Stand-Up at the Big Fish

So, This American Life have devoted one of their TV shows to stand-up. Here's a clip, where they cover an open mic night at a bar. I hope this gives you an idea of why I'm so excited about my open mic project, and all the stories and people that are out there:



I don't agree with Ira Glass's commentary by the way. Like most of his TAL introductions, it brings a single interesting or provocative thesis to the table rather than trying to summarise a complex situation, like in the Telephone episode, where he says that (I paraphrase) 'when you talk to some on the phone, it's one of the most intimate forms of communication there is - it's like you're whispering in their ear'. I don't think that's wholly true, but it's a surprising and interesting and fresh way of looking at the subject, and that's the whole point of these lead-ins. In their own way, each of Ira Glass's intros is like a 'didja ever notice?' stand-up bit. It's why TAL is so consistently damn good.

But anyway, the idea he advances that all stand-up open mics are huge, lethal peaks that we send these junior skiers out to practise on just isn't true. Some are bearpits, some are like quirky, touching little support groups where all sorts of misfits and strugglers can come along and be accepted. Most are somewhere in between. Some can be one or the other, depending on the night. Some lurch between the two states during a single night. It's an incredibly diverse world where a lot of human emotion is just out there, presented in its raw form. It's like what reality TV once aspired to be.

If you liked that (if? psssh!) then you should listen to the first story in this radio episode of TAL: Lost In Translation, where Starlee Kine and Jonathan Goldstein go and do karaoke stand-up, on a karaoke machine which contains stand-up routines as well. It is good.

Ukulele Record Breakers, Glastonbury and Horrific Torture

So here's a video of our attempt to break the world record for most ukuleles playing together at the London Ukulele Festival. I'd been there to open the Grass Ukes Stage, and also because they had an open mic, but I think the world record attempt was pretty much the biggest open mic I've ever been too! You can see me right in the middle of the shot with Tim Junior; I'm wearing a khaki shirt:



It was hella fun.

So today is Homework, the Aisle16 scratch night in Bethnal Green. Doors are at 7:30pm and it only costs three spondools, so you should come. Me, Chris Hicks and John Osborne are providing suppport with new material, then Luke's doing a full preview of his new Edinburgh show, The Petty Concerns Of Luke Wright, where he asks 'How does the desire to be loved by millions turn into an ego trip?'. It will be dead spesh.

I'm feeling pretty down at the moment. I suspect the reasons are threefold. One, publicity for We Can't All Be Astronauts is just about over now, so that's kind of it. Now, we just wait and see whether people buy it, and whether the people who read it like it and tell other people. I guess I'm feeling the post-party crash, and hoping I've done enough to not make it a pricey disappointment for my publishers. Having now been through the process of getting published, it's terrifying to see how much of a book's success or failure hinges on a handful of decisions by just a few people. Having someone pick it to review or decide to use it in a feature can mean the difference between a book reaching its target audience or sinking into obscurity. I'm not sure which of those categories Astronauts will fall into, yet.

Secondly, my grandma phoned and casually gave me the weather report for Glastonbury - torrential thunderstorms. People laugh about these things but constant rain ruins Glastonbury. Despite its history, as an outdoor event it doesn't deal well with bad weather and as a punter, five days of clammy, shivery vagrancy without anywhere to properly sit down is a dismal trial that saps your will to live. Last year was only good because, on Saturday afternoon, the rain relented, and, on Sunday, it was sunny. Sunday was glorious, and I had a great time. The rest of the festival was miserable. Not only that, but last year, we had the awning of Luke's caravan to shelter in, with camping chairs and a cooker and a kettle for tea. This year, we've got none of that - just little canvas cocoons to wriggle into, all sodden and wretched.

So yeah, I'm not looking forward to that. I feel very lucky that, as part of Aisle16, I've been able to perform at Glastonbury three years on the trot, to generally large and appreciative audiences in the big Cabaret Tent. Weather be damned, I love performing there and that's why I'm prepared to stick it out through all the grimness. I've got a grudging admiration for the kinds of people who seem able to shrug off the bad weather and enjoy themselves anyway - that takes a level of resilience I haven't developed yet - but, for me, the sight of a night time downpour blasting thousands of tiny tents just fills me with dread.

Finally, I think I feel bad because I woke up from a nightmare where I was being horribly tortured by a man who had discovered that I was a spy. I was pinned down, and he had a long, thin needle and he was moving it about fast, threatening to jab it into different parts of my body like the soft inside part of my elbow or the corner of my eye, and I was hysterically telling him that I'd confess everything, that I'd tell him what he wanted to know, he just had to stop because I couldn't concentrate if he kept punishing me, but he wouldn't, there was nothing I could do to stop him torturing me, but I knew that it'd be worse if I didn't talk and he wouldn't stop until I'd told him everything he wanted to know. I was hysterical and frantic and the worst thing was feeling like I had no control, like all the usual socialised mechanisms of getting a response out of someone weren't working, and there was nothing I could do to prevent my suffering - my options were 'bad' or 'worse'. I woke up gasping for air, my heart crashing in my chest.

