Wars are bad

I had a dream that I wrote a great joke last week, I know right, must have been a dream!

Thing is I actually laughed myself awake and then sat for 15 minutes trying to figure out if the joke was funny enough to write down, I then became distracted, possibly the dog decided to clamber on top of me as he does when I have nodded off on the sofa during the day, he thinks it's funny I laughed myself awake despite the fact he often farts himself awake!! 

Maybe my phone went or I decided to check Facebook or something mundane I don't know but I immediately forgot the joke, it was a play on the word Liverpudlian, an insult, to someone not from Liverpool but who was really into the Beatles (not even a wool or whatever scousers call them I've no idea)

This big fat unit of a guy, like huge and hairy and lacking any personal hygiene standards (that's polite speak for he smelt like he's been dead a week. I'm not saying this has anything to do with home being large or hairy it's just this individuals issue please don't write to Anne Robinson, not that the staple faced grinch can do anything!!)

It did make me realise I need a dictaphone, there is probably some kind of app that acts as one I imagine and I need to talk to myself.

Well I need to talk to future me, I need to tell future me what the joke or idea that past me thought of in full was; this way I can develop the idea better rather than looking at the notes as I think I mentioned in a previous blog they barely make sense anyway yet still the other day I wrote this note.

"Went to stroke benji but he's a kid not a dog"

What the actual fuckedy duck does my brain do when the conscious switches off.

I've tried recently to write things that I believe in more rather than just jokes or finger as a verb related stories!

Maybe my subconscious is telling me to make a point through stand up?

I wrote recently about why Making a Murderers Steven Avery is a genius and is blatantly the guy who killed Theresa Halbach, he planned it all spent 18 years in jail and then got a documentary team to follow him about so he could get away with it or at least get a public pardon, yeah there were more jokes than what I posted here but I was howling at myself, I was being unreasonable and then justifying my unreasonable point or at least making something that makes no sense have a sense of some kind, because... It's just jokes innit (no idea why the innit is there)

I fucking loved it, it was somewhat Inbetween Bill Burr and Daniel Sloss only without their talent, fuck it I can be a shit Burr or Sloss, or a Bloss as I'm going to now call it.

When I write in Bloss mode there will be all those opinions I have opted not to share because I don't want to argue with anyone or upset anyone, you can all have your opinions and mine could be wrong just as yours could be but fuck it if I can make mine funny I win give me my prize!!

I think it's fair to say I've never really won an opinion off, I've no idea what happens when you do but given how much bellendry goes on when an opinionated tool feels challenged I can only assume the rewards are great? 

Maybe you get your naughty bits kissed by the person of your dreams.... Although if this were the case, for me it would be a large hairy smelly Beatles fan who I've just insulted hilariously and then completely forgotten how!

The stage is a good place for opinions, but to be honest, audiences don't come to comedy looking to be taught or preached to, they don't come expecting to learn a moral lesson, hear some rant about the government, the illuminati, wars are bad or ukip are thick.... 

We get it... 

They are stupid!! 

Stop pointing it out like a sanctimonious smug prick, we know Donald Trump is not just a moron he's the fucking King or moronia!!

 YOU'RE NOT STEWART LEE!! 

Just make us fucking laugh!

Sure we know the differences between men and women and I don't want to know about that time you had self love or thought your uncle was a 70's bbc DJ

But tell me about when you shit yourself on the train if you want, observe stuff that happens every day but from a different perspective if you need it's all good... Yes I went all ranty but I'm hopping back on the funny is funny slide and I'm happy to slip down it and laugh at comics who aren't teaching us anything until snot runs down my face and I make that froggy sound when I laugh!

(Like an actual frog, I wasn't being racist about anyone , although having to mention that suggests maybe I am, I will address that with myself)

I rather suspect a number of audiences also go just to switch off and laugh too, so write what's funny... I'm not even sure if I'm talking to you or myself now... It's been a long week!

J x

I got fired!

So.... I had a dayjob that I really quite liked until Friday just gone, I don't have a dayjob anymore!!

It's only the 2nd time in my life I've been fired, I've walked away from a couple of jobs, in fact I once took a job that I didn't fancy just to keep my dad happy and on the 1st day he gave me a lift to work.

I got out the car and walked up to the door and as dad pulled away I turned and went to McDonald's for a brew and then walked home (he would have been at work).... I had to do that for 5 weeks before I eventually found a job I liked and pretended to move offices!!

So yeah that makes me a little unemployable it seems... Actually the other job I was fired from would make me unemployable as I was involved in the pouring of 3 litres of vodka into the slushy machine to get drunk on vodka slushies after work, only to then forget we'd done that leave for the day without cleaning the machine down and causing several children to have hangovers on the Monday (yeah don't call the cops this may have been embellished!)

