december2006
VAMOS A LA PLAYA
Hello;
Indian summer is called in America when in the middle of a really cold winter a short season of warm winds come and you walk through the snow in a t-shirt while days before you could not even walk outside without getting frozen. And that atmospheric phenomenon is becoming more and more common. Is it the global warming thing? How can we know? It has happened in the pass and it has a name so why now it is because other reasons than the ones why it happened before.
Anyway for girls or better say for me that I am a boy, these great weather make possible for the girls to gout on the streets in a very sexy way a prettiness that when the new years eve party is freeze they can not wear.
After dinner and a little bit of conversation we left. Miren and me left at two o'clock in the morning and all our friends had left some time earlier. When you spend the celebrations with your family it is very difficult to get rid of the roll that we all play with inn our family. I am the oldest and that is the roll I played there. So I have to stay in the house for a little bit more time than the rest of the people.
On the streets it was packed with people. Completely packed¡¡¡ The Indian summer was making possible that my village looked as if we were in the south hemisphere. People were wearing t-shirts on the streets of Romo. I was not, I was not cold but I had a meeting in the afternoon and we started to drink wine and then one thing let to the next and I was doing lines after lunch. Do not repeat this at home because it is not very good. It meant that late at night for me felt like if I had been in a two or three days party and I could hardly hold myself. So I went for another line and we went to another bar and then the whole thing collapse. I could not hold myself any longer and I had to go home and rest. In normal circumstances I would not even bother to go out but I live with a lovely flower and she blossoms in days like these. We danced for a while, not enough for her. She was pretty an sexy and ready to hit the night and she did do it for quite a while and then a big hairy bomb hit her with the news that we had to go back home because the night was coming to and end. The streets were full and we had being partying with people that we do not normally party with and then we saw these friends that we usually party with so we split up with the other fiends. Confusing? Yes, I know but that is how it is sometimes, very confusing.
I thought of my friends in England, celebrating their New Years Eve party and …I just thought about them before I went to bed. Soon I will be there and I am not ready.
Have fun.
MEMORY LANE
Hello;
Memory lane or growing older and older all the time, which is what happen when you make it to my age.
I will give you a little bit of history. When I was very small, my parents were Christians/ hippies. For the first years of my life they lived in a community. They were about twenty-five people with different ages and professions who have the same believe and that were trying to live according to their ideals.
Of course that did not work, it did work for a while and that was our gain. All those years many more babies come to this world and from just one, me, the community of kids grew to around fifteen children. The different in age went from ten years, myself to one or even less. All the summers of my child hood were in big houses in the country side with lost of kids like me and many parents like mine singing and doing things that were very strange, specially because the parents of my friends at the school did not do then. We had a fantastic childhood.
Well, now we all have grown quite a lot, I have grown up the most. We all have partners but no one of us has had children yet. One of those kids is going to work in Australia. He is going to work in the marine biology department of Sydney University so he has organised a meal with all the kids of that community and that is were Miren and me have gone today.
I am sure by now I have fucked up the whole tense of the blog. I do not know if I am writing in present or in the pass. Sorry.
Well, they have given the party at their “txoko”( the typical basc play to give meals) and we were around fifteen once again. Not every body came because the relationships between us have always been very much about the relationships that our parents had and they had many fights. It would have been very fair to invite to all of them even if our parents are not friends any more.
As we were looking around, we show a meteorologist, chemist, lawyer, designer, doctor, philosopher, etc and then a bloody physical theatre actor, well not really, and stupid clown.
We really had a great time taking and laughing about the things that made us be together and we tried to find ways of keeping in touch but even being there it was a little bit of a fake because it was the house of one of our parents.
I looked at their face and I have taken care of all of them when I was young and now there are gorgeous girls and strong men, clever people that have out grow me and that I would love them to be my friends. We had a nice time and they old took the piss of me for talking too much and telling too many stories. I was the grand father telling stories about the old times. Horrible.
Have fun.
MEETING
Hello;
For while I have been trying to create a small company mirroring Spymonkey in my town in Spain. It is not easy. The most difficult thing is to find people that make you tickle and that you really like to play with.
Many years ago I did a show with Jon Ariño and Eguzki Zubia, two actors from Bilbao.
I met Jon many years ago, he was one of my first teachers of theatre and Eguzki was an actress from Bilbao that I had seen on the stage and that I really liked. We did a show together and it did not work very well. I lost all the money but we did have a fantastic time working together. It is that why we want to work together again. It has taken all of us all this time to get in an agreement about which we are and what do we want to do.
And it is all because we are old people now and we know that things do not work some times. When I was young I did many companies and I never thought they were not going to work out.
Then I did Spymonkey and things did work out and because they did I learnt that there is many times where things do not work out.
So we are having thought about our next project. We have to put an application for a grand and also we are having talks to do some clown number for a hotel during the month of August, and there is the possibility of doing a show about the music of Scarlati. These three things, well not really because I have said just two, the play we want to do is a devise project about a kitchen and three cooks. We would like that it has a resemblance to Sunset Boulevard thou we do not care very much about the story and we will rather just clown around. We have spoken to Cal to direct the show and we are going to try to get him here to give a workshop.
We met at Eguzki's house in Bilbao. We talked a lot and we have many ideas and we made a big list of things that we should do. We have the list but no one of us wants or has time to do all the things that we need to do. The three of us need someone that is very well organised and is ready to all the groundwork. Then we will be able to deliver the thing that we are best at.
There are many reasons why I want to create a parallel group to Spymonkey here in Bilbao. I have enjoyed very much what we have been doing with Spymonkey all these years and I wish we would carry on doing it for many years more. I am confident that it will happen but now days Spymonkey is about leaving the company where it belongs. The company belongs to Brighton and I do not live there. It is normal that Petra and more Toby would get the benefits from that, he works really hard. I imagine myself having something similar here in the future.
Have fun.
CORRUPCION EN MARBELLA
Hello;
I cannot do it anymore. I have arrived here on the 22 nd of December and I have been living in a big dinner party for the last six days and now I had enough. And it is today, the day that I have a Corruption in Marbella party, when I am have decided not to drink and not to smoke and not to eat like an animal and all those things that we do here at this time of the year.
But let me tell you about the party. Every year the actors of Bilbao give a party to celebrate the New Year on the 28 th of December. Like any other new year's party we eat the grapes listen to the ding-dong of the bells for the New Years Eve, and then we kiss and dance until the early hours of the next day. The first day of the New Year, well, in this case the early hours of the 29 th of December.
The last five or six years the party had been at the Hika Ateneo, a small place by the Bilbao River where we cold not party ‘till very late. So for this year we have change venue and we have had the party at the room where we all rehears when we are in Bilbao. It is a room that all the actor from Bilbao pays for with a small amount of money. We pay some money every two months to keep the room for all of us. It is a very good room that used to belong to a theatre company from Bilbao. Now all the young companies use it and this year they have organised the party and they have come to the party for the first time.
I always fell completely like a foreign in the party. I walk around like a fish out of water because I do not know anybody and the ones I know are the Queen and King of the party and they cannot be taking care of me all the time.
But this year the party was about the Corruption that has been going on in Marbella, in the south of Spain for the last ten years. Everybody was dress like millionaires from Arabia, or people in prison. Leire was dressed as a microphone and that was very funny. My friends Eguz, Bego and Matxalen were dressed as girls from the harem of a big Arabian Jeque. I was not dress like the theme of the party. I put things that I liked and then I realised that I looked a little bit like a white James Brown. I had a funny costume but I did not have a lot of fun thou I have to say that I enjoyed very much the party. Everybody was having a very good time and that was a fantastic thing to see. Everybody was very happy and everybody was enjoying very much the fact that was there. I think next year I am going to have much more fun.
