Female Comedy Influences

I am now involved with a comedy sketch group and was thinking on my influences the other day.

Not a film watcher or a music listener, there was one thing my mother brought me up to appreciate fully and that was female sketch comedians (I far prefer them to female stand ups). So here's a very quick rundown of my major influences


Victoria Wood & Julie Walters
I get this disgustingly huge smile on my face when I watch these ladies perform together. Victoria Wood is an unmitigated genius and Julie Walters' physical comedy in every single sketch brings me to tears of joy. I've mentioned before that Two Soups is pretty much my favourite sketch of all time so I'll post something different by them. Gah! I love them!



Dawn French & Jennifer Saunders
The grand mistresses of the parody, French and Saunders were my first comedy gig at the Bristol Hippodrome in 2000. As I've mentioned and posted videos by French and Saunders before here's a live sketch from that very gig I went to see.


Fiona Allen, Doon Mackichan and Sally Phillips (aka Smack the Pony)
This is one of my mum's favourite TV shows so it's got this incredibly nostalgic feel to it for me. It makes me so happy. These three sketches crack me up:


The ladies of Saturday Night Live
I can't leave this post without mentioning my favourite ladies from the longest-running sketch show ever, Saturday Night Live. To be a live sketch comedienne as a full time job means these ladies are the cream of the crop. And oh man, they're sickeningly inspiring.

Gilda Radner (1975-1980)



Amy Poehler & Tina Fey (2000-2008) - I wanted to show their Golden Globes opening because they're just genius together



Kristen Wiig (2005-2012)



Kate McKinnon (2012-present)
 

How To: Pikachu iPhone Charger

This post will show you how to make your iPhone charger plug into a Pikachu face!


Here's what you will need:

• your Apple charger plug (make sure it is long out of the socket and HANDLE WITH CARE)
• a yellow sharpie
• a black sharpie
• a red sharpie

 

Remember to handle the plug very carefully so you don't shock yourself.

Step One: Take the yellow sharpie and colour in the entire plug (except the back!)

 Step Two: Mark in the position and size of the eyes using the black sharpie.

 Step Three: Add the nose down from the eyes, it's an upside down triangle. Then mark in the mouth, it's like a flattened 3. Mine is all a little wonky, I'm sure yours will be better!

Step Four: Add in cheeks using the red sharpie. They're a little smaller than the eyes and diagonally down and outwards from them. As a finishing touch I added the white in Pikachu's eyes. I'd suggest using white nail polish to put a white dot on, or Tipex!

Et voila. Mine looks all mucky and weird because I tried to spray it with a sealer after I'd finished. Don't do that, all the black ran down and he looked like Horrific Hallowe'en Pikachu.

Writer's Room - THE UPDATE

I originally wrote this post when I was sharing a house with two other people and basically kept 95% of my belongings in one awful room.

Well, now I've sort of got my shit together and live in a lovely flat; have done for almost a year now. So as a nice comeback to this blog I thought I'd update you all on my surroundings.

The Bed

Same bedding, just been made. Oh and my landlady is nice so the bed ISN'T a broken mess that gives me back issues. Tidy!

The Desk

Again, same PC/desk components, I just have a lot more room to play around with now. Plus, lookit! Nice carpeting rather than freezing cold floorboards! I love my little flat.

The Bookshelf

Still don't have even a tenth of my books here, but this is where I keep them. And yes, I still pile a bunch of crap on top of and in front of the books. But I'm getting better. I intend to sand down these bookcases and paint them a mint green soon!


Storage Areas

What? WHAT?! There's no crap shoved here there and everywhere it'll fit? Everything is relatively neatly organised in storage cupboards? Well, shiiii.

 

Yay for proper storage!

DVD/Game Collection

 

 Me and the boyfriend merged our collections and organised them semi-neatly on some shelves! Note Blade and Hulky on top there :D

Clothes

I have two wardrobes now and I love them. There's SPACE IN FRONT OF THEM as well. Yay! Still not the most neatly organised I know. Planning to go through and give lots away to charity because I really don't wear the majority of it. Note to self: stop assigning all belongings sentimental value.

"Dresser"

 

And instead of keeping my cosmetics and toiletries scattered haphazardly around my room I now scatter them haphazardly on the windowsill in my bathroom. I love my bathroom. Look at the tiles!


There you have it, a little update. A cleaner working area means better focus and more work gets done. I'm so happy now.

