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Too many really early starts this week and I am finding it very difficult to focus on work. Unusually my video AIOTM script remains largely unwritten (though I made a little headway today) and although I sat at my desk for most of today, I wasn’t really feeling it. Making this six part series is a massive undertaking and we’re running kind of blind as we can’t put the shows out until they are all finished (or at least I think that would be a mistake - Impetus will be lost if the show comes out in dribs and drabs). But by necessity (partly as it’s the ethos of the show and partly because I am not getting paid for writing it) I have to write it quickly. Sometimes the fear of failure over rides creativity.
And the thing I mildly regret about the way we’re doing it is that in the video version of the show we are unable to incorporate anything from the news. Often in the old days, some topical event would act as the peg to hang the whole show on. But as this won’t be out until Easter (or thereabouts) I had to ignore today’s news that was cascading over me like…. well like itself. All that is great for when I come to write the audio episode, but when you are forced to think of Donald Trump paying prostitutes to piss on a bed because the Obamas had once slept there (and little tip, if you want to avenge yourself on someone via urine, then it’s more effective to piss on the bed BEFORE they sleep in it and AFTER you sleep in it. Otherwise it’s a Pyrrhic victory), it is very hard to think about anything else.
I thought Trump might be a clever man pretending to be petty and stupid (takes one to know one), but now I am not so sure. The lack of self-awareness is astonishing. His anger at fake news, when he must know that he peddled so much of it (or is he really that thick that he thinks news is real if it agrees with or facilitates his viewpoint - he who lives by the lie, gets weed on by the lie) his constant assurances that allegations that he is in the pocket of the Russians are refutable by using statements from Russians and ignoring (and becoming furious with) American intelligence. His attempts to fudge the legal issues about being President and making money from his businesses seemed school-boyish at best and as his female lawyer left the podium you could see his brain going into overdrive whilst he worked out if it would be funny to grab her by the pussy. But the only reason he grabs pussies (which always seemed a weird way to treat them, even if with consent) is that he needs to hold all the precious urine inside them.
He ended with his catchphrase at least, even if it felt a bit shoe-horned, like he had planned it out way in advance, like this was going to be an amazing way to finish. If I am ever US President I am going to end my press conferences by saying “Do you want me to solve all your problems? Do you? Is that what you want? No, I’ll tell you what you want, the moon on a stick!” Then I will hand out Fist of Fun DVDs and say, “Watch that and then that comment will make sense.” And then I will walk away as one journalist with integrity shouts out pertinent questions to me. Before arranging to have him killed in a car crash. As will happen with that guy. Unless the secret service shoot me/Trump first.
The video RHLSTP with Susan Calman is now up in the usual places (youtube for example).
Audio will be up on Thursday.