I have to say that there were many people with no costume and that was really sad. It is like the cool guys decided not to wear a fancy dress and that kind of ruin a little bit the look of the whole thing. The ones who organised the whole party were great because it was very well done. Thanks.
Have fun.
STEAK & JOINTS
Hello;
Well, that is what I do when I meet whit friends from the past. We go to a restaurant where in the past we would have gone because it was cheap and we could get drunk cheaply and then we try to eat expensive and not drink too much. And after we try to find the places where we could have a smoke like when we were young.
So I arrived to the restaurant and there were lots of people, mainly young people that have chosen these dates to meet with friends and celebrate that they are together and that we have not see each others since the time we lived in London.
We order a couple of Stakes. We were ten people so we were going to be eating one every five people. When the Stakes arrived I understood why. The Stakes were nine inches thick¡¡¡¡ I could not believe it. I have heard of them in the pass but I had never seen them before. They were fantastic. They were super tasty and very tender, cooked in the grill with lots of thick salt and then brought to the table in a hot pan so it keeps hot and cooking.
I thought they were marvellous and I now I have said that before.
These friends that I am talking about I met them in London when I first arrived. I knew Dani from Algorta and Romo. He was studying photography at Middlesex University and now he is a publicity photographer in Madrid. Through him I met Alicia and Roman and we became very good friends after everybody else left England.
Eduardo, Rosa, Luis, Borja, Merche y Miren left at the same time than Dani so we manage to see each others one a year of twice. We enjoy very much every time we see each other's but each year is more complicated because everybody is very busy.
After dinner we wander to the local bar where still is possible to smoke joints. In our times everybody did it everywhere but now a days the whole society is less tolerant towards the subject thou there are far more people than before using it. My friends do not smoke anymore so I was the one that supplied the staff. I had something at home.
We smoked and we talked about the things that have happened for all of us during the time we have not see each other. And we smoked and smoked for quite a while and when the stone hit us we all say good-bye.
We will see each other again very soon sooner than we think. We had a very nice time together doing things and shit.
I love meeting them. They are all friends. That kind of friends that you speak with once or twice a year and that they are always there. I love them.
Have fun.
FOG 3
Hello;
There I was in Alicante. Well I was at its airport that it looks like a big English mall because most of the people that go through there are British. They had a pub and they had lots of things that you will find in a motorway stop restaurant.
Almost all the things were boring and I just had to look to the departures screen to realise where everybody that uses the airport comes from and goes to, Manchester, Aberdeen, Darby, Glasgow.
So I sat in the airport for a while after checking the shops of the airport that I found really boring. I had an overdose of airport time, thou some of the time was at the VIP room of the Barcelona Airport. I got a little bit drank there with all the freebies and then I had some munchies and read the latest newspapers from Spain. There are such differences between travelling business class and economy class. You have to try once.
I received the call for boarding and something like forty people walked with me to the gate. My thoughts still in the fact that I was in Alicante and I was not liking anything that I was seeing and the fact that in a day like this, on the 22 nd December so many people were flying from Alicante to Bilbao.
The time in the Barcelona Airport went really fast. First because I had the chance to discover the VIP room and second because it is a very happening airport. There are lots of shops and there are lots of people and I always get the opportunity of practice one of my favourite pastimes, which is to look at people.
The terminal was crowed with people that have had the same problems as us, their airports of origin had cancelled many flights and they had arrived to Barcelona and missed their connections.
The plane I flied was small and with quite lots of people but after flying with firs class the airhostess were really rude and boring. I do not remember much so I think I felt sleep. The offered me a drink and I said no.
At the arrival nobody was waiting and that was fine. I had put it in my budget the fare for my taxi home so that is what I did. The more I take taxies home from the airport the less I like it. I got so used to have people picking me up from the airport that whenever they are not there it kind of make me sad. It is like my returning home gets delayed.
The driver was a young guy and I had to tell him where my street and my house were. He was not from the area. He told me I was his last job of the day. He was tired and bored. I mentioned to him that there might be many more planes arriving that night. He did not bother.
When I arrived home I was tired but very happy that I made it home. I had been travelling for almost twenty-four hours and I could not wait any longer to see my love.
Have fun.
CHRISTMAS
Hello;
It went very well yesterday. You could see how everybody was being very careful and trying to be happy with whatever everybody was offering. Miren's mum was a little bit sick from something that she ate some days before so she could not enjoy fully all the things that were on the table.
The food was very good and the little one of the party Iñigo was very funny ‘till he felt sleep. We all tried to have fun and to make everybody to have lots of fun. The meal was very smooth and I think that the fact that everything was good thou Miren and me had to work a lot in washing and cleaning make possible that tonight we will have a very nice Christmas day all together.
Today Jon and Lourdes come with Xavier. They went to Lourdes parent's house yesterday. Today we will all be together and we will also distribute the presents.
For some years now we are doing the game of the Blind friend. I am sure you do not call it like that in here in England. Basically you put all the names of the people that participate in the game in a box and everybody picks one. The one that you picked is the person that you have to get a present for. We have done it like that so we do not end up spending thousands of euros in presents every year. We set up the limit in hundred euros. I prefer to receive more presents and less expensive that just one presents that it is not even a surprise.
This year I had to get a present for Miren's mum and I thought of getting something in England. Time passed and when I arrived here three days ago I had not got anything so I spoke to Miren and she got it for me.
I am a little bit shame of myself for doing this but I did not have time and Miren and me always argued because there is not space for risk with this presents. It is only one present so you have to find exactly what they would like for a hundred euros and buy it for them.
I have been campaigning to play the game properly and not cheat but I have not been successful convincing my wife I am not even going to bother with the rest of her family.
Then we got presents for my parents. I got for my father a box with things to smoke cigars and for my mum a watch. They liked it but I had to return the smoking things because they did not work.
I got a pair of shoes for surfing and clippers to cut my hair. I have not been able to use them yet but I cannot wait to go into the water and use them.
The meal and the party finished very late and we had a great time all together. I have to say that the older I get the more I like these kinds of celebrations.
Have fun.
NOCHEBUENA
Hello;
Guess¡¡ Guess, I dare you to guess what I am talking about. Call you closest Spanish friend and ask him or her what does that mean? Once you have done that then you will be more ready to understand what is that I am talking about now. Because what I am talking now it is a very favourite day for me. We gather all together to celebrate the night when Jesus got born, in my family for many years that was the reason to celebrate that night. Now we do not do to celebrate the birth of Jesus we celebrate the fact that we are all together and happy to be so.
Since my brother and sister do not live in Romo anymore my parents have spent that night alone and I did not like that so last year I said that this coming year we were going to celebrate the party in our house with Miren and me as the hosts.
It is a big step fir Miren and I into the world of adulthood without having any babies for us. Usually with us having kids we would have became parts of the big people of this world. I think that we are not going to have kids or perhaps it is going to be hard for us. But do not worry because I will keep you inform about the whole process in the New Year.
So, thou it sounds like a really easy operation it is not, we have to put two families in agreement about the menu and about the spirit of the event.
My wife's family have grown quite a lot recently and now it is not as easy as it was before but they are very easy going and when it comes to food very classical and straight forward with they way things should be cocked.
My family on the contrary are a little bit hippies and like to try new things sometimes in a very frivolous way that my lovely wife does not like very much.
The two families know each other for a very long time but have never had a strong relationship. They get alone but Miren and me fear that the fact that they have not had a strong relationship during all this years may affect the night and they would not remember this day as a happy one.