I expect it was my fault for watching the videos from this post on Metafilter about the terrible human rights abuses that still go on today in the North Korean gulags. They're extremely disturbing, but I'm glad I watched them - it's obscene and outrageous that such atrocities continue to happen, although what the international community might be able to do about them is another, far thornier question. Certainly anyone thinking of going on a kooky North Korean government mandated 'sightseeing tour' of NK should think twice about pouring their tourist dollars into a grotesque totalitarian regime.

It's rare that something I've watched translates so quickly and so obviously into a dream. My sleep patterns have been all out of whack for the past week or so. I've had a couple of late night writing sessions that have turned into all-nighters, but also my hayfever was making being up in the day a pretty rubbish, wheezy experience, so I preferred to do my work at night, when the pollen count is lower. One of the effects of messing up your sleep patterns is your dreams become a lot more vivid and memorable. Irritating that they've become memorable-horrific rather than memorable-porny, but I'd rather have horror in my dreams and technicolour carnal theatre in my waking hours than the other way round.

Anyway, if you see me at Glastonbury, give me a hug, eh?

Aisle16 at Glastonbury Festival

It's appropriate that Glastonbury is organised by a farmer, because the ancient and fundamental principle of the yearly harvest also applies to the festival - if the weather's shit, it'll be shit. I hope that the weather isn't shit at Glastonbury 2009, because firstly, have you seen the line up? WHAT. It's actually mental. Blur, Crosby, Stills & Nash, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Art Brut, Nick Cave, Roots Manuva, our chums Wave Machines, our chum John Smith opening the Acoustic Stage on Friday, ROLF HARRIS. I repeat - WHAT. You should read through the line-up, because I guarantee there will be someone who I haven't mentioned who will make you exclaim: 'Tim - how could you leave out x? x are amazing!' where x is the name of an artist or band you admire.

I know your AwesomeScanner currently reads: critical density reached, HOWEVER get ready for it to overheat then short out in a blast of sparks, because I'm going to be performing too, as part of performance poetry collective Aisle16. We're doing half an hour on Friday, Saturday and Sunday in the Cabaret Tent (that massive yellow and blue one in the Circus Field) from 11:40am to 12.10pm. We're also doing a slightly longer set in the Poetry & Words Tent on Saturday afternoon, 5:15pm-5:55pm. That's over two hours of Aisle16 - longer than most of the headliners get. I know, I know. We're incredibly chill.

Come and see us one of those times! It's poetry but the twist is it's not shit. If you're not familiar with Aisle16 allow me to break down the Glastonbury roster into a quintet of crude archetypes: Joe is the sardonic scholar. John Osborne is the kindly uncle. Chris is Michael Douglas in Falling Down. Ross is Charles Bukowski, if instead of being drunk he was just a bit tired. And I'm the sex-pest who takes onlookers' embarrassed laughter as encouragement.

So yes. Aisle16 at Glastonbury - 11:40am every day in the Cabaret Tent, and 5:15pm on Saturday in the Poetry & Words Tent. Set a reminder on your mobile. You'll only forget otherwise - you know what you're like. I'll also be making a number of solo appearances - catch me wandering dead-eyed across the festival site at 7:30 every morning, clutching a bundle of soiled rags to my chest and howling something about needing medicine for my baby.

In other news, while browsing the Ebury Twitter feed I found a link to this review of We Can't All Be Astronauts on a blog called The Slammer. It's a really positive review and I feel chuffed: 'A less safe pair of hands would make certain passages sound whiny and irritating, but Clare’s passion for the subject matter lifts these moments into a real-life triumph of the underdog tale. His self-deprecating humour is also a major virtue - particularly when it comes to briefly being "Jeffrey Archer’s bitch" on national TV.' Ha - that first sentence becomes unintentionally damning when you remember that the 'subject matter' is me.

Lots of people who've read Astronauts have got in touch to let me know what they thought of it. I try to make a point of replying to everyone, but thanks anyway to all the folks who've taken the time to write to me. I'm surprised at how many people have said that certain sections resonated with them - it's obviously struck a chord with a few frustrated artists out there, and it's been nice to hear that it helped some readers feel slightly less alone in their futile struggle for recognition. Other people just wrote to let me know that they'd laughed at what a twat I am. That's nice too! I can be a bit of a twat - I'm glad that at least I'm a twat who uses his twattery for the forces of good. Too many twats squander their talent. Stupid twats.

