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Tuesday 8th December 2009, 18:14
We’re now 3/5 of the way through this year’s Comedians & Carols shows, and much fun, among the tiredness, driving, and managerial stress, has been had by all. It’s a real treat but also a real beast to organise – each night involves stage-managing up to 14 performers, convening them at an often obscure venue somewhere far from any public transport (and most of the performers don't drive), cram the night full of them, plus multimedia on Powerpoint, props, budgeting, and vitally also making sure the (mostly church) venues are happy we’re the right side of reverent/irreverent/offensive/inoffensive/funny/not funny. But top fun. So, some basic questions...
First question many wonder: is it to do with Nine Lessons & Carols For The Godless? No. I would say this is the opposite, ie. it’s for the Godful, but it is aimed at the Godless too. Only we’re not a bunch of atheists talking science; we’re a bunch of religish folks talking religiocomedy (several nice new words in that sentence).
Second question you may then wonder: which came first? I think ours did. The atheist one got more press cos they’ve got Ricky Gervais. In terms of celebrity, they win at top trumps. In terms of all-round Christmassiness and nice warm rosy feeling at the end of it, I like to feel we come out on top. To be honest the two shows aren’t in any competition, since their show is in central London, and we’re taking ours on the road, to the south coast, the west coast, Yorkshire, Essex and Cambridgeshire. A central London one next year, fo shizzle.
The shows have been lovely, with a nice mix of acts: stand-up, sketch, magic, double-acts, musicians, character acts, videos, carols, and mince pies. Alright, the first one in November took a while to make them feel Christmassy, but as the audience observed, it’s November. Give ‘em a free mince pie though, and they won’t care what month it is – they’ll be harmonising ‘Sing, choirs of angels’ before you know it.
Tonight I write this from a vicarage in York, where we performed just now in the shadow of Yorkminster. I’m convinced York looks Christmassy year round anyway, so it’s great to get to do it here. Feels all Dickensian. Might go out and buy a goose tomorrow, or maybe fling some windows open and ask an urchin to buy one for me for a shiny penny.
So roll on next year, and thanks to all the performers who have been excellent this year in the C&C shows. Christmas cheer has been spread. Happy advent, one and all, and if anyone reading this fancies this show for their own venue/community/church/theatre/big living-room, we’re now booking for 2010. December only.
Tonight, Buckhurst Hill in North-east London/Essex. Do come if you're in the vicinity.
Thursday 12th November 2009, 14:41
...the 11th of November, gunpowder, treason and plot. I’ve been testing at gigs: about half of punters seem to have poppies. Less than usual? Seemed so to me, but who knows. I've felt Poppy Day was more poignant this year, with troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, and our national presence there being such a topic of debate at the moment.
This summer, my wife and I were delighted to have a little post-wedding luncheon with my Cornish relatives at a really nice hotel on the Cornish coast. A delightful meal with good folks, and we were treated wonderfully by a female maitre d’ (mistress d’?). We got talking to her, and she was a great woman, who had sadly last her husband not long before, and had both her boys being sent overseas to Afghanistan that very next week. Last week, one of her son’s names has been in the news. The day he was due to return, he was killed.
I never met him and barely met her, but remembering his proud mother, the news story has had the horrid title of being the first time that I’ve known in some small way the family/friends of a serviceman killed in a modern war. It adds an awful new dimension to the news story, and indeed to Remembrance Sunday. I'm well aware too that I'm probably part of a minority - more and more Brits have a friend, relative or acquaintance that they've lost in modern warfare.
I vary opinions about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Wiser, better-informed people than I equally waver, so I’m not going to make up an opinion just for the sake of it. I don’t know if they’re fighting unwinnable wars, but troops in both countries are fighting darn hard ones. Seeing the film The Hurt Locker recently gave the merest glint of the tough conditions out there and the frighteningly vague enemy they’re up against. I’m quite pacifist, but I 100% support them now they're out there, especially now that Poppy Day has come around, and especially now I can picture the family of one of these guys.