I can predict that my parents will sit in their sits and they will pass all the responsibility of the night to Miren and me. On the other hand Mary Tere and perhaps Mariela, Miren's sister may try to call the shots but always for the better of the party.
This is a party for everybody and we hope that everybody can enjoy very much while in our house and everybody has different way to enjoy.
Happy Christmas to everybody and have fun.
FOG 2
Hello;
(I always wanted to write something like that “To be continued)
So I went down to the check inn desks and of course they were packed with hysterical people trying to get into their planes as fast as possible. They all were thinking they may have to spend holydays in lovely London and nobody wanted to do that.
My first problem was to identify the cue, the right cue to check in for my fly. The chaos at the Iberia desks was huge and nobody seemed to have anything clear about how things were going to be in the future.
I put myself in one cue and it felt like being in Mozambique trying to get the portion of food from the UN. One man walked in front of me looking at me very upset because I had jumped his place in the cue. He was French and yes this is a racist comment. Then the frenchy had to take all my nasty looks until the moment of check in because the man was in front of me in the cue.
It took me another hour to have my suitcases checked in and I went in to spend my time in the duty free area. As soon as I was in the duty free area I called Miren again to tell her that I was going to make it. Then I got into the plane and I waited there for another hour. By that time I had already met many people who have told me all their stories of disaster travelling. A girl from Valencia had been coming to Heathrow for three days and no one of the days she had managed to take a plane and go to Valencia as she expected.
I saw her first looking at the screen and worrying about the fact that there was not gate for her fly. I did not talk to her at first but when she came around for the second time and she was even more worried than the first time I had to tell her that once we were in here everything was going to be fine. And of course we started to talk and she talked a lot, and I talk as much as she does. We had time to talk because we had to wait for an hour more in the waiting room.
We finally got into the plane and she went to her sit. I thought “I should call Miren now so she does not come to pick me up and I am not there” but I did not have time to call her because the plane was about to leave.
I tried to get a sandwich in the plane but there were so many people that when the little trolley arrived to my ally we were about to land. Many people were giving shit to the airhostesses for all the frustration of the waiting etc. I told them do not worry about my sandwich and as I was going to leave they call me in a secretive way and gave a sandwich for free.
The fact that I did not have any food was the least of my troubles I was going to find out that there were not flies to Bilbao and that my options were very limited to arrive to Bilbao that day.
The only option was to fly to Alicante and from Barcelona and then get a connection there to Bilbao. The alternative was to spend the night in Barcelona and fly next day in the morning home. I choose the one that will take me to Valencia, where I had never been before and be in Bilbao late at least at night but be there.
So there I was in Alicante's airport a city in the south of Spain that I have never been before and I had to be there for a couple of hours. I left the plane to the transfers and there was no one on the desk or in the waiting room. After leaving an airport with extreme security measures now I am in Spain and nobody cares about security.
(To be continued)
THE FOG
Hello;
A big cloud of fog is surrounding Heathrow Airport and lots of planes are getting cancelled. Well, to say planes would be an error so I say flies are getting cancelled. This cloud fog has been lingering around the airport for the last three days so by today the Airport authorities have organised something so people whose flies have been cancelled do not stay in the airport. When you arrive to your terminal a welcome commit e is waiting for you and takes you into a big tent where they inform you if you are still leaving or you have to go back to where you stayed last night. I am lucky my fly is going to go. I checked on the Internet before hand and they have not say any different while I wait inside the tent.
One man at the other end of the tent was given information while cracking jokes that I did not find very funny but many of the other passengers liked very much. It was very cold so the tent helped to fight the cold and also the coffee and water and tee that they were distributing all the time.
Finally I made it into the terminal. My fly was on the screen but as I mentioned before that was not the main problem, the main problem was if there was a plane to do that fly.
I sat on at the Costa Coffee premises and I had breakfast. I left very early in the morning from Muswell Hill to be in the airport with enough time in case I had to improvise to go back home and I had not have time to eat anything since. My temper was not very good so I did not fell any hunger until I was inside the terminal and I knew that I was going to go to Bilbao.
I sat on a chair and I started to listen de conversations that other passenger were having around me. One man had arrived to the airport at three o'clock in the morning that day. His fly was going to leave at five and not it was eleven o'clock and there were not signs of flies for him in the near future.
The lady in front of me was going to La Coruña (Spain) like me to celebrate the Christmas holydays and she was having a better luck. She had not been able to check her luggage but while I was having my coffee with my pastry she received an announcement that they were ready to get the check inn.
That gave me hope, I had been sending messages to Miren during the whole day and I could not guaranty that I was going to make it but I was felling confident.
At twelve o'clock a learned that my fly was ready and that I could check in and I will be going to Barcelona sooner or later that day.
I kept eating my breakfast and then and reading my papers while trying to enjoy the special events I was witnessing. It does not happen very often that Heathrow get close for three of four days due to a fog storm. I suppose we are going to see many more of those from now on because the global warming.
I managed to finish my breaks fast as I got called to go to check for my plane and for my fly. (To be continued)
Have fun.
TROUBLES
Hello;
Then there is that moment were things should start to change and you see the cliff, the void in front of you, the wall that has gotten build for many years now being put down.
You look around in the room and there is a thick silence that can be spread in toast and eat it for breakfast.
We talk and talk and talk and it is not a matter of convincing any body but there is a common understanding that when you work with people you have to try to accommodate the happiness of everybody involve in the work that you are about to create.
For the last five years I will say we have accommodated to the desires of one of the members of the group. And that thou being unbalance it can be a decision made by the group so it holds a good ground. Nevertheless as a rule of engagement that everybody should follow is display tons of generosity and that will means that next time you will try to give that chance to the other part involve in the work of the group.
So in this collaborative world that we work there are characters that have a special charisma and talent and ideas that manage to stand out and play big parts in the groups they play with. This is a fact and perhaps they should not work in any other conditions. My motto is that you should always give more than what you may expect in return. The pleasure should be in giving not in giving so I will have to receive in return. And I say this because I do not like to work with people that do not inspire me; I want to work with people that challenge me all the time.
At this church in Brixton something has been broken and we will have to make a good deal of repairing to be able to come out with a good show. It will have to be the whole show about percentages and not being able to do a good show.
There is something that I like about the whole trouble and that is that it is a very stupid trouble when you think about it. Clowns could really make a very good show about it.
I have fell very tempted to give up, to go off crying and determined to change things that are causing lots of pain in my life but now with some time between the conflict I have decided to give up and make the best show ever.
Have fun.
ST. VINCETS
Hello;
We are rehearsing in a small church in Brixton. This place is like ten minutes away from the station and it is in a very quite neighbourhood. When you arrive there you can not believe that this place is use for anything but this is not a surprise because most of the rehearsal spaces in London are really like that. They all are multipurpose places that are completely ram down and that you always have to pay of fortune to work there from a specific time to a specific time. And do not go over time because then you will have to pay with you blood.
This place in good conditions it will not be bad at all but the problem is that it has many problems. We have to start from the fact that it is very cold. There are heaters but because it has very high ceilings all the heat disappeared through the cracks in the roof.
The room is really spacious and with wooden floors and you can be noisy and run around and use the space to their main potential. There is a strap or a piece of cloth hanging from the pillars on the roof that tells us that a circus artist has used this room to practice.
The windows are very big and give a very pleasant light during daylight that at least for me help a lot with the work.
Then another major problem is that if you want to go out for lunch or to grab a coffee there is nothing around. You have to go back almost to the station to get something to eat. We have found thanks to that Rosie's Café. Rosie's Café is in a small ally in Brixton and has lots of Italian, Spanish and Mediterranean food. It is very small but you can do take away. It is very small but still there is a table inside where you can sit and have your food with a very nice coffee.
