Excerpts from the Edinburgh Fringe 2005

I realised I was dyslexic when I went to a toga party dressed as a goat.
- Marcus Brigstocke at the Assembly Rooms

Cats have nine lives. Which makes them ideal for experimentation.
- Jimmy Carr

The dodo died. Then Dodi died, Di died and Dando died... Dido must be sh*tting herself.
- Colin & Fergus at the Pleasance

My parents are from Glasgow which means they're incredibly hard, but I was never smacked as a child ... well, maybe one or two grams to get me to sleep at night.
- Susan Murray at the Underbelly

Is it fair to say that there'd be less litter in Britain if blind people were given pointed sticks?
- Adam Bloom at the Pleasance

My mum and dad are Scottish but they moved down to Wolverhampton when I was two, 'cause they wanted me to sound like a tw*t.
- Susan Murray at the Underbelly

The world is a dangerous place; only yesterday I went into Boots and punched someone in the face.
- Jeremy Limb, at the Trap

I saw that show, 50 Things To Do Before You Die. I would have thought the obvious one was "Shout For Help".
- Mark Watson, Rhod Gilbert at the Tron

I went out with an Irish Catholic. Very frustrating. You can take the Girl out of Cork...
- Markus Birdman at the Pod Deco

Got a phone call today to do a gig at a fire station. Went along. Turned out it was a bloody hoax.
- Adrian Poynton at the Pleasance

Employee of the month is a good example of how somebody can be both a winner and a loser at the same time.
- Demetri Martin at the Assembly Rooms

A dog goes into a hardware store and says: "I'd like a job please".
The hardware store owner says: "We don't hire dogs. Why don't you go join the circus?"
The dog replies: "What would the circus want with a plumber".
- Steven Alan Green at C34

Hey - you want to feel really handsome? Go shopping at Asda.
- Brendon Burns at the Pleasance

It's easy to distract fat people. It's a piece of cake.
- Chris Addison at the Pleasance

I enjoy using the comedy technique of self-deprecation - but I'm not very good at it.
- Arnold Brown at The Stand

If you're being chased by a police dog, try not to go through a tunnel, then on to a little seesaw, then jump through a hoop of fire. They're trained for that.
- Milton Jones at the Underbelly

Christ, I thought the UK was ahead of the curve on humour. These are pants.

I am telling you guys, I know you are all sinners but I want at least one of these.

So I can laugh my arse off.

Oh yeah and damn straight.

Every now and then I miss Panshita. He is a red blooded heterosexual in spite of a youth spent wrestling to achieve the state championship. And he is refreshingly refreshing. He is not a man of nuance. I may, at times, have feared for my life, but I have always been confident that, if requested he would break the neck of anyone I asked him with no questions asked. These people are my people.

So it was that I braved the Monday night rain and headed down to the east village. P does not like to venture out of his neighborhood, not as a result of deference to his locale but because he is lazy. He also refuses to meet anywhere other than his apartment. Any offer to meet in a bar is always countered by a request that one reviews an item of recently purchased furniture. It is hard to refuse P, as he is wont to yell incomprehensibly down the telephone. There is only so much blood dripping out of my ear up with which I am prepared to put. There is also an enormous amount of amusement ot be had in observing the P in his habitat. It's a fucking nice triplex and he likes to whittle.

P doesn't like umbrellas but since I was carrying one of the golf variety he took the chance at intimacy to put his arm around me and dislocate my shoulder with his right hand. P is built like a brick shit house as we would call it in the UK. He is familiar with human contact during bar fights only and therefore is sometimes careless when around women. Any yelp will always be heartily laughed off.

P: So cute stuff why do you always wince around me?
Me: I wince FOR you. I wince for you and my damaged skeleton. Get the fuck off me.

Slap.

I like to hang out with P in that it gives me an opportunity to lay into a member of the opposite sex, and I mean a sweetly placed closed fist punch in the solar plexus, without any sort of retribution. P always chuckles. He is built of steel and any assault is fruitless.

P: Hey hey I love it when you get feisty.

P grabs my head in both hands and squeezes. My eyes bulge. I wish I had a fontanel.

We walk past Uovo.

Me: Hey this looks nice. Can we go here?
P: No no no. We have a different plan. Tonight we are having all you can eat crab.
Me: Really?
P: Yes. It will be a proper American feast for you. None of this European crap.

There is never any arguing with P. Ever. If he disagrees he just repeats his position ever louder, until he is yelling and you either walk away or give in. I know this now and so do not even agree to meet him unless I know I can deal.

