- Dear Time, I know that you're generally none-too-flexible with the nature of your own existence, but I could do with some extra mins today! #
- Video: thisisdavid: http://tumblr.com/xbc6z66ev #
- Only one day away from a 24hr flight with @FloValentine. You can attach a silencer to a baby, right? #
- This really is great! RT @AllyFarrell: THIS IS AMAZING RT @lexx2099: Beyonce's 'Single Ladies' -motown style http://bit.ly/bZuSGd #
Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-03-07
March 7th, 2010 § 0
Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-02-28
February 28th, 2010 § 0
- Excited about today's haircut after seeing owner standing in empty salon, in cowboy stance, staring into mirror & blow drying his own hair. #
- New haircut looks like bastard son of @thisisdavid, Tony Law & the 1950s. http://tweetphoto.com/12182252 #
- RT @tomkelshaw: I'm Team Lago all the way. If you can't use that Bronze to score chicks at a bar, what good is it? http://bit.ly/dDhPV2 #
- RT @rexbox: Iphone master @mrfungfung has a trailer up for his new game: Fox Vs Duck: http://foxvsduck.com/ #
- If you're going to take to the stage with a quiff the size of a small country then either mention it or prepare for awkwardness. #
- Your wife does herself with non-organic cucumbers #middleclassinsults #
- Listening to Roxette’s "The Look”. Thumping snare drum being done no justice by laptop that would make Brian Blessed sound like Mike Tyson. #
- Train delayed to Paddington. Disembodied robot lady voice on PA says she's sorry, but she doesn't have feelings so how can I feel better? #
- Late night diversions on motorways that are badly sign-posted, suck the big one. I'm looking at you M11. #
- Hey redbull, you may have gotten me back from Peterborough alive, but now I'm home, exhausted & wired. What now? #
Turning Lead Into Dinner
February 24th, 2010 § 0
Cooking, like stand-up, can be an incredibly humbling experience. You can do all the preparation in the world, follow the instructions to the letter, pay close attention to the process and still be left with a shit-sandwich.
But we keep coming back to the stove/microphone even after we’ve crashed and burned so the rewards must be pretty awesome if we’re happy to risk such dismal, and often public, failure.
I only came to cooking late, partly because I didn’t know how great it could be, but mostly because I was a firm believer that the toasted sandwich was the pinnacle of human culinary achievement. In hindsight, there is still something great about the toastie, but it’s very much the LEGO of food – just assemble the pieces correctly and it will be roughly what it’s meant to.
Proper cooking though, is like alchemy. You have your base ingredients and hopefully, through a series of arcane rituals and the proper application of fire, you can transmute your articles into something greater than the sum of its parts.
I’ve never really achieved this, but I’ve come close enough to believe that I should keep trying, despite the embarrassing failures.
Last night I made risotto for the first time, and I knew that it was going to be a little tricky. In the past, I’ve cleaned up after other people have made risotto, so I know that there’s nothing fun about trying to remove two inches of burnt rice off the bottom of a saucepan with a chisel.
I love “fire and forget” cooking, like roasts and casseroles – anything that you’re allowed to walk away from for a while with a glass full of wine and a head full of dreams about how good the finished product will be. Risotto, unfortunately, is like a child with ADHD wearing a suit made of dynamite. It requires constant care and attention to make sure that it doesn’t go crazy and ruin your kitchen.
I thought that I had it all under control, but as soon as I started adding the wine to the risotto in a manner known as “one for Kent, one for the risotto”, it was all over.
I write this to you from one day after the disaster, sitting at my kitchen table ,typing on my laptop while forking re-heated risotto from last night into my cake-hole. It’s not a wholly unpleasant experience, the asparagus and the spring onions have come through nicely but consistency really ruins the experience.
Upon tasting the risotto fresh out of the pan last night, my fiancee summed it up best when she remarked, “this is like eating semi-tasty, rice-based cement”. And she was right.
Cut Up to Size
February 23rd, 2010 § 0
Yesterday I had my first professional haircut in 2 years and it was a doozy. Not having been inside a salon for a while, I asked the hairdresser for something fun and he proceeded to cut and build a quiff the size of a small country. After 35 minutes and £20, he’d completely transformed my look from “homeless-not-so-chic” to “rockabilly sex offender” which was startling to say the least. He also gave me a folding, flick-knife style comb that has my name on it.
I walked home in the drizzle and snow feeling a like a taller, hairier, less-dead James Dean; certain that I was radiating an aura of pure, unadulterated cool. When I got back to my flat and passed the hall mirror, I almost shat myself as an unfamiliar, high-haired stranger stared at me from the depths of the reflection, creeping me out with his silly do (and the fact that he was wearing my face).