I have to say that she does some of the best sandwiches I have in England in second place after that place in Edinburgh very close to where Toby's mum house used to be. For me that is the best sandwich place in Great Britain.
There is a man that takes care of the place. He is a nice man and lives very close to the church so he spend the whole time in his house and when it needs to be close or open he comes out of the house and does it. We all have different feelings about this place but for the fact that is so far away from where we are staying and that is really cold and away from anywhere remotely inspiring makes everything more difficult. Also we are not at our best and things are not easy so why to make it even more difficult by coming to such a shitty place. I am sure is great in the summer. Brixton in the summer has to be the greatest place in London but is December and it is very cold.
Have fun.
THE CLIP
Hello;
We are all driving to Kentish town to watch the first final cut of the things we were shooting last week. Our editor and friend lives there and we go to his house to watch the trailer in his house. I know I should say his name and I want to do that but I do not know how to spell it properly. Ok I am going to give it a try, Moury. That is his name, or at least something like this.
Moury has been fundamental in the creation and learning of how to do things on the TV. I do not want to pretend that now we do know a lot about TV, on the contrary. When we started we had ideas that we thought we could put them on TV after doing this clip we have realised that we know much less than we ever thought. And that it is fine because it there is something that Spymonkey has is time. At least as far as I am concern.
Mourry has a fantastic house in the middle of Kentish Town. His room is the editing room and we watched the whole thing there, sitting in the bed and in all the chairs that we could fit in.
The clip was brilliant I did not expect to like it at all. When I do things in front of a camera I fell really self conscious so when I see the result on the screen I can see all the time how I am felling self conscious and I never like myself. But this time as an exercise for us to see how we fell and how we play in front of the camera and thought it was not bad. Of course the whole thing was too slow.
We did three scenes that were introduced by a speech of Mr Murdston at his most pompous. The first one was the Tombstone ordering scene from Stiff. This for me it was the most slow of all of them. I thought the games of me not let him go did not work because we did not allowed to leave the table so the felling of being in the studio or in shoot did not work at all.
The second one was the Love Room. This scene was going to be in the show in Las Vegas but they cut it so we try to do it for the clip. I have to say it does work quite well. It has good rhythm but it would have need more shooting of reactions and things like that We shoot in two takes almost and it is a very non words physical comedy so it needs to start lots of reaction shoots that we did not do.
This is not for showing to anybody, perhaps for our friends and family but we should not show it to the BBC or perhaps we should. In a way they know that we are trying to learn and if they want us to transfer our staff to the TV they should give us a little bit of time to do that. Why should day? There are many talented people out there that already know how to do both things at the same time. We will see.
Have fun.
FOON DUE
Hello;
I had written in the title Foo Due and that does not mean anything. So you have not seen it but you are going to have to believe me because I say it, any way as a sign of normality we have done a dinner party at Petra. We have eaten the typical Swiss meal. The big pot fill up with cheese where you try to get some of it by introducing a little piece of bread fix at the end of a metal stick. When the piece of bread is well soak with cheese you take it out and you eat it. If by any chance the piece of bread fells on the pot you have to kiss to the person sitting on your right or pay a deed. Usually you do not do it like that because every body have forgotten about tradition and people just do not want to do silly things. Anyway it was really nice, Roger really know s how to do the dish. When you manage to put a piece of soaked bread in your mouth it is not just cheese what you taste, there is garlic, paprika, kirsch and many other flavours that make the dish very exciting.
We drank quite a lot. We had finished a very good two weeks of work on a possible television idea for the BBC and we were very happy with ourselves.
On Monday we were starting to rehears Bless the new Spymonkey show.
We were around ten people in the dinner, Cal and Mat, Murray, Petra and Roger, Lucy, Toby, Stephan, Graeme. The shape of the Spymonkey team has change quite considerably, we used to be six or perhaps seven and now wherever we will go we are going to be almost twelve. It is hopefully much better for the whole thing because we want to be bigger and also because we want to do bigger things and work more than we have worked until now.
I fell that we are not being able to enjoy as much as we would like. We are starting a new way of working with Cal and it is very scary to know if we are going to be able to pull it off. It is challenging and the fact that not everybody is happy makes it even more difficult. I am sure that we all are going to try to be up to the challenge with lost of enthusiasm hope.
We did not stay very long, we all were tired of very long two weeks that where a little bit stressful, television is a new medium for all of us. We felt relief, after some time trying to put something together we had managed to come up with something that felt like and step forward. We all went to sleep very happy that night, a little bit of wine and mission accomplished.
Have fun.
BOUNDS GREEN
Hello;
For many years now I have dreamt with having a house in London. It is only a dream because I do not have money to buy anything in this very expensive town. So whenever I do to any area of London I fantasias about how would it be to leave there.
We have been working in Bounds Green the last two weeks and I have had the time to have many dreams about leaving there. There is a part of Bounds Green that I really like and it is the one that is by the park. I do not know the name of the park but the houses are very big and I can imagine that I will be a very happy person living there. It is very close to the tube and also it is quite nice. The houses that were my favourites are the ones on the other side of the park and the road.
Those little dreams have been taking me away from the horrible thoughts of how rehearsal will go next week in Brixton.
I do not think I would like to live in Brixton. I would not like because it is south London and because I have not see any place that I think is very nice or that I would like to live inn. I like Brixton for going to concerts or to score drugs. You can call me racist but it will not be completely true because I can not know everywhere and I do know Holland Park for walks with you dog or to look at the rich a grandiose houses where all the rich people live.
I will never dear to go to score drugs there and I am sure there are many places in Holland Park where you can buy drugs but I am sure you have to buy them on hundred grams to hundred grams.
My favourite place to live in London is Primrose Hill in North London. The area is very pretty and it has great shops. Regents Park is on one of the sides and Camden Town where the Market is. Then the whole neighbour hood is full of great squares with trees and benches where you can sit to eat the great sandwiches that sell in the great delicatessens shops of the area. The pubs are great and as soon as you step into the park you get an amazing view of London that is really impressive.
And before I forget there is a channel that goes through the market and that provides an amazing walk for Sundays. Also the pubs that are in the by the side of the river are fantastic. The whole area is really posh so you get very nice wine and very nice food. When I say really posh I do not mean posh like not accessible but posh in sense of very well guard and village like. A preserve area of the old London that still has a very nice way of living. My problem with my dream is that it will cost around three million pounds that I am not expecting to pay for a flat. To pay that incredible amount of money for a flat is something of a sin and I will never do anything like that no matter how much money would I ever have in the future. Please do not hold this words against me in the future.
Have fun.
HOW TO WRITE A BLOG
Hello;
As I am in the bus on my way to Central London I like to read my Saturday newspaper. I always buy the Guardian. As I go through the pages of the magazine I discovered a column that tells you things about how to write a blog. I do write a blog and I have to say that any help is always welcome. I go through the whole column very interested and very seriously and when I arrived to the end I decided that I am going to do the same thing in my blog. I had decided that on my way back home because I have to be completely honest with you, I did not read the column on my way to Central London but on my way back from Central London.
So if you write a blog you have to give it a good name. I think this blog has a very good name and the least of the intentions of this blog is to be anonymous.
So if you write a blog you have to say lots of things. Things that are important to you or that you are just very mildly interested because that is the reason why you write the blog. It is a window to the rest of the population of the world. The rest of the population of the world have all very eclectic interests and you may be saying something that someone out there is also interested in.
