Saturday 20 March 2010

Aurally Fixated- Live

After my mass rant about wrestling earlier, I thought I would say something a little more positive.  It’s official, we are taking this shit live! Although not literally because I’m not sure 100 normal people would pay to watch me and Howard poo.  Anyway, we have booked the Basement Bar at the City Screen Cinema in York, a venue both Howard and I used to work in, it’s where we met fact fans.  We have had meetings about the show, have settled on a rough line up, although changes will always happen, and made posters.  The current plan is for the podcast recording to be the headline act and that Howard and I will go for about an hour in front of a crowd for the first time.  Howard will also dust off some of his stand up, and Helen and possibly me will do a couple of sketches we have started writing.  There will be another couple of things to be added to the line up as we go along but thats sort of it, the shape of things to come!

The show will be at 7.30pm on Monday 26th April, at the aforementioned City Screen Basement Bar.  Tell your friends, buy tickets, buy them tickets!

In other news, I am planning world domination,  the podcast is just the start.  Decided I’m going to be the Jerry Bruckheimer of the UK, producing here, managing there.  Watch out...

Monday Night Wars...

Okay, so, having had time to reflect on the first 2 weeks of TNA Impact going head to head with WWE Raw, I believe the ‘New Monday Night Wars’ are over already.  TNA went live with an average show, starting with the ‘return’ to the ring of Hogan and Flair.  Neither of these people are men I want to see wrestle, at least in his heyday Hogan had charisma.  Flair has been an old man for at least 15 years now and should have retired when WCW went out of business.  If the TNA main event had been AJ vs Abyss I would have watched that, AJ is awesome and Abyss has had a reinvigoration by his alliance with Hogan.  But Hogan and Flair never needed to physically be involved.  Hogan can barely walk after having hip replacement and seeing him stumble around the ring was just embarrassing.  This, don’t forget, is the man TNA is putting it’s faith in to grow a new, hip audience to compete with Vince’s PG friendly product.  That we had to see that match twice was just plain bad.  Even worse, they had debuts scheduled for Rob Van Dam, Jeff Hardy and Shannon Moore, and screwed all of them up.  Granted, very few people care about Shannon Moore, although I always enjoyed his work, but RVD and Hardy are the 2 top free agents in the business.  Hogan, Bischoff and Russo have killed that dead. Dixie what have you done?  RVD scored a fluke win over Sting, fair enough, both are former World Champions, Sting in the twilight of a great career and RVD hovering around his prime.  But to me, if you are having that match, you tell people about it.  You have a dream never been seen match and it takes 20 seconds with no build up.  TNA thought the best move for RVD was not telling anyone he was on the show.  That’s retarded.  The man has a big fan base, do you not want him to bring that with him?  Then having him fluke the win and spend an eternity being beaten down by Sting with a bat, yes again, well that really built him as a man who can help the company grow.

Jeff Hardy, made a last second run in to help Hogan and Abyss.  That’s it.  That’s the big return for the man who was WWE champion little over 6 months ago.  Good lord.

All this is before I even make it to Raw...which was okay.  Nothing special, couple of good solid matches, a so-so guest host, and a slow solid build to Mania.  Raw scored average ratings while TNA on their ‘Live Debut’ featuring the returns of all those things scored a 1.2.  Wow, that’s the same rating ECW was getting on minority channel SyFy.  Way to go boys.  Dixie claims to be delighted with the show they put on, well Dixie, you are not nearly as smart as I thought you were.

The 2nd week of head to heads was even more embarrassing.  The first hour of TNA was awful, truly awful.  It only picked up with an excellent X-Division triple threat.  This is the last show before Destination X, the big pre Wrestlemania PPV.  Nothing on the show built towards the PPV except a terrible promo by Flair and some excellent X Division stuff.  TNA put on a taped show, up against Stone Cold Steve Austin’s return as Guest Host, 3 Wrestlemania rematches (including Triple H v Orton and Michaels v Jericho).  Fair enough, the taped show is a fixture and probably will always be a fixture, but to go up against that line up with The Nasty Boys & Jimmy Hart (!) vs The Dudleys & Jesse Neal.  Did Vince pay you to come in and destroy TNA?  Granted, it featured the return of Spike Dudley (Brother Runt) which is always nice, but it’s hardly The Outsiders sitting ringside on Nitro or DX taking a tank to WCW.  Sheer embarrassment for me as a viewer, and this week the ratings were even lower.  I know where I would start, and it wouldn’t be having Samoa Joe kidnapped by ninja’s a month ago and then never mentioned again, seriously!

And all this is without Austin taking charge of a contract signing between VKM and Bret Hart, how do you compete with that?

For me, until TNA thinks outside the 1996 WCW box it seems to be living in then there is no competition.  The WWE is not even in a classic hot period like the Attitude Era or the Hogan years.  They have some good talent but they are mostly not being utilised while TNA is pushing Orlando Jordan (really?) and Hall/Waltman, oh, and of course Hogan and Flair.

