#have been fiddling with this for like a week but ultimately I think it's funnier just like this fdlskfjs

[everybodyknows-everybodydies]

Colette has just taken a bite of apple (rare treat that it is), quite absorbed in her grading, when someone over her shoulder says with an audible grin, “Do you know what’s worse than finding a worm in an apple?”

The unchewed bite is spat out, sailing inelegantly across the room to splat against the wall and then splop to the floor, before she’s fully processed the situation. A noise like a cat readying a hairball huddles in the back of her throat as she whips around with the rest of the apple bleeding juices over her hand, held aloft and prepared for violent launch at the intruder. “What did you do to the—”

“Half a worm,” says Kharish brightly.

---

“Sorry,” she goes to wipe apple juices from the bridge of her nose, “you’re right, it’s dangerous to laugh while eating. I’ll work on my timing.”

“I did not laugh!”

[janeashersource]

Jane enjoys creating a new role...

TV Times magazine, 28 November – 4 December 1981

Everything about her is fresh and fine: her skin, her blue eyes, her hair, which has lightened over the years from red-gold to silver-gilt. Jane Asher at 35 still looks a snowdrop of a girl.

That fragile air hardly hides a basic sturdiness. Rejecting any notion that she offers the world a romantic pallor, she cheerfully observes that she had always been as white as a ghost. She is good at fielding inquiries she sees as an invasion of privacy. At the age of 19 she was in the middle of a long, lively, much-touted relationship with Paul McCartney. the results of her openness then have left her wary of interviews.

Jane Asher lived with political cartoonist Gerald Scarfe for some years. They have a seven-year-old daughter, Katie. These days Miss Asher is Mrs. Scarfe and Mrs. Scarfe sweetly does not care to say how long she had been married. 'For quite a while,' is the most she will manage. 'You can never explain your own life to anyone else,' she said last year. 'whatever you say, you're bound to antagonise someone.'

Gerald, Jane and Katie Scarfe live in Chelsea. Not long ago, sitting in her vast, handsome kitchen and waiting for a sibling for Katie, Jane said she likes being pregnant. 'I'd have babies all the time. You can always work round them. I've never planned a family round work. If a baby is good you can do almost anything.' She sounded slightly vague. As this is a lady who does not drift, sounding vague is probably as good a ploy as any to block questions.

Little Jane Asher was six when she played in her first film, Mandy, the story of a deaf-mute child. 'It probably made me want to go on the stage, but I was so young that I don't know whether I would have tried, anyway. I like to think that I persevered where my brother and sister didn't.'

Peter, two years older than Jane, abd Claire, who years younger, acted in films and on radio when children. But only Jane worked hard enough to take her O levels at 15, because her parents made it part of the deal that if she got behind with them she would have to stop acting. She performed professionally on television all through school and she carried on from there. 'I didn't have formal training. I just did it.'

Perhaps it was this early start which early on gave her the confience to pick and choose her parts. 'i'v always een very choosy. I particularly enjoy doing something that's just been written, creating a new role. I'd like to think that you can influence a new play a lot. When you're working on a character for the first time, shapes emerge.'

She has done some good first-time stuff. Christopher Hampton's The Philanthropist and Treats, Brian Clarke's Whose Life is it, Anyway? with Tom Conti. some of the plays are plenty wry, but as yet she has not properly taken on the ultimate challenge of straight comedy.

This is something she wants to do. she hopes she has brought comedy to Celia Ryder for Brideshead Revisited. 'Celia's a bit of a funny character. the more i played her the more sympathetic to her I became. charles is so beastly to her.'

Unintentional comedy attended Celia. The ITV strike in 1979 stranded Jane in the middle of a scene – she was standing in a bedroom about to enter the bathroom. a year-and-a-half later she found herself opening the door, looking, she imagines, a lot older, 'and wiser, maybe.' But what was one doing with the character 18 months earlier?

It was hard to remember: she had been in a play during that time. Before the Party, by rodney Ackland, got Jane Asher launching out in new directions. She produced as well as performed and for the first time she had to take on the drama's organizational and financial sides.

Sorting out her experiences, she came down for organisation. 'I'm not particularly good at finance but I am interested in getting things done. It's difficult to go up to people and say,you must put your money into this wonderful production, but I do. I try to find angels [backers] for a joint company I've formed with The Oxford Playhouse.'

Last Summer Jane stretched her organisational gifts by successfully staging a charity show, Hidden Talents, for London's Mermaid Theatre. John Le Mesurier sang a Cole Porter song, Clive Jenkins read petry, Tim Rice did his Elvis impersonation and astronomer Patrick Moore performed in this own operetta. The results were impressive enough to give rise to talk about a series for ITV's new Channel Four.