And that is the reason why you should have the possibility of getting comments in your blog. Once you start to receive comments about something that you thrower out there then you start a dialog and that is one of the purposes s of blogs.
The author also says that usually people that know you read blog and I have to say that that is my experience. Almost all the people that read my blog is people that knows Spymonkey and not necessarily me but it could not be in any other way because Spymonkey is the reason why I write the blog and the reason why I can be known.
He says many more things but I do not want to discuss them here now. I like writing my blog and as I have said many times in the pass sometimes is hard and I fell that what I am saying it is not interesting but I still get a kick from writing it. Thou I have to say that my favourite blog is when I fell naughty and funny and I want to write about something that is not important.
So this blog should have never be called how to write a blog but why do you write a blog and my only reason is because I have fun and I have the opportunity of telling my side of the story to all of you who want to read it.
Have fun.
TV OFF
Hello;
Amy Sedaris, The Peep Show, Extras, Jules et Jim, these and many more are the people that we are having in our minds. Not everybody likes everything but we agree that they are our inspiration. There is not one thing that I like lately, well, yes, South Park and The Puppets Show and that is the kind of thing I like it. And in a way it is very funny that I like the most stupid staff or better, I like simple staff. Or the way I see it, I like classic staff.
But we are just some yards away from finishing the writing of the proposal. We have gone to the end of a very busy time where we have tries to avoid things that have already be done and things that we do not find very funny. It is very difficult because being so many it is complicated to arrive to an agreement that suit all of us.
Of course as usual there are people in the band that have stronger felling than others and those are the ones that have the strongest input.
Every time idea and I through I see someone else face griming with the face of that is really boring. But to me the things that make laugh now are the same things that made me laugh when I was really young. I have not stopped in all these years doing silly things watching the movies of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, the Marx brothers, Chaplin, Buster Keaton and South Park etc. For me they all make me laugh as much as they made me laugh the first time I saw them.
Then there are all these new TV series and they are really funny but when I watch them they amused me but they do not make me laugh. When I see Ricky Gervais in The Office my favourite thing is how good actor he is more than how funny it is what he does. I think it is funny but it does not do it for me.
I do not thing I would like to do something that does not make me laugh I think I would like to do something that I think it is really funny for me. Of course I suggested the idea of doing a look like South Park series but with real actors and everybody look at me as if I was really juvenile and that is exactly what I am. I am very juvenile and puerile actor who likes to do funny stupid things.
So we are rapping up and we have written a series about the lives of great people of the twenty century, from Freud to Prince Margaret. It has a very nice shape and I am going to have fun playing the parts of the silly people. I hope it pass the cut of the BBC so we will be working on the tele from now on.
Have fun.
THE PRESENTATION
Hello;
Justin from the BBC did not come to see the presentation so everything went well, because we did what we wanted and there was nobody here to tell us the contrary.
Rose Mary McGovern did like everything we told her and then when Murray finally came to the room with the two gig stick it was not working in any of our computers.
That was quite funny because that is the classic Spymonkey thing. We will do lots of preparation and when the time to do the thing come something fundamental is missing and we have to cancel or postpone it.
Rose Mary left and we think Justin did not make it because yesterday he probably was at the British Comedy Awards and got really drunk and he did not bother to come and see us. True or false?
Now, after the flop we all drove to Murray's house in Kentish Town and watched the clip of the love room in his computer. I have to say I was surprise that it was good. I did not like myself at all but the rest were laughing so I have to think that as a part of the scene I was good.
We still have lots to write so we will be using all the time ‘till the end of the week to write the whole proposal and then next week we will be starting to do “Bless”.
I have found this and I cannot resist showing it to all of you. It comes from the Time Out when we played at the London Mime Festival, now almost four years ago.
“Although Spymonkey's performance history is rooted in physical theatre, temperamentally they have more in common with the Farrelly brothers. “Cooped” is a spoof gothic romance which revels in puerility. The problem with such sniggering humour is that anyone can do it. Perhaps the quintet's most engaging characteristic is a refusal to find any joke too silly or embarrassing- hence the starling scene in which Stephan Kreiss and Aitor Basauri dance naked, fig leaves unstragically hovering below their belly buttons. Just as disappointing though, is their failure to find any joke too humdrum or contrived.”
There is goes. I cannot believe that after all those things that someone who I do not know the name said we are still doing what we do. This is amazing. Never the less there are opinions as there are people in the world so he or she should not have come to see the show. And he or she came so we had a really hard run at the BAC because our audiences were very small and we did not make any money and it became a time for tensions and worries. Now it is all for history.
Have fun.
INTERVIEWS
Hello;
One of the big problems of us, when I say us I mean Spymonkey, is that we are very disorganised with all technical things. These problems have created many troubles while working in different countries of the world. For instance while doing a gig in Madrid the moment of doing the sound check arrived and we could not find the music. We have forgotten the music of the show in England and we were in Madrid just for one day.
You can imagine what we have to do to get hold of a new set of music to be able to have music of the show. It was horrible. It was a great performance for me at least and the audience cheer grandly.
So now we are getting a production manager that could take care about all of us. And I really mean it because it is really scary to be somewhere and not knowing how to do what we have to do. Funnily enough the strongest is the team that work for us the better will be for us to break and have fun with everything that we do.
So Kathryn came to Bounds Green to put himself forward for the lighting designer. She was very nice and happy person to get along with and that is one of the most important things for all of us. When we work together we spend lots of time together and sometimes it is more important to be able to get drunk and do stupid things.
Then we had the pleasure of meeting Jezz recommended by our dear friend Javier Marzan.
Jezz just arrived from China, Shanghai and he has been flying people in theatres in plays like Peter Pan, or very acrobatic ballets. He is very calm and very capable of doing everything that we have done until now. We need someone to get hold of the lights and sound and at the same time we do our shows.
And also we decided to get Tanya from Brighton. She is going to be our production manager until Canada at least and then she will be taking people that she recommends and organised. She is a very good friend of Graeme Gilmour our great and wonderful and light set designer.
As soon as we can have a good team everything would be fine.
There is another girl, Ally Beale. Paul Hunter has recommended her from Told by an Idiot. Ally seems to be busy at the time that we have to be in Calgary. Ally is a well-known technician with many companies that we know so she could be great for all of us.
Spymonkey is a clowns company and it is very difficult to organised a clown company because you do not really know when are they clowns or not. I am sure that we will be able to get a very good technician that will take care of us like a big mama.
Have fun.
WRITING
Hello;
The sun gets through the windows and helps to warm up the room where we work. Lucy, Petra, Stephan, Toby and Cal around a table and the hitting full blast to keep us warm. Although to be so warm it is not very good because I can see how our brains go a little bit like a flan. It does not look like every body else's brain is getting like a flan because everybody is firing ideas and things are flowing.
BBC has asked us to do some work in how to transport the kind of work that we do into a TV format. The idea is a good idea but it is not easy at all because how can we make possible the whole thing of having many layers at the same time could transport to the TV.
And the hours go by, very fast in the morning and not so fast in the afternoon.
I like some of the things but for many times it looks like if there is a big competition between the members of the company to score more points coming with the biggest amount of ideas that will make it into the show.
So there are moments where we should keep all of us our mouth shut because the ideas are not very good. But, let me ask you something, what is a good idea? The good ideas are the ones that get made. There are so many that do not get made and that does mean that they are bad.
I have gone up in the blog to read what I have wrote and it sounds as if I am trying to justified myself because none of my ideas made it to the series but it is not true. We are having a great time creating concepts for show for the TV. We would have thought some weeks ago that we were going to be able to do this again together without killing each other's.
