Rhod Gilbert

Saw the first night preview for Rhod Gilbert’s new show, “Rhod Gilbert and the Award Winning Mince Pie“.  I’d seen smatterings of Gilbert from TV and the internet but never live so my expectations going in were minimal.  Thankfully, Gilbert did a lot more than just meet those expectations.  His new show is based around a mental breakdown suffered as a result of the comedian forcing himself to live in the real world for four months.  At the root of this is the Award Winning mince pie mentioned in the title.  On the way to the show’s hilarious ending, Gilbert talks about his problems with dating a younger woman, the pointlessness of service station attempts to improve customer service and performing for the troops.  On several occasions Gilbert made mention of the show being all over the place in areas, but as someone who had never seen him before I didn’t really see much evidence of this.  Gilbert was hilarious throughout and on the evidence of this preview, once he reigns in what he percieves to be him ‘all over the place’ this will be an even greater show. ****

Books

So the fringe basically begins today.  We are heading into town later and will just decide there what we are going to see.  Our decisions will be based on a combination of show starting times and whether the tickets were free or not.

I’m reading Kate Atkinson’s novel Case Histories at the moment.  It is pretty good so far.  I read the sequel to it, One Good Turn, not realising that it was a sequel until a few pages into it which is no use.  It was fine as a stand alone book but I hate watching/reading things out of sequence.  That’s why I won’t be able to see the new X-Files film until I’ve caught up with the TV series.  I’m just like that.  Once I finish Case Histories, there is supposed to be a third book in the series coming out next month that I will no doubt get.  Though that might have to wait for me to read the latest Christopher Brookmyre novel as that will be my priority next month when it comes out.  Lots of books.  Makes me almost want to get mine finished.

Short update

It’s the fringe tomorrow!  I can’t wait.  Technically it’s not really the start, but most acts have previews going on from tomorrow so it effectively is.  We are going to see something tomorrow.  No idea what yet.  Hopefully we can blag some free tickets.  I love the atmosphere at the fringe, it’s so laid back.

Haven’t progressed at all with the writing since last week.  Must… try… harder…  I need inspiration.  Another benefit to the fringe is that it will almost certainly provide that.  So it’s win-win really.

Finally an update

That’s a long time without an update from me.  My sister was in town so I didn’t have much time for the world wide internet highway.  We all went to see Batman yesterday.  It was excellent.  Heath Ledger has received a lot of praise for his role as the Joker, so much so that I was half expecting that it couldn’t possibly be justified to the extent it was and sympathy was probably a factor in people’s judgments.  But no, thankfully.  He really is awesome.  A lot of people were second guessing the decision to go with Ledger when it was originally announced he had been given the role, but I always suspected it would be a good move.  I didn’t expect him to be quite as good as this though.  Definitely a must see movie.

The Stewart Lee and Josie Long DVDs arrived today and as suspected they are both brilliant.  Josie Long is like having your mate round making you laugh and Stewart Lee is just brilliant.  Him and Daniel Kitson are the best stand up comedians in the world right now.  Anyone contending that likely hasn’t seen either.

Finally, finally finished Zadie Smith’s On Beauty.  Just like The Autograph Man there was a point I reached in reading where I just couldn’t stop reading it.  White Teeth I couldn’t stop reading from the start.  I swear the next novel she releases I won’t buy and then not read until a year later.

Mamma Mia!

Saw Mamma Mia tonight. Not impressed. Not impressed one bit.

More dvd talk and a bit about editing

The Tony Law and Will Hodgson DVDs arrived today, hurrah. Watched the Tony Law one. Very funny. I remember the first time I saw Tony Law live. He just comes out and says the most surreal things. At first you think, what is this guy doing? It’s like watching someone bomb. And then, after a couple of minutes, you finally get it and he just goes from terrible to brilliant in an instant. I’ve never really come across a comedian like that before. He’s not playing the fringe this year which I was a bit disappointed with because he was great last year.

Cracked on with the editing tonight. Still going at a slow pace though. I think realistically I should be looking at finishing the whole thing by Christmas time. I think that’s achievable, even with the write off that August will undoubtedly be. Which means 2009 will be all about getting published. And writing another book. But mostly getting published.

