Sarah Palin.... good God

Sarah Palin gave her first TV interview on Friday - link to it here - and it was very scary. The coverage of the interview is even worse. "MOTHER.... MOOSE HUNTER.... MAVERICK!!" Great. So there's potentially going to be a Vice President of the USA whose main skill is alliteration.

Don't get me wrong. I wouldn't mind all the hysterical(hysterical! womb! 5 kids! geddit?) coverage of her if she knew anything about foreign or domestic policy. But what are her views on current Russian activity, for example? "You can see Russia from Alaska". Coooool....

Time magazine has gone bonkers over her as well. I'll have to quote it as I read it in the actual paper rather than online - "There is an undeniable power in the tale of a woman who knows how to carve up a moose and can give a speech while leaking amniotic fluid, just hours before giving birth to her fifth child..." That's not a qualification for office. If you've had so many  children you can practically roll one out whilst barely missing a beat in the middle of another speech about guns and Jesus, then you should be sectioned as a main Western contributor to the world food crisis rather than greeted at airports by crowds of adoring fans waving signs saying "Hockey Moms 4 ever."

I also don't know why being a hockey mom is good. I"ll get back to you on that.

I'm back

I've realised something over this month that I've been away. Away, "doing the Edinburgh Festival", "creating new stuff", "developing" as an "artist". I've been trying to put all these different tags on it, but I know the truth. I am suffering from a shameful addiction to the Edinburgh Festival. 

I will do almost anything to facilitate being there. This year alone I have lied, borrowed money, made grand claims, had lunch with my ex-boss to get a loan, and even been in denial about doing it at all. "Hello, is that my bank, First Direct? Yes, please could I borrow some money? About £3 grand... No... it's.... not for the Edinburgh Festival, it's for... a holiday." They'll lend it to you if they think it's for a holiday.

Basically, I know all the tricks. Pretend you're going to be famous directly afterwards, offer them a stake in the show, borrow from 4 different people and don't tell them about each other. Let them think they're the only ones and it doesn't really cost that much. If they knew the extent of your problem, maybe some of them would stop you. But they don't. They are enablers. The bank, my ex-boss, my mum, the producers, my boyfriend. Enablers!!

But what of the "phenomenon" that was Exhibitionist? - you can link here to cool reviews from Fest and also Three Weeks. Thrilled with all this stuff about being "innovative" and "relevant", but next year I'm going to go for "funny".

In the meantime, I cannot afford to leave the house. Or buy food, or pay rent. That's the goddamn motherf*ckin genius of being an addict. If you've had a similar experience, and want to try and face up to what a few years of the Edinburgh Festival has done to you, or maybe you're living with someone who cannot control his or her Fringe shows - get in touch. 

Knife Amnesty

As a Gesture of Goodwill, this blog is giving up all its knives, and would like to encourage other young hooligans to do likewise.
This blog also hopes that by joining the amnesty, it can help add to the culture of fear and panic about knives in any way that is useful.

This blog has now run out of knives, and needs to pop to the shops for a few more knives.

Introducing....

Hello. I have taken some photos of the characters for the show! It's pretty pretty exciting. This one on the left is Bethan - she's a very upbeat suicidal teenager from Bridgend in Wales.

The next one is Joanna. She is a geek who hero-worships Steve Jobs from Apple Mac and everyone seems to love her so I am starting to be quite jealous.







Then there is Derek. He is also below, or wherever this infernal device chooses to place the

photograph.
Oh, here we go.









Despite his homosexuality, Derek is a committed bigot.


Finally, there is Katherine:
Katherine is very, very wrong.

And there's a fifth character too, but that's a surprise. It's not that the show has a plot exactly, but the characters do interlink, and there's a certain logical madness to it when an actually famous person joins Profile Me and starts blogging. In any case, who it is might change by the time I get to Edinburgh. I haven't decided. Do I need to do that soon? I mean, it's cool if I'm still writing this on the train on the way up there, isn't it...