Since Brideshead Jane has acted with James Fox in Love is Old, Love is New, a four-parter for BBC Television, and with Laurence olivier in John Mortimer's A Voyage Round My Father, for Thames Television. More recently she has been working on a book which shows her at her most domestic.She has always enjoyed engaging in domesticity and the book is about her unusual talent for elaborate and fanciful cake decorations. 'I've done lots of cooking and cake-decorating for years. During Before the Party, Phyllis Calvert [Jane's co-star] said I should put a book together on the subject.'If you're going to decorate a cake yourself it's much funnier and more charming tomake it about the person it's intended for. the point about this book is that it isn't professional. People who think that ornate decorations must be a professional job won't be over-awed. I'm very much an amateur, working at the kitchen table among children and dogs, and having to clear up for dinner.'the book will have lots of pictures showing needle-fingered Jane fiddling about with the tiny, imaginative details which emerge from her piping bag. It should be out next Easter, a good time for cakes.

Jane once said of acting: 'I sometimes wonder what it does to the brain, saying the same things over and over again. It seems strange to do it eight times a week.' the observation came out of a long run. She still wonders, remarking that – like words – lines repeated too often lose their meaning. 'It's interesting. It goes in waves. You can enjoy yourself discovering something new for a while and then you can sink into a great trough and feel you've lost it completely. Then suddenly one night you find it again.'

Jane Asher would make sure that she found it again. Cakes, babies, scripts, angels – whatever she tackles, she tackles well.

Found via John Kilwarren twitter.

[someonetotaketheedgeoff-blog]

22.08.2017 – Journal; Don’t Fuck Where You Eat, Work, Tasmania & Friday Night Open Mics

Don’t Fuck Where You Eat

Like life relationships become stale. You run out of motivation to push forward. Everything becomes boring. You suck each other dry. Maybe you only have so much ‘intimate’ love. You eventually annoy each other.

We love our parents and siblings but fuck they can annoy you. I think it’s hard to live with anyone unless you can fuck them to relieve the tension of living together - it’s why it sucks to live with your parents.

I lay under the table. She lay next to me. The laptop on the table playing music. I lay awkwardly, back to the couch. Bit of crying, bit of talking. Playing the same song over and over. Being sad and stoned is weird. Like being sad in slow motion. You think of drugs as a short cut to happiness but then when something jarringly sad happens during the high it amplifies the pain.

‘Please don’t kiss or fuck my best friend/roommate now we aren’t together’. I said.

‘…We… We… don’t do that much anymore… we don’t do that much anyway…’. She said.

Bad answer. Bad opener. Bad closer.

It’s just courteous - don’t fuck where you eat.

I joked that I could trade rooms with my roommate/best friend and we’ll go about life like nothing happened. Then I joked that I’ll just kill myself and he can move in to make things less awkward.

All of this is better I think. I can be a much better friend to her than a lover. Sexually I’m so fucked up and haven’t wanted to fuck her for ages anyway. Which depresses the fuck out of me because she’s very beautiful.

Maybe we spent too much time together.

After 6 months of fucking and spending time together secretly, then agreeing to be together we’ve spent nearly every day together for the last 3.5 years. Days and nights. Mostly it’s been great. Never really had a fight - argued of course. Never any intense disagreements.

After the break up I decided to have a short break from stand up – it wasn’t 100% because I was sad. I just didn’t have any jokes about the break up. Didn’t do stand up for about 3 weeks. In that time, I could feel myself becoming more and more full of shit. Saying things that I didn’t fully agree with and feeling fraudulent - you need stand up to kick you in your teeth.

Most people’s lives, mine included, are about avoiding failure. Trying to build a comfortable space for yourself. Stand up, if you’re trying, you’ll fail at it. You’ll eat shit and bomb but that’s a good thing. I learn more and more that you should shower yourself in failure. Find new ways to fail. Find innovative ways to get crushed, let days pass, have a wank in the shower and get back out there. The less bombing hurts you the better you’ll be. Just get back on that horse. That dead fucking horse. Stand up - the most brutal of the arts; sky diving for theatre kids and painters.

I went busking a few times when I was 16 at Salamanca market in Hobart. A great market, mostly for tourists on Saturdays. My parents were overly supportive, buying me a camping stool to sit on while I played guitar and my mum telling everyone she knew that I was busking.

It was before I sang. So, I just played guitar. I played Jazz standards on a steel string with no amplification. No one’d really be able to hear me over the noise of the market. I was super nervous and would play for only 40 minutes, making measly change.