By the time it came to “drive-to-the-gig-o’clock”, I’d completely forgotten about the hair, so I picked up the other comics and drove to Ipswich oblivious to the fact that I looked like some greaser, lumberjack from the 50s with a severe case of muscle atrophy.
My first hint that something was wrong came when I walked on stage at the Ipswich University Student Union & Cock Fighting Area. A snigger went up from the crowd as I took to the stage but I foolishly thought that I’d left my fly undone, not that I was wearing hair that made me nine feet, two inches tall.
About ten minutes into my spot, well aware that something was amiss, but unable to ascertain what it was, I leant to the side as part of a joke and began to topple to the left, my hair’s gravitational pull exerting its influence on the Earth and pulling me to the floor. For the next few seconds I staggered about like a newborn giraffe, struggling to find my new centre of gravity.
In the end, the gig sucked but I can’t just blame the hair. Sure it made me look ridiculous, but stand-up comedian is an occupation where that shouldn’t be a problem. Tonight I’ve got the night off, so I’m going to spend a few hours, pacing around the flat, adjusting to my new-found height, so the next time I take to stage, I don’t flail about like a drunk transvestite in platform boots.
Often in life, the true consequences of your actions aren’t apparent until they’re running towards you with a baseball bat and nail gun, and by that time, there’s nothing you can do except take a beating and get attached to something. What you’ve got to remember though, is that sometimes the beating you take is worth it. Sometimes, it’s worth £20, 35 minutes and a shit gig in Ipswich just to be able to say to people “my hair is taller than yours”.
Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-02-21
February 21st, 2010 § 0
- Costa now make a Flat White. They're about as difficult to swallow as a Uwe Boll adaptation of anything you love. #
- Going to Jewish wedding today & have to take own yarmulke. What's the point in being chosen by God if you don't even get a free hat? #
- Augmented (hyper)Reality: http://vimeo.com/8569187 #
- I'm last-minute MC tonight @ Bright Club, Wilmington Arms, Exmouth Market London. Science meets comedy & they fight to the death. Come along #
- Strangers who don't approve of me singing the Terminator theme song to @FloValentine as we walk down the street need to get over themselves. #
- BTW – these are our favourite versions: @FloValentine's http://bit.ly/azum93 @KentValentine's http://bit.ly/bZSfwg #
- There's something about the plug hole of our kitchen sink which can turn a scrap of something I'd eat into "Jesus that's disgusting". #
- Soho: proof that the cultural epicenter of one of the world's largest cities can still be a bit shit. Good coffe though. #
- Tranny with a 10 inch beard! #SightsOfSoho #
Ignore at your peril
February 19th, 2010 § 0
My grandma used to say: “Denim is dubious.”
Not my jeans BTW.
I bought two pairs of jeans today; identical pairs because I lack any sense of fashion imagination. I knew what size I was after (32” waist, 34” leg if you’re interested) so the entire shopping experience from go to woah only lasted 5 minutes. I was a shopping ninja – in – buy – out – that is, if ninjas had to buy their own jeans. Unfortunately, I didn’t heed my Grandma’s advice. I was cocky that because I knew my sizes and thought there was no need to waste time with the “try” before I got to the “buy”.
I’m now at home wearing a pair of jeans so tight that I’m sure my sperm count has dropped to, if not zero, then the number of bullets I would leave unfired if I was locked in a room with Kyle Sandilands and a loaded revolver – which is pretty fucking close to zero.
The other pair of jeans purchased, which are (seemingly) identical, fit absolutely fine – no unnecessary pressure on calves, thighs or groin which is both a physical & mental relief. Why the hell then, if they’re meant to be identical, do one pair strangle my entire lower section while the other, more reasonable pair, just make me look like a man in his early thirties desperately trying recapture his youth (the look I’m going for)?
When I hold them up, their dimensions seem the same, the labels and documentation claim that they’re identical, but there’s something deeply wrong with one of the pairs. I feel like I’ve just tried to buy healthy, identical twins from a small, poor country and flown them home to discover that one has cholera. Shit! Why didn’t I try them on in Malawi? I can’t turn up to my HEAT magazine shoot with a broken child.
Of course, if I’d just listened to my Grandma and tried the jeans on in the shop, I could have avoided all this whole palaver. I would be happy, my dead Grandma would be happy and you wouldn’t have just had to read a crass metaphor about an adopted bought child. Still, if I had listened to my Grandma, I would have joined the army at sixteen to let the “beat the weak” out of me; so why don’t we just agree that A) old people aren’t always right, B) ill-fitting jeans aren’t the end of the world, and C) Malawi is no place to buy children.