Seated at 3B, I am turning around looking for somewhere to hang my bag, when something wooden, cracks me deftly across the back of my skull. It hurts. It was well executed and I can feel a degree of constraint. I turn round and P is holding his belly with one hand, a plastic bib tied tightly around his neck and the laughter is consuming his entire body. His right hand is clutching a wooden mallet. Oh Christ I think. I am in an all you can eat crab night with P and the instrument of the evening is a wooden fucking hammer. I am in hell.

P has 5 beers to my glass of wine. During the evening I have 2 glasses to his 10 bottles of Corona. He is enviably good at drinking. He consumes these in just under 2 hours and leaves for the bathroom once. But P is annoyed with my retarded style of crab cracking. Small multiple blows to the shell are not manly. P likes to sink the mallet into the crab, smashed down by his right fist. The first time he shows me how to do this, my eyes are sprayed with bay and I have to leave to go to the bathroom to soak them. They are burning. P thinks I take this like a good sport but I really want to bury the mallet into his face.

It's the actual body of the crab that confuses me. I know I am not supposed to eat the weird looking shit. But I want to know how to hit the main body of the thing so that it opens up easily. Is there any where to put the hammer so that the thing opens up easily?

P is always excited about instruction and almost throws his mallet across the table. It disappears into my crab. He picks up the crab shell and palls it apart with his hands.

P: This bit her is the guts. The brown sludge.

P tips the body to show me and then shakes it so that the brown sludge flys out of the shell and slides down my chest, underneath my shirt. I am resigned to the ecening. P laughs loudly anyway and wipes his hands in his hair.

Me: So how are you coping with laundry these days.
P: I have my own machine.
Me: Yes I saw that but do you use it?
P: Sometimes. But I never wash my pants. I don't wash those on principle.

P asks me to walk him home. His hair is full of crab shell - "no flesh though!" I decline. It is Monday after all.

I love you Richard

I went to see Richard Dawkins this morning speak at the Alvin Ailey Dance Theater (christ how I hate to spell it that way) and I was completely bowled over. Maybe it is the English accent or the suave grey locks (he is 66, older than my Dad) but I think it was probably his description of religion as a virus planted in the minds of children that made me rejoice so wholeheartedly. He was so passionate in his contempt! Ahhhhh I love him. And so funny! He refused to even name Bush preferring to refer to him as "that man you mentioned". For an hour and a half I almost longed to be back in England where only 25% of the populace would describe themselves as having religious beliefs until I remembered that the misery of the place could make a mormon an atheist.

Dawkins believes that whilst the human brain evolved with a purpose, to search for food etc for basic survival purposes, it faces a crisis in that now, being a fantastically sophisticated organ, it has a hard time computing that its environment, the universe, has no such purpose. Dawkins thinks we need to accept and grow the fuck up. There is no meaning. Shit happens. He refuses to debate creationsists as being seen on a podium with a scientist is the credibility they seek.

Richie Rich Rich. He noted the successful marketing of religion, here in the US in particular, and accepted that as a scientist he had a responsibility to "get out a bit" and sex up Dawinism. People don't like to grow up - they like to be told what to do and what to believe: to remain an eternal child. It is an attractive proposition even though it can manifest itself as repression. We are back again to his idea of religion being a virus as is found in computers and how it replicates itself in others. I am not sure the brights are necessarily the way forward however. A perusal of the website shows The Advice Goddess to be a founder member.

I think I might go to this. I crave humanists. Rich will be there as well. Maybe I can jump him.

Also, interesting article by Peter Singer on euthanasia. It's repetitive of the President of Good and Evil minus the histrionics.

Today I am feeling for the Rene. I have heard through a good authority that her declaration of "fraud" ties in nicely with Kenny Chesney playing for the other team. Oh baby, nothing hurts as much as the dawn of that first realization, unless of course he also ran off with your Creme de la Mer. Since she seems unable to move muscles in her face which would enable her to cry, I hope she's not sitting home and eating jars of Branston Pickle, unlike me who just finished off a jar of Ricks Picks when I should be out on the toon instead of cooped up in stalker central watching DVDs.

But hey, who said life is not coincidental? Or was that no one? Anyway, I just watched "Nurse Betty", a movie in which everything was so eerie familiar, especially the presence of Greg Kinnear in the role of arsehole. I am not really sure what La Bute had in mind with this one, or Possession for that matter which I thought was shite. Still Morgan Freeman does have one good line, something along the lines of how you don't need a shitty husband or a wacko doctor when you have yourself. Yes please thank you.