Thing is that's not my normal working attitude, I work hard, I usually have little to say and just crack on with my job, this most recent job I worked harder than usual despite being knackered from returning home from gigs at 3am or having to be up early 4 mornings a week for the gym.

I worked as hard as possible with not a single day sick leave in the 15 months I was there but.... My bleedin phone, I keep that thing too close and anyone who knows how desperately hard it is to get gigs without pouncing on them within seconds knows that having half an eye on that bastard Facebook comedy bastarding forum!!

Also now I'm podcasting I have been listening to a few podcasts so while I was working away in the warehouse; a warehouse that I single handedly organised from a confused mess to a work of warehouse art, warehouse porn even!! (Yeah I'm taking that too seriously)

I'd have my podcasts running all day, thing is a colleague was not a fan of me doing this and said colleague went to the management to report my naughty naughty podcast and occasional email  addiction..... And boom the Alan Sugar finger was pointed at me and I was whisked off in a black cab to appear on radio 1... Well ok I walked off to the train station and today appeared on Lancashire tv but it's just as glamorous!

So that's it, fired in the least rock and roll way and I can't even get decent material from it.... Although I will bloody try, and while I'm gutted to be kicked into touch and feel kinda embarrassed to hear people passing on the message I got fired!, and for it to be so out of the blue like this was a shock but...it does kind of put my so called comedy career back in my own hands, I have no excuses now I guess (is being shit at comedy an excuse?)

From this point I guess I should drag myself out of bed as normal, hit the gym as I would do and then treat writing etc as my job between the 9 and 5... Let's see how long that shit lasts.

J x

I can only apologise

I was just sitting at home the other day minding my own business when a massive bandwagon rolled past.

It was the comedy podcast bandwagon and I hopped right on board, swiftly realising podcasting takes a lot more effort than just talking at microphone.

My 1st attempt was okish, until I went to edit it and heard the sound of my own voice.... Fuuuuck!! I sound like someone has stuffed socks in the mouth of the spotty kid from Simpsons and asked him to talk bollocks!!

I can only apologise to anyone who has had a conversation with me, that must be irritating, it's astonishing I have any friends!!

Now I know everyone feels that way about their own voice (apart from piers Morgan maybe) but does everyone yell at recordings of themselves to SHUT UP YOU FUCKTARD!

I just spew utter utter nonesense! And the sooner I stop this behaviour the better!

That said I am quite enjoying the podcasting with 2 podcasts running at the present, one based on sports betting and the other somewhat narcissistic all named the Jim Bayes show is based on mysteries at the moment with a series of things such as Lord Lucan and Bigfoot both recorded already and crop circles, the Roswell incident and the Black Dhalia to follow.

I'll have guests along to discuss the subjects in question and let's see where this next attempt to forge some kind of career from comedy takes me.

There's a lot of other acts on this bandwagon and some of them are doing a bloody great job (I particularly liked Lee Kyle's 21 questions)

Thing is, it's all just part of a journey (yes I called comedy a journey what of it?) that will either end with the glory of headlining at the dog and moose in kirkdale on middleoffuckingnowhereville with 6 open spots for company and a grand fee of £125 when it cost £90 in fuel to get there, or some awful failure!!

Either way, 2016 has started, I've not gigged yet and I still bloody love stand up comedy.

J x

Koalas aren't impressed

2016 is here, yknow, in case you missed it... Time for all the new year new me stuff, because it's easy to be a new you, or me, for the month of January.

There's dry January going on at the moment, because nothing quite says healthy like having one month in 11 off something!!

If you're going to do something then great set about doing it in Jan but don't do it just for Jan, a short term goal is great but aim higher. 

I've been aiming higher for a while now, mainly because I'm sick of getting piss on my shoes but we all have to have our mini goals!

Fat me, when the highest thing I'd aim for was the biscuit tin (thankfully times havechanged and so have I)

I have been aiming higher as an act too, but not been putting in the hard yards properly, which is an all too common mistake. Working hard on something needs an element of mental toughness, which is useful as I've been described as both tough and mental in the past however offensive that may be to those with actual mental challenges!

It also needs strategic thinking, goal setting & hugely important accountability setting. Accountability is the thing I'll talk about here, as a stand up who writes countless notes on my phone that I think are hilarious only to do the square route of naff all with. 

They don't even make sense now, I read through utterly be used as to what my poor excuse of a brain was doing! 

here's an example 

I wouldn't bat an aye lid cos it's above an eye and my bat is heavy 

Local campaign

Knives are for cowards.... say the government that drops bombs 

Killing a bear might be impressive but koalas aren't impressed... Yeah!! WTF???

Accountability required to get these ramblings written into jokes and keep evolving.