And I just have to stand up and open the door because my brain has melted and I can fell how some of my brain has become liquid by the heat in the room and is coming out from my skull through my ear, nose and the outside of my eyeballs. It does look like thick pure in yellow and green colour. I had not notice anything until one of my colleagues point out at me with disgusts. I stood up really fast and went out. The whole thing did not seem to stop and I thought I was going to loos all my brains. The weather was very cold so little by little the brain pure started to go back to wear it belonged. Some of the brain pure went through the mouth and end up in the stomach with not very satisfying consequences. Now I have lost some of my brain because I ate it.
Have fun.
PISSED OFF
Hello;
And I am pissed off. I was happy early morning but then something estranges happened. Well, not really estrange but we did not know when the thing was going to be shoot and then Cal told me that If we do not have what we need then we will not use it and the gag will not go into the shooting. And to a certain extend he is right but it piss me off. I am not sure what it is that it piss me off, the fact that we always do what he wants to do or the fact that I did not go to find my wig during the weekend or the fact that I do not have enough power to confront him when I think there is something wrong or I simply disagree. In any case you have to have “the Larry David Power” in order to be able to do not let go anything and be confronted every time you think you may be not in favour of what some one is saying or doing.
And I am upset because I do not want to get upset and I know that I get upset I will be able to do what I want to do because with me being upset I will force what I want to do to be done. But I want to change the way I do things. I do not want to have to get piss of so nobody dares to argue with to be able to do what I want to do. I want to convince everybody with words that what I want to do is a good thing to do. But I do not have those words anymore. I have spent many years living in “La Gran Bretaña” and I have not been able of learn English properly. I think what I should do from now on is to force everything to all the members of Spymonkey. Next time I meet them I am going tell Petra what she has to do next and how. Toby will have to sing all my song and be agree with all my ideas while I teach then the new things for the computer. Stephan will have to say yes to everything I say and he will not be able to bully me at all. Cal will have to think that all my ideas are very good and he sincerely will like them. And then all at the end of the day will know how to speak Spanish and whenever I cannot express myself properly I will be able to do it in Spanish.
I would not like it but is good to think about it. I am sure that if there is not fight then there is no fun. But this is a very nice to think about it for a little while but in true I will rather keep things as they are and I will get rid of my piss off felling.
There are some days when I wake up in the morning and I have left my bed with the wrong foot. And then I can spend the whole day jut Ron Moody around everything and everyone and I know it is not nice. So now I am going to wash my face and get rid of my piss off shit.
PENNY DREADFULL
Hello;
The show was good but I was not interested. The actors were very good but I did not like them. The music was good but not more than a fringe production. And then the show was good. It is a good show and I think it is going to have a very good run all over England.
I do know that the whole thing seems like a contradiction and it is. Mick Barnfather is a wonderful performer and a great teacher and he brings great things out of all the performers. I presume that the problem was mine. I had big expectations about what I was going to watch. Samuel told me that the show takes a little bit of time to pick up and then gets really funny and I was waiting to see beautiful stupidity. And then there was none. They had bright performances and beautiful singing and the costumes and the set where very clever design with the help of great lighting and nice venue. The venue was the Hoxton town hall. It is a very nice place where it is full of character and it felt like being in a place out of time.
And the best thing about the show it is that the company works. The group of actors are very charming on the stage and it is a joy to see them together. They move like dancers and they are not dancer neither looks like dancers and I hope for them a bright and very successful career.
The play follows the story of a girl that was the lover of George the fourth, Mary Robbins or Robinson. She was a whore and an actress and she died young of a venereal illness. The end of the story it is really sad. The story is very interesting but I wanted to see more of the actors. I am sure that is all my fault and that probably I went the wrong night for me and for Mick. At least that is what he told me. It was the last night for them in that theatre and the show, they say had gone a little bit sloppy.
I went with Petra to see the show and we both enjoyed the time we spent there. Then we walked to Angel to see a movie but the movie was not there so I got the bus and went back home. London it is never easy but has those great opportunities of watching a show, or catching a movie or going to an exhibit that you do not get in any cities like you get it in London:
Have fun.
X
Hello;
I can't spell the name of the show and I cannot spell the name of the company so I am going to talk to you about a show a went to see at the BAC with Stephan and Petra. A very good company did the show from the south west of England. They have been working there for many years and we became friends with them in 2001 while playing Cooped for the first time in Edinburgh festival. At that time they were playing the show called Red Shoes.
This time they are playing a Christmas show until the end of January and our friend Paul Hunter is playing one of the characters. He is probably one of the most important characters that are not really in the original story. It is all a very famous fairy tale about this little girl Rapunzel, that her mum does not want to fall in love with anybody and hides her in a very tall tower so she will never fall in love and leave her. Her mum will visit her all the time.
The girl starts to grow her hair really long. One day she hears voices and she call to see who is down the tower. There is a boy under the tower so she throws her long hair down and the boy climbs all the way up to the tower where they fall madly in love.
You can imagine the mother find out, punish the boy and punish the girl but at the end of the story like any other fairy tale story the boy and the girl end up together very happy.
The show is a Christmas show and it is very funny. The more they do it the better is going to be. We have come to see it very early on and you can see how the actors are looking all the time where the director is sitting. But it is a real pleasure to see such an imaginative show that gives lots of spaces for the actors to enjoy what they have to do. Breaks all the conventionalisms of theatre in a very original way and it is very playful fro the audience and the actors.
I have to say I was not incredible happy with the main girl and with the main boy but I loved the mother, Mike, and I loved the duke and I loved Paul. And I am an actor and I was jealous I was not doing something similar during Christmas.
The play happens at the BAC and I do not like that venue. It is a little shitty venue that has disappeared up its own us. It used to be really shitty but with lots of charisma and you was able to forgive every thing because they were trying all the time. Now they behave like the national theatre of the fringe and that is not good. Anyway perhaps now the National Theatre is going to start to behave like the BAC when it was quite good?
Have fun.
MUMMY
Hello;
The ancient times of Egypt were when the cats used to rule the world. The world was rule by Faraones and they were the example for everybody. Stephan gets dressed us the mummy to do some work into an Egypt episode. Cal and Petra dress him up with a big roll of toilet paper for big ass and I grab the cello tape and try to fix the rebellious pieces of paper to his skin or to his hair or to other rebellious pieces of toilet paper.
He does not get covered completely. He gets covered the upper part of his body and the face. He is tall and mysterious with his face cover in toilet paper thou I think it is because it looks like a big mummy from a cartoon comic strip.
Toby goes in front of the camera and Stephan is placed in the background to illustrate the theme of the story that we are about to tell. Toby, playing Mr. Murdston talks to the camera very seriously about the time when the last famous mummy got discovered by Lord Canavarn and Lord Carter. By opening the tomb the unveiled a 6000 years course that will hunt all the people involved in the offence. The amount of treasures and the glory they gained will not be useful because they will die before they can enjoy their successes.
The pillar of smoke cross Stephan siluete and gets to Toby's face. Cal, Petra, Murray behind the camera and me look at the scene with curiosity and expectation. We are waiting for the mummy to start to break the whole thing so we could laugh. Mr. Murdston carries with strong pathos the historical moment to which he is referring and in the middle of the speech the mummy open his eyes. We, as an audience think for a moment that the mummy like in the horror movies is going to jump and teat in pieces Mr. Murdston's body but no. The mummy opens his eyes and listens to the speech with attention.
