I've now had a week to reflect on my five night season in this year's comedy festival, and I can pretty much say it's been all good. I came away thinking I'd love to do more hour-long shows to really master the hour of comedy. Having not performed a preview of my show I went into it last tuesday nite quite cold and so the first two nights were about getting used to doing an hour for the first time in a year, getting used to my tiny, intimate venue, and getting used to my show itself. tuesday and wednesday were my learning nights, and the last three nights were enjoyable and fun. I came away feeling proud of my show and like I'd want to put it on somewhere else. My show was one of the more undiscovered gems of the festival but I think I could change that next year by putting quotes and accolades in the program blurb and putting up some big kick arse posters around the place. Also just doing shows in consecutive years will help. I look forward to previewing my next year's show in Adelaide and Dunedin.

Curled up with a blanket on the couch early in the morning nursing a fatigued head and an upset stomach from yesterday. It may be comedy festival or it may be coffee related ie. too much coffee all last week (especially on saturday) then only one limp instant coffee on sunday morning. Where to from here? The reviewer described me as the enigma on the NZ comedy circuit. Have I found my niche? The NZ comedy industry still rewards backwards, agricultural, lowest-common-denominator type comedy.

We are all on a journey through this life.

None of us has arrived, none of us has made it. Who knows what's around the next corner? Nothing is nailed down, nothing is permanent. People come and go. Nothing lasts. Money comes and goes, food comes and goes, greatness comes and goes.

7/5/11

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.