All’s Well That Ends Well Starts Well

No, that’s not a mistake. This is a follow up post to the ‘All’s Well That Starts Well’ post from Friday, where i spoke about a secret comedy show preview that was happening sometime [Friday night] and gave a bit of a taste of what it was about.

So basically this beard:

And this completely lack of a sense of hairstyle [at the moment – i’m in limbo]:

Gathered together with three other guys names Graeme, Andrew and JP and put on a Quiz Show called ‘All’s Well That Ends Well’ for a group of our friends and loved ones in the hope that we could gauge the kind of response it would get, see what areas needed to be strengthened or tossed out or added to and whether or not the general consensus was whether people would actually pay money to watch this as a real live proper theatre show sometime [At least until DSTV commissions us].

And it was great.

It could have been better and will be better. Things like exploding [read ‘kicked over’] lamps before the show and exploding [read ‘slightly backed into not by me’] street electricals after the show won’t happen in a real theatrical space. Also not being in a real theatrical space also is extremely unlikely not to happen in a real theatrical space.

And it was our first time and so we were just getting a feel and giving a taste of what it would look like.

While any comedian [except maybe the ones who don’t have to beg their friends to come watch their shows] will probably always say, “There could have been more laughs”, there were still a crazy whole lot of laughs and consensus at the after party at my place was that people enjoyed it a lot, there is something there, it was a lot funnier than i thought it would be and “Nice hummus” although at least one of those points was possibly not about the show.

So we will meet and discuss and hopefully get some feedback and hopefully tighten some things and be more careful around lamps and driving home afterwards, but ‘All’s Well That Ends Well’ started well in my opinion and i am pretty sure we will be back for more…

Don’t not keep watching this space.

Poetry with Erik with a K: Father William by Lewis Carroll

Heidi Segal selects the poem ‘Father William’ by Lewis Carroll and invites Erik [with a K] to give it his best:

Did that deeply move you in places you didn’t even know you had places? What poem would you entrust Erik [with a K] with if you were given the opportunity?

[For more of the classics read by Erik [with a K] in his special way, click here]

Tandem Post: Boundaries

Boundaries

Emma was dead.

I mean, she got that, she really did. Although to be fair, it had taken her quite a while.

But, in her defense, this was completely different to anything she had experienced before, and so recognising it was perhaps not such an obvious connection. What was so distinct about her present state, ‘Was this a state? A condition perhaps? Or do you have to be alive to be in any form of condition? Let’s stick with state for now,’ was its complete and utter differentness to anything else she had previously known.

‘Known?’ Know. To be aware of. Hm, even that seems wrong. It’s like i am in this place of complete awareness with regards to things known and experienced, but i still don’t really have a lot of idea of what is really going on. And what comes next?’

There had been no Terry Pratchettian CAPS LOCK voice speaking directly to her brain to let her know that Death in his, ‘His? ‘Its’ maybe? Does Death even have a gender? All that assuming Death actually has a form and persona of course. I think I may have read too many fairy tales on this topic,’ skeletalness was present and ready to take her away.

‘Skeletalness is NOT a real word. I seem to be really struggling with words to describe my current scenario. That’s the whole trick when you’re introduced to something so well and truly differently different I guess. Urgh, my mom would have cringed at ‘differently different’. Okay, focus, Emma, and let’s try and figure out what comes next. I mean, there is a next, right? This can’t be… it?’

Emma had actually lost count of the number of hours that she had spent trying to “figure out what comes next” before the moment of realisation had struck her that she was in fact dead. You would think it would have been more obvious, but there had been a certain confusion about her, a kind of mist, when she had woken up, ‘No, it can’t be woken up. That would imply sleeping. But I wasn’t sleeping, I was dead. Um, but it had felt like waking up, so maybe we’ll go with that for now,’ and tried to go somewhere else.

The cloud had so descended upon her that even though grasping at a door handle with fingers that were no longer there should have itself been a deafening clue, it had simply delivered to her the information that this particular exit was not a viable one and would she try somewhere else. The second door that led out to the, well previously had led out to the pantry, was also no help. She had moved to windows to no avail, and then, in desperation, and with a sufficient amount of panic, even attempted to pull a chair below the trapdoor in the roof. ‘But pulling anything becomes an impossible endeavour when you have nothing to pull with. Oh look, there I am.’

‘Hours? Had it been hours? It had seemed so, but what was time now? It might have been minutes, or even seconds? Every moment seemed to fade into the next one, in silence of course.’ The one thing Emma had picked up quite quickly on, once she realised, was the deafening silence that, ‘No! No! No! You cannot have a deafening silence. That does not make sense and it has never made sense no matter what ridiculous name the teachers had given to it. Silence is quiet. It cannot deafen you. Overwhelming, perhaps? That is what this silence has felt like. Almost like it was the presence of nothingness as if that could be a thing either. Where was I?’

