Mike Birbiglia's Girlfriend's Boyfriend

I saw Mike Birbiglia's show 'My Girlfriend's Boyfriend' on Tuesday night. It's a masterclass in storytelling performance. And as funny as most anything I've seen. Honest and painful, with act-outs, anecdotes and asides, shifting back and forth in time, Birbigs takes us from before his first kiss right up to more recent life-changing romantic encounters.

Quit writing, you loser

Alternate title: shut up and focus.

This is a great blogpost that has given me barrel-loads of ironic advice and reminded me just how awesome Ron Swanson is.

So I'm off to do some writing.

Slapdash Improv Festival

London's Slapdash International Festival runs from 5-10 June

The improv scene here is in mid-explosion and London needs a big international improv festival. Companies like Showstopper, and Austentatious and events like last weekend's 50-hour Improvathon have been getting mainstream comedy plaudits and David Shore's improv classes have been drawing in stand-ups and sketch comedians by the bushel-load.

Plus there are weekly improv nights courtesy of The Wilmops, GTI, Hoopla and of course London Improv; there is tonnes of stuff happening.

But what I thought was missing was a collaborative sustained festival, a place to showcase styles and things that people are working on, here and abroad, and share skills and generally meet up with people from all over and work and share the craft. A festival of improv, if you will.

And I believe you will.

Beard info: knowledge is power

I don't know if you've noticed, but lately I've been rocking a look that can be described as 'seriously semi-bearded'. It may not be particularly luscious or full, but it is almost certainly a beard.

Nobody's Perfect (Excursions)

Me, "Possessed of what the French call an 'I don't know what'" (Photo by Jinni Lyons)

Tuesday night was the third run out of Excursions at Tamesis Dock. Part rap, jazz, hip hop and funk classics night on a boat, part hangout with music enthusiasts, and part marvel of musical and lyrical skill, it is even more than the sum of its parts.

Thanks MCA

On Friday Adam Yauch, AKA MCA of The Beastie Boys, passed away at 47, of cancer. I don't need to eulogize too much, because there are already some great tributes out there, like this in the LA Times, this from the Beastie Boys website, and Nathan Rabin's piece on the A.V. Club. And many more besides; everybody was a fan of the Beastie Boys. Even a grieving China has freed Tibet, following news of his death.

Advanced Phrenology at Wellcome

I went to check out the Wellcome Collection's Brains: the mind as matter exhibit recently. It was pretty gory; lots of brain bits on display, heavily augmented with videos of archaic and painful-looking procedures and tools for skull cutting and trepannation - generally the history of getting mental with the physical home of the mind.

CRUMBS takes London

Last week old friends and improv stalwarts/Euroheros CRUMBS were in town. It was great having Steve and Lee here for an inspiring week of improv-heavy fun (two workshops and a show).

Enhance your Text! With Spam!

My browser recently received, unbidden, a thing called Text Enhance. On every single webpage various words would be 'enhanced' into hover links for pop-up spam ads. Very quickly, it started driving me mad.

Boris vs Ken: London's Battle

Actually, these guys hate each other.

London is not far away from voting for a new mayor - less than a month, in fact. There are a bunch of candidates, and all of them are unlikable, but for many reasons.

Back from Brussels, refreshed

It's a long story..

Marbles spent a weekend in Brussels, and boy did we ever! Three workshops (me Saturday and Sunday, Dave on Saturday) and four shows (two intermediate student shows - which Dave also played in, and two Marbles shows). The workshops were full, and the audiences for the shows were big and appreciative. It was exhausting and inspiring, in a word, it was exactly what we needed to rejuvenate our creative partnership.

The Samantha Brick lesson

Stone-cold fox Samantha Brick's dynamite good looks have caused some haters to hate. Those 'haters' include essentially every single person in Britain

Writer, award-winning producer and journalist Samantha Brick has written an article for the Daily Mail about how hard it is to be as beautiful as she is. Almost instantly she's been subject to some backlash that has been predictably negative and quite persistent.

Really, she should have known better.