Said accountability could come from a group of fellow acts, 2 or 3 is sufficient but more if needed. Organise to get together once a week, once a fortnight, whatever works best... And write the shit out of my comedy.  Just go to costa, pay way too much for a coffee that will be cold before you finish it, maybe bounce ideas off each other but just write.

Be each other's accountability buddies, so one week we maybe can't be bothered but at least one accountability buddy kicks arse and we go do it, sure no one can force anyone because we are grown ups and we can be bellends but hey if you're accountable to other people then maybe the things you're trying to do might just last beyond one month.

All that said, it remains to be seen if I'm going to improve at all no matter how many times I may be beaten around the head with the funny stick but hey, at least I will have lots of distinctly average stuff rather than just some distinctly average stuff.

Happy new year by the way!!

J x

Real Madrid drinking team

The problem with giving up alcohol for a few months is that when you drink alcohol again you forget how shit you are at drinking. Unfortunately for me me football buddies (we don't play footy they are just round and full of wind) are champions league drinkers, me going out with them is if I were to use the football analogy... Which I will, like Real Madrid taking on the horse and chaffinch Sunday league reserves team.... It's a non contest but there was a real pre match feeling I could give this a go!

I wound up without a gig which allowed me to join in much sooner with the drinking, in a previous blog I had mentioned whisky and so my tiny feeble man brain was lusting for this with amateur enthusiasm the kind of which sees many a Brit crawling along a puke pee and glass coated kerb in a deshevelled state while still convinced they can dance or pull or both!!!

The thing is I had like many a comedy flavoured person does, been hoping for something to happen, something I could look back on and embellish to the point of uber hilarity although in reality just get a mildly amusing anecdote to which I add 3 knob gags and classic Jim lean forth as I relay the story to a bemused audience of 6 punters 4 bar staff and 5 other acts all staring at their phone because they've seen me before.

I have been very much the dull boy of late , sure after gigs I sneak in a drink now and then, usually it's a water with ice and I've tried the diet water with full fat ice joke on a few nonplussed bar staff while at it, it takes away the embarrassment of ordering a drink that's nearly always free and instead replaces it with embarrassment at my dad joke.

Aside from that my social life has involved 4 visits to the gym a week, that's not even a brag, no one likes a gym prick, I'm a Jim Gym prick, if only I liked preserves, I'd be a Jim jam gym prick (I'll stop now) it's involved 2 games of football a week, one day a week writing (usually just some half assed blog!) and 2 or 3 nights a week gigging along with 5 days at the day job, cramming in time to walk the dog and the odd date here and there (well coffee in McDonald's seems to count so I'll take that!)

Basically I'm too busy to have any crazy shit happen to me that would make great comedy.... Which of course means I either have to up my game and do more crazy shit or actually sit back and realise that I, like anyone on this silly little planet can write creatively if I just allow myself too.

There's no need to wait for crazy adventures to happen, sure when they do that's awesome but in reality what makes a comic good is putting in the miles writing because if any other act is like me they need to write 4 hours worth of stuff to get 20 mins they are happy with.... And when I say happy with I mean not happy with but it will do for now, writing is the dirty bit, the hard part that takes time, takes patience and ah fuck it lets just nick some jokes offof sickepedia because no one seems to be saying much to the 4 zillion (slight exaggeration) acts that are doing that.... No seriously don't nick jokes and actually in a car share recently an act pointed out that when you write a joke it's worth googling the premise and the joke to see if it's out there already as it might just save you some pointy pointy fingy.... Although there seems to be little of that at the moment 

So my tender state, created by the thrashing handed out to me by Real Madrid's drinking team allowed me an opportunity to get a bit more writing in, maybe I should just get blasted every weekend and write my way to recovery... Who knows maybe one night I'll get my head kicked in by an 8ft baby on a stag do, or fall in a river and be rescued by a bloke who looks like Jack from titanic, or maybe I'll get arrested for (this one did happen) picking up a discarded hard hat putting it on and standing next to a policeman keeping patrol of the taxi rank singing YMCA.... Whatever happens putting pen to paper each week is the bit where the real comedians will rise up above those gifted actors .... I hope 

J x

Happy to quit comedy

Christmas party week this week for pretty much everyone who likes to drink and talk to other humans, I'm not so good at the latter and I am really bad at the former.

I like people, people are interesting, every person on this planet has a complex and interesting life, even that Hopkins woman, sure no one would really care if she fell into a cement mixer and some Polish immigrants made a house for an Indian family in sweaty Scotland out of her cold callous house brick body..... Just for clarity it is not I that thinks Scottish are sweaty.

I like people but I really really don't like people!! I mean if there was one or two people then I'd probably like them but when you go into a bar and there are about 4 zillion people in there and they have all had 6 jäger bombs, 5 Sambuccas 4 pints of craft lager (it's like normal lager but it's more expensive because the word craft has been added to the description) 2 real ales (ales that descended from Spanish Royalty I would guess) and a red bull (because sugar and Taurine are really good ingredients to add to this mix) then it for me becomes a bit awkward.

