Step away from the funny Jewish lady

Well, if they're going to make the Secret Policeman's Balls a more regular thing again, that can only be good. I did some stuff with Amnesty International at school and it's very worthwhile and very important and I genuinely think there are few organisations more deserving of a couple of hours of your time every so often.

Every so often, since, 1976, they organise these gigs; Wikipedia notes the first was organised by John Cleese, and they had heavy Python/Beyond the Fringe involvement from the outset. They did a bunch in the 80s but they seem to have trailed off in recent years. I was only dimly aware of the name, and missed the previous revival in 2001, which was organised by St Eddie of Izzard. Who was on tonight as well, doing much the same jokes about God as he's been doing since Definite Article. I mean, I love Eddie, seriously, but his stand-up is, to put it politely, remarkably ... thematically consistent.

Then there were highlights from Russell Brand - who is both an incredibly funny man and an incredible cunt, which means I am conflicted internally - and the Pub Landlord, and, oh, a whole bunch of people, Julian Rhind-Tutt and Stephen Mangan off Green Wing, Richard E Grant, Jo Brand, Seth Green, Chevy Chase for some reason ... and more ...

Unfortunately, the lowlight was Sarah Silvermann. I've been desperate to see some of her stand-up since I read this incredibly interesting article about her in the Observer magazine earlier in the year, all about how she was controversial and yet and at the same time very Jewish. And then I saw her on tone of those Comedy Central Roasts and she was good on that, and so I bounced about a bit in my armchair when they announced her on stage ... and it turned out her stand-up is actually shit. It's not even pseudo-offensive comedy, although it tries to be, God bless her, she's just really, really lame. She's the sort of person who would come on stage at Komedia or Jongleurs and just have people talking through her set. In fact, I think the audience were actually talking through her set. There was certainly precious little laughter. So, you know, I don't need to see her again in anything ever.

If you ever get the chance to see this one, then watch it. It was a thoroughly enjoyable couple of hours nevertheless.

The lo-fat alternative to NaNoWriMo

I first tried doing NaNoWriMo in, gosh, 2002, when I wrote a 15,000 word epic involving dragons and lots of hot teenaged boys discovering their sexuality together in a generally groovy and enlightened way. And then in mid-November I got distracted by looming essay deadlines and ditched the whole enterprise, which was a shame because I'd been doing rather well.

Then I tried again in 2003. At about this time my tastes in fannish things were wending away from dragons and boarding schools and towards giant Japanese robots. This one was about giant robots and it even had a title, it was called A Very English Manga and I got about 500 words into it before I realised what a ridiculous conceit the whole thing was and, once again, ditched it before you could say deus ex machina. Then I went back to worrying about how crap my job was, and as you all know I've been pretty stumped for ideas ever since.

Then I picked this one up off quiet_lucidity, who has spotted a rather intriguing thinger called NaBloPoMo, whereby us lesser mortals who would quite like to think we're authors but can never get it together to actually write fiction update our blogs every day throughout November. I feel that for me this is an eminently achievable target. So while you smug NaNoWriMo mob are off slaving over your hot novels, I get to play in the shallow end of the literary pool with the floats and the giant inflatable crocodile. No boring lengths for me! Someone switch on the wave machine!

To make it a bit more interesting I'm copycatting Fran and am going to carry my camera around for a month and try to do a photo a day. So to kick us off as we move into winter - and by gum it was cold in London today - here's a picture of some nice winter warmers that I took this afternoon.

Bottles of whisky
Originally uploaded by titanic_days.

I've only just set up a Flickr account, so I haven't figured out how to get it to post to LJ looking nice and all. So I may go back to Photobucket, or even try using that insane LJ picture thinger again.