I don’t want to sound like a crap panellist on The X Factor and use idiotic percentiles twice in one blog post, but I am 110% sure that no soldier is going to read this blog, now or ever, but anyway, I wish ‘em well. I’ve seen the running order of a comedy gig line-up they’re being sent in the next few weeks, and they’ve got some good acts coming their way. They’ve got some crap ones too, but that’s just like any gig in the UK, so at least that should remind them of home. Be well, chaps and chapesses.
Friday 30th October 2009, 03:00
It’s Halloween! Woo! But not for churches. Many have ‘Light’ events, to promote the flip side of Halloween, ie. to encourage young uns to not go out dabbling in the dark arts of Trick or Treating or the like. I fall somewhere between the two. I too am anti-Halloween, but for a different reason. It’s rubbish.
Does anyone really like it? It’s just there because it’s not quite Christmas and we need a reason for a party. But wait a week and you’ve got Fireworks Night. That’s great for a party. You get fireworks and everything – the clue’s in the name. But Halloween? I don’t want to answer the door to some acne-ridden oik with a cape round his shoulders, demanding in a voice that’s just broken today that we give him some sweets or he’ll spray foam over our car. Most of the time you either look at them trying to work out if they’re too old to be doing this (15 year olds trick-or-treating just comes across as threatening) or too young (either they’re on their own, in which case it feels weird, or their parents are with them, in which case you get the impression the kids don’t want to be there at all, but Mum made a costume specially).
I have the luxury of an evening job, so I’m delighted to say that I’ve made it my business to have a gig every October 31st that I can remember. Those trick-or-treaters will just find an empty house. Ha. But given that only this month a survey came out that the vast majority of UK householders don’t want carol-singers at their doors because it feels like home invasion, can we not also conclude that these people don’t want trick-or-treaters either? I shall be buying no sweets this year. If any kids come round a day early (I’ve seen that before – thus ruining my gig-booking scheme), they’ll be getting chopped-up bits of liver wrapped in Quality Street wrappers.
If this all sounds like a Halloween-based Scrooge, then we Brits only have ourselves to blame. The Americans do it and do it properly, but to the extent that it’s now a fancy dress party extraordinaire. And that goes beyond horror into Superman costumes and the like, and that I don’t mind so much. It’s the prospect of going out on October 31st to find a bunch of women dressed as ghoulish vamps with red juice running down their cheeks as they lollop zombiefied to the nearest pub that’s got a special drinks offer on. I’ve seen that all summer – they’re called hen dos, and they’re not pretty.
I applaud the churches in doing something different, even though ‘Light Services’ probably sound as painful to non-Christians as the words ‘secular funeral’ do to churchy types. The worry is that kids will go from Trick or Treat to Ouija boards in one easy step. While I don’t think that happens much, I can almost see why they would, just because, as I say, Halloween is so boring. You come back from Trick or Treat, you’ve listened to The Time Warp and The Monster Mash, you don’t know what else to do for the rest of the evening. Someone’s suggested a horror movie at the cinema to round off the night, but it’s only Saw VI and Halloween II, so even that’s a rubbish plan. You’ve got a whole week to wait till fireworks, so what else do you do? Out comes that most deadly of demonic boards: Monopoly. And then it all really kicks off as no one can quite remember the rules and suddenly Jon owns everything and he’s also the banker. Coincidence? I don’t think so. Then it all kicks off and then there’s real blood.
So yes, by all means have your Light services, good churches. But best of all, let’s hope Halloween and The Light Nights cancel each other out, and we can all get back to a nice normal Saturday night with The X Factor, a bottle of wine, and no annoying knocks at the door from feral kids that look like they want to burgle you.
Bah, humbug! (Wait a minute, that’s not a humbug – it’s a bit of liver wrapped as a humbug...)
