It’s August 2024. I’m a writer-comedian. I live in Glasgow. I’m married to Samara (as of ten years ago) and all is exactly as it should be.
Creative Production
I run a small press magazine called New Escapologist and Issue 16 came out last month. It’s a thing of beauty so why not grab a copy? It’s selling quite well, which is pleasing.
I’ve started tentative work on Issue 17. Commissions are out, ideas are doodled, writing is lazily underway. Due for release in early December, this will be the last of the cycle of four issues we financed in early 2023. I’m not sure what will happen after that. It would be nice to do more.
I performed my one-person literary comedy show, The Annotated Audiobook, at PEN Theatre in south London last month. We could hear the rain hammering atmospherically on the roof (which I liked) but the audience was tiny. I quipped that playing to such a small crowd “is either a right of passage or a new low.” If I do more of these, I’d very much like them to be in black box theatres like PEN, though ideally with 30-50 bottoms to warm the seats.
Work continues on the film I’m making with Mark Cartwright and Anthony Irvine. We’re turning my book about the Iceman into a documentary and it’s been tremendous creative fun so far. Last month we were shooting in Devon. This month we’re presenting WIP screenings in Edinburgh and Birmingham to raise money to help finish the thing. September will see a final London shoot at the Bill Murray club.
This month sees the publication of Before I Go, the memoir of “the archaeopteryx of alternative comedy,” John Dowie. I’ve loved working with Dowie on this book (I served as his editor and helped to get it published) and I hope we stay friends once its all over.
In my previous ‘Now’ message, I mentioned that June would be devoted to something new and different. “Ooooh,” I said, and, “yes.” This half-happened. The first two weeks of June were dedicated precisely and successfully to this mystery project. Then things got busy again and I had to stop. Hopefully I’ll pick it up again soon.
I’ve got an article in the July-August edition of the Idler. My name’s on the cover this time and I’ve had some really kind emails about it too. Thanks idlers.
Reading
I finally finished that monster biography of Portuguese poet Ferdinand Pessoa by Richard Zenith. It was very, very good so it’s hard to begrudge the absurd length. I want to tell the world about Pessoa, but there would be no point: Zenith is your man for that.
As much as I enjoyed Zenith/Pessoa, it felt good to draw a line under it. Three months is a long time to spend reading the same book. Since then I’ve enjoyed a short book about Kraftwerk and a deeply entertaining collection of essays about the Talmud. I’m now reading two books (a novel and a nonfic) for review in New Escapologist 17. Bliss.
Travel
I have not travelled at all this summer. Our Canadian relatives are visiting next week though. That’s travel of a sort. They will bring news of a faraway land.
Cultural Devourment
Some films I enjoyed recently were a documentary about rewilding called Wilding (2023), La chimera (2023), mumblecore comedian drama I Used to Be Funny (2023), and wolfcut queer love-in I Saw the TV Glow (2023). That latter film was fascinating: truly, today’s youth have been robbed of their Buffy.
I also saw Oppenheimer (2023) which was one of the most boring films I’ve ever seen in my life. It’s resolutely uncinematic; just loads of dull men talking in rooms. On and on and on and on and on and on and on.
I saw these films at the GFT. Support your local art cinemas, you sods.
Inspired by the Kraftwerk book, I also watched boomer mystery road film Radio On (1979). So cool.
Our legendarily difficult local hipster pub quiz took a few weeks off while some football was happening. I don’t really understand the connection between these two things, but I’m long accustomed to my favourite things being cancelled or destroyed to make way for sport: from tuning in to watch Star Trek: The Next Generation in the 1990s only find that the cricket has overrun, to the public libraries being closed for covid safety in 2020-21 while thousands of dullards are allowed to shout their lungs out at dribbling millionaires at Ibrox on the other side of the river.
For TV, I’ve been watching Batman: The Animated Series from 1995, a favourite of Dowie’s. It’s absolutely superb. Penguin is my homeboy. But I also like the Riddler, so skinny and green. Mark Hamill will always be my Joker, but then so will sexy grandma Caesar Romero. Inspired by I Saw the TV Glow, my wife and I also watched the first season of Charmed. It is rubbish.
Physical Form
Here’s my picture of the “month” so you can continue to monitor my ongoing decay, this time taken in a state of repose at the Devon film shoot:
