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I am getting better at spotting the days where I am not going to be productive and bailing out. I should have gone back to sleep this afternoon really, but instead I lay in bed watching Pixels. Yes, nowadays a day off means I have to watch at least one Adam Sandler film. I was slightly disappointed with Pixels in that it wasn’t as utterly, utterly terrible as I had been hoping and as many people had led me to believe. Don’t get me wrong, it was very bad (obviously) and had little to no redeeming features, but it didn’t dip below the abysmal level that I have come to expect from Sandler’s work.
Yes, it was a very lazy attempt to cash in on 1980s nostalgia, without any effort to go beyond the “Do you remember Donkey Kong?†level of the worst kind of stand up. Yes, it was a premise that made no logical sense - why was the probe sent out into space so biased towards 1980s video games and TV shows and no other human achievements. I mean, I’m not knocking Fantasy Island, but I wouldn’t have put it on the probe. Yes, the performances were phoned in and many fine comedy actors (especially female actors) were wasted on roles where they scarcely (if at all) got to speak. It's true, Adam Sandler looked annoyed and depressed that he was expected to do a minimal amount of work to make his fee. But it wasn’t overtly horribly racist (the character supposed to be the man who invented Pacman scarcely did a single Japanese stereotype), there was no properly gay character who everyone else mocked, before saying that they were all right (as long as he didn’t bum them). And given the potential for a “The Cobbler†style disaster, it was a reasonably all right kids’ film (if all disbelief was suspended and you didn’t mind the guy who was the Snowman in Frozen fucking Qbert). Obviously don't watch it yourself. Especially if you are hoping to sit back and witness something that is only one rung above excerment in terms of human creativity. This film is two rungs above excrement, even if someone who climbed the ladder stepped in the excrement on their way up and left some of the excrement clinging to this rung.
I did manage to pack two boxes of stuff in my office and have a 20 minute nap before driving over to Walthamstow for my annual preview at the brilliant Red Imp Comedy. I found it very hard to believe that it was a year since I’d last struggled to find a parking space near this venue as show time rapidly approached. It was very hot again, but this was the best preview yet. And I managed to drop quite a few bits and still have enough (though I need to come up with a good ending and play around a bit more with some of the bits in the middle. And put in more jokes. And try to remember the bits I ad-libbed and then forgot. Of all the things I have to achieve in the next three weeks this is weirdly the one that I am worrying about the least. It’s a lot of fun to be picking around with new material in a show that is still quite different every night. I hope I can keep up at least some of that improvisational quality during the Fringe run (it is quite likely).