Anyway Rene, whilst you are fixing your gaydar, may I present you with words of wisdom from the wise (no, that's not from me but something I gleaned last night from someone who knows).

Red flags

1. More than four pairs of shoes.
2. More than seven pairs of socks.
3. More than five pairs of trousers.

That's it? Damn.

I want this phone although I doubt somehow that I will be able to get it on T-Mobile since they suck. Sort it out, Zeta Jones.

I am moving my US love to material items, where it will be safe. Safe and happy and happy and safe. Err, well that and toy boys then.

My UK love resides adamantly with the nieces. Two beautiful little people who love me just cos, even though I don't deserve it. They don't even know me but everything they give is unconditional. I love them back but they scare me. It's as though they know the secret to life. Maybe they do. Maybe it is cbeebies. In which case, now that I have told you, you all owe me money.

At least with this breakup it's the anal sex I get to miss.

Still, I manage to amuse my self with this article from the beeb about dominatrixes.

This woman rocks.

"For him, it's really about the sacrifice and the service.

So when we get into heavy flogging, it's important for him to be in a sacred ritual space.

We don't engage in any verbal back-and-forth. It becomes a moment for meditation and silence and contemplation.

The only thing you usually hear is the sound of the whip on his skin.

I've achieved the power over men that I experience through, first and foremost, being able to feel complete control over myself, being able to define for myself very clearly what I want to get of a relationship."

Oh Goddess Vanessa, teach me.

This guy has nothing on me

Precisely

Testing Testing

I have a stupid habit of putting myself in ludicrous situations just to see if I can actually get myself out of them. I have managed to wean myself off this to some extent as I have aged and just become lazy in general. Still though, I like to keep myself on my toes, so every now and then I play Ryuchi Sakamoto "Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence" just to see what may tug at the heart strings. Does it feel like someone has torn a muscle in my chest? If I don't have a nervous breakdown I generally feel that everything will be ok. But it's all rather pointless really in that everything will all be ok anyway. Everything is ok. Everything always was.

Looking out across the ocean yesterday, staring at the sail boats, I was reminded of a trip I took to Fishers Island four years ago when I had just arrived in New York. Such a virgin. The house was similar, only the one in East Hampton is younger and has fewer bedrooms, but the dramatic locations are the same and both had managed to clear the garbage and the imagined injustice from my mind. Sea air and sancerre is the perfect balm.

I love being a moocher. I will stay anywhere if all I have to do is babysit and bake brownies. I can entertain guests with anecdotes of shaven testicles and regale old men with fabricated stories of past croquet victories. Seriously though, I can do it all. Just as long as there was a welcome to outstay in the first place and the hosts were never a bunch of total fucking wankers.

Shooting at Harvey Nicks. My fave shop in London, after Tescos natch.

Yikes.

Holy crapster.

Yeah so I am going to Tenessee today. It's too exciting.

Never Happy

Pro: You are English
Con: You are posh
Pro: You want to take me to Africa
Con: On some sort of horse riding thing
Pro: You laugh at my jokes
Con: Your laugh
Pro: You gave me a watch
Con: You said I can't pawn it
Pro: You said you hated me
Con: You like exclamation marks

I think Damien Rice should be banned. He makes me cry when I am really happy let alone in shock. Still it reminded me that I owned the screenplay to Closer and so I pulled it out to reread the exchange between Natalie and the hottest guy on the planet, Clive Owen, whom La Stace and I decided yesterday was the only suitable candidate for the future Mr Jennifer Aniston - you always, always have to trade up.

It, being the screenplay, didn't help. Bastard. I did however notice that the real end of the play resolves with Jane/Alice's death and Dan flying out to New York. Larry and Anna have seperated with him living with a nurse, Polly, and Anna has a dog. For once I am pleased to note that Hollywood made the right call on this one and left the ending as miserable as possible and in the air.

Yeah so fucking what. Just because we might have spent a few months of exstatic union, where does it say that we have to hang around each others necks for the rest of our lives, throttling each other with boredom when we can fuck someone else until we hate them too? Nowhere, that's where. Let's move on to the next total fuck up. And pronto.

From today's FT

The London-based Diplomat magazine, required reading for envoys and plenipotentiaries everywhere, reports on a curious visa application test at the British embassy in Skopje.

A Macedonian folk troupe wanted to travel to a festival in Wales but had brought the wrong paper work and left things late.

Embassy staff decided to test their credentials by organising an impromptu performance in the car park.

Since just 35 of the 41 dancers were deemed good enough to receive a visa the group cancelled the trip.




You can read it also here.

Last night I figured out the answer to one of life’s questions that had been haunting me for years: “Why the fuck did I buy this?”

