Hello 2010!

Hey you. Nice to see you again. You're looking well. Have you had a haircut? Sure? Well your hair looks great today, then. You're welcome.

I had a pretty Kinder Bueno 2009, all told. My first (maybe only!) book came out, I got to do gigs with Vic Reeves, Jon Ronson and Tim Key, I tried my hand at stand-up, and I made some new friends. So come on 2010, how are you going to beat that?

Well, it looks like I'm going to be taking my first ever solo show to the Edinburgh Fringe in August. I'm working on it at the moment, and my main goal is to make it not crap. Having written material for four live shows in the past two years, I know only too well that I'm capable of lurching between rather entertaining and drab sniper bait, so I'm kind of counting on lots of trial runs and useful feedback between now and then. If you were to ask me what kind of show I'd like to go see at the Fringe (well, clearly even if you weren't I'd still volunteer the information unsolicited) I'd say something funny and interesting that made me think. That's the kind of show I'm trying to write.

It's weird though - the moment you start putting stuff down on paper, all these possibilities start closing themselves off to you. I think, as a writer, my biggest enemy is lack of focus. My ideas fly about like shiny bits of paper in the Crystal Dome at the end of the Crystal Maze, and I get sort of dazzled and mesmerised by them and can't decide which to grab for. I think probably the piece of live writing I'm most pleased with so far is my 'How To Save Your Girlfriend' bit for Infinite Lives. Although, in the linked video, it was my first run-through and so my performance is not the greatest, once I had it down I really enjoyed delivering it. It allows me to talk about some obscure shit that I secretly care about, like the opening part of Wardner, or Dynamite Dux on the Master System, but by making relationships the nominal subject of the talk, it's accessible to people who are usually bored to within a merry inch of their lives by banter about video games. I love video games, and getting people to laugh at random stuff I'd privately laughed at before felt really good.

It's very unlikely my first show will use a screen. Though I'm a fan of the Aisle16 comedy microlecture format, and it's hugely useful to be able to illustrate a point or chuck in cool, colourful pictures, unless you need it for every section, it splits attention across a whole extra medium. Plus, I'm a bit concerned that I'll end up writing in that ironic faux-lecturer voice, whereas I'm trying to work towards the 'Hey, I'm just a regular folksy dude telling you the story of what happened to me' voice (though just as grounded in artifice) that typifies things like The Moth. Also, it's just much easier to find places to practise bits of a screenless show in front of a live audience, whereas if I use a screen I've pretty much got a coupla previews, then I'm doing it.

I don't know. Like I say, as soon as you start chowing down on one meadow, the grass o'er yonder starts to look increasingly verdant. Like ectoplasmically so. We're talking Slimer or some shit. That's why it's good I've left myself with plenty of time to pull a 180 if I decide I need to try a different route, like 'git with clicker'.

Anyway, onwards with scriptwriting. In the meantime, you should really go check out Cat And Girl. It's so witty it annoys and depresses me. The internet is renowned as a world-trumping cretin nexus, yet it's full of people much smarter than me.

We Can't All Be Astronauts - at HOMEWORK, tomorrow!

So yes, hooray, tomorrow, Wednesday 30th September, I'll be reading from my first book, We Can't All Be Astronauts, at the Bethnal Green Working Men's Club. But wait! Not only will my esteemed Aisle16 brothers in arms Luke Wright, Joe Dunthorne and John Osborne be providing support with new work, but we have a very special guest in the form of journalist and broadcaster Jon Ronson!

Basically, we think he's brilliant. You might suspect me of being sycophantic just to big him up for the gig, but one, you're much too clever to fall for obsequious propaganda, so I simply wouldn't bother, and two, I've posted very prominently before now - on this very blog - what a massive fan I am of This American Life, a show which he has contributed some of the best stories to. Check out Them, Habeas Schmabeas, Pro Se, and It's Never Over. In fact, while we're talking about superb radio, why not check out an episode of Jon Ronson On? May I humbly suggest The Wrong Kind Of Madness and The Worst Internet Date as two good places to start?

So yes. Come. The Timeout listing is here. Doors at 7:30pm, and we usually get started some time after 8:00pm. We'll all have books to sell and sign too, if you fancy one. I suspect it's going to be funtimes.

Ghostbusters... Yes, We're Back

Apologies for the lack of updates recently. I know you must have been tearing at your hair and gnashing your teeth with sheer boredom, and for your fortnight of torment, I beg your forgiveness. A combination of tech problems, writerly busy-ness and lovely weather have left me with mere slivers of free time, and every time I've looked at the blog and thought 'Shall I?' I've backed down like a wheelchaired grandmother wimping out of a river jump. I think part of the problem has been that I've got lots of ideas for involved, substantial posts, which will take ages and which I haven't been able to face starting - then compared to their rich majesty, a little Youtube vid or 'so, this is how my week has been' update feels as a crude Crayola scrawl against the artistic fruits of history's grandmasters.

