Externalised

I bought an external hard drive and have finally backed up the contents of my laptop.

Once again I am instructing you to do the same.

Now.

Bike Shed Festival

So a month from now, the folks behind Behind The Bike Shed are having a festival this summer.



Their most ambitious project yet: four shows in four venues. More details TBA, but you can follow their progress on twitter.

Clubbed

Coop's Comedy Club was a success. I've know idea how much money it made, but the audience seemed to have a great time.

I didn't get a chance to listen to the comedy music, but Andrea Hubert's opening and closing stand up was great. I was dubious about whether a mix of stand up and sketch comedy would work, but I was definitely proven wrong.

Zoe & Catherine's series of Flatmate sketches work very well and I think a show made up entirely of them could be incredibly funny. Gi Lewis' Interview & Fitness Instructor sketches brought the house down. Will Huggins' commitment saw to that.

Both the monologues I wrote seemed to get a good reaction. The Karen speech that Zoe performed was the original (this was the sequel). The other was a video rental shop lamenting his lot in life. I did that. I'm hoping to record them both.

Carruthers Camera #4

Another batch of photos I took for the Carruthers blog:

Hop is a contribution to the collection of filth that accompanies the posts about our sex therapist sketch.

Suburban Shroomin' is a photograph taken of the worktop in the kitchen at my parent's house. I posted it to complement Mike's Drugs scene. I hasten to add that as far as I know neither of my parents take magic mushrooms, I've no idea why anyone would need such a bag though.

Barrel Fever was taken in another kitchen and ended up in another sex therapist post.

What day is it... was a homemade discarded sign for some event or other.

Take your pick was taken on an empty tube train, obviously. Empty except for me that is, obviously. This ended up in a trainspotting scene post. I suppose that was obvious too.

Abandon Shop...

...This is not a daffodill.

Why can't all computer malfunctions be that much fun?

My laptop broke. And then it was fixed.

And then it broke again:

IDE Disk S/N = SB0211SGGEKSSB
Error Code - 0F00: 075D
Msg: IDE device failed. The self test failed this porton of the test.

IDE Disk S/N = SB0211SGGEKSSB
Error Code - 0F00: 0244
Msg: Block 6430591: Uncorrectable data error or media is write protected.

IDE Disk S/N = SB0211SGGEKSSB
Error Code - 0F00: 1A44
Msg: Block 6430591: Uncorrectable data error or media is write protected.

IDE Disk S/N = SB0211SGGEKSSB
Error Code - 0F00: 1A44
Msg: Block 6430591: Uncorrectable data error or media is write protected.

IDE Disk S/N = SB0211SGGEKSSB
Error Code - 0F00: 1A44
Msg: Block 91855923: Uncorrectable data error or media is write protected.

So that was two error codes in two blocks. I searched online at the library and understood almost nothing of what I found. Apparently my hard drive had bad sectors. Thanks to Dean for his fantastic effort in fixing it again.

Coop's Comedy Club Tonight

It's today.

I'm in three scenes and I've written two, but of far more interest are the half a dozen scenes I'm nothing to do with, the DJ playing 'comedy music', the award winning stand-up comedian and the DJ playing 'music with less comedy content' also on the bill.

Dematerialise This

I filmed this over-active security light in North London late one night because I thought it looked a bit like everybody's favourite time machine taking off.

Coops Comedy Club

After her first play, Unidentified Baggage, won her the Gold Standard Best New Writing Award at The Henley Fringe Festival, Zoe Cooper is taking her new play You Can't Go Swimming With Your Ex Husband to the Edinburgh Festival later this year. Edinburgh is expensive and she has organised a night of comedy and music to raise some cash to take her there.

Date: Sunday, 13 June 2010
Time: 17:00 - 23:00
Location: Electricity Showrooms, 39A Hoxton Square
Entry will cost you £5

I've joined the club and I'll be appearing in it, and I might well have written some of it too.

Homewrecker

Here's another chunk of Jarvis Cocker's Village Underground set. This is 'Homewrecker'. This is also the video I would have posted the other day, but I couldn't.

Take that, library!

Written Out Of History

Written Out Of History from Simolab-Creative AV on Vimeo is a video by Max Carocci and Simona Piantieri. I provided two voiceovers for it. I read the opening poem and the Scottish letter.

Originally conceived to accompany the events marking the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade in Great Britain, Written Out Of History is a mix of historical facts and accounts of the forgotten legacy of Native American slavery told by indigenous scholars and anthropologists. It covers a period of American history that pre-dates the arrival of African slaves on the continent from the arrival of Columbus until the eighteenth century. Given the extent of the subject, they are planning on making a Written Out Of History part two for which they are currently seeking funds.