His eyes blink and look to both sides. It fells as if the mummy has been sleeping for the last 6000 years and is checking how things have change. Mr Murdston leaves the spot in front of the camera and leaves the whole focus for the mummy. Suddenly a merry piece of music from Egypt comes in and first the eyes of the mummy start to dance to the rhythm of the music. His shoulders join in and his head cannot stop moving. It looks like a fat white sneak that has just eaten a massive egg and has got stuck in her throat. The rhythm gets faster and the mummy is getting rid of his bandages, his long arms are dancing to the music. His face looks as if it is going to exploit in a second and suddenly through the bandages a big tongue appear moving also to the music.
The mummy walks forward trying to dance with the camera and she switches off. It has had enough.
Have fun.
MEETING WITH BBC
Hello;
Late at night, at the Glynis Henderson Productions with Rose Marie McGovarn, our producer for the TV project with the BBC. So do not get confused about the title of the blog. The meeting was with someone of the BBC but supposedly she is working for us but really working for him or her. That is always the kind of things that happens when you do things for big TV companies that are funded by the government.
The light in the office is not very good I have to say. They do have this flat in the middle of London. For me they are in front of Heal's store and that is a place where you can get the most beautiful pieces of furniture and things for the kitchen and the office.
The office is the second floor with very narrow stairs and once you arrive there and open the door into the flat and it is daylight is very nice because you come from the dark of the staircase and then is an apartment with lots of light.
But then when you go at night the light fells as a hospital or a place that is not very healthy to spend too much inn. They do have fluorescents on the ceiling and it makes you look like sick person. The nice people that work in the office that receive you always in a very welcoming manner compensate all these.
Rose Marie arrived when we had already been there for a little while. These moments are precious moments for Spymonkey's business conversations and decisions making time.
When she came in we were all ready to fire up all the ideas that we had during the week.
I like Rose Mary. She looks for me someone from a fairy tale. She has something very funny and approachable about her. I vaguely remember meeting her in Edinburgh this summer. I think she was talking with Glynis at the Bar of the Assembly Rooms. I like her glasses. The pair she always wear s are blood red and because she is blonde it gives her a very nice air of eccentricity.
Sadly she could not give us any clues of what we should be doing because as she said to us the only person that knows what goes on in John's head is John. Even so we bombarded her in that very bad-lighted room with lots of questions so we could deliver a project that the head of comedy at the BBC will buy at firs sight.
When we left we met with Neil from Switzerland in a Brazilian restaurant. I did not stay for dinner but I had a drink. It is nice to see him. He is a fantastic man to have a round when he is in a good mood. I miss working with him. It was always so exciting to go to a room to work with him and be challenge by his ideas for exercises. I had a fight with him once but we become friends immediately afterwards. At KKG the atmosphere was very hypocritical so when we were doing STAU he was always a breath of fresh air.
I rode the bus back home. There are two weeks coming ahead of us where we are going to have lots of fun and that make me very excited.
Have fun.
STIFF
Hello;
Third day of workshop for the Spymonkey TV project. Suddenly we see the light but I am pessimistic. We have no freedom I fell. We are talking almost all the time about what we can do and what we can not do and it kind of piss me off. How on earth some people know what we can do and what we cannot do?
Like in everything we do some of us seem to have more answers than others and that is not very nice. Because specially in a project like this where we have never done anything like this before you really have to be in love with the whole thing so if you are saying to yourself from the very beginning this is right and this is not right you do not have the time to achieve freedom.
But we have given a go to Stiff. We have redone some of the scenes from Stiff to try to do them as part of the taster that we will be sending or giving to the BBC. And it is such a pleasure. There is not doubt, Stiff as a show it is a much more finished and closed and rounded than Cooped. Of course Cooped is funnier but Stiff has a perfect structure and it is very funny and very stupid.
As soon as we got into it we all started to laugh like children. It would be an interesting exercise to try to find out why Stiff was born like it was. We were all new with each other's. Cal was new with us and Paul Willeman was in the company. Then he left and Stephan took his place. Since Stephan came the whole thing took off but all that time working in Brighton and laughing a lot.
I have this memory of the researching time where we were completely free because there was not politics and everybody had happy thoughts and interesting things to do. At the moment I think there are far too many things about competing that do not allow the best material to come out.
We talked about redoing Stiff. I think that we should do it, specially for festivals and for gigs that they are one off and thing like that. It will give us lots of pleasure to do it and the most important thing it will help us to make some money for the company.
Stiff was the perfect clown show with fantastic pathos and with lots of stupidity and fantastically funny moments.
“Good morning we are mourning” this is just a classic line. We have now the security that the show is fragile and stupid and being now more experience performers we will be able to make the show better.
Have fun.
FARTING
Hello;
“Listen, Murray does not like when you fart all the time. He is a very polite man and that is why he has not said anything but today it was really disgusting the way you were farting non-stop. I think you should not do that anymore, he is coming here as a favour to all of us and we should try to be gentle and careful.”
These are not my words that are the reason why I put those little things in the beginning of the paragraph and at the end. So we had this problem with the amount of smelly air that we let out of our Asses. Well I should not include everybody in the “we” the reality is that it was Stephan and me. Stephan had some of the most horrible farts ever. We were sitting or doing something in the rehearsal room and suddenly a horrible wave of smell will get to you and it was impossible to ignore. The smell was so strong and horrible that you could not pretend that nothing happened.
I joined in the farting competition for sympathy. He was farting and I wanted to fart to so instead of letting my farts go out with out mention I will press the chicks of my bottom to create a big sound. My farts do not usually smell. The do make big noises and after many years I have mastered the art of manipulating the sound to a quite nice degree. No, I cannot do songs or sounds that could be recognisable but I can transform a blur fart in a wishy fart of vice versa by squishing the edges of my asshole with my ass chicks.
Anyway, it is all in my case because the amount of French-fries that we eat at lunch. French fries or chips give my farts and I like them very much. I they would be the chips that you do at home with good oil and good potatoes I do not get so fartty but with the frozen ones I can fart until I die.
Murray I am not going to fart every again in rehearsals. It is really nice to have you there working with us and I would not be able to forgive myself if you will not want to come back because I have had a horrible fart. Thou I have to say that it is a very perverse felling, I could right so many blogs about the time when someone refuse to work with us because my farts where so horrible that he could not take it any longer. I would become a kind of super hero that will prevent crime by farting in front of the baddies and the horrible smell will make them go or save the world from estrange creatures by farting in their faces so they will decided not to conquest the earth after all.
I will be calling SuperFart. And I will have costume like superman but with an SF on my chest. I will have to be very fit because I am sure everybody will make jokes and they will call me superfat instead of superfart my real name.
Have fun.
SAAM'S HOUSE
Hello;
Murray, James, Petra, Toby, Stephan and me are in the rehearsal room. This place is in Woods Green. It is like the big room of house, or better a garden hut transform into a rehearsal house or little studio where you can do work.
It belongs to Susan Gaulier. When she split up from Philippe she decided to have this place where she could work with her company and when they are not working she rented.
We do not like it very much because is very small but is very convenient for Cal and for me because it is very close to our house. Well, it is not my house but that is the place where I stay always when I come to London.
The place has wooden floors and white walls. One of the sides of the house is a big window that faces the garden of the house. It fells sometimes as if you are in the middle of the garden of Susan. Every time her partner comes out to smoke a cigarette you see him out side and it is quite funny and intimidating.
The place is really great because when you have used lots of other different places to rehears you do realised that it is fantastic to have a place where you can stay for very long and come back in the mornings and nobody is going to bother.