Even when she was looking down at her lifeless body, transfixed, mesmerized, paralysed, hypnotised, spellbound, enraptured, bewitched, captivated, fascinated, engrossed, stunned, immobili… ‘Stop it! Stop it! Stop it! Remain calm. You’re losing it. You’re losing it. Keep it together. What is going on here? Surely something has to happen next. Surely someone, some… thing… has to appear and help me or lead me away or something? Tell me what to do.’

Those last five words she had meant to scream, but there was no screaming here. There was no sound at all. She could barely register her thoughts as words and even they were starting to make less send to her. She felt trapped here. Once she had discovered her body and however long it had taken for her to join those dogs together, to realise that she was in fact deaf, she had quickly become hysterical. Walking through walks had not proved fruitful. It definitely screamed as if something was keeping her in this roam.

What was she meant to don’t? She had no ideal. Her hedge seemed to be spitting now. Lied and worms humming at her foam awe differential erections. No right minded bacteria carpool battery battery emphasis derivative.

Hated.

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

Be sure to check out the other amazing posts with this same title with:

Megan: http://www.meganshead.co.za

Dave: http://bloggsymalone.wordpress.com

The allergic to E challenge

So one of my new favourite virtual [for now] friends, Dante, whose incredible Micropoetry can be found over at Original Dante, challenged me to a duel [well kinda, cos he already pulled his trigger in his own fight] which i had already kinda done in someone’s comment section, but there is no verifiable proof, so i decided to take him up on it…

OD is the reason i got interested in, and brave enough to try, Micropoetry and even though i still suspect my Micropoems are not short enough, they are WAAAY shorter than my regular poems [and getting there] so hopefully there is hope [ha ha, yes that!]. so how could i resist? And he already has a way too ridiculously nice nickname for me which also helps me to believe…

Step Away From The ‘E’

And the Rules to this No-Letter-That-Precedes-F-Or-Follow-D challenge are these:

The rules:

1. Write a whole paragraph.
2. Without any word containing the letter “e”.
3. By reading this you are already signed up.
4. Challenge at least five bloggers to do the challenge.

You should totally jump across the virtualness of space and go and check out OD’s submission, which was flawless.

But in the m antim , h r  is min :

Staring at cracks on a part of my wall I had not paid much mind to until this occasion, I thought about how much intoxication it might bring to a tiny ant, struggling to carry a biscuit crumb across its cliff-like contours. What quantity of obstruction would it vanquish or would this straightforward [from my outlook] provocation snap its will in two? In an instant though, I was shown that my lack of faith in my microscopic companion was without foundation, as it [I could not confirm if this was a boy or girl at this point] took aim and simply slid down a portion of flaking paint that I had hardly known was an option. As I was busy watching all this, my mug of Chai had grown significantly cold.

i would love to see the following people give it a try, just because i know they will totally own the challenge:

Megan Furniss

Dave Luis

Catherine Jenkin

Nick Frost

Valerie Anderson aka tbV

And she is probably way too busy for this nonsense but i would love to read the piece Jamie The Very Worst Missionary comes up with, and since she missed my book launch recently, i’m sure that this would be about fair, right?

Apologies If you’ve already been nominated before, otherwise If you haven’t, I hope you accept. Looking forward to reading your posts!

Poetry with Erik with a K: Intro

i would like to introduce you to Erik [with a K]

Sometimes when i am bored or feeling extremely creative, i like to disappear so that my alter ego, Brad Fish, can take centre stage – among the most popular things that Brad Fish was ever good for was a series of Dangerous Things You Can Least Expect videos lovingly known as DTYCLE where he warned us about all kinds of things we might have never known we needed warning about such as paper, camping and of course the more obvious dangers inherent in too much violins in the world.

In more recent times though, Brad Fish has not been around as much, but in his place has stepped another man, of more European persuasion, and who has a taste for some of the finer things in life, such as poetry, and particularly reading it [or parts of it] really loudly in his delightfully foreign accent.

That man was Erik [with a K] and here are some of the poems he has done so far:

Do Not Go Gentle by Dylan Thomas

Father William  by Lewis Carroll

Lonely Cloud by William Wordsworth

Sea Fever by John Masefield

Timothy Winters by Charles Causley

Given the opportunity, what poem would you ask Erik [with a K] to recite for you?

Poetry with Erik with a K: Timothy Winters by Charles Causley

Amy Benn requests the poem ‘Timothy Winters’ by Charles Causley and Erik [with a K] gives it his best shot:

[For more poems with Erik with a K, click here]

Highlight Moment from my life #63 – Hair

It is a fairly strange thing for a guy to list ‘Hair’ as one of the 100 highlights of his life, unless you’re David Beckham and have David Bekham type hair i guess?

But for me, it’s been an extension [ha!] of my personality and a way for me to express myself in many various ways and so definitely deserves to be on this list.