The answer, as it came to me, related to items of clothing only. “Because when you bought it, it fit and it looked fucking great.”

Half my wardrobe had, until last week, been hanging unused for years. Sunday night I slipped into a pair of XS Joseph sparkly non-stretch high-waisted jeans I bought in 1997. Who would have thought that high-waisted jeans would have come back into fashion so dramatically on Sunday night? Yeah bitch, back in fashion like MC Hammer. I thank the Chloe. Hey, did I tell you they were non-stretch as well?

Also, a shout-out to the lady who came right out and told me that she was prettier than me that night: I guess your self-esteem must have needed it but you can go ahead and take that one anyway. You can’t touch me because I was in a pair of trousers that hadn’t seen the night since the 90s. And yeah, they are non-stretch. NON-STRETCH.

I am so glamorous that today I managed to get a hint of suntan whilst waiting on a train station. In New Jersey. My previously blue/white limbs and torso now glisten with a light beige and latent melanoma. Will such wonders ever cease, I ask of myself nightly.

In the meantime, keep your jealousy in check, peeps.

Life is rarely dull. Sometimes it is positively magical. There are times when you have been rejected so utterly by one person and then right behind him is another with a lifelong embrace.

For a while there I was wondering whether I might have broken a rib and then I opened my mail to find that Harlan Estate have welcomed me onto their mailing list.

It may seem irresponsible to throw down a wodge on wine that I have never even tasted and won't get anyway for another six months. But I just love having something special in my wine fridge that I can take out and share with someone I love. All that nervous excitement, it's better than the anticipation from the first time you have sex with someone. Thankfully I am better at the selection of wine than men and I am, whilst imbibing, rarely disappointed.

Oh wow. It's not like I was about to get married anyway but really, fuck that for a game of soldiers......

From this excellent article, I found the following words of wisdom:

There's no incentive to stay married and wait for our children to grow up and come work in the family business, because they won't. If we're really, really lucky, they'll place a few calls and drive us to the nursing home. There's no hardship significant enough to keep us dependent on each other. No famine, polio, Indians. If the hardest thing in your life is that your husband won't pick up the dry cleaning, are you likely to hang in until death do you part? Surely not, when at the first sign of disappointing behavior helpful friends and therapists pipe up: "You can do better." Mutual funds do better, not humans. But why stick with the dope on the next pillow when there's Kate Winslet and George Clooney on cable to fill the twilight hours? And there's no sexual inequity to keep one party in line. In the bad old days, one person -- the woman -- took all the shit. Now who ya gonna call?

but as I've learned, by inserting the well-placed question into many a casual conversation, most married couples are sexually incompatible. People with strong sex drives tend to admire and marry people who basically disapprove of sex. People with low sex drives are intrigued by people with high sex drives. Sexual opposites attract and then go on to torment each other 'til murder or divorce, whichever comes first, do them part.

Via Arts and Letters

Simply too fantastic

From this article in the NYT detailing the murder of a Hong Kong Merrill Lynch banker by his wife.

Ms. Kissel admitted during the trial that when she flew with the children to Vermont in the spring of 2003, fleeing an outbreak of SARS in Hong Kong, she had an affair with a stereo repairman. Her husband suspected the affair and hired a private detective who photographed the repairman's van outside the Kissels' vacation home for several hours nightly.

The husband also installed spy software on Ms. Kissel's laptop computer. The prosecution presented evidence that upon returning to Hong Kong, she had typed search terms like "overdose of sleeping pills" and "medications causing heart attack." She then went to local doctors who wrote a series of prescriptions for sleep medications.

The prosecution charged that Ms. Kissel had served her husband a milkshake laced with Rohypnol, the date-rape drug, and three other sleep-inducing medications, all found in his stomach in an autopsy.

Mr. King also said that Mr. Kissel had frequently coerced his wife into having painful anal sex for five years before his death, and was trying to do so again at the time she killed him. He presented evidence that Mr. Kissel had used his computer to look at homosexual pornography and to search for information about anal sex in Taiwan before taking a trip there.

"I was asked to run a marathon,
I said, "no way."
They said 'come on, please, it's
for spastics and blind children.'
So I thought, fuck it, I could win this."

Weltschmerz

Constant nausea is fantastic. I am now on Day 2 of the “Unable To Eat” diet and already my face is a skull. I reckon if I can keep this up into next week I shall be slipping into all the clothes I bought at the John Varvatos sample sale sans shoehorn. I shall be so light that I merely float above the treadmill. And then I shall rock and be loveable.