In terms of writing, I've been mucking with stuff from my next book, getting it ready for some part of it to be looked at by another human being. Sitting down and writing prose is something of an odious experience for me, occasionally punctuated by satisfying - albeit brief - flurries of productivity. I like a lot of the parts of being a writer, except, for the most part, the actual writing. Hmm.

I've also been working on getting my poetry sets ready for Latitude festival at the end of this week. I reckon one in every five performance poems that I sit down and write ends up making it into my final set. And I don't often write performance poems. This means if I want some new pieces, I have to commit to a pretty intense work schedule so I've got more chance of turning up one that works. It's a little frustrating when you finish a poem, think 'wowee this'll be a banker', then deliver it at your next gig to crickets. But, you know, I'd rather work hard than be rubbish. I've got a poem in the works at the moment which I hope, hope, hope will wind up becoming a solid part of my set, and I'm trying to get it finished for Latitude so it can have its debut there.

Um, I completed Mario Vs Donkey Kong and Mario Vs Donkey Kong 2: The March Of The Minis, the former on the GBA, the latter on the DS. A mon avis, Mario Vs Donkey Kong is brilliant - a fun-packed dose of classic platforming action that sees you, as Mario, pursuing Donkey Kong after he steals a sackful of clockwork Mario toys from the factory. The level design is superb, the gameplay tough but fair, and the difficulty level ranges from easy to fiendish - a rare and welcome concession to hardcore platformer fans who want a challenge they can really sink their teeth into.

Mario Vs Donkey Kong 2 is pants. The fun, intuitive platforming action of its predecessor has gone - in its place is a joyless Gyromite clone (you remember Gyromite, right? No? Exactly) mixed with the most tedious elements of Krusty's Super Funhouse. Instead of getting to dash, backflip and 'yahooo!' as Mario, you must use the DS stylus to shunt little chittering Mini-Marios round small, dull levels. They move slowly, the stylus system is iffy, and the boss battles with DK are samey and bland. It's like a rubbish version of Lemmings, and the failure is all the more painful when you remember how classy the previous title in the series was. It's a rare swing-and-miss for the Mario franchise, and a sobering reminder that Nintendo's much-lauded innovation has risen from a history of pig-in-a-poke goofs, from Gyromite's ROB to the it's-so-bad Powerglove to the unwieldy Superscope to the nausea-inducing Virtualboy.

So, coming up I'm performing at Latitude festival in Suffolk on Thursday (9:10pm in the Literary Tent), Friday (6:00pm in the Poetry Arena), Saturday (11:30pm in the Poetry Arena) and Sunday (6:00pm in the Poetry Arena). I'll also be part of Aisle16 and Friends every night in the Poetry Arena, 11:00pm Thursday and Sunday, 1:00am Friday and Saturday. I'm helping to compere the Poetry Arena too, so basically, busy weekend pour moi. The weekend after I'm at Camp Bestival on the Saturday, reading from We Can't All Be Astronauts in the day, then doing a poetry set in the evening. On the Sunday, we'll be at Port Eliot Literary Festival, where I'll be performing with Joe Dunthorne and Ross Sutherland, doing our show about our attempts to infiltrate the enigmatic French experimental literature group the Oulipo - Found In Translation. Later that day I'll be giving a reading from We Can't All Be Astronauts. Then, weather-permitting, we are going to get plastered. The following weekend I'll be at the Kendall Calling festival, doing some performance poetry, then after that... oh, you can just check out my schedule. Be really nice to see you if you're about at any of those festivals. Come and say hi. Teach me a really elaborate handshake or something.

There. I think that's all for now. I've managed to write about poetry and video games in the same post, thus alienating both halves of my audience at once. If you don't feel excluded by one, you probably hate both. Well, that's what this blog exists for. Taking the rival camps of people who like poetry and people who like video games, and bringing them close enough that they can glare at one another, stoking their mutual emnity and mistrust. Now, if you'll excuse me, I've just remembered that there's a new episode of This American Life ready for me to listen to. See you at the festival!

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.

This American Life

I feel as if posting this will mark an unshouldering of sorts - a chance for me to finally let go of baggage accrued over the past eighteen months.

I first discovered This American Life via the superb community blog Metafilter, a website which has introduced me to almost everything I like on the internet.

This American Life has influenced me more profoundly than anything else in the last year and a half. After listening to my first episode, I was hooked. Essentially, it's an hour long weekly radio show, where each episode has a loose theme. It's mostly non-fiction, with the occasional short story or dramatic monologue.