The only plus sides that TNA have at the moment is the X Division, Angle, Beer Money, Morgan/Hernandez, Samoa Joe, AJ and a few other talented stars, who could be big stars, if TNA knew how to make stars.  Hell Jeff Hardy is the biggest fuck up in wrestling and VKM made him world champion, and a legitimate world champion at that.

Anyway, enough ranting.  Until Hall/Waltman become permanent fixtures...

Saturday 13 March 2010

Busy busy...

Well, it’s been quite a week for me.  Things have taken a big leap forward and are actually exciting! The week started with a photoshoot, which was cool, but I don’t photograph well, and I certainly don’t pose.  I look like Chandler Bing!  We got some nice pictures, and some really awful ones.  One or two homo-erotic poses, but then this is me and Howard we are talking about.  We have been known to have a ‘gay vibe’.  But Howard’s news this week will have gone some way to dispel that, maybe.  Howard and Kendal are officially pregnant.  Congratulations to them, delighted for you!

Been a strange week at work, not one that I’ll go into here, this is not the arena.

Went to see Defending The Caveman on Monday night, greatly enjoyed myself.  It did veer close to the ‘generic differences between men and women’ line but there were some very clever points in there.  I consistently smiled all the way through and had some proper belly laughs as well, and Mark Little is very likeable. A good night out!

Then Wednesday I bowled, badly.  Had a good night though so it’s all good.  Soo tired this week, not nearly enough mooching time. 

During the week Helen and I decided on the name for our theatre company, we will be known as Chameleon Theatre.  Our first production will hopefully be an adaptation of Kevin Smith’s Clerks.  We have decided to delay it until the end of the summer now, in favour of doing some fundraising in the meantime.  A former colleague from the Screen is a very talented artist and is going to design a logo for us for the theatre company.  All good!  Also, we got our first merchandise...the badges arrived.  2 designs and they look really good.  Hitting the promo trail hard.

So, now it’s announcement time...

Monday April 26th, City Screen Basement, Howard and I will be performing our podcast ‘Aurally Fixated’ live in front of an audience, well hopefully.  Helen and I came up with the idea of doing a night of comedy, sketches and stuff.  The current plan is to perform some sketches, Howard will do some standup, then the main event will be the podcast recording.  Booked the venue, sorted the sound man to record it for us, Jonny is going to film it, so we can even release a video version!  Good times.

Now we just need to write some material...

Sunday 7 March 2010

Long time...

It’s been a long time since I have been genuinely moved by a piece of entertainment.  I think the last time might have been an episode of Chuck last year, maybe Away We Go.  Last night I saw the one man show ‘Morecambe’.  I had heard really good reviews of it from various comics, and knew that it had sold it’s entire run at Edinburgh last summer.  I also knew that it bore the seal of approval from Eric Morecambe’s sons, and I may have made this up, but I think even his widow.  I heard Bob Golding, the star, on the radio a few times and he seemed to be genuinely interested in sharing the comedy genius of Morecambe.  So I had high hopes.

The show started with an obituary, and then Golding appeared, looking remarkably like Eric.  The show itself plays like a flashback over the life of a man who entertained millions of people over 40 years of a career.  There is always the risk of it becoming a greatest hits package, an impression of someone doing all their best bits.  This show steers away from that by not being an impersonation of EM, but a representation of him.  Bob Golding is an actor and not an impressionist.  And a marvellous one at that.  During the course of the show he plays Morecambe, but also within the same performance does about 15 different characters who pass through the life of Morecambe & Wise.  Speaking of Wise, little Ernie is represented by a ventriloquists dummy.  Very skilfully done.

It was quite possibly the best thing I have ever seen on a stage.  I gave a standing ovation, which I very rarely do, this was the first time I genuinely believed it was deserved.  I was in turns, amused, entertained, moved, brought to tears, amused some more and then at the close I was almost distraught.  Golding for his part looked visibly moved by the ovation he got, which was mostly standing.

Walking home afterwards I still had a lump in my throat.  Bravo, sir.

Friday 5 March 2010

Promised Land...?

Been a long week...
First I was ill, then we got a new area manager, then he got ill, then he came and spent an entire morning kicking me in the balls. I've had better weeks.
On the plus side, we recorded Episode 3 of the podcast! If you haven't yet listened to it, please do go to itunes and download it, Aurally Fixated. Really enjoyed the reording this week, we increased the length of it substantially this week. Up to nearly 45 minutes. Hopefully people will enjoy it again, been getting positive feedback from people so that is good. Howard wanted to record one of his sketches to give away as a little bonus to our dear listeners, and also to have for his online comedy/acting CV. I quite enjoyed recording it, but then the character was not a million miles away from me.
We are planning world domination with the podcast, maybe pitching to a radio station or two. Howard came up with the idea of maybe doing the recording live, with an audience of paying guests, which I like, although I'd like to build up a little more following first. I think a video version of the show would be good, then the listeners could see my ridiculous hand gestures!
I have hit the promo trail hard again, we now have a facebook group, profile, twitter, website, email address. All go for us! Oh, and I have ordered us our first piece of merchandise...some badges.