:00) – Playhouse – NR3 1AB
• Norwich – Fri, 20 July (20:00) – Playhouse – NR3 1AB

Another splash and dash update. Been a bit hectic work wise the last couple of days but that’s been pretty easy to deal with after a really relaxing weekend We had The Lovely Suze’s Mum and fiancee Rod over on Friday for a really nice night of good food and a few drinks which was followed by a quick dash to Bristol on the Saturday for Suze’s twin niece’s birthday party who are just five. Another evening of good food, drink and company and then back home on Sunday. All in all very convivial and nice Got a few piccies to:

Still have a fair few things to get out the of the way this week, not least start sorting a trip out to hamburg for early July. There’s some really fabulous work stuff brewing as we come to the end of the our current projects as well. The nature of these things mean it’s fairy hush hush but I’m really hoping when the land settles I’ll be able to post more about it here soon.

More comedy this week to, we’re off to see Mark Thomas in Chichester tomorrow. Be interested to see what he’s like live. To be honest I’ve found some of the stuff he’s done a little bit right-on but after hearing a piece on Radio 4 about rights to demonstrate that made me laugh out loud I thought he may be worth a go

And at the end of the week it’s off to Norfolk for one of Bernie and Jim’s excellent parties, this one being particularly special as it’s her 50th

And just as bizarrely as it started

Out near London yet again last night and once again a mix of business and pleasure. Unfortunately the Super Sekrit nature of some of the stuff I saw means there’s not a lot to report. After that we sojourned to the pub where it was great to see Mr and Mrs 71motei, Guy, Glen and a few new peeps I’d not met before from the vastly populated Guildford development scene.

Guy climbing out the of the roof of his car

71m and Dave

And on the way back I was able to add the album of creepy pictures featuring drunk sleeping men on public transport.

That one’s not quite a sclerotic as the previous two. Off to Bristol this weekend with the in-laws to see Suze’s Bro and family. Should be nice

I don’t want to known as someone who only sings when their winning so it’s only fair to report that in my 3 way Geo Wars battle I now rank last and even worse in competition to hit 2m I’ve also been vanquished by The Mighty Shelley. On Saturday I thought I was doing pretty well, 4 games all above a mill but below my current high score of 1.3m. In Geo Wars I’ve found that your highest scores have a fair bit of luck involved but if you can push you average score up then in the end that’s going result in getting you further up the leaderboad.

So I was mentally rubbing imaginary hands with invisible glee at the prospect of reasserting my Geo Wars manliness in the near future. Until this came through last night of course:

Jon always seems to be the bearer of bad Geo Wars news and all I can really say about is BAH! It’d be lot easier if I gave up at this point but I’ll at least try to hit my 2m goal sometimes soon

The text of Shelley’s Geo Wars dominance came through on the train last night as I’d hot footed it into town to see Bleachy who was in London for one night so few turbo beers were in order. Good fun as ever, nice mix of work an social. The train back was a pain, maintenance works meant part of the journey was by bus and I’m a bit shit at busses. A wag at South Western trains did have an attempt at cheering the passengers with this:

To pass the time I also took some pictures of drunk snoring sleeping men. I’m thinking of starting a flickr group for them.

It all made sense a full of Kronenburg but in the cold light of day there’s something a little creepy about it all

Recently I’ve been subjected to vicious persecution for exercising my right to free speech when reviewing a comedy night we attended last week. Yes, my appraisal wasn’t wholly positive and that fearless drive on my part to tell it the way it is has drawn blazing ire from an Internet Mental.

Fear of more harsh words would shut up a lesser man but I realise that if I roll over we may as well admit Al Quaeda has won! As Benjamin Franklin said:

They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security

And he knows what he’s talking about, he invented the electric kite!

So last Friday we saw Isy Suttie and Russell Howard compered by Colin Owens in Totton and as a result here’s the review The Man doesn’t want you to hear!

The compere Colin Owens was excellent. Here’s a picture of him being excellent:

Isy Sutti was similarly excellent. I didn’t get a picture as she was too excellent to take a photo of.

Russell Howard was excellent (actually he really was excellent) this is a very unexcellent picture of him being er.. well excellent.