I remember going once. I’d sat down after moving to a new area thinking it’d be more lucrative. I played for 5 minutes and my entire family turned up, their faces irritatingly beaming. As they walked closer and leaned over the guitar case I watched their faces lose their excitement as they all looked at one singular $2 coin.

My dad said something to the effect of – ‘Is that all you’ve made?’.

It paints a perfect picture of the arts. We all do it - when we walk past a busker. You try not to let them see as they play their shit cover of Wonderwall but you’re looking at their guitar case – your looking to see their worth.

When you talk about doing stand-up people ask if you make money. It doesn’t annoy me but when you say you don’t they look at you slightly less enthusiastically - it’s annoying.

I see it the same as studying. It takes years to become a practising lawyer but no one’s ever going to ask if you get paid while you’re studying to be one. It’s ridiculous to think anyone would make money out of an unconventional skill off the bat but I guess it’s how the world sees shit.

***

Walking through the city midday. Windy as fuck but the air had a warm comforting quality. I listened to Homebrew in my headphones and walked towards Flinders St. station. My bottom jaw lightly clenched in a smile that I couldn’t stop. The I-just-got-laid-smile.

Melbourne’s really an insanely colourful place. Crossing the road, a guy walked towards me from the other side. He looked rough and angry. He held a Buzz Lightyear action figure in one hand and angrily muttering aggressive shit to Buzz as we walked past.

I thought about last night as I slurped udon noodles. Did karaoke for the first time. Sang Radiohead’s Creep as hard as I could to a bar of strangers. A blokey dude slapped me on the arse when I finished – ‘Mate, bloody beautiful!’ he slurred.  

Work

At work, I filled up a tray of drinks and went to the foyer - 4 of us lined up in a row aligned with the entrance so guests could grab drinks as they came in. I was third along so fuck all people took my drinks.

Holding the tray quickly became utterly painful. I have OK arm strength but combined with maintaining balance it became increasingly brutal. I looked at the glasses. Maybe this is what hell is? You hold a tray of glasses in a lobby that no one ever drinks as you uncomfortably sweat into a white button up shirt.

Working this job (catering for weddings and events), you get to experience a lot of inner worlds that you wouldn’t usually see. Rich people, cultural weddings, people that take themselves very seriously. Working a charity fundraiser for super rich white people I took gluten free bread to a table. It was for a guy named ‘Theo’. I asked if there was a Theo on the table. An old grey dude was like - ‘a CEO?’. How corporate do you have to be to think I meant to say ‘CEO’. Struth.  

When I started this job, it was kinda brutal when you made mistakes. People of more authority would shred you verbally. To deal with this I pretended I was into being dominated in that way - that secretly I’m getting some sort of sexual satisfaction. So, I win.

After work. Sipping some decent champagne sitting at a desk covered in pens, an upper staff member, a predatorial gay dude, fiddled around in his suit jacket on the back of his chair. He walked a few steps over to where we sat, shuffling a wad of $50 notes like he was about to do a card trick.

‘Alright let’s see who’s got the biggest cock…?’ He said.

Light pause then a ripple of laughter. Funnier because he was serious. We sipped and sat uncomfortably. The conversation gained momentum again, ignoring what was said. Like a cyclist that’d fallen over, painfully getting back on their bike and pushing forward. I love the forwardness of gay dudes.

***

Depression’s inherently selfish but also a natural reaction to reality. The world we live in, the existence you’re dealt, a body so plagued with desires, the impossible grind for happiness, the potential for bad shit to happen all the time.

Hard to say whether it’s a half empty glass or half full when the glass doesn’t exist - or filled with tears.

When I feel positive or make myself feel positive I feel like a fraud, a fake, a liar because I can’t help believing everything’s fucked. When I commit to being negative I ultimately feel worse, I justify bad behaviour, I take more drugs, I neglect my friends, I drain people, I don’t follow my dreams.

Depression’s basically a mindset you can’t see a way out of. A narrowing of your mental peripherals. It’s a justifiable response to reality so it can be an effort to heave yourself out. Actual clinical depression’s quite rare I imagine. But every second person I know is on pills. Makes you wonder what the fuck is going on? What happened? Did life suddenly become shit? No, they just created a pill that makes you not notice – true virtual reality.

Everything’s work. Nothing comes for free - especially not a good mental state. When you see someone happy – they worked for that shit. Or maybe they paid for it. If you know them well and they’re smart and aware - the harder they worked for their happiness. When you see someone happy all the time and you’re a miserable cunt you either look at them and think what a blissful dumb fuck or you wonder what they know that you don’t.