Dubious Friends
February 18th, 2010 § 0
NOTE:
I know this is more vitriol than comedy, but I didn’t have time to be angry AND funny today.
Ok, so Israel sends a Mossad hit squad to Dubai to murder a Hamas leader and the UK gets angry – so far so good. UK then calls Israeli ambassador to the foreign office for diplomatic bollocking – also looking good.
Unfortunately this is where disillusionment kicks in, as it becomes apparent that all the UK is concerned about is the fact that some members of the Israeli assassination team were travelling on fake UK passports. What the fuck? Who gives a shit about passports when your friend just sent a massive team of assassins to murder someone.
I don’t know about you, but if one of my friends killed a dude, I wouldn’t give a flying fuck about their travel documents, at least not until I’d gotten my head around the fact that I’ve been friends with someone who’s obviously a massive dick. Even so, there would be some pretty heavy consequences as a result of that crazy little thing called murder.
For a start, I don’t think that we’d be friends any more. We all have friends who are dicks, but surely there’s got to be a line, and I think murder is a good place to draw it. I know that Hamas can be real arseholes, but who deserves a 17 on 1, gang-bang style assassination in their Dubai hotel. You know you’ve crossed a line when there are Australian Rugby League players who think that you’ve got too many people in the hotel room.
Secondly, I’d voice some heavy disapproval. I think that assassinations on foreign soil deserve a slightly sterner rebuke than “please don’t murder anyone while you’re carrying our passports”. Maybe the focus of the rebuke could even be less on forgery and more on the cold, calculated, state-sanctioned killing if humans.
I think it’s correct and proper that the world is a upset with Israel, but get angry at the right thing. If you’re out to dinner with mates and one of them climbs on his chair, shits on the table, then pulls up his pants and sits down as if nothing happens, it’s ok to get angry… but not because he didn’t wash his hands.
Dealing with difficult people
February 17th, 2010 § 0
Here’s my thought of the day for 17th Feb, 2010.
That’s no yarmulke, it’s a space station
February 15th, 2010 § 2
Today I’m going to a Jewish wedding and I’m not happy because I’ve just found out that I’ve got to bring my own yarmulke/kippah/skull-cap.
This isn’t a logistical problem because I’ve been to Jewish weddings in the past and have been given a yarmulke each time. I now have a small collection of them which I keep between the heavy brass fittings that I would steal as a child each time our family went to “Sizzler” and the coffee mug of foreign coins that I’m too lazy to organise, but too stingy to throw away.
I figure the change is good for the collection box of any compulsory, Christian-church attendance (If God’s not happy with Euros, he can kiss my Costa Rican colón), the yarmulkes are fine for any Jewish weddings or impromptu indoor frisbee tournaments and I can use the brass fittings for braining any Mormons that actually make it through the front door. They’re my religious insurance collections.
The only reason that I’m bummed about having to bring my own yarmulke is that getting a free skull-cap is one of my favourite things about Jewish weddings. In fact, until today, that’s what I thought Jewish weddings were about: Joining two souls in the eyes of God, contract law & free hats. Also, my yarmulke collection is how I keep track of my Jewish wedding attendance. How will I know how many Jewish weddings I’ve attended if I don’t get a free hat?
Previously, this was an easy question to answer as: Jewish Weddings Attended = N (where N is the number of free yarmulkas next to the change mug). Now that I have to supply my own skull-cap, my equation will have to be updated to: JWA = N + 1 which a) is a clumsy expression, and b) is going to look horrible when I amend the original formula in my “Kent’s Big Book of Life Equations”.
Since updating the equation would be an administrative pain the arse, I’ve decided to take a radical course of action and make my own yarmulke for the wedding which I’ll wear and then add to the collection. I’ve cut a picture of the Death Star out of my Star Wars Annual (2009) and stuck it to a small circle of fabric the same size and shape as a regular yarmulke. Now, when I stand next to someone at the wedding, from the back, it will look like their head is about to become the victim of an intergalactic laser attack.
Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-02-14
February 14th, 2010 § 0
- Fablemonger for free tonight at the Builder's Arms in Kensington. Details at http://www.fablemonger.com #
- Ahhh my old nemesis, Colney Hatch #Tesco What manner of sanitation or organisational fuck-up will you surprise & disgust us with today? #
- What good can come of a day that starts with a muffin, filled with lemon custard? #
- Its A-OK if you want to bow in subservience for the next 22 hours. It is my day, but I don't get royalties so your fealty can pay the rent. #