More biting opinions soon!

All the best ideas are stolen and I thieved this one from my mate Dan. All you have to do is find somewhere on the web that has an interesting web cam, write a little script to capture images from it over a period of time and then convert the images into a movie

Here’s the Spinaker Tower in Gunwharf, Portsmouth:

[flv:/video/spinaker.flv 352 288]

Readers of this blog will have noticed there’s been the odd kerfuffle from time to time here, most notably the Wii Cripple and more recent mystery Geometry Wars (not so) mysterious random abuser.

The Devil, a mere beginner at evil

Yesterday’s post about the worst stand up I’ve seen has managed to conjure up yet more ire from the internets.

A bit of self googling on the part of Ashley Frieze, the guy we saw at Hamptons, led him here. He read the post and left a message for me. No psychotic ranting just a small comment and link to his own blog where he mentions what the negative comments but apart from a mildly sulky comment about fat jibes he was pretty cool.

I did feel a little guilty reading the guy’s blog, he’s not having a great time right now and was already fully aware Hampton’s wasn’t his finest hour. I can imagine it stung a little finding some unqualified punter running him down a bit but if you’re going to take money in return for entertaining people being taken to task when you fall short is fair enough. The guilt abated after finding Ashley’s more than happy name and shame those he’s felt some minor slight from for “poor service” and hopes they’ll feel his wrath by googling for their own name.

Today though an Ed Gee who ZeeeeeeerINGGGSSSSSSSSS me right in the comments section with this

Mr Frieze must be really worried to know he was criticised by someone who feels the need to shout on a web page about what sort of camera they’ve got, and how good they think their Apple Mac is (a machine originally designed for people who can’t cope with two mouse buttons), and apparently reads the Guardian. I bet he’s quaking in his boots.

As for Ed Gee, his IP address is from Newcastle where from reading his blog is somewhere the compere has lived. It’s probably an overly zealous friend standing up for their mate. Which is fair enough. And he’s pretty much spot on; I am big Guardian reading twat who prefers Macs and likes taking pictures with a camera of quality that outstrips my ability to use it.

10 out of 10 for effort you’re not going to make much of an impression or change anyone’s behaviour with duplo slurs like these. They’re the sort Care Bears would toss around after a night on the pop or in the middle of pre leaky week.

D-, worst homework yet, must try harder

As for the stand up guy? He’s booked in October to MC a few more gigs in Southampton and I hope he’s a lot better. If he is I’m man enough to admit I was wrong about him

Russel Howard tonight in Totton, hope he’s good and if not he hasn’t a shed load of hypersensitive friends in Newcastle who’re going to feyly rip me to bits.

I’m not sure what force propels some people towards an open mic and use it as an instrument of torture. Whatever it is that force was throbbing with extreme and frightening power last night as it dragged Ashely Frieze onto the stage at Hampton’s in Southampton where he performed some of the worst stand up I’ve ever seen. He started with a bit of cliched too and fro to the audience gleaning information so he can adlib some comedy funnies:

And you madam what do you do? A student? Oh lots of day time TV no doubt! And you sir? You’re what? In IT? HAHAHAHA! You could fix her computer!

It didn’t get much better than that. I’ll laugh at most stuff but Ashley has managed to nudge the comedy needle into the most frightening of places; right at the very edge of “extremely bad” but still solidly outside the “so bad it’s funny” zone.

Now this guy’s been doing comedy for nearly 4 years now, I think it’s his day job and he’s looking far from underfed. Assuming over that time his act has improved you’d have thought he’d had the tools to handle the odd heckle in his comedey arsenal . Apparently not

Ashley: So we’re here to see some comedy tonight!
Mark: When does it start?

He just looked very upset and genuinely taken aback. He’s probably a nice guy without a malicious bone in his body and that he’s persisting in a career he’s not immediately suited for probably isn’t even his fault. This sort of misapplication of effort is usually down to a slight myopia regarding your own talents and often overly friendly encouragement from your nan (”ooo aren’t you funny Ashley, you should be on the telly!”).