I've managed to get fitter than I've ever been, to that end I feel youthful, but that's where my pretence that I'm young ends. It's not helped when you enter a bar and you look like you could potentially be someone's dad there to pick them up, there are kids in there younger than a scar I got on my chin during a bar fight I got in when I was of an age that getting in a bar fight didn't terrify me!!

They are prancing around to some bloke who's clearly got an issue with female dogs and garden tools as he raps about all the bitches and hoes that he never used to have before the days he could afford to own luxurious shit such as a Rolex, then for a brief moment I get excited as a song I recognise comes on, but it's not the track I thought, just some guy shouting over the top of the music I once liked when a band in too old to remember the name of once sang over it, then next track... I find myself asking what the fuck is a rizzle kick??

When did my ability to enjoy life die? Fuck I'm not old, it's a mental state....it's not that I don't like other people, sure they are all dressed like cartoon characters and no one wears shirts and shoes anymore but that's not their fault.

It is dawning on me my social life is stand up, I'm getting old in my mind and I only like people if they are sat listening to me and laughing at the bullshit I think is funny.... Who thinks a man turning into a chicken is funny for fecks sake??

I should have known I was getting brainified (it's a word ok!) old, I know the difference between bio and non bio washing powder, I own nose hair clippers (fuck off they are useful) and I consider a nice sit down to be a thing! 

Having a nice sit down with Ronnie

This week is party week, my social life had been negotiating road works and 50 mile and hour speed restrictions listening to Stuart Goldsmith... I'm not equipped to handle busy rooms but as a comedian (of sorts, on can we just assume that I'm a comedian in the basis that I do comedy??)

It's been easier to hide away in the back, show off for 20 mins then piss off home for a nice sit down!

Thing is, I bumped into a former Leeds based act the other day while Christmas shopping, he was so bloody happy!! I mean a million miles from the guy I knew as an act, really happy, like he smiled and it wasn't forced and he even looked like he's been in a bed with a real girl recently!!

I heard a rumour a notoriously hard work act has recently married and will be quitting stand up too because he's happy.... Is this it, do I need to be miserable? You don't have to be happy to quit comedy but do you have to quit comedy to be happy? Nah I doubt that.

I can do miserable but I'm going to go to these Christmas parties, try my bleeding hardest to talk to people without yawning, zoning out or moving the subject to myself as quickly as possible and I'm going to drink some fecking whisky (I have no ideas how to drink whisky but I'm about to learn so I can at least look distinguished rather than old!!) and I'm going to make sure that happy Jim can still be comedy Jim.

J x

Lovely gigs

I have had a busy week this week, the usual stuff really, 6 trips to the gym (I went inside and worked out on at least 2 of them too ) 5 days at the dayjob currently training a newbie, 4 gigs, 3 games of football 2 turtle doves and Alan partridge on DVD!!

The gigs have been quite nice, none of the horrible Christmas party buffoonery I witnessed like last year when a supermarket I won't name, let's just call them Asdur, held their do at a gig I had in Leeds and took the entire front 3 rows.

In fairness we should not allow a pre planned, ticket only, non exclusive to your company, live event ruin a mundane conversation about Steve in accounts hilarious anecdote about the time he called Susan; from shipping; Sarah. 

You hilarious bastard Steve, sorry about our event requiring you to be quiet so the  other paying guests can enjoy the show.

And how rude of us not to realise Lucy from customer services hasn't seen Jennifer from the other side of customer services for 4 days, you must have so much to catch up on?? Tell us more about what happened in goggle box this week that simply can't be enjoyed silently!

I think the most rude and thoughtless thing we did holding a gig there that night was get right in the way of some necessary drinking, because a Christmas do isn't a Christmas do until you're 5 shots of sambuca in, you've some how managed to button your shirts middle button to the top hole, you've just threatened to beat the hell out of someone while wearing a jumper with a flashing Rudolph nose on it and a yellow paper hat or you've had that many copperbergs you've become convicted that they are four value for money!!

Fortunately this weeks gigs have all been lovely (while in comedy terms "lovely gig"

Usually means "I did well" I can honestly say these were just lovely gigs.... I don't know what the code is for I could have been funnier but the audience were nice)

I suspect as we creep closer to Christmas and party season gets in to full swing there may be some more lovely gigs but I know at least one night between now and next year I'll be stood talking to an audience that makes me happy no one carries around rotting fruit and veg anymore.

I hope I'm wrong, being as busy as I seem to be I'd like not ever feel it's time wasted although in fairness time is only wasted if nothing is learned, and there are always lessons to learn ( better grammar may be one I could look at)

I think I'm just going to sit back and enjoy whatever the Christmas run gives me.

J xx