What first hit me so hard about it was the way in which the producers manage to tackle both very large stories and very small ones, often combining the two types on the same bill. It introduced me to a whole new genre of non-fiction storytelling - small incidents or little ideas that somehow shed light on something greater. Until I listened to This American Life, I never realised that people were allowed to tell those kinds of stories - stories that aren't the news, exactly, but often aren't exactly memoir either. Stories that are interesting, funny, real, surprising, and sometimes beautiful, but without being glib or glurgy.

Although I'm not exactly the perfect archetypal hipsterish agnostic liberal, I realise that I'm fairly close to the centre of their ideal demographic, so it may be that TAL's appeal doesn't go right across the board, but, for me at least, it feels like it scratches an itch that, until I discovered the show, I was dimly aware of but could never quite locate.

All this discursive meta-theorising can't quite convey it though, so I suppose I should apply the age old writing axiom of show, don't tell. Here are some of my favourites. If you click through, you can stream them online, or download each episode for 99 cents. If you listen to a whole bunch, it might be nice to donate a little something via their website, to help pay for bandwidth. I did, and I felt right pleased with myself.

My Big Break - the story of Charlie and Mitzi's gig on The Ed Sullivan Show is a beautifully-constructed piece of radio journalism, and Shalom Auslander's true life story of his strict Orthodox Jewish school's 'blessing bee' is one of the best bits of memoir I've ever heard.

Babysitting - I love the brothers talking about when their big brother was left in charge of them, and pretended he could turn into a werewolf. It reminds me of that weird period during your childhood, when the border between imagination and reality is blurry, and you can quickly work yourself up into a state of terror. Also, the final story in the show is just amazing. It's funny, it's sad, it's got twists... and it's just great to hear the participants talk about it themselves.

Telephone - this is one of my favourite Ira Glass intros. I just think the chap's so cool, and he tells an engaging, intimate autobiographical story without being self-indulgent. The first story, about the delinquent teenager who discovers his dad's been taping his phonecalls, has a really satisfying plot arc, and it's a great example of a story that is ideally suited to radio.

Break-Up - all of Starlee Kine's stuff for TAL is, in my opinion, brilliant, but this story about the embarrassing intensity of a break-up is probably my favourite. The moment where she blurts Phil Collins' lyrics to her (ex)boyfriend in an attempt to make him stay is both cringe-inducing and beautiful in its honesty. The way she develops the story from there is an object lesson in why TAL isn't just good, but great.

Another Frightening Show About The Economy - along with the earlier show, Giant Pool Of Money, these shows feature some of the best popular economics reporting I've ever heard. They're a little more 'of the moment' than most of the TAL shows, given that they're responding to contemporary news events, but I still find it mind-boggling that TAL can shift so seamlessly from charming, folksy anecdotage one week, to understandable, content-rich economics reporting the next, then back again, executing both styles exceptionally. Alex Blumberg and Adam Davidson make for very likeable, very listenable hosts.

The Super - the theme for this show, apartment superintendents (essentially live-in maintenance men for big blocks of flats, I think), doesn't sound very promising, but it's a killer episode. Jack Hitt's stories are as robust as they come - you could drive a tank over them and they wouldn't break - and the one the starts this show doesn't disappoint. It's got hilarious moments, frightening moments, and sheds light on wider things. The second story, about the building superintendent who thinks he may not have long to live, had me laughing till some snot came out.

One of the best things that came out of my discovering TAL, was that I began to write non-fiction. I'd written video game reviews, opinion pieces and feature articles, but I'd never attempted journalism where I was a character. I'd never realised that there were situations where that might be okay, where stories about myself might be interesting to someone else. The ultimate product of all my TAL listening has been We Can't All Be Astronauts, my first book. I'm sure some parts are a bit cackhanded and prolix, and it was largely a case of learning on the job (my interview technique could do with a spell in bootcamp), but it's been wonderful to discover a whole new form of writing I'd never considered before.

As a newbie to non-fiction, I was desperate for all the guidance I could get. These four videos, where Ira Glass, TAL's host, explains how to create a story for radio, had more influence on my writing than anything else. I'm not claiming to have implemented the principles he suggests with any particular aplomb, but having them as a kind of North Star was a lifesaver. Even if you have no intention of writing non-fiction, or if you find his prescriptions for story-building somewhat facile, I think they're fascinating and thought-provoking nonetheless.









I might as well finish with a clip from the This American Life TV series, now two seasons old. It features the animation of cartoonist Chris Ware, author of the funny, melancholy Jimmy Corrigan, The Smartest Kid On Earth. The person interviewing him is Ira Glass. The 'turn', at 1:30, is something I think typifies TAL stories. Something about the whole piece makes me really happy. It's small, and human, and captivating - or, as the TAL TV series tagline would have it: 'Funny. Surprising. Dramatic. True.'



Okay. Splurge over. This has been very cathartic. I feel like I can finally put the rampant fanboy to rest, and stop boring people at parties - or, at least, find new things to bore them with.