Have never been totally happy with 'xtremelanguage' as the name of this blog and today the right idea for a name presented itself. Wasn't even meant to meet Sam today for lunch but Blair who I was meeting said Sam was in a cafe just up the road so we went and joined him for lunch. Mentioned to Blair I have a blog and out of the blue Sam said "bleating - a cross between blog and Keating", and a new name for my blog was born. Subject to availability.

When you sign up to do a comedy festival show you have to trust that, come festival time in April your germ of an idea will have sprouted into a fully ripened, plump new show. Of course it's the sobering combination of opening night deadline and seeing your show cast in stone in the festival program that keeps you awake at night in cold sweats actually writing the damn thing! Without peak moments a career can feel like working on a Hyundai production line. For every working stand-up comedian, nailing a comedy festival show is their Everest. No matter how many times you've done it before, you still might die. James Keating in True Story. Tenzing not included.

http://www.comedyfestival.co.nz/auckland/show/true-story

Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening
By Robert Frost

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

This morning I went round to my mate Rob’s house to catch up with him and his chickens. He brought one of them inside for me to meet and I chatted with the brown chicken for as long as was humanly possible. Naturally the conversation with Rob turned from chickens to comedy. I said something that he said was an interpretation of a dream he had had where he was walking along a path and he could see all around him except directly in front of him. I had said that everyone is on their own path and has to be brave enough to walk down their own path. He said he didn’t know exactly what lay ahead of him because it was his path and only he was walking it. It takes courage to look around and see other people walking their own path or walking as a group on other people’s paths, but for some truly unique people it is important for them to walk their own path to help provide the world with uniqueness and variety and to help keep everyone else moving forward along their path, or leadership. Rob has 4 chickens including a black Spanish one who he has named with a long, impressive sounding Spanish name, 2 brown ones and a white one. For some reason I'd imagined them all to be white but I was probably just thinking of my favorite peom by William Carlos Williams,

The Red Wheelbarrow

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

Woke up this morning feeling hungover after drinking only three beers last night. Embarrassing. That's the thing about living on a shoestring budget - you can't afford to drink too much, so you're tolerance for alcohol drops. Last night when I got off stage I got the nod of approval from one of NZ's comedy godfathers, Brendhan Lovegrove. Before I went on he advised me to speak loudly and to hold the mic close to my mouth so as to dominate the rowdy crowd including a stag do and a hen's night. It totally worked, but the crowd weren't that rowdy anyway. I hooked them in at the start with my usual leftfield style and material, and had them attentive for the whole 15 minutes. I can hold my head up high after solid performances three nights in a row at the Classic.

It's taken me til now to get excited about doing another show in the NZ comedy festival. Traditionally I've done a show every second year, starting in 2007. I have an idea for a new show and I've already started to flesh it out. In March I will have done comedy for 10 years, and my show is something to do with that. Watch this space.

7 Days series two is now nine episodes in and so far I've had 12 gags to air, including a whopping six in the last episode. I now realise that my whole week has become consumed with 7 Days, because on Wednesday I begin writing the jokes, on Thursday I submit them, on Friday night I watch the show on TV (or watch it the next day on the network website) to see which of my gags got in, and then all weekend I look forward to Tuesday for confirmation of what gags I got in... then the next day it all starts again for the next episode! Last week I submitted 80 jokes and got six to air, four of which were for the games "Answers" and "Caption That". The other two jokes were "script jokes" - my first script jokes to air - about news stories for the games at the top of the show such as "What's the Story" and "My Kid could Draw That". I was very happy with the script jokes I submitted this week and feel as though I'm improving in this area. Six jokes breaks the old record for most jokes to air by a single spec writer by two. Apparently some magazine has voted 7 Days New Zealand's best comedy show of the last 50 years... stoked I'm helping make it so.