Maybe I’m being too harsh, maybe his gentle non challenging comedy is subtle in ways my brutish sense of humour just isn’t able to comprehend. Maybe he’s a Richard Digance for the 21st century or a Richard Stilgoe. That or just completely shit.

Judge for yourself reader

The crowd were near catatonic when Ashley left stage but Robin Ince and Russel Kane both got the crowd going again. Each were great in their own way, Ince trying out some new material he’s going to use at the Fringe and Kane getting a shedload of laughs through a quickfire delivery slightly similar to the excellent Russell Howard.

All in all a good night, Joy and Jon were out with us and my mum come along too, the first time she’s been to our new place in Soton and we all generally had a good time. Even so my overriding memory this morning is Ashley Frieze doing inept and slightly patronizing observational comedy about chavs and the silly things they say.

I meant to take a camera last night but stupidly forgot. I’m trying to make sure each blog post has a picture so here’s one of the cat we’re looking after that I took this morning

Off to London this evening to meet with more chums for some more drinks. Hoorah!

I’ve seen 3 interesting things in the last day or so.

Number 1 is Facebook: Initial impressions are that these guys have made a fancy schmancy myspace alike. Look a little deeper it becomes apparent they’ve made a completely awesome social networking platform. It has a pretty comprehensive API that allows people to write 3rd party apps for your Facebook page. It makes it very easy to hook in the content from other social networking sites like Flickr or Livejournal. And the default apps that come with it are pretty good to. Myspace is okay, I’m a member of a pretty terrible band that has a page there but it’s shoddily engineered and you can see it’s operating at the limit of it’s abilities right now. Facebook has expandability engineered from the ground up and looks like it has the potential for creating a unified interface for the numerous web apps that I’m a member of. My page is here and so far it’s fair to say I’ve been pretty impressed.

Number 2 is the angriest blind man I have ever seen: And he had very little reason to be angry. The 2nd most angry blind man I’ve seen wasn’t all that angry, he managed to walk into a wall in Holborn. His stick didn’t help as it was in his left hand and the wall in front of the right side of his body. I’d expected a few swears but he just went “OOOFF” and then carried on. The angry blind man I’d seen was at Waterloo east and just heard the announcement that his train was delayed for 3 minutes. I wouldn’t expect anyone to comment on that past a muttered “oh dear” but Angry Blind men shouted out “FUCKING CUNTS” just as I walking by. Which made me laugh and in turn led to him muttering “fucking cock sucker”. I retreated to a safe distance and took this picture:

fig(i) “You fucking cocksucker!”

And immediately afterwards he turned and started looking directly at me. I’m no coward but the man was angry and had a stick so I sloped off even further down the platform.

Number 3 (and most excellent of the three) was: catching up with an old friend Andrew Carter who I haven’t seen for around 16 years. We knew each other when we both worked for Beam Software (formerly Melbourne House) in Australia after being shipped over from the UK as they were having trouble getting skilled technical staff to fulfil the contracts we had. I stayed for year and Andy stayed for a lot longer eventually ending up running the company we’d both started at as programmers. I had an awesome time in Oz and made many good friends.

fig(ii) Andrew Carter, author of the mighty Warhawk and Scuba Kidz

It was hard too as I had to write a game on platform I’d never worked on before in a relatively short amount of time. On top of that there was a very authoritarian technical management on the project’s where the company’s CEO would arbitrarily (and with little insight) dictate how things should be done. The Brits in the studio lead a bit of revolution and did things the way we thought was right and long term that was a big step forward for Beam. Unfortunately the CEO’s ego was more than a little bruised and the transition to more modern development techniques was a bit painful for him. And me as being the mouthiest of the group I got singled out for insurrection I got the game done and I’m really proud of it too. After that I left.

Fast forward 16 years and we’re in a pub in Greenwich and having a chat like no time has passed at all He now works for a big German publisher / distributor and is setting up a studio in Singapore. It’s interesting as some aspects of the paths we’ve both trod since Oz have been very similar, both having moved from the technical to the managerial, and by separate routes we’ve ended up with very similar views on running game development. It was really good to see him and we shouldn’t leave it so long until the next time.