I Hate Everyone Who Goes To The Cinema

I came back to check up on my blog this afternoon and was HORRIFIED to discover I haven't updated it in FOUR MONTHS. What's that about?

So, unable to bother enough to write something original for today here's a piece I wrote a while back about hating everyone who goes to the cinema. Enjoy.

Fresh Queen of Cathays

On the fields of Somerset, born and raised
In my tractor is where I spent most of my days
Ploughin' and preparin' my harvest was a lark
And doing some cow-tipping after it turned dark.

When a couple of guys, they might've been thiefs
Started makin' crop circles in amongst my sheafs
I ruined one barn dance and folk started tellin' tales
I said I'm going to study lit in a city in Wales

I whistled for my horse and when it came close
I saw someone had kindly shaved "M4" on its arse
If anything I could say that this might've been a myth
But I though "nah forget it, oh boyo! To the 'Diff!"

**Doodoo doo DOODOO doo dooo! Doodoo doo DOODOO doo doo!**

We. Reared. UP to student halls, where I would be living
I implored of lovely Dobbin "yo horse, stop shitting"
I looked at my bedroom in a wonder and haze,
I'm finally here. I'm the Queen of Cathays.

Kyle's Ravenclaw Scarf

Quite a while ago I believe I promised my friend off of the Twitters, @iamspacebar a Harry Potter scarf and then I forgot about it. He kindly reminded me just before Christmas and, ignoring his pleas that he was kidding, I went ahead and big fat knitted one for him anyway.

His house is obviously Ravenclaw so I found this lovely super-chunky yarn by Patons. I picked the colours "Delphinium" and "Indigo" as they were cute hues of Ravenclaw blue. They can be purchased HERE. Because it was super chunky it knit up really quickly.

I just went for a simple scarf structure. I used 10mm needles, cast on 20 stitches and knit 25 rows in each colour before switching back and casting off when I nearly ran out of yarn. Simple!

Here are some photos of *me* wearing it, because I'm yet to send it up to bonny Scotland for Kyle...




This is an in-progress photo of me setting in the loose ends after the knitting with a crochet hook I had lying around.






And because I'm wholly uncapable of being completely serious about anything this is a little shot I like to call Dilophosaurus-Chic



Click HERE to view this work on my Ravelry.

Writer's Room

This is a blog post about that most spectacular of things: the Writer's Room.

No, not the BBC website (( CLICK HERE )) which you should check out if you *do* write as it's inspiring and awesome.

No, the bedroom/workspace of a young writer; older writers have got their shit together somewhat and can possibly afford two separate rooms for sleeping and work. Not us under the age of 55 though.



Behold! The bed, expertly made just how I like it! Sure, it has an overabundance of cushions, pillows and blankets and SURE I may HAVE to rearrange and pad about like a restless cat for half an hour before I settle at 5am each night... but this is where the magic happens. And by magic I mean reading sometimes. And sleeping. Mmmmmm.



Behold! My PC. Built by me so it doesn't work as well as a ready-made shop bought one. That's how I like it. This is where I do my research and writing. Well... when I say research I mean browsing Reddit, Tumblr and occasionally Wikipedia (for verification; that site is so correct ALL of the time). Aaaand by writing I mean browsing Reddit, Tumblr and occasionally Wikipedia for hours before writing half a page, getting tired and crawling the half a metre to bed. WITHOUT my feet having to touch the floor might I add? Chyeah.



Behold! (Okay, I'll stop with the beholding) My bookshelf. Stocked to the brim with my assortment of books. Get this, only those which I have purchased in 2011 are here (and one or two already in 2012). I will blog on this minor, MINOR obsession at a later date. But yeah, man I love books. There's also a complete boxset of The Wire sitting there. Ignore that. And the knitting. That's not where that goes.





These are the storage areas of my room. Above the gas meter cupboard, behind my desk and under my bed. As you can see everything is neatly stacked and labelled to make it really easy for me when I want to find something and/or move house. Proud of these.




This is my DVD/Xbox game collection. At one point it was all categorised and alphabetised but then I wanted it to be colour-coded, lost heart IMMEDIATELY and this happened. The only semblance of intelligence in this set up is the Star Trek and Friends boxsets being used like bookends. Hooray!



My clothes, all washed nicely and hung away. I'm all neat and tidy with my clothes like that.



My dresser... I *think*. Look, it's called organised chaos. I know where everything is in my room! ...Unless it's in one of the storage areas. Don't ask about those, I get upset.

SHUT UP.