Interview With Me, Plus We Can't All Be Astronauts 'Hilarious' Reveals Grazia

There's an interview with me up on essentialwriters.com, which you can go read if you're somehow not satisfied with the current volume of unsolicited self-disclosure on this here weblog. In other news, I am SO in Grazia today. Well, We Can't All Be Astronauts is anyhoo. Lauren Laverne dubs it 'hilarious'. Thank you, Lauren. Do people still chortle? What's a chortle sound like? It's not very onomatopoeic, is it? I imagine it's the kind of noise that'd be made by a toddler choking on a gooseberry.

But I digress.

We Can't All Be Astronauts Launch Pics

These are some pics from the launch of We Can't All Be Astronauts. Joe Dunthorne, Ross Sutherland, Steve Aylett and Salena Godden all did some terrific readings, and a good time was had by all. Pics courtesy of Dan 'Scoopmeister' Derrett.

We Can't All Be Astronauts - Review 2

So I got another review of We Can't All Be Astronauts, this time at writers' website essentialwriters.com. You can read the full thing here, if you like.

The reviewer, Judy Darley, is mostly nice about it. She says some bits are 'truly fascinating', that 'you can’t help but be awed by his audacity' and that 'you’ll be alternating between feeling depressed and inspired by Tim’s revelations, and may even find yourself making decisions about your own future as a writer'. But she also thinks I'm whinging and self-indulgent and sections of the book read like me chucking my toys out the pram.

I think that's probably a fair comment. When I was working on Astronauts I had lots of decisions to make about how to portray myself, my moods, and my aspirations. On the one hand, I wanted to be honest. On the other hand, I didn't want to come across as such an unlikeable arsehole that I alienated the reader. Severe depression can have a weirdly narcissistic component to it - sometimes you end up projecting all your feelings of doom and self-loathing outwards, deciding that there's no possible way you can be happy in this shitty, fallen world populated by hollow bastards. Like I say in the book, I puffed up myself and my idea of my future because as a teenager I was lonely and unhappy, and an aggrandised narrative gave me something I could cling to. Up close, depressed people are often hugely unsympathetic, but their suffering is still real, as are its consequences.

In the end, after several discussions with my agent and my editor, I went for being as honest as possible, because that seemed like the most interesting option. In her review, Judy says that in places I come across 'like a kid with a strop on because they didn’t get the part they wanted in the school play'. I think that's very perceptive and I absolutely agree. And it's easy, if you get the part you want or you're not invested in the play at all, to dub that kid a grasping obnoxious pranny and move on. Jealousy isn't a very noble pursuit, and it rarely evokes our sympathy.

Personally, I wanted to investigate. Most of us experience jealousy to a greater or lesser extent, although we're not all prepared to admit it. I expect most people deal with it better than I did, but then, the useful thing about a grotesque is it's easy to see the mechanics of the trait it embodies. I don't want to start vaunting the cheesy, life-improving benefits of Astronauts, but I do hope that some readers recognise smaller, less destructive instances of the same sort of thinking in their own lives, and can let go of it a little as a result (or at least feel like slightly less of a twat for not being perfect).

I realise that the moments in the book where I say 'I know I was being really self-indulgent and actually I was a very fortunate young man' don't negate the fact that much of the story focuses on a character who has his priorities badly out of whack, so I think it comes down to whether the conflict and psychology of that interests you. It's just who I was, and who, to a certain extent, I still am. I get the impression that Judy would have preferred a straighter account of the writer's path, with all the various hurdles between page and publication. Which is fair enough. I'd prefer The Bill to have more ED-209 cameos but until we get out of this damned recession and ITV starts filming bespoke episodes I'll have to make do with my crappy retro fan fiction. In one episode, ED-209 and Tosh uncover a cache of stolen video recorders in a Sun Hill lockup - but who's the culprit?

Homestuck

So if you've been doggedly following my blog for some time now, you'll know I'm a capering ninny of a fanboy for Andrew Hussie's MS Paint Adventures. I've posted several times before about the marble cake of win that is his text adventure meets webcomic meets 'what if you could play the most awesome video game ever' simulator.

Well, the latest adventure, Homestuck, has just reached Act 2. The first Act was kind of like a prologue, setting up the premise, so now is a really good time to join! Unlike a TV show or comic book series, all the backstory is right there, so you can breeze through, discover the story for yourself, and catch up! More importantly, unlike both of those things, you get to suggest stuff for the characters to do! John: Captchalogue TC's rapt attention. Go on. Go have a peek. I'll wait.

And if you like pretend video games so much, why, pray tell, have you never watched Pirate Baby's Cabana Battle Street Fight 2006? HUH?