It is really true that if you want to do a big show with lots big things that it is not the most inspiring place because it is like a big living room. The first time we went there we all thought it was a very good idea. I thought that it was the kind of thing that you can have in your garden without a problem. Well, I did not really think that, Susan thought about it first. She did it and then she got into troubles because she did not do the whole thing legal on the first place. It was not her fault thou. Her architect did not inform her that the plans were not very good. There is a law that says that if after five years nobody has told anything about the fact that your little house in the back of the house is not legal then it becomes legal. It is quite funny that law but you know this is England. Then some one made a shitty inspection and found the illegal thing before the five years and they told her the house had to close.
Now Susan has closed Saam's House and she is going to use it for living purposes. I think it is going to make an amazing living room or entertainment suit. The ones that are going to suffer the most are going to be the companies that work with Cal because that was a very convenience place to work and very cheap too.
Good-bye Saan's house and well come the rest of rehearsals spaces of the world.
Have fun.
EL GROTTO
Hello;
Once upon the time in the far of one of the corners of deserted land a small hole in the ground got bigger with the help of the human nature. What some time before was no more than a big hole in the rocky part of hill become a cave, a grotto and the people started to use it as place to guard themselves from the rain or from the heat of sun in the summer.
Nothing abnormal seemed to be happening with something that was a hole and now was a cave, a grotto. It is the normal developing of things in life, you are small and young and then you grow and get mature and then you get older and die.
But with the small hole that became a cave, a grotto what was going to be his next and after next development state? Could the small whole that developed into a cave; a grotto would develop into a tunnel? Could develop into a mine? What was the next possibility for a small hole that no one thought would ever become a cave, a grotto?
Everybody who used the cave, the grotto in the summer to avoid the heat and in the moments of rain to do not get wet wander what was going to be its next face or shape.
One little girl was not worried about the next shape of the cave, the grotto she was happy playing hide and sheiks with her little dog Carlos. She will throw a piece of wood as far as she could and then while Carlos was going to get the wood she would run very fast into the cave, grotto and hid there until Carlos would find her with his incredible sense of smell. One day, she went for a walk with Carlos and played the game of hide and sheik. She throws the piece of wood and saw Carlos running after it. She waited until Carlos had run for twenty yards and then run as fast as she could inside the cave, the grotto. She was running so fast that she did not see a little piece of stone that had fallen due to the strong rains of the last two weeks. She tumbled and felt in the ground hitting her head with the ground. She lost consciousness and went into a sleep.
Suddenly she saw a big head of light on top of her. She looked up and could not see anything. She covers her eyes with the back of her palm and looked up again. A really nice and a sweet voice started to talk to her, “dig” the voice said. She did not know if she was dreaming or what she was hearing were voices from her head that had stopped working with the big hit that she just had suffered. Then Carlos started to do what he was best at, dig. The voice said again “dig” and she started to dig with Carlos. Carlos thought it was a game and started to dig really fast.
The voice becomes a face and she could she a gentle woman with pretty features that was smiling at her. “Do not be scare, I am the immaculate Conception” She did not know what the lady was talking about but she was having fun because she had found another game for her to lay with Carlos from now on.
When the hole was considerable deep fresh water started to come out. She looked at the water and reached her hand to get some in her mouth. “It is fresh and sweet,” she said while lifting her face up to see the reaction of the lady of the light but she was not there anymore. She told everybody and … that is now history or story.
So the end of the story of the hole is that it became a big Grotto-Church-religious pilgrimage destination. Who would have thought? A small hole had making it into history.
Have fun.
BUTTERFLIES IN MY STOMACH
Hello;
No, I do not have animals in my stomach. I have use a metaphor to illustrate the way a fell on my way to Sam's house. I walk from Cal's house to the rehearsal studio because it is quite close. I like walking in the mornings especially when I am concern with something and worried with something. I put my I-pod in sauffle and then I listen the music so I can relax and face the work that we are doing together.
The little flying things in my stomach do not move all the time. They come and go like any other thing and they are more present when the subject of my thoughts is the future works of Spymonkey. So I try not to think and I put my head into thinks that I like, for example wining the lottery. For that I have a soundtrack. The soundtrack is made with a collection of songs that are funny and very pacey and that is the kind of music I try to have while walking to rehears in the morning.
From time to time the butterflies organise a big attack and I fell them bunching against the walls of my stomach. Those attacks are never for too long. After one of them there is always the odd crash of the little insect but that does not really disturb me, if anything tickles me.
Lately I have had other symptoms to add to the Butterflies in my stomach. It all happens in this order first my brain goes into the problematic situation that we are suffering that I am not going to explain here for obvious reasons the first one being confidentiality and starts to make a prediction for the future of what this problematic situation is going to cause to the life of Spymonkey. When my brain gets really heated up with the apocalyptical thoughts the butterflies in my stomach start to take off crushing wildly against the walls of my stomach. I am dreading the day that they will discover the way up my oesophagus. That they I am going to start to vomit and that could be causes because I am a very bad vomited.
So my body is trying to control the panic in my brain and fighting with his power facing the battle of the butterflies in my stomach and then around my chest a big point of pain starts to ring all the alarm bells of my human system.
It does not look or fell like a stroke. The pain is firm and consistent and definitely it comes from my heart. That muscle is so sensitive and has such an amazing a complicated set of veins and muscles and little things that it will be too much for me to say where the pain is place. Usually I bring my hand to the place where it hurts and I get a little bit of relief. Then a strong message of calm to all my body or it will go off like a presser cooker and I usually I relieve a big fart. I am sure if someone sees me from the back will be able to see thousands of little butterflies flying off. The pain goes and everything goes back normal. Until now all these attacks have happened during the day if I start to get them during the night I will have to consider the possibility of suicide or stop sleeping. I will see.
Have fun.
1st December 2006
CARDBOARD CITIZENTS
Hello;
When you go to the Buddhist Arts Centre in Bethnal Green is it always because you have questions about your faith and you are looking for a new religion? Well, no. I think that question was boring and too long for nothing.
Petra and me gave a workshop today for Cardboard Citizens. I am not very sure what they really are. I know that they are peopling whit not much money and that they receive some kind of education so they can stop living the way they live. Lucy and Flick had worked with them in the past and they approach Spymonkey to give a workshop. Petra put herself forward and I thought that it was a very good idea for her to do it because she liked the idea of working with people. Then I received a phone call to see if I wanted to go with her. I said yes and there I was this morning a little bit earlier to prepare the workshop and to see Petra.
The space was great and the people that came to do the workshop really nice and very good. It does always make me fell very nervous when I have to do something new. I have not done things many times, I mean like giving workshops or doing things like that. The only thing I do a lot is to play COOPED.
Anyway that is not important, two Italians, two Spanish people, some English and then Petra and me and one girl that was taking care of everything.
At then we had six hours of workshop to give to all these people. They all were very nice and charming. I had just arrived to England and I was not felling terrible confident about my self and being there and all that shit.
We did the normal exercises. Petra led has of the work and I led the other part. It is very difficult to give workshops to people some time, especially when you are trying to create work for yourself. The funny thing about it is that you can cheat in a workshop because people have paid for it and you have kind of the obligation to deliver like when you are on the stage. The different thing with the workshop is that the performance goes for much longer and there is moments when you are supper tired and incapable of entertain anymore to anyone.
My favourite moment of the workshop was while doing the Eurovision song contest competition exercise. The two Italians and one Spanish were one team. They came representing a country of east Europe and doing silly things that did not make anybody laugh. Then we told them to work in being together and in listen to each other and in not trying to be funny. Those little silly things made them to become more sensitive and aware of the fact that they were on the stage and they had to be happy together. They did not do much but we were highly entertained and we laugh a lot to their stupidity. That is the beauty of the clowns, to make people laugh without doing anything.
Have fun.
