Christmas trees, shedding pine needles, going brown and lying on their sides now litter the streets and clog up the pavements. Near to my house someone has conveniently stacked a couple in the middle of the gateway that allows emergency vehicles to get through the one way system. When will this senseless butchery of trees end? Come on fundamentalist Islam, pull your finger out and take over the world. What we would lose in liberalism and equality and not shooting people because they had suggested that it wasn't necessarily a blasphemy to share a glass with a Christian or throw a piece of paper with the name Mohammed on it into a bin, we'd make up with trees being allowed to stay in the ground and not get slaughtered for Jesus. Of course these trees are grown especially and would not exist if it were not for Christmas, but what kind of a life it it for them?
If the murder itself wasn't bad enough, we then take the trees corpse, still with life in it, just rootless, so it can sense the indignity, and decorate it with gaudy bits of tinsel and baubles and lights. If a serial killer did that with his human victims it would be enough to get him sent to a secure mental unit, especially if you also hung chocolate from them and put an angel on their head, but no one cares about the trees. I hate to see how our arborous neighbours will treat us when Planet of the Trees comes about. Unlike the apes version, the trees taking back the world is much more likely. I hope they will put lights around our corpses and then when we stink too much put us out by the bins. Good luck to the Arbarians trying to bring down human civilisation. I am still looking for the bit in the New Testament where Jesus says we should slaughter trees unto him and let's not even get on to the Easter egg issue.
The dead trees make me sad. I am glad to say that more by accident than design, this year due to snowy weather and too much work I did not get round to buying a tree. Maybe we should all stop doing it.
I told my girlfriend how much I disliked this tradition as we passed another fallen fir. She is a big fan of the Christmas tree and was properly sad that we didn't get one. She said that next year we should get one with roots that can be replanted. "Yeah," I said, "That will never happen."
And it won't. Partly because we have nowhere to plant it, but mainly because that is much too much hassle. I like trees, but later this year I will kill one in honour of a God I don't believe in.
I am getting over my new year grumpiness and getting things into more perspective. Tonight about 110 people in the audience, which I would have thought was a bit of a disaster if I had been told that would be the case at the beginning of the run, but it's a positive step in the right direction (and the weekend gigs look like being half full at least. Saturday might even sell out). And a really great crowd in, allowing me to be playful and silly and a little bit experimental. It's been a tough week for me but it's good to have doubts and fears at times and I am pleased that I am honest enough to talk about it (admittedly with a degree of humour behind it all - I am not as depressed as some of you seem to be worrying that I am) rather than playing the game and pretending everything is hunky-dory. All I have is my honesty. And though walking past Stew's crowd wasn't a 100% great feeling, in the interview I did say I was glad for his success and I really am. It struck me as we spoke that Lee's new found appeal is a big positive for anyone trying to do something different and interesting. It shows it is possible to break through and carve a niche for yourself without compromising what you're doing. And whilst those people are idiots for not yet knowing how much they would also enjoy my show, at least they are out there to discover it. I don't suppose Stewart felt that they would be there for him even five years ago. I said in the interview, truthfully that I was pleased for Stew and that in fact my anger and resentment is reserved for the comedians who have made it big when they aren't doing anything that interesting and aren't that good and have been quite lazy. It's not all comedians by any means, and I admire most acts (even the ones I don't like) because it is a hard business to get anywhere in, but a few don't deserve the position they are in, especially when there are so many more talented and hard-working acts out there. But Stewart Lee stands as a beacon of hope to those good acts. Most of them will have their hopes dashed, like a brittle, dry Christmas tree tossed into the road. But sometimes hard work and talent can lead you to where you want to be. Just as sometimes laziness and luck and being friends with the right person can do it too. Choose your path comedian.
I had some asparagus for my dinner before I came to the gig and was very impressed that when I went for a wee when I arrived at the theatre it already smelled of asparagus. Good work asparagus, making wee-time fun. Why can't more food put in the effort to be as entertaining on the way out as it was on the way in. A very few foodstuffs make the effort, but asparagus is the most diligent. Is their an evolutionary benefit in affecting the smell of the wee of anything that eats you? Maybe it would discourage animals that use their urine to mark their territory from consuming you (but only if they understood cause and effect). I don't think so. Asparagus has put in all that work just for the entertainment value. We can all learn a lot from it.
And more tube based interaction, but this time with an escape route. Three young men were standing chatting at the top of the stairs on the way into Oxford Circus tube station tonight. It was 11pm so it wasn't too busy, but they were blocking over half the staircase and it was hard to get round them. As I squeezed through the gap I commented loudly, "Hey, good place to stand, fellas!" This time I kept walking. I had unleashed a bomb of sarcasm and was halfway into the station before it had exploded into their stupid, standing in the wrong place, ears. Oh yeah, I have still got it. My girlfriend had had to follow me in single file due to the nincompoops and I asked her if she had seen if they had reacted to this angel of truth descending upon their selfish world. She said that she didn't think they had heard me. I think it was likely that they were tourists from another country (whose customs were different and where it is good to stand in tube station exits and entrances) who probably didn't understand English all that well anyway. I thought of going back and clarifying and saying, "Actually it is a stupid place to stand. When I said "Good place to stand" I was being sarcastic." But I thought that would lessen the impact of my brilliant bit of social satire. And that they might hit me.
On the tube itself a middle-aged man was listening to music on his phone without headphones. When I see teenagers being this self-centred I can kind of understand it, because they are young and it's their job to be pricks, but I couldn't believe this man was selfish enough to subject us all to his personal taste in music. Fired up from my tube entrance based bravery I considered asking him what the fuck he thought I was doing, but I realised I would have to sit opposite him for another fifteen minutes afterwards and didn't like the possibility of repercussions. I think I need some kind of superhero uniform so I can patrol the tubes and remind and inform people when they are being jerk-off cock-holes. This man escaped tonight, but when Tube-man makes his debut, no one will be safe.