Wednesday 28th October 2009, 13:10
I haven’t blogged in a record amount of time for me. I’d like to think this is because I’ve realised the true value of work, and that my creative energies are best focused on the epic film script I’ve just written. No. The truth is, I’ve found twitter.
To start I thought the two were able to co-exist. Micro-blogging and macro-blogging (this is macro-blogging, by the way. What a posh word for what is basically an apology to approximately no one)... But because twitter has that bite-sized quality, whatever you are thinking, so long as you are thinking a thing, can be squeezed into it. The fact that you can do it from your phone means that you can ‘tweet’ during a bad film in a cinema, or even a good film, or a minute before you go onstage, or even onstage itself (I have not done this... yet. Adam Hills, I hear tell, is a fan of this). It’s rare you’re out and about and think, “You know what I really need to get out there to the world: this 500-word long blog.” More likely it’s things like ‘Don’t go and see Saw VI: it’s rubbish’. Or ‘Had a lovely gig in Liverpool’. Or even more likely: ‘Had a lovely gig in Leeds’.
So that’s my reasoning for lack of blogging. I may blog more, now I’ve remembered too, but more than likely, my main witterings will be over on twitter.com/paulkerensa. You don’t need to be on twitter to read them – you can just go to that link in the previous sentence. If you sign up though to twitter, then you can ‘follow’ (like friending on Facebook), and help soothe my ego. Twould be appreciated. Thanks.
Sunday 13th September 2009, 13:50
- The next day was officially rubbish. Allegeny Forest is great to look at from a distance, but when we drove through the middle of this 100-mile square national park, we realised that you literally can't see the wood for the trees. Best stand well back for the best view. Then when I insisted we visit Youngstown, Ohio, just cos our surname is Young (not Kerensa – do not be fooled), well that was a letdown. Turns out Youngstown is the Mafia capital of the country. Who knew? Well we did, as we drove through and felt like we were driving through a warzone.
- Then came Pittsburgh, and the real reason for our trip - a medical conference which was a joy to behold, sharing stories with other bellybuttonless folks and meeting for the first time other people whose bladders are as wonky as mine. Got to love you, guys. I gave a little speech, which had everyone wetting themselves. Although that could have been the wonky bladders. The queue for the toilets was impressive anyway.
- The host of the conference then took us to our very first baseball game. Woo! After loading up on Pittsburgh Pirates memorabilia, he informed us that even locals don’t do that cos they never win. Except when we're in town, when they thrash the Milwaukee Brewers. In yo face, Milwaukee! In yo brewing face.
- Then we hit the road again, onto Amish Pennsylvania. A fine excursion, and great to see their much simpler, often more attractive way of life. Many on the tour bus couldn't understand how they could live as they did, with horses and carts being their only vehicles. Then our tour bus overheated and we were stuck by the roadside for an hour in the sweltering heat, and the horse and cart idea sounded pretty good after all. A great experience, were it not for the fact that it was my wife's birthday, and being where we were, we struggled to find anywhere to serve us booze. In fact the Smorgasbord Diner we ate dinner at was probably as far from a birthday dinner as Zoe had had in mind. Sorry about that, m'dear. Oh for a Wendy's there. Ironically the village was called Bird-In-Hand. Maybe we should have waited to dine at Two-in-the-Bush.
- Our last day saw us take in some unusual placenames. We visited Intercourse, PA. We didn't make it to Climax, PA (it was a bit far and I was tired). Also we narrowly avoided Panic, PA and Hooker, PA. Another time, when we’ve got the money.
- Finally we ended up in Washington DC, with a whistlestop tour of the famous sights. Delighted to see that since I was there last a mere 10 months ago, they've removed Abe Lincoln's 'No Sitting' sign, probably after I satirically posted it online, citing the irony that he's sitting. Do you see? He's sitting, and yet it says 'No Sitting'. Well not any more. Kerensa causes sign-changes with his satire. Zing! Outta the park. Okay, too much baseball for me...
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