10 November, 2009
Now’s as good as any time to make a little dedication to my favourite pencil. His name is ‘Old Blue’. We met about 2 years ago in a cold student flat in the middle Edinburgh, he was hanging out with some other mechanical pencil buddies his previous owner had obsessively collected inside a meticulous stationary draw. We got along great, but after a while his nobbliness really starting to bite into me. After a while things started to get pretty bad, so I jammed a couple of pen grips over him. We had our rows, but after going through some highs and lows, we’ve been trough some pretty amazing stuff, and I’ll never regret a moment. Thanks Pencil. Thpencil.
Ian’s also got a clever little extendable pen we call ‘Classy Clive’. It’s non-gender specific, well more vague really. Tom generally just writes with his own blood, he’s passionate like that, so… ‘Tom’ would be the accurate thing to put on his census form I suppose.
P.S. If you’re reading Steve Wright, can I have ‘
Can’t Live if Living is Without You‘ by Harry Nilsson. Anything else that makes me want to bleed with clichéd insincerity is fine too. Does he still do that Sunday show? I don’t know.
11 October, 2009
Ian broke out a pen and showed the white board who’s boss the other day. Here’s a nice iconic fancy that I cleaned up… I call him Hamish Giffins. What do you christen him?
Coming soon!… Double Stool Peril!
5 September, 2009
Max Fitness has made it into the Atom Upload Showdown! If we win we’ll earn some mulla and get shown on Comedy Central! So get over there, brave the 30 second advert, and VOTE FOR US!
17 August, 2009
Here’s some behind the scenes shots, while I edit our latest live sketch. Yep, that’s me with a whole lorra wax. It took about 5 washes with Fairy Liquid to get rid that muck, as proven by me sporting the ‘Dandy Geldof‘ after wash 3.
Bit of trivia: Tom and I share the same sweaty shirt throughout.
14 August, 2009
Here’s a fantastic article that Ian found written by Bournville College. I’m putting this up here mainly because I know I’ll loose the link and regret never being able to find it again.
The article explores George Orwell’s 5 rules to good writing, including an inspiring smackdown quote from Ernest Hemingway. Here are the rules. Slosh about in the original article HERE.
- Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figures of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
- Never use a long word where a short one will do.
- If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
- Never use the passive where you can use the active.
- Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
- Break any of these rules sooner than saying anything outright barbarous.
Here’s Ernst to lead us out with a buzz phrase to look down thread super bitched up on the street:
Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words? He thinks I don’t know the ten-dollar words. I know them all right. But there are older and simpler and better words, and those are the ones I use.
5 August, 2009
Ehy! Message in a Bottle will be making an appearance at the Edinburgh Fringe as part of Popcorn Comedy’s Best Of Show. The shows will be on 6th and 26th August and only cost £5 which is an amazing price 6 top quality stand ups and bunch of videotic gems.
Go HERE to see more details. Don’t ask why! Just do it!! It’s really good… Oh well read on.
We won’t be able to catch the shows, but we’ll be catching the aftermath of it on the last weekend of the festival (28th-30th). The last time we were up I was a student there and the smug occupier of a beautiful flat… It’s going to be a bit more guerilla style this time round. We’ll keep a log and possibly even a fun bit of video to document our travels.
This is bringing back all sorts of memories. If you ever happen to be in the National Gallery of Scotland keep a look out for
this painting of ‘Jesus’. However, if you look closer
it’s not Jesus… it’s Tom. That also appears to be Andy Murray flogging him. That guy on the left looked familiar too but we just couldn’t work it out. After carefully ripping it off the wall and gently ramming it down Tom’s trousers we took it away to
have a closer look……
….. Turns out it was Dave Benson Phillips.
30 July, 2009
Thanks to AWNtv for featuring Bored Stiff. It always means a lot to get on there.
28 July, 2009
Closed in. Grey. Kitchen table. Door handle. Rain. Colours? Textures? Rhubarb? Ouch! Sharp in oh so many ways. Oh the pain! Stop mocking me! Bush russle. Faster. Hup. What a day to climb a fence in mother’s underwear. I hope I don’t – I’m snagged! How do you explain something like this? Maybe the police station will have a leaflet?
Hello officer. No, this isn’t my house, no. Oh.
25 July, 2009
On Wednesday, was
FilmRats, based in the Bristol Pear in Selly Oak. We’ve had our stuff screened there for the last couple of months but weren’t able to make it, so it was a nice surprise to see the evening’s films finished off with
Bored Stiff and
Message in A Bottle.
Organisers Andrew and Tom Hewson seem to have got the event down to a T, warming up the night with some music/live performance, then some films, then polishing of with a final musical act. An audio visual sandwich if you will. I think the guys have got a great feeling for keeping the mood up in the room too. It’s easy for these sort of screenings to end up as a endless depressing sludge of grainy experimental films – which is great in moderation – but here the films were mixed up so that there was a nice change of pace and
our in-your-face-
dirty-little-treats were used as little pick-me-ups at the end. Most importantly though Andrew compared. The most important thing for events like this is to TELL people to clap and get some repore going. For some reason people just don’t do it otherwise. I still don’t understand why.
The venue’s the perfect setting, it’s relaxed, nice size and layout, built in projector and a decent sound system. It’s a shame no where in the city centre really matches up. Highlights were personal favourites
KateGoes plus
FaceOmeter, as well as meeting Black Country Cinema collective,
Birmingham Salute.
24 July, 2009
The last week involved a few lovely screening/social events. Here’s the first.
On Tuesday was
The Great Animation Challenge at the Lighthouse, Wolverhampton, which started off with brilliant round up of animations from last year’s Flip Festival. My personal favourite was about a man who’s slipped coordinates in 3D space and is trying to fix it by being hit by asteroids.
I can’t tell you the name of it yet as I don’t know… (
Skhizein, directed by Jeremy Clapin) I also missed the first half of it. Maybe that added to the feeling of just watching a snippet of someone’s life, rather than going through the whole process of setting up the character. I quite enjoy watching films half way through or without the sound on. You have to piece together a story which is probably no where near as interesting as it seems because it’s turned into a puzzle, everything they do suddenly becomes potentially important.
After that bit of reflection, came the screening and announcement of the winner of the Animation Challenge itself. The prize rightly went to
Joe Lea’s interpretation of Underwater Fax of Death, which thanks to other people’s attraction to the song means I’m still singing
that song in my head 4 days later. Afterwards, I got to catch up with some familiar faces and chat to some new ones… which was nice.
P.S. I’ll find out the name of that animation and see what I can link to.