Editing and the Fringe

The editing went well last night. I wouldn’t say I did an awful lot, but I’m not sure just how fast fast is when it comes to editing. I felt like progress was being made and I feel that’s more important. I’ve had a few ideas so far to make the thing better, including strengthening the beginning and ending, which are both quite weak in the current state.

The Edinburgh Fringe starts next week and I can’t wait. To get myself in the mood I have four comedy DVDs coming through the mail over the next week. Tony Law and Will Hodgson from Go Faster Stripe should arrive in the next two days. If you haven’t seen either they are both well worth a look. I’ve also ordered Stewart Lee’s 41st Best Stand Up Ever and Josie Long’s Trying is Good from Amazon. I’ve seen both shows and they were both brilliant. Get those as well.

August is going to be a pretty crazy month. I can’t imagine too much writing will get done then. Between the festival, a stag night in Ireland and then a wedding in Ireland. And work should probably get quite hectic then too for various reasons. At least there is bound to be plenty of alcohol involved in all this. It will be needed.

Back to Work

I’m thinking about going back to the first novel now and try to start editing. I wrote a new opening to it that I sort of like. It wasn’t a lot, only about a hundred words or so but it was the first time since I finished that I really wanted to go back to it. It’s actually harder than I thought it would be to get myself motivated to start making changes. I skim through it and so much of it seems bad to me. Maybe it is and maybe it isn’t but that’s how I feel when I look at it. And it makes me want to just abandon the thing and move on to the next book. But the problem with that is that if I spend another six months or whatever writing another book I know I will look at that and think the same things. It’s like I’m expecting the first draft to be this great piece of work where the only editing that needs done is minimal. And that’s pretty unrealistic. I know I just need to get over myself and get back to it. So that’s what I’m going to *try* to do.

The more observant among you might realise that this means I’m not going to bother with the word count target this week.

The X-Files

I passed 2000 words today. Hurrah! It was harder work than it probably should have been. Maybe that’s symptomatic of me not really knowing where it’s heading still or just my own laziness. A little from column A, a little from column B maybe.

I’ve been getting back into watching X-Files this weekend. I realised I have to as the new movie comes out in a couple of weeks and I’m not up to speed on the whole thing. I watched right up till about a 1/3 of the way into series 8 and then just gave up. I didn’t even bother with series 9. It wasn’t that I didn’t like it past that point, even though that was when The T-1000 joined the show, I was just in the habit of taping the shows and then not being bothered to watch the tapes. Unbelievably I did the same with the Sopranos at one point but managed to catch up by buying a DVD boxset and watching it all over the course of a weekend. That was fun. I suppose I always thought I would watch the rest of the X-Files at some point but the movie coming out pushes the issue for me. Watched two earlier today and surprised that I haven’t really forgotten all that much. Better get back to them actually. See, I can force myself to do some types of work.

Wedding Speech – The Pre-Pre Planning Stage

Wrote some more today. Around 1600 for the week or so. Since I’m counting the week from Monday to Saturday, I still have Sunday left so it should be okay. Next week I’ll try and do 3000, although with Wall-E and Mamma-Mia (thought I was getting out of going to see that, I thought wrong) to go see and a visit from my sister at the end of the week, it could be tough. It really only leaves me with two, maybe three days. Better make them count I suppose.

I’ve also been thinking about making a start on my wedding speech. My wedding is 11 months off so it’s early, but I know me and I could easily have that attitude when it’s 11 days away. It would be great to have it completely written and mastered months in advance so that when I come to give it it looks like it’s all coming naturally. Though if that were to happen, everyone who knows me would just be like “How come he can’t come up with this shit any other time?” I will try to be funny. The question isn’t whether or not I will fail, it’s how badly I will fail. Less is better. I have to stay away from pop culture references, which is a weakness. It’s going to be touch and go for me not to say “I take thee Rachel” at the alter just for the cheap pop. My fiance will get that, but probably won’t appreciate it. And the people who won’t get it definitely won’t appreciate it. It’s probably best to try and avoid doing it.

I will try.

I can’t promise anything though, I’m only human.