I was thinking of giving up booze for July. That hasn't happened.

Oddness and Ironies

The irony of what I'm doing with my Edinburgh show versus my life, is starting to become obvious. Here I am, writing a show about people who choose to have a public profile way beyond what is necessary - in the name of fame, openness, peer pressure, whatever you want - and also, here I am, writing a blog about that.

Basically, I want my Edinburgh show to be entertaining. I think it's already pretty silly, and I'm really trying to write a 'show', not something which is just 'here are the best bits of my stand-up'. But I also want it to have a plot and and a theme and to say something. I love talking about music, and doing songs, and with that in mind, my fifth character (one of them is pre-recorded) was going to be a sort of alcoholic music producer, who bitches about stuff and then gets the sack. But somehow, it doesn't quite fit with the rest of the show, which is really all about the new "freedom" we have to live our lives in public, but also not to be seen to do anything stupid, ever. So I'm writing a new character that will really nail the show into the territory of 'political character comedy'. I am quite a last-minute person, but am worried that even I am taking the piss in how late in the day this show is evolving. It's got to be ready in just over a month. And I don't want to do it half-arsed.

Meanwhile, here is some of the samizdata I've been reading. I'm particularly amazed at the moment by the extent to which Gordon Brown seems actually to be using the concept of doublethink (as explained in 1984) to justify his policies, whilst citing Orwell as a writer who "extolls the virtues of the liberty of Britain" (to paraphrase). Brown made a whole speech on 'what liberty means' in the current climate, and seemingly introduced an idea called 'new-liberty'. Good God. Click here to read the speech. And here to read an amazing dissection of it by academic Fabian Tassano.

Yeah. Making comedy out of this doesn't write itself.

Never going on holiday again

That's right, I've been on holiday. I'm completely behind on everything, even though I was only away for just under 7 days. My boyfriend is also self-employed, and we are now both so stressed by having to go away that we have decided simply never to go on holiday again. Above is a generic picture of me on holiday. Except it's not - it's a picture of me in Miami in February when I was doing Last Comic Standing. But I figured, I look relaxed in this photo; I look like I'm vaguely having fun, probably because I was working and I like that. I can't upload any photos of me on my actual holiday because I just look too pissed off / sarcastic the whole time.

Confession and Max Mosley

It has been just under a week since my last confession. Did you know that you can now confess, in the Catholic sense, online? I don't imagine that's any fun at all. There's none of the frisson of the cloister, the ritual of making up a load of venal sins and whispering them to a man you can't see. If you're going to do that online, it is definitely merely a blog and you should stop kidding yourself.

I'm interested at the moment in Max Mosley's alleged Nazi orgy. I know it happened a few weeks ago now, but I'm writing an Edinburgh show so anything that's happened this year is fair game. Also, the Catholic thing reminded me of it, because although I'm not involved in the BDSM scene (and nor is Max Mosley, judging from the video - those stripey jumpsuits, what were they thinking? How can anyone get turned on by prostitutes who are dressed up as a row of knitted scarves?) I did gleefully read that a popular S&M ritual is a sort of inverted Catholic Mass. I can't go into the specifics of what happens, but I think it's safe to describe it as "low Anglican".

But I think that illustrates the point I want to make. S&M sex is supposed to be wrong, wrong, wrong. It's not about creating the right moral and spiritual boundaries whereby sex can occur, because that's known as a loving relationship. If you think any other kind of sex is disgusting, fair enough. But it's consenting adults, and someone else's private life. Pretending to be a Nazi is a pretty grim way to get turned on, but I would defend his right to do it in private without the News of the World broadcasting it "in the public interest". It's not in the public interest - unless it's to warn the public about the lamentably unconvincing acting that goes on in our nation's brothels. How does this affect his ability to do his job as president of the FIA, rulemaker to the high-octane world of Formula 1? Say what you like about spanking prostitutes, but at least it's carbon neutral.