All my heroes were/are depressed, dry, cranky, alcoholic, drug riddled motherfuckers.

I’m thinking about being depressed for a while. Just casually. Maybe part time. Never go full time depressed though – the hours will kill you.

Tasmania

Went to Tasmania for 6 days. Just to hang out really. See my friends. I drank nearly every day and chain-smoked like an animal. I had a many great conversations. I saw a lot of people. Did a gig. Went to the yoga with my sister. Went to Hobart’s infamous basement of sweat, Cascade Larger and chlamydia - Mobius night club.

Tasmania’s small. If you’ve grown up there – going out drinking becomes like this unwanted school reunion – in fact everywhere becomes an unwanted school reunion. Living there you get very good at clocking people from a distance and ignoring them in the mall. It’s not even because you don’t want to see them. It’s just tedious when you’re trying to buy bread and see 7 people from grade 4 in the process.

Coming back, I welcomed this. It’s taxing when you live there but visiting I embraced it. Getting off the bus in the city I walked around aimlessly knowing I’d see people I knew. I saw 4 people I knew. We punched darts under a bus shelter in the wet air and talked shit – it was beautiful.

The gig I did in Tassie went well.

After the gig, I stood outside smoking with friends. An intense dude wearing a trench coat and a child’s backpack walked around the court yard. We watched him disappear into the bushes and return to give everyone a rock he’d found.

‘One for you there mate…’.

‘One for you, one for you…’.

‘…Ah and one for the lady…’.

Even when it’s not an open mic mental illness inevitably gravitates to comedy.

My friend with zero streets smarts and/or awareness of reality jokingly told the guy to throw one of the rocks through the window of the bar.

‘No. Don’t do that’. I said firmly, stepping forward.

‘What the fuck are you saying man?’. I asked. ‘The guys obviously high as fuck… Jesus fucking Christ’.

My friend just laughed and shrugged it off.

After I’d performed the same friend came up me to me.

‘You did really well… I see a man that no longer cares about his own happiness only his success’. He said.

I didn’t know how to answer that. I paused for a bit.

‘My happiness comes from being honest on stage… If that brings me success then… great… I still care about my happiness though man…’.

Coming back on the plane, I got on the train home. Looking out the window I played back a montage of all the goodbye hugs that I’d had in Tassie. It made my eyes water and gave an intense feeling of optimism – A rarity to me in the past months.

Friday Night Open Mics

Sitting in the front row of a Friday night open mic waiting to go on.

I sat there overthinking everything. Thinking about the history of stand up and all my favourite comedians. Going through my set in my head. Re-wording a bit in my mind – a bit where I shit on a dude that looked like a dude sitting behind me in the audience. I changed my description to something that wouldn’t create attention.

I over thought everything until my tension plateaued and I felt calm. A calm I used to feel doing comedy in Tasmania. It felt good and my set went OK.

I missed out a bit about breaking up with my girlfriend. The bit leading into it talked about using my girlfriend’s vibrator to fuck myself while she’d been away. I forgot the bit so it seemed like I still had a girlfriend.

The MC got back up.

‘Liam Donnelly everyone!’. People clapped. ‘… He shouldn’t fuck his arsehole… He doesn’t even have a girlfriend! Hack!’. He said.

I laughed somewhat sheepishly.

I knew he had no idea if I had a girlfriend or not but my mind spun. Does he know? How does he know? Does he read my shit? Na he’s just ripping shreds. Surely.

Hours later into the morning I smoked on Flinders St. steps. A woman with a face like a clenched fist comes by and sweetly asks for a spare smoke. I smiled and said I didn’t have any.

I watched a young couple across from me sitting on a cube of concrete. They smoked and smiled. Usually after a break up seeing couples is a sad reminder of what you don’t have anymore. But I felt nothing watching them. Wasn’t bitter or sad. The idea of ‘being’ with someone now seems strange to me. Like a hobby I don’t understand. Like windsurfing or cheerleading.

Maybe it’s because I don’t feel lonely. If I felt lonely I’d be fucked.

I fell in and out of sleep on the replacement bus. Dangerous thing to do. Could wake up anywhere, be completely fucked and be forced to Uber home.

My head pounded so hard when I got home. 2 ibuprofens, protein shaker full of water, 1 reluctant cigarette and a wank for desert. Phone on 9% - enough for a wank. My head pounded so hard I had to grip my forehead with my free hand to stop it throbbing.

I spend so much time drunk. Why? Am I bored or scared of my own brain?

I don’t know if you can be creative for your whole like and be happy.