I did the new material night at Amused Moose Camden tonight. It was a slightly less triumphant gig, due to the fact that I hadn't really learnt what I was doing. Thus my attempt to find out whether
this entry might work as stand up went a bit awry when I missed out some important information. I think it probably won't work, but might have another go at it. I like it because it conforms to the rough theme of paranoia and worry about how one is perceived/judged which might be the rough theme of my new show. So we'll see.
I also tried to add to a very old routine to make an all new one with something based along the lines of this:
"I shouldn't knock Jesus, because after all he is the Lord of the dance settee. Oh yes. The Lord of the dance settee. That's him. You must know why. It's in that song - dance, dance wherever you may be, cos I am the Lord of the dance settee..... Really as a kid, you learn those hymns phoenetically and until I could read I believed that that was what the words were. Obviously I thought this meant there must be a massive sofa somewhere in Heaven, bigger than any sofa you could imagine. How big's the biggest sofa you can imagine? Bigger than that.... Not that big. And Jesus is up on that sofa, dancing away. He's doing the fandango, Riverdance, he's doing the Huckerbuck, St Vitus's dance - religious, he's doing the hilarious David Brent dance from the Office, Jesus thinks that that dance is the funniest bit of the Office and he cant see it too many times - every dance ever he's doing and if anyone else tries and gets on the dance settee with him, to join in the dancing he kicks them off and says, "No, I am the lord of the dance settee, gettaway." It's no more stupid than the Holy Ghost or....
And all the time hes got his lettuce with him. You must remember his lettuce. Everyone knows about Jesus's lettuce don't they? You know the "Lettuce with a gladsome mind" Jesus's happy lettuce, Jesus took it everywhere. You couldn't separate Jesus and that lettuce. People loved him for looking after that lettuce, "Praise the Lord for he is kind" they said. You might say, well he's not all that kind, if I had a lettuce that had a mind, that could think and imagine and be gladsome then I'd look after it too. I could make some money out of that lettuce with a mind, and even better it's a gladsome mind, the lettuce isn't going to be a pain in the arse to hang around with. It can see the positive in everything, but to be honest that word "gladsome" was euphemistic. The lettuce was always gladsome because it was a bit simple. Yeah, it had a mind but judged by the human yardstick it was a very feeble one. To be honest that lettuce was little more than a cabbage.
Don't get me wrong. It was extremely intelligent for a lettuce. Put it amongst other ordinary lettuces and it would be bored and disenchanted, but amongst humans it was out of its depth - this relentlessly cheerful lettuce was an annoyance to even the dullest human mind and to Jesus, possibly one of the greatest thinkers ever, it must have been tedious in the extreme, but praise the Lord of the dance settee for he is kind."
I kind of thought people might not know the hymn "Let us with a gladsome mind..." etc, but it seemed quite a few people didn't know the Lord of the Dance either. I wondered aloud whether this was because the new generation of twenty-somethings weren't forced to sing hymns at school like I was. Anyway, I think that will be my last attempt at that particular piece of material.
It wasn't going all that well and I'd been thinking of having a go at something based on yesterday's magpie thoughts, even though I hadn't really learnt it. The crowd encouraged me and I gave it a crack and though I missed out lots of info this actually went pretty well - especially the stuff about having your wish system worked out in advance. And so something that I had actually written this very day (bearing in mind that each entry is written the day after the events that it describes) was performed to people within hours of its creation. This felt pretty good. It's nice to be finding an outlet for Warming Up beyond the internet.
I had been hoping to get under 14st by the end of February, and it should have been easy as I started the month at 14st2. But alas I had put on a bit of weight during the poker week and although I have shed it again I was still 14st 2 this morning. So it's a 12 pound loss over the year so far, which isn't too shabby, but I will redouble my efforts